One reason I brought up the subject of torture yesterday is that I wanted to remind us how culture shifts in its definition of morality, especially regarding warfare. The torture techniques, the “enhanced interrogation” if you speak NewSpeak, these were the very things that we found outrageous when they were practiced on American soldiers during the Korean War, Vietnam War, etc. Waterboarding, for example, was one of the main accusations against a Japanese officer tried for war crimes after World War II. American soldiers were court-martialed for performing “the water cure” during the Spanish-American war. It’s been considered something morally repugnant. Until it became “necessary.”
To be honest, there is no reason for a nation of this world to not embrace these things. Nations aren’t Christian; people are Christian. However, dare we Christians go along for the ride as our country’s morality changes? I wrote before about the bombing of cities becoming acceptable. Now we’re talking about torturing prisoners. Each of these things become acceptable out of pragmatism: they work, they save lives, etc.
Terrorism works as well. When the governments to whom we blindly pledge our allegiance accept the use of suicide bombers, will Christians do the same? History says yes. And that’s really sad.
Performing these terrible, and immoral acts only confirms the cowardice of those who recommend or do these things. Yes these people are cowards, why do they do this? “out of fear” fear they are going to look meek, or even weak before the rest of the world, then they are a coward to admit what they have done when confronted. Yes these people are cowards, it takes a much stronger, and braver person to do what is right even if it does garner criticism, and a strong leader will admit when they have failed, instead of trying to hide that failure by saying “but it worked”. What if Jesus had said torture one of the thieves, surely they will accept the sins of the world upon their back, and save me, because I do good and they do evil. Would our sins be washed away ? NO! Did torturing these people rid the world of evil? NO! It served no purpose other than make a few cowards feel they had done all they could do. Christians should stand up for what is right, not hide behind a cowardly government. and that is my opinion.
Laymond, I often wonder if depending on our own strength rather than trusting in God is not actually a form of cowardice.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
1 Samuel 15:3 (English Standard Version)
3Now go and strike Amalek and(A) devote to destruction[a] all that they have. Do not spare them,(B) but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'”
God destroyed the Amaleks, history shows, because they continually violated the laws of God, and they were a danger to the safety and survival of God’s chosen people.
But now think, did the Amalek children not flee in absolute terror? Were they not killed in front of their parents? Were the parents not killed in front of their children?
Talk about torture. As a parent, I’d rather be waterboarded.
It is because of verses like the above that I believe that we can not just look at the harm done by individual acts when we look at war and torture. We have to look at the world, sometimes, from the point view of the greater good. That’s what God did with the Amaleks. That’s what I think the United States has done in the AUTHORIZED use of torture.
The cases of authorized torture that I have read about by U.S. officials were conducted because the officials believed that lives were at stake.
In one of the cases I have read about, one of the captives bragged that terrible acts were going to take place. Waterboarding brought out that a plan to drop a dirty bomb was in the works, and a plane was going to be flown into a skyscraper. A dirty bomb could cause unimaginable suffering to tens of thousands of people. Is it really Christ’s wish that we allow this to happen because we do not want to cause the plotter of such a horrific scheme to suffer for even a day at our hands?
My allegiance to my country is not the point here. When evil presents itself as it did in World War II, for example, such non biblical passivism would let unimaginable evil triumph. Yes, on an indivdual level during World War II the Japanese and Germans were no more deserving of death and pain than you or me. But on the national level that God was using to judge, just like the Amaleks, they were commiting horrific crimes against the weak and innocent. I think God made clear in 1 Samuel 15:3 what response he thinks is justified in the face of such evil.
Interestingly enough, I was writing about this on Tuesday, working on another project. The destruction of the Amalekites, as well as other military actions in the Old Testament, was related to the promises given to Abraham concerning the promised land. That promised land was where God’s kingdom was set up on earth. The Amalekites tried to prevent the Israelites from inheriting the land that had been promised to them. If we lose sight of those connections, we begin saying, “Well, God authorized military action in the Old Testament.” Yes, he did… in order for his people to secure the land he had promised. The Israelites were never sent around as regional policeman, striking down the Assyrians, Babylonians, etc.
Current evidence shows that reports of “success” from “enhanced interrogation” were greatly exaggerated, to say the least. Add to that the fact that interrogators claim equal or greater success with non-violent interrogation methods.
Even if they had been effective, however, pragmatism can never guide our hand. Nor are we to set ourselves up as judges; there is one judge who can truly look on the hearts of men and discern between the righteous and the unrighteous. 1 Samuel 15:3 in no way justifies Christians taking vengeance into their own hands. Non biblical militarism is not the answer.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
Did God send Samuel to the US government bearing a message directly from Himself?
