How to be a Christian

[DKleinecke]

I found an interesting article via Google News on CNN.com. I am
sensitive to copyright issues so I will not just copy it.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life ran a survey on white
evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants
and the religiously unaffiliated, and conclude that

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to
support the torture of suspected terrorists.

That is depressing news to those of us who take our religion
seriously. 54% of people who go to church at least once a week agreed
that "the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or
"sometimes" justified." Only 42% of the people seldom or never go to
church agreed.

On the other hand the religious group that most often said torture was
NEVER justified was the mainline Protestants. So not all hope is lost.

I am not going to try to defend torture. So far as I am concerned
anyone who says it is ever justified has failed to hear Jesus'
message. It isn't even justified on purely secular grounds - nothing
learned using torture is reliable enough to be trusted.

I ask: what are we going to do when so many people who claim to be
Christians flunk such a simple test of morality?

If you are reduced to nit-picking arguments about whether or not water-
boarding is torture you have already lost the argument. Everybody
agrees it is the functional equivalent of toture.

[themu...@gmail.com]

Two items, here:

1) If torture didn't work, nobody would use it. It works. (Not
talking morally, just functionally. People don't waste their time on
something that doesn't work.)

2) Jesus' morality is for individuals, not governments. Paul
specifically says that God gives governments the sword essentially to
maintain the peace. This isn't to say that torture is or is not
justified, but you cannot consistently use Christ's words on morality
and apply them to a government. Were that the case, then taxes would
be stealing, and it's not.

[dary...@aol.com]

You have evidence to support your claim that nothing useful was
learned? That's not what I hear. Of course the results of the
interrogations were not released, I'm not surprised about that.

I do pray that no one you love will ever be harmed for lack of
information that could be gained from the techniques used.

Do you really equate what happened with things like drilling holes in
someone's teeth, suspending them by their arms behind their back,
beatings, electric shock applied to sensitive areas, rape. The sort of
things done to John McCain. IMO if you are going to call our
interrogation methods torture we are going to have to come up with a
whole new word for the other kind.

Daryl

[DKleinecke]

I believe the posts that have been made to my original post prove my
point.

People are quick to prefer what they believe is a personal advantage
over Christian morality.

[George the Guy Who Watches Terrapene carolina triungus]

The best defense for our type of enhanced interrogation would be if
some good old boy to say:

That aint torture, heck, that is how I discipline my wife and kids.

[Steve]

>1) If torture didn't work, nobody would use it. It works. (Not
>talking morally, just functionally. People don't waste their time on
>something that doesn't work.)

Well, about 362 million prayers a day have been made by christians
over the last 1800 years or so - for loved ones not to die, for sight
to be restored, for lotteries to be won...... and less than 1
billionth of those can even be pretended to have been 'answered'.

So...yeah... people will certainly waste their time on things that
don't work.
[shrug]