Well, I have been away for some time now. Partly, I have been doing a lot of traveling recently. Partly, I have been busy working on a new book project.
But I intend on becoming a more regular poster again soon after Christmas. For now, here are a few thoughts churned up by a recent encounter. Thanks for reading.
“Torture Happens”
The week before Thanksgiving signals an annual event that I have been blessed in being able to attend since my retirement in 2015. That event is the annual joint meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Academy of Religion and the Institute of Biblical Research.
This year the meetings occurred in San Diego, CA. Thousands of scholars, academics and independent researchers gathered together from around the world to enjoy a very large religious book fair (where I could easily spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars!) and a vast cavalcade of lectures, presentations, seminars, panels and special events touching on the wide array of topics falling under the rubric of “religious studies.” (I confess that I am an academic geek and feel as though I’ve died and gone to hog heaven every time I attend this conference.)
Ever since my book on Christian Zionism was published in 2021—titled Like Birds in a Cage: Christian Zionism’s Collusion in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People; if you have any interest in this subject and have yet to read my book, you should ask for it as a Christmas present—I have made a point of attending every session available on the subjects of Palestine, Israel, Christian Zionism, and the war against Gaza.
Among the many sessions I attended this year was one hosted by two Israeli Jews slated to discuss the achievements of political Zionism in modern Israeli society. At least that’s what I understood the catalogue description to promise.
The first speaker was an elderly rabbi who gave a long, rambling disquisition (a midrash, I guess you could say) on who knows what. I’m afraid I cannot tell you what his intended topic was supposed to be. It was a stream of consciousness oration that wandered, seemingly without purpose, from one disjointed topic to the next and could easily have given all rabbis a bad name were a listener prone to gauche generalizations.
The second presentation was offered by an Israeli journalist who shared interesting stories focused on the history of modern extremism in Israel. The general upshot seemed to be that “life in Israel is complicated.” Ok. Thank you very much.
I can’t remember what triggered my decision to ask a few questions of the second speaker. I can only recall that I wasn’t buying his pro–Israel slant on what it was exactly that made life in Israel so complicated. I raised my hand to remind him that Israel was a highly militarized society (much like ancient Sparta) which dominated and oppressed an entire group of people, i.e. the Palestinians, having kept many of them under severe, military occupation since 1948.
He replied with standard attempts at justifying the unjustifiable. It’s what most Zionists do.
I pushed back by mentioning the story of my friend, Munther Amira, who was tortured daily during his recent imprisonment in Israel. His physical abuse was not isolated. It was universal and systematic. No one was exempt.
“Torture happens,” was the Jewish Zionist’s answer.
I was dumbstruck. “Are you kidding me!?” I replied. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”
Yep, that was all he had to say. “Shit happens.” (My rephrasing).
I describe the daily dehumanization of my friend, and he hands me a cheap, working–class bumper sticker in response. Shit happens.
What kind of a tawdry, demented view of life is this? But, of course, such a perspective only applies when bad things happen (I’ll try to stop writing the word shit now, even though it seems very much at home in a story like this) to other people, not to oneself or to one’s own loved ones. When bad things happen to Israel, such as October 7, 2023, their pain serves to justify all manner of seething revenge and genocidal retribution.
In the case of Israel, “genocide happens.” The world says “Yes” and goes on its merry way.
I am not surprised to hear ethnic nationalists, like my political Zionist interlocutor, think or speak so crudely, without conscience. But I am truly shocked to hear Christians talk this way, for it reveals a moral compass smashed to smithereens. For, yes, I have also heard good, church–going folks also say things like “shit happens.” (Oops.)
Many bad things happen in life. Rape happens. Child abuse happens. Wickedness happens. What matters is not our ability to restate the obvious but our ability to respond with outrage and work towards a better world, a world where wickedness no longer happens without comment or correction.
The divinely endowed Image of God in humanity is defamed in myriad ways every single day in this world. Every assault against another human being is an attack against the divine image. The awful repetitiveness of such blasphemies may become a recipe for conscientious exhaustion, but it can never become an excuse for indifference, acceptance or feigned impotence.
We are not helpless. Wherever wickedness is permitted it can also be condemned, corrected and terminated. Following this alternative path is the prophetic responsibility of the Christian church.
God cares deeply about such things. And because God cares, God’s people are obligated to devote their lives to doing whatever they can to stem the tide of wickedness in this world, and to mend the wounds of all those who have suffered such wickedness themselves.
I am not a postmillennialist, like many liberation theologians appear to be. I do not believe that anybody’s activism, no matter how far ranging, is ever going to eradicate all wickedness from this world. For that, we must await the return of Christ himself. But we are called to help “prepare the way.”
Yes, torture happens. Any craven numbnuts can know this much. The Christian’s obligation, however, is not simply to know that it happens, but to scream a lifetime of outrage over its reappearance; to work to stop it; to help to heal those who have suffered from it; to see that it is never resurrected in our lifetimes.
Yes, wickedness happens. This is one of the several reasons that Jesus died on the cross for all the wickedness of this world. We can thank our God that Christ did not look at this corrupt society of ours and conclude, “Well, wickedness happens down there.”
Christ did not shrug his shoulders and go on his merry way—a decision he certainly could have made had he wanted to. Rather, he stopped and saw. He heard. He cared. He came down, and he entered into the human condition. He served. He sacrificed. And he rose from the dead in victory.
He now calls us to serve, to sacrifice, to expend ourselves in doing whatever we can toward ending such wickedness as torture, rape, child abuse, and all other forms of human oppression as we await his Return. Though we will never end it all completely, we must do our part in smashing these works of the devil beneath the jackboots of righteousness.
No one is ever free simply to say “torture happens” as if it were a wisdom–filled observation on life.
We have but two options when we say these two words: we may weep, and we may plan to end it as we cry.
