Torture in the night
Ever since I was a young child, I have had an unwilling fascination with torture and execution. I wish I had money for every hour I have lain awake in the night, trying to comprehend the brutality of human beings toward one of their own, and the humiliation, helplessness, agony, and forsakenness of the victim. What is it like to be utterly alone before the power of those who enjoy your screams of pain? (Those too dull of imagination to appreciate the question should view one particular scene in the 2007 film Rendition.) What is it like when the trap door falls, the piano wire snaps taut, and there is only curiosity and delight among those watching you die? And many other and darker questions might be asked.
I think I keep returning to these morbid problems for several reasons. First, I simply can’t fathom how humans become so insensate as to enjoy the spectacle of suffering. Is such cauterization of sympathy possible? I’m not talking about rejoicing in justice – there is something in every one of us that wants to see retribution on those we perceive as wicked, and for good reason. I’m talking about enjoying someone else’s pain so as to make it an end in itself: opening the door to cruelty toward one’s enemies, and worse still, toward defenseless innocents. How do we keep prattling on about the moral progress of man? We have not taken a single step forward since Cain.
Second, I am a Christian, and I have a lot of forefathers who died under torture. I want to enter into their sacrifice so as to honor it; and I want to prepare myself for the possibility that I may be called on one day to imitate their example. Could I do it, I ask myself? Could I die with dignity in the midst of public humiliation and mockery? Could I keep my head up and honor my Lord in the face of my fear, against the terror of pain and of utter aloneness?
An image comes to me of Aslan padding slowly toward the Stone Table. The metaphor, moving as it is, cannot match the reality: the Son of God bound, bloodied, the friendless plaything of the Praetorium guard, hanging by nails, hated by men and devils and even (may we dare utter such things?) of God Himself. There is no tenderness for Him, no comfort, no vinegar to dull His agonies. But – and this is where Christianity subverts the wholesale evil I have been describing – “herein is love.” This is God entering our estate, knowing our suffering and absorbing it, bearing in Himself our pain and death so that for us one day “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore.” This is what gave courage to the martyrs of old (and gives it still to the martyrs of the present), and it is what I pray would give me courage were I to face the cruelties of man on account of my faith.
But there is more. The death and resurrection of Christ is the beginning of the new creation, the terminus whereof is a final day in which the Creator who made us to image His Triune love will come to judge the living and the dead. And in that day, by the standard of His own perfection of goodness, He will right all wrongs that have been committed under the sun. He will expunge the atrocities of men, their crimes and cruelties, their violence and victimization, so that it will be visible to all (and acknowledged by all) that righteousness has triumphed in full, that evil has not had the final word in anything perpetuated on the earth. Not one tear of Ivan Karamazov’s little girl will go unavenged, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. There is One above the jeering crowd who knows all, in whose heart there is no pleasure in our pain, and who will bring every deed into judgment. Here is the courage of the martyr, and here is the hope of every victim in this blighted world.