Christians Justify Torture, a Great Hypocrisy

It saddens me greatly how our governmental leaders’ blatant disregard for the Geneva Conventions by legalizing the torture of our detainees can be supported by so many of our brothers and sisters on the Religious Right.I am appalled by the lack of compassion for those who could be tortured under our new “law”. As we’ve just recently seen by the release of Canadian Maher Arar, a falsely-accused terrorist, from a U.S. imprisonment/torture camp in Syria, there are many people in these detainment camps that are innocent. Even if these men and women on the Right cannot wrap their collective minds around the fact that torture is flat-out immoral, surely they can understand that torturing the innocent is wrong.But maybe that’s the problem. I’m not so sure those on the other side of this issue see it as anything more than an “issue”. When we look at things like poverty, war, and torture as merely “issues”, then we are conveniently able to remove the human aspect of the problem. When we allow ourselves to look at the “torture bill” as nothing more than an issue, we allow ourselves to forget about the individual men, women, and children that have the possibility of being beaten, suffocated, starved, electrocuted, and water-boarded in the name of our country. In other words: out of sight, out of mind.Here’s where the moral dilemma of this rationale begins for Christ-followers: We are called to be imitators of Jesus. When Jesus came to walk among us, he didn’t see the issue of sin in this world as a mere “issue”. Jesus saw each individual on this earth being hurt by evil.Maybe it is time for those on the Religious Right to stop placing “towing the party line” over following the teachings and example of the One they claim to follow. Jesus did not tell us to pick up our crosses and put them down when it interfered with our party’s political position. No, Jesus told us to pick up our crosses and follow him. That means loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, turning the other cheek, and not returning evil with evil.Let’s stop this game where we pick what teachings of Jesus we like and will follow, while leaving the rest that make us uncomfortable for someone else. When we start to follow the whole teachings of Christ then we will all understand how torture is wrong and that there is no way we can justify doing this to another child of God.