It is a strange betrayal, isn’t it?  I’m going to go on a little bit of a journey before I circle back to this.

A couple years ago, I noticed something strange about Christian belief.  I was looking at biblical mentions of hell and the devil, and what I discovered surprised me: We have made hell so much scarier than what is in the bible.  Instead of being an Adversary or God’s prosecuting attorney, we’ve turned Satan into a monster and given him much power.  We’ve created this incredible landscape for hell, filled with demons and torture, when the bible points instead to a place of sleep or rest for the dead.

At the same time, we’ve tamed God’s angels and turned them mostly useless.  Every time an angel appears in the bible, the first words out of his mouth are don’t be afraid.  Would any of the angels that appear in popular art have to say this?  The ridiculous babies or the gentle, beautiful women?  No, we’ve stripped the angels of their power and majesty, leaving nothing left that would make us afraid.

In reflecting on this, I realized something really strange about us humans: we fear goodness far more than we fear evil.  We are threatened by good.  Goodness paralyzes us, because we don’t understand it.  So we undermine it.  We pull its teeth, and we ascribe selfish motives, and we plug our ears and sing the la-la-i-can’t-hear-you song so that when goodness speaks, we can hear only ourselves.  Because if goodness exists — if God exists as a being of pure goodness — then we know we fall horribly short of the mark.  We know we are not good.  We may try to be, or we may claim we try to be, but we’re selfish and manipulative and vengeful, and we know it.

So we imagine up hell as a place of punishment and torture, the place we believe we deserve to be.  We try to make God as selfish and vengeful as we are, sending us forever away from God’s presence to this place of punishment and revenge. We turn God into an oppressor rather than a savior.  We turn God into a being of violence and vengeance rather than of goodness and love and light.  And then we worship this ugly and tarnished version of God, because we know in our heart of hearts that we are not good and we deserve punishment.

This is my answer to the question posed in the original tweet:

Everytime a group gets oppressed, some of those oppressed will side with their oppressor. I never understood what motivates that betrayal.

The motivation is simple, though it may not be immediately obvious.  These oppressed people who side with their oppressor, they believe that they deserve to be oppressed.  They know that darkness lives in the deep places of their soul, and they know that they are flawed and unlovely and un-good. 

Dimerdji is right to label this as betrayal.  We are called not to dwell in our awfulness, but to abide in the infinite love and mercy and peace of God.  We may never see true goodness in this world, or pure love, or pure mercy, but we can aspire to them.  We betray ourselves, we betray those who are oppressed, and we betray God as well.

whipporwill:

Believe Me, It’s Torture: What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist—not inflict—it

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding” was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.

Exploring this narrow but deep distinction, on a gorgeous day last May I found myself deep in the hill country of western North Carolina, preparing to be surprised by a team of extremely hardened veterans who had confronted their country’s enemies in highly arduous terrain all over the world. They knew about everything from unarmed combat to enhanced interrogation and, in exchange for anonymity, were going to show me as nearly as possible what real waterboarding might be like.

It goes without saying that I knew I could stop the process at any time, and that when it was all over I would be released into happy daylight rather than returned to a darkened cell. But it’s been well said that cowards die many times before their deaths, and it was difficult for me to completely forget the clause in the contract of indemnification that I had signed. This document (written by one who knew) stated revealingly:

“Water boarding” is a potentially dangerous activity in which the participant can receive serious and permanent (physical, emotional and psychological) injuries and even death, including injuries and death due to the respiratory and neurological systems of the body.

As the agreement went on to say, there would be safeguards provided “during the ‘water boarding’ process, however, these measures may fail and even if they work properly they may not prevent Hitchens from experiencing serious injury or death.”

On the night before the encounter I got to sleep with what I thought was creditable ease, but woke early and knew at once that I wasn’t going back to any sort of doze or snooze. The first specialist I had approached with the scheme had asked my age on the telephone and when told what it was (I am 59) had laughed out loud and told me to forget it. Waterboarding is for Green Berets in training, or wiry young jihadists whose teeth can bite through the gristle of an old goat. It’s not for wheezing, paunchy scribblers. For my current “handlers” I had had to produce a doctor’s certificate assuring them that I did not have asthma, but I wondered whether I should tell them about the 15,000 cigarettes I had inhaled every year for the last several decades. I was feeling apprehensive, in other words, and beginning to wish I hadn’t given myself so long to think about it.

I have to be opaque about exactly where I was later that day, but there came a moment when, sitting on a porch outside a remote house at the end of a winding country road, I was very gently yet firmly grabbed from behind, pulled to my feet, pinioned by my wrists (which were then cuffed to a belt), and cut off from the sunlight by having a black hood pulled over my face. I was then turned around a few times, I presume to assist in disorienting me, and led over some crunchy gravel into a darkened room. Well, mainly darkened: there were some oddly spaced bright lights that came as pinpoints through my hood. And some weird music assaulted my ears. (I’m no judge of these things, but I wouldn’t have expected former Special Forces types to be so fond of New Age techno-disco.) The outside world seemed very suddenly very distant indeed.