Did God send Samuel to the Allies before they firebombed Dresden?
Did God send Samuel to Truman before he commanded Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be obliterated from the face of the earth?
If I was being waterboarded, I’d admit to having a dirty bomb in a plane ready to crash into my own parent’s house if it would get the interrogator to stop. Information “produced” by torture has to be verified against already-collected information from reliable sources and methods before being acted upon.
And the greater question, Andy, is: what changed between 1945 and 2009 that allows the US to go from prosecuting waterboarders to promoting them? Isn’t that situational ethics?
Referring to Old Testament situations, to justify things of today, is like building an ark and depending on it to get you through the fire Peter describes destroying the earth. It just won’t work. As we are told things are different today, we have a new covenant, and a new mediator. Under the old covenant God used prophets to speak to men, under the New Covenant he used his Son. Love your enemy, not torture him. I know it is not always easy to be a Christian, but I believe Jesus told us that.
Should a firefighter wait until God instructs him to run into a burning building and save a life? Or does he assume from his knowledge of God as revealed throught he scriptures that this is the right thing to do? I believe he doesn’t need a direct command from God to know.
Similarly, when the president of the United States reads about the Rape of Nanking, hears of the Bataan death march, sees the brainwashed fantacism of the Japanese on the beaches of Tarawa and Iwo Jima, and suffers from the pain of knowing that many, many service men and Japanese will die every day a horrible war continues to rage — does he really need to wait until God tells him directly that ending the nightmare with the use of the atomic bomb is the ONLY moral thing to do?
Each time someone takes some separate incident such as Dresden, Hiroshima and takes it out of context of the events that preceded or surrounded it, he or she is not looking at the big picture, as God does and I believe expects us to do. Each event is judged in the context of the big pictures of God’s intent for the behavior of man and society. God is our example of how to behave.
The Amalekites were destroyed because of heinous actions, and the suffering they caused God’s people, themselves and others — and would have continued to cause had they been allowed to live. We in this age MOST OF THE TIME follow GOD’s EXAMPLE, not commands spoken directly to us. God’s example was to punish, with horrific violence when necessary, evil nations that would not repent. During World War II, Germany and Japan were certainly as bad as or worse than the Amalekites. As a whole, the actions of Christians who fought against these evil nations were Godly. I am well aware that spraying someone with a flame thrower or putting a mine where it will blow a person’s leg off are horrific acts. So is hacking to death every man, woman, child and animal in a city with brutal and crude implements such as swords, knives and axes. But God has shown that we AS A NATION NOT JUST AS INDIVIDUALS, have a responsibility to discern his will and try to carry it out. Based not just on the New Testament, as this blog maintains, but the OLD TESTAMENT as well. It’s one book. It’s one God. It’s one way.
Back to torture. Do I believe that God would allow us to torture a fanatic if it was the only way we could think of to find out information that would prevent widespread suffering by innocents? Yes, I do. God favors the innocent. But just as the Americans who used these practices did, I would want very, very strict rules and limits on what was done and when.
About the Amalekites: that’s just not right, according to the Bible. While God foretold the punishment of many peoples, the only ones that he actually sent his people to take care of were the ones involving the promised land. Not the Persians, the Medes, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, or even the Romans. That’s based on the Old Testament. That’s based on the Bible. {And let me encourage you to differentiate between what this blog says and what commenters on this blog say}
Today we have no earthly kingdom, no promised land. The equivalent for us is the kingdom of heaven. Since it is a different kind of kingdom, the arms we use to protect it are different; see Ephesians 6.
There is no biblical precedent for modern warfare, nor biblical justification. Only by ignoring the context of the Bible can we claim that there is.
Grace and peace,
Tim
Tim,
Questions.
Did God send the Persians/Medes to handle Babylon or was the writing on the wall and Belshazzar’s death a coincidence?
Did God send Babylon to handle Israel in a captivity?
Did God send the Greeks to handle the Persians?
Did God send the Romans to handle Israel?
Did God send a torturing delusion to handle Nebuchadnezzar?
Did God take out Belshazzar (in Babylon) with a Mede (used by Persians) for misusing utensils that belonged in a Temple (in the promised land) two nations away that God had Babylon take in the first place?
Did God use the Hebrews to be a blessing to one generation of Egyptians and then use Hebrews bring destruction to another generation of Egyptians?
BTW: I haven’t said what I think about torture.
