He is right, and, again, this is an easy question for Americans, whether theistic or non and it is an easy question for Christians. Only the devil is coercive and when we condone torture, we honor Satan. That this conversation is even happening is proof that of how far America and the Church have dedicated to sophistry.

Posted by: Doug | November 7, 2007 4:03 PM

Ditto! And I urge everyone to either call or e-mail their senators and tell them NOT to vote for this confirmation. Let us be true citizens and expect our elected officials to act with honor and integrity.

Posted by: Charity | November 7, 2007 5:50 PM

We have gradually become a people who cannot see the harm we do to others. National Catholic Reporter did a survey last year and learned that while close to 60% of Catholics in the pews believed they were pro-life. 76% believed that torture was ok under some circumstances. And they weren't necessary a complete overlap. We yell - "socialized medicine" while the neighbor down the street loses first his job, then his health care and then - sometimes his life because we believe there has to be some system already in place that will take care of him. Nope - there's not much. We mourn the almost 4000 deaths of our sons and daughters in Iraq and forget the hundreds of thousands who have been killed since we arrived there to demolish a brutal regime. I spoke with a woman recently - a comfortable and intelligent woman - who told me that if she believed that the Iraqi people were worse off now than when we entered the country - she just didn't know how she would live with herself. So - she quit reading the news or listening to it. I asked my students - very good, intelligent kids - if they knew what had happened in Pakistan over the last few days. Not one of them had a clue that anything had happened. But 2 of them remembered seeing the "president of Pakistan" on the Daily Show.
Torture takes many forms including the slow death of the American dream that has happened to many working people over the last few years. It is torture to know that you cannot provide for your family - that there are no jobs that you can do. Torture is the manner in which we have demonized an entire segment of our society - illegal aliens - while we still want the services they provide. Torture is watching the constitution slowing destroyed by an administration so filled with itself that it cannot even determine reality anymore. But, waterboarding - well that's something we can say "no" to. We're helpless it seem on the big destructive forces around us. perhaps we need to begin with waterboarding - demand that nothing like that be done in our name - and then - look at the harm that has been done in our name and begin to untie the knots of untruth and deception behind them. It will take a lot of Christians - and Jews - and Muslims and Hindus and even athiests to untie those knots. I think God is calling us to truth. It is apparently a difficult lesson.

Posted by: Thinker | November 7, 2007 6:51 PM

Once we do away with torture supported "by" Americans, will the Progressives do anything about Muslims doing it day and in day out and day in and day out without cease?

Thinker?

Posted by: Me | November 7, 2007 7:13 PM

Good for Joe Carter.

Though as I've said before, Judge Mukasey was, if not waterboarded, at least taken to the woodshed and reminded that if he essentially admitted the U.S. had tortured detainees, it would create huge legal liabilities and diplomatic nightmares.

Realpolitik or telling the truth? Sad that Judge Mukasey tried to fudge the difference so fecklessly.

Posted by: Larry Parker | November 7, 2007 7:31 PM

For
me, there are some fundamental challenges that national security
issues present to a Christian world-view. Being a former citizen
soldier, I have already been forced to reconcile my personal belief
system with the implications of Just
War Theory in order to, in good conscience, participate in the
mechanics of war. However, my reconciliation was not a blending of
Caesar and Christ – it was, in fact, the clear separation of the
two. natural
law drove me to participate in our military while spiritual law
has brought me closer to God in the midst of living in this world.
Here are some the radical sayings of Christ:

• Matt
  5:21-22 – Harboring angry against another is on par with
  murder

  
  

• 1
  Jn 3:15 – Hatred is on par with murder

  
  

• Matt
  5:38–39 -- Don't resist evil-doers and even turn the
  other cheek

  
  

• Matt
  5:43-44 -- Love your enemies which includes doing good to them

  
  

• Rom
  12:19-21 -- Don't avenge yourselves, leave that up to God

  
  

• 1Pe
  2:21-23 -- Remember Christ's example – He did not revile his
  torturers

  
  

• Matt
  18:21-22 – Forgive multiple offenses from the same person (70
  times 7)

  
  

Try writing the Sermon
on the Mount into the National Defense
plan. Clear enough, right? One of the provisions of natural law is
the protection men from each other, but the ultimate aim is for
mankind to reconcile with the entirety of the spiritual laws which
Christ promised to put
in our hearts. In my pragmatic view, the day the
lion and lamb are led by a child will be the first day I will be
willing to abolish the provisions of natural law and trust the
universal goodness of mankind. Yet personally, I am responsible to
implement the spiritual laws where possible.

To be clear on my position
though, both Christ's radical
sayings as well as the principles of natural law are incongruous with
any policies of
fear or implemented by the civilized
West.