Arms already lost to me, I wasn’t able to flail as I was pushed onto a sloping board and positioned with my head lower than my heart. (That’s the main point: the angle can be slight or steep.) Then my legs were lashed together so that the board and I were one single and trussed unit. Not to bore you with my phobias, but if I don’t have at least two pillows I wake up with acid reflux and mild sleep apnea, so even a merely supine position makes me uneasy. And, to tell you something I had been keeping from myself as well as from my new experimental friends, I do have a fear of drowning that comes from a bad childhood moment on the Isle of Wight, when I got out of my depth. As a boy reading the climactic torture scene of 1984, where what is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world, I realize that somewhere in my version of that hideous chamber comes the moment when the wave washes over me. Not that that makes me special: I don’t know anyone who likes the idea of drowning. As mammals we may have originated in the ocean, but water has many ways of reminding us that when we are in it we are out of our element. In brief, when it comes to breathing, give me good old air every time.

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning—or, rather, being drowned, albeit slowly and under controlled conditions and at the mercy (or otherwise) of those who are applying the pressure. The “board” is the instrument, not the method. You are not being boarded. You are being watered. This was very rapidly brought home to me when, on top of the hood, which still admitted a few flashes of random and worrying strobe light to my vision, three layers of enveloping towel were added. In this pregnant darkness, head downward, I waited for a while until I abruptly felt a slow cascade of water going up my nose. Determined to resist if only for the honor of my navy ancestors who had so often been in peril on the sea, I held my breath for a while and then had to exhale and—as you might expect—inhale in turn. The inhalation brought the damp cloths tight against my nostrils, as if a huge, wet paw had been suddenly and annihilatingly clamped over my face. Unable to determine whether I was breathing in or out, and flooded more with sheer panic than with mere water, I triggered the pre-arranged signal and felt the unbelievable relief of being pulled upright and having the soaking and stifling layers pulled off me. I find I don’t want to tell you how little time I lasted.

This is because I had read that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, invariably referred to as the “mastermind” of the atrocities of September 11, 2001, had impressed his interrogators by holding out for upwards of two minutes before cracking. (By the way, this story is not confirmed. My North Carolina friends jeered at it. “Hell,” said one, “from what I heard they only washed his damn face before he babbled.”) But, hell, I thought in my turn, no Hitchens is going to do worse than that. Well, O.K., I admit I didn’t outdo him. And so then I said, with slightly more bravado than was justified, that I’d like to try it one more time. There was a paramedic present who checked my racing pulse and warned me about adrenaline rush. An interval was ordered, and then I felt the mask come down again. Steeling myself to remember what it had been like last time, and to learn from the previous panic attack, I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex. The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel ashamed when I think about it. Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia. No doubt this will pass. As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, “Any time is a long time when you’re breathing water.” I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

click to read more…

(via silas216)

christiannightmares:

Westboro Baptist Church to picket funerals of Arizona shooting victims (Click image for story and press release)

Let me say this one more time:

The leaders of Westboro Baptist Church are not Christians.

It takes more than claiming the name to be a Christian.  What does it take?  It’s right in the baptismal vows:

• Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
• Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
• Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
• Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your savior?
• Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
• Do you promise to follow him and obey him as your lord?
• Do you believe in God the Father?
• Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
• Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?

I’m sure that the WBC folk think they’re okay so far, and I’m willing to give them this much.  But this isn’t all.  It gets harder from here.

• Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
• Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
• Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
• Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
• Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

It’s in these later parts of the vow (which we answer not just with I will, but with I will, with God’s help) where the Phelps family and other members of Westboro fall short.

Where are these people proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ?  What evidence is there to show them finding and serving Christ in all persons or of loving your neighbor as themselves?  And how on earth does this respect the dignity of every human being?!?

To be a Christian, one must believe in and accept Jesus as savior.  And then, one must behave in the ways Jesus commands us to behave.  These commandments are actually very simple.

1. Love me.
2. Love all persons.

That’s it!  It’s a two-part plan, and it is just that simple.  The thing is, love is hard work; it isn’t easy.  To love means to work for the very best for another person, even at the cost of getting the very best for oneself.  That sounds pretty simple, too, doesn’t it?  We may not be wired this way, but we can do it… with God’s help.

This kind of love becomes more complex and difficult once the community gets to be larger than about a dozen or so people.  That’s when we need love-in-community, which is called justice.  Justice means that we work to secure equal access to the good things in life for all persons.  And the good things in life are both the things we need to physically survive (food, shelter, clean water) and the things that give us life (learning, meaningful work, a life of the spirit, love, forgiveness, grace).  Truly, justice is pretty simple though it can be as difficult as love.  But we can do this, too… with God’s help.

The Westboro folk, though, do not appear to live out the love and justice that Jesus commands of us.  Instead, they hide behind shouts, chants, and signs, all of which display anger and hatred.  If you’ve read this tumblr blog for more than a week or so, then you know where anger, hatred, bullying, and abuse come from: FEAR.  And fear is not just the opposite of faith but the rejection of faith.  So not only do these demonstrators clearly demonstrate their rejection of the very basic and simple commandments of Jesus, but they demonstrate their complete rejection of faith.  By their actions, these demonstrators show us that they utterly reject Christianity.

Fred Phelps, I name you a False Prophet.  You and your family teach God’s children to reject and defame the savior God sent to us.  You and your family teach God’s children to live in fearfulness, in anger, in abuse.  You and your family are the forces of wickedness that rebel against God.  You and your family are the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.

As a Christian — newly reaffirming my own baptismal vows this morning, on the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord — I RENOUNCE YOU.

And I pray for your immortal souls.  God knows, you need it.