Just trying to understand this idea of ‘God knew about it but God didn’t sanction it’. Is there anything God “knows” about in prophecy in the Bible concerning His people that isn’t sanctioned by God? To say that the Bible is “Promised Land” centered doesn’t end the argument. The Bible is only about one thing— Someone’s coming, He’s here, He’s coming back. It isn’t an inclusive history of God’s dealings with the world but it is a history of God’s dealings (His: character, nature, attitude, moral, ethics….) with one nation. Has God ceased His actions with using nations?
Are sparrows now on their own in the Christian age?
The question is not “Were Germany and Japan worse than the Amelekites?”
The question MIGHT be: “Were Germany and Japan worse than the Allies?” Remember, the Allies were composed of one nation run by Josef Stalin and another nation which still legally treated some people as animals. Your sliding scale of righteousness gets dangerously skewed. Why didn’t the US punish Russia for its atrocities? The simple answer: because the US didn’t get involved in WWII for moral reasons, Andy. You know this and I know this. The US got involved in the Pacific Theater only when its Pacific hegemony was threatened, and in the
European theater only when its economic interests were threatened.
But that material is secondary. The question is: “Were Germany and Japan enemies of God’s nation?” The only way the examples of national violence in the Hebrew Scriptures support Christian involvement in nationalistic violence today is if one nation directly attacks God’s nation. Since God’s nation doesn’t have physical borders or a capital or territory to be attacked, our violence today is against those foes that actually do threaten God’s nation: the enemies Paul describes in Eph 6.
Don, very good questions. I think that God throughout history, up until the present, has used ungodly people to bring about punishment on others. We may not like that fact any more than Habakkuk did, but it’s consistently true. [The exception being the possessing/cleansing of the promised land.] In fact, Habakkuk is a good study about all this. He wanted wickedness punished in Judah, then was shocked to learn that it would be the ungodly Babylonians that would do the punishing. Did that mean they were actually righteous? No, God tells him… they will in turn be punished.
As for the Bible being a history of God’s relationship with one nation, I agree. But remember that the New Testament draws on the experiences of that nation to teach God’s new nation how they are to live. God brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir, but the New Testament doesn’t use their experiences to tell us how to be Christians. We are the new Israel, not the new Babylon.
As for the sparrows… you were the one who used to make fun of people who trusted in God to take care of things (something about sitting on their fat behinds waiting for God to give them what they need). Dare we believe in a God who can take care of business?
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
To those brothers who seem to think we still live in old testament days, when is your next animal sacrifice for payment of your sins, I have never seen one, so at least tell me how it goes. Didn’t God demand that also? Oh you mean that is the only thing he changed.
Laymond, while I don’t think we are under the old law, I do think that we have to learn from what is written in the Old Testament. God hasn’t changed.
“you were the one who used to make fun of people who trusted in God to take care of things (something about sitting on their fat behinds waiting for God to give them what they need).”
NO, I was/is the one who found my brethren who sit on their fat behinds sometimes when the cause doesn’t suit them but rally when it’s one of their soap boxes…. guy.
I trust in God and NEVER sit on my behind. It is the guys who are too sophisticated and “faithful” to bother with governments and politics but join the KIWANIS or the ones who “don’t legislate morality” but won’t let their children watch any TV that bug me. They “trust in God” to run the country (oddly enough because THEY are too above-all-that but God isn’t) but manage their retirement accounts like Donald Trump and fuss over their cars like little girls…..
You know hypocrites who trust Jesus with the politically incorrect stuff but not with the real stuff in their lives. :)
“Did that mean they were actually righteous? No, God tells him… they will in turn be punished.”
Sorry have to disagree with your conclusions/theology to that one. By your definition ANYONE who is punished is unrighteous. That also would preclude or include Israel because ultimately she died unfaithful and punished and I suppose by your definition and the actions in AD 70– unrighteous.
Nebuchadnezzar WAS finally righteous in the eyes of God. So was Nineveh. So was Abimelech, the Abraham one. So was Abel.
Oh goodness,
I just read your comment to laymond.
You play the NT card with me and the OT card with him.
Nice move Holy Man.
Don,
I played the NT card? It’s possible… tell me what I said. Both you and Andy seem to think that I have done that.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
Don,
I guess the characterizations that you gave were general enough that none of them were meant to apply directly to me. I will mention, though, that I’m not so much trusting in God to run the country, I’m trusting in God. For all I know, God’s plan is for the U.S. to pass into history. I trust him to do what’s best. I’m in this country as an ambassador, an alien, a foreigner. That’s my role.