Posted by: Michael | November 7, 2007 7:39 PM

Muslims of your imagination are not the Muslims that I know nor are they much different from any large group of angry young men without hope. We create pictures of people to match our fears and they are rarely truthful pictures. If you have created monsters of Progressives, Muslims, Hilary, etc, they are monsters of your making and somehow that gives us an excuse to do as they do -even if they have not done it - whatever It might be.
Muslims that I know are as horrified at the deeds of a few as I am at those who shoot abortion doctors or gather in militias to claim white supremacy in the name of the one I call holy.
I've been reading about religous addiction this week. Religious addiction is what happens when reality is completed taken away by fearfilled, vengeful and empty thoughts in order to suppress that fear and vengeance and emptiness we fear is inside of us. . It must be addressed for what it is - non reality utterly unconnected to God. God does not hate those that we think we must hate. You can't kill or hurt or torture anyone "for Jesus". Nor can a good Muslim do such things for his/her faith. Illusions where we get to pay somebody back for anything are a denial of the resurrection. Jesus never asked us to do such a thing. The sin of the world is blame and accusation. Jesus showed us what a life without such motivations could be. Then to show us utterly what it looked like - he died on a cross. It didn't happen because God was some sort of sadistic punishing father figure. It happened to teach us what our violence looks like and what we could be without it. I look at Jesus on the cross and the only reaction I can come up with is - please let me never create victims in your name. Let me never put anyone on a cross and say it was for you. It is so much more difficult than feeling triumphant.

Posted by: Thinker | November 7, 2007 8:03 PM

Skip writes, "I've been looking for the scriptural justification for torture, but I just can't find it."

Read through the comments in response to the original post at EvangelicalOutpost (which run I'd guess about 80% against the post's condemnation of torture), and which include attempts at Biblical defense of torture. Some of the same arguments are summarized in a diary at RedState. Mind you, I find the exegesis in these arguments to be, um, tortured. But there are people believing they've found scriptural justification.

Posted by: zann | November 8, 2007 9:12 AM

Okay, I went over there and read the posts, and am pleased to report that 90% or more of the posters were normal, moral, anti-torture people and a small minority were hidebound Bible idolators who thought torture was just fine because nobody could come up with a Bible passage that says Do Not Torture. May I mention in passing that this kind of idiocy puts Christianity in a very bad light? A VERY bad light. So I am relieved that most of the people were horrified by this kind of view. To my mind the whole reliance on an ancient book is just...well I won't say it.

Here is a sample:
>>Torturing another human being can in no way be considered biblical

Then it should be very easy to cite Scripture prohibiting the government's use of torture against evil doers, but it isn't or somebody would have done it by now.

>>and certainly violates the Golden Rule, and the command not to return evil for evil.

The Golden Rule applies to individuals, not governments. As we see in Romans 13, God gives governments the authority to punish evil doers. You don't have the authority to take vengeance on people who have wronged you, the government does.

Punishment is one thing. Torture is NOT punishment.

** I don't know about you, but after I read this kind of thing I feel like I ought to take a shower.**

Posted by: SkipChurch | November 8, 2007 9:39 AM

I was quickly estimating the %age of individual posters...not the %age of posts... because one guy was the main defender of torture on a Biblical basis.

But also, I'll be perfectly frank, I did not WANT to see lots of evangelical Christian support for torture so maybe I erred in my estimate.

The thing is, Christians in the US set the moral tone, based on their numbers and their political influence. That's just a fact. If Christians were predominantly cooking up Biblical justifications for torture, I'd just despair, because if you can justify torture, you can justify ANYTHING.

Posted by: SkipChurch | November 8, 2007 10:22 AM

I posted before about the reasons against making specific laws against waterboarding. Summary form, 1) president wouldn't sign it, 2) if he signed it he would include a signing statement that says he didn't have to follow it, 3) waterboarding is already covered in a number of US laws and treaties and passing another law won't help if the justice department that enforces that laws won't prosecute (and is in fact in charge of people that are breaking the laws), 4) specifically mentioning one type of torture may stop that specific type of torture, but all that people will do is move to another type of torture that is not specifically mentioned and claim that congress has not banned that specific type of torture.

Torture, like most other laws must be governed by general definitions, not specific descriptions. That is how we make laws in this and most other countries.

Posted by: Adam S | November 8, 2007 3:18 PM

Tongue in cheek, Skipchurch. I was comparing the idea that nothing in the Bible expressly forbids waterboarding with the idea that the laws that say no torture aren't specific enough. I agree with you. The law agrees with you. Pretty near everyone without a Fischer-Price Baby's First Interrogation Kit agrees with you.

Posted by: Doug | November 8, 2007 6:07 PM

Thinker, be careful, though. They're made in China.

Posted by: Doug | November 9, 2007 11:03 AM