And you’re right, I didn’t state things well when summarizing Habakkuk. When he cries out to God about Babylon’s unrighteousness, God’s answer is that Babylon will be punished. I didn’t mean to say that the fact that they were punished means they were unrighteous. They were unrighteous and they were also punished… but God didn’t ask the Israelites to do that. God has historically used ungodly people as agents of punishment. The Assyrians were spared for a time in the days of Jonah, but have you read Nahum lately? They were not “finally righteous.” They were shown mercy for a time. There is a big difference. Nebuchadnezzar turned to God, but was serving other Gods at the time he was used by God to punish Tyre, Egypt, Jerusalem, etc.
Oh, rats… I’ve gone and played the NT card again.
Tim, you said we were not under the law, but we should learn from it.
Like the example of the adulterous woman who was going to be stoned for her actions.
Jn:8:5: Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
So naturally Jesus said if Moses said it then get on with it. Oh! you mean that is not what he said , now I remember, he said torture this woman, she deserves it. That don’t sound exactly right either, well you know what he did, if you don’t, look it up I might get it wrong. I just can’t seem to grasp why we are to learn from a law that was done away with.
Laymond:
Because that guy in the NT you can’t stand, Paul, said those things were written for our instruction (Romans 15:4).
Laymond,
Regarding John 8, those men were not following the law. It did not say she was to be stoned, and it said that both she and the man should be punished. Also, they were setting a trap for Jesus, not honestly inquiring about the meaning of the Law.
That said, the Law was given by God, the God that does not change. And, I’m not just talking about the old law, I’m talking about the Hebrew scriptures, the Bible that Jesus and the early church used. 2 Timothy 3 says studying it can make us “wise unto salvation.” Sounds like it’s worth studying.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer
See, I warned you that I might get it wrong. Just to tell you how dumb I am, I don’t even know what Jesus marked on the ground.
Yes the characterizations WERE very general and obviously don’t apply to this post because it is political, governmental and Christianal :)
“God has historically used ungodly people as agents of punishment.”
Since that statement is so “general” I don’t know if this will meet your criteria BUT- God sent Israel into Canaan also to punish the ungodly Canaanites in the Promised Land. God used Israel on the other occasions I mentioned to punish the ungodly. God used Israel to punish portions of Israel. Israel sitting in Babylon and forcing that “ungodly” nation to respect and honor Him is God using Israel outside of Israel to bring the “ungodly” into a form of “godliness”.
How do I feel you used the NT AND OT cards?
You seem to jump back and forth across covenants depending on the argument the other person uses.
BTW (to others):
Not all of the OT has to do with covenantal(?) Israel. Most of the actual history recorded in the OT occurs outside the Mosaic Covenant. There are more centuries of recorded history in the OT that precede the establishment of the Mosaic Covenant than there are recorded during the entire time of it being in effect.
Don,
If you can give examples of my jumping back and forth, that would be helpful. What I’ve tried to say is:
(1) Military action on the part of the Israelites in the Old Testament was related to (a) entering the promised land; (b) securing the promised land; (c) repelling invaders from the promised land. I’m not “throwing them out” because they’re Old Testament examples; I’m saying that we need to see what the promised land is today and how we enter/secure/defend it.
(2) The Old Testament is useful for our learning, even while we don’t live under the old covenant. That’s why I play the OT card. I’m trying to play the “let’s use the whole Bible” card.
Now, in the comment you quoted about God using ungodly people to punish, I mistakenly assumed that the whole context of the conversation would be considered and that I wouldn’t have to repeat what I’d already written. Hence the abbreviated description. Aside from the situations I’ve referred to in point 1 above (in this post), God used ungodly peoples to punish unrighteousness in all of the instances that I can think of. Yes, I am discussing military action, the use of force and/or violence. That is the context. Military action by God’s people outside of the promised land context. Not there. So unless you feel that nations today can somehow operate militarily within the context of God’s promised land, I don’t feel that the use of those examples is justified.
Grace and peace,
Tim
Tim, I guess you, Andy, and Don all have a point, if your post was speaking of war in general, I guess in my ignorance I mistakenly thought you were speaking of ” torture” . Torture of those who are captured, under complete control of their enemy. As I read the scripture God Judges your heart, in my opinion it takes a pretty dark heart to do to others that which is considered torture. And an even darker heart in a Christian to condone such. As I said to begin this comment chain, A coward.
The conversation has strayed a bit into examining war. In fact, the previous post was about torture; this post was about Christians changing their views on what is right and what is wrong whenever our country makes such changes. I’ve brought up that point twice, with the discussion each time dissolving into a defense of the change rather than considering WHY we change only when our society changes. If Christians think torture is appropriate, we should have complained loudly when our country chose not to torture. If we thought it was inappropriate before, nothing should have changed. That’s what this post was about, although I’ve gotten a lot out of the discussion anyway.
Grace and peace,
Tim Archer