“Honoring the Image of God”

May 24, 2009

Genesis 1:26-27

Matthew 22:15-22

How will you observe Memorial Day this year? Maybe a cookout. Perhaps a graduation party. And there are always the sales. Or yard work.

I have been or will be involved with most of these activities this weekend. It’s always nice to have the change of pace that a three-day weekend brings. Doing something, however, is not the same as marking this day.

The current US law that makes Memorial Day a holiday declares it a day on which the people of the United States are called upon to “unite in prayer for permanent peace.”[i] Putting aside all the church and state separation issues in such a law (I can be real touchy when the government tells me I should pray) this statue gets at the real nature of Memorial Day. This day calls us to turn away from our usual pursuits and our ongoing preoccupation with war and death. It calls us look toward the future of peace.

How will we turn our gaze? How will we pray?

Our prayer this year should be public—and not necessarily with heads bowed. Sometimes prayer is protest. We should use this Memorial Day and this weekend to insist that as a nation we do everything necessary to bring an end to torture. We should begin such a public prayer this day and not cease in our praying.

A nation that sends young men and women into harm’s way should not engage in torture. It’s as simple as that.  Bringing an end to torture is the greatest memorial we can offer this year.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center gave us a disturbing look at attitudes toward torture among various Christian groups. 46 percent of white mainline Protestants said that the use of torture against suspected terrorists can often or sometimes be justified. 62% of white evangelical Protestants agreed.

If that isn’t troubling enough, the survey also showed that the less people attend religious services, the more likely they are to think that the use of torture against suspected terrorists can only rarely or never be justified. Perhaps for your moral and ethical well-being I should be encouraging you to stay home from worship.

46 percent of white mainline Protestants said that the use of torture against suspected terrorists can often or sometimes be justified. For the past year we have displayed a banner reading “Honor the Image of God: Stop Torture Now.” During Lent we studied the Bible together to discover what is required of us as people who follow Jesus, who is both the tortured One and the resurrected One. As a congregation, our public message and our study of scripture puts us with the 53% of mainline Protestants who say that the use of torture can only rarely or never be justified.

I would say “Never.”

On Memorial Day we as a nation stop, however briefly, to remember those who gave their lives for this country. Some gave their lives in the struggle for civil rights, some in the struggle for a free press. Generally on Memorial Day, however, we remember those who died in military service.

Sometimes as a nation, we fought for very clear causes. WW II is remembered as “the good war.” We fought against the evil of Nazism, an evil that employed torture to reach its ends.

Sometimes the causes we fought for were not as clear. But in such times, our enemies in Vietnam, Cambodia, or the Soviet Union often used torture against their enemies.

As a nation, we were different. Yes, American exceptionalism can lead to a sense that whatever we do is right and good. But in regard to torture, we were different. We were the exception. We didn’t torture. Enemy combatants would surrender to United States troops because they knew they would be treated humanely. They knew that as a nation we honored our commitment to the Geneva Conventions which prohibit “violence to life and person,” in particular “cruel treatment and torture” and also prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”[ii]

We know all the reasons not to torture. In addition to the fact that it is usually only the most brutal regimes that employ such techniques, the information obtained through torture is notoriously false. Indeed many governments used torture primarily to obtain false confessions that could be used against individuals.

This month we heard the testimony of Ali Soufan, a top FBI interrogator who witnessed CIA interrogations firsthand. Soufan testified that torture was counterproductive. Not only was it ineffective in gaining new information, it made it harder to reengage with suspects afterwards.  

Of course every act of torture is a crime under international law. If torture is committed in an armed conflict, it constitutes the war crime of torture. If torture is committed as part of a systematic or a widespread pattern of similar acts, it constitutes the crime against humanity of torture. And the Geneva Conventions are clear that: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”[iii] We cannot let concern for safety or security permit and excuse torture.

For us as people of faith, the strongest argument against torture is that it degrades the image of God in each human being.

Here we Christians get some help from Rabbi Arthur Waskow. He tells the story of a rabbi living under the Roman Empire who said: “When Caesar puts his image on a coin, all the coins come out identical. When the One who is beyond all rulers puts the divine image on a ‘coin,’ all the coins come out unique.” Torture, Waskow says, “tries to destroy the image of God and replace it with Caesar’s image on the human soul and body.”

One day a group of people set out to entrap Jesus with a question: “Should we pay taxes to Caesar?” However he answered, it seemed as though Jesus would be in trouble with the Roman or the Jewish authorities. The image of Caesar was stamped upon the coins along with the words: “Caesar, Emperor, God.” By endorsing the payment of taxes, Jesus could be accused of violating the Jewish law against idolatry. And we can imagine what the Roman government—or any government—would think if Jesus advocated refusing to pay taxes.

So in a typically Jewish way, Jesus answers the question with a question. “Whose image is on this and whose title?”

Well, Caesar’s, of course.

Rabbi Waskow then imagines Jesus putting his hand on the shoulders of one of the troublemakers and asking: “And whose image is on this “coin?” [iv]

So give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s—and give to God the things that are God’s.

Through torture, Caesar seeks to press his own image onto every human being even today. Through torture, even our own government violates the image of God using twisted legal reasoning to justify the unjustifiable.

We should expect more—indeed, demand more—of ourselves as a nation if we are going to send people to fight and die for the sake of this country. Let us resolve this Memorial Day that we will not require people to put their lives on the line to defend a country that tortures and we will not require those in the military to employ torture in their duty. Let us resolve that we will honor those who have died by bringing an end to torture.

The choice that we have to make as people of faith is whether we will celebrate the oppressive Caesar or follow in the way of the infinite God.

We call on our nation to repent.

While we know that we have engaged in torture, we do not yet have a full understanding of who was tortured, what techniques were used, who tortured them, and who authorized the use of torture. A criminal investigation or at a minimum, a Commission of Inquiry provided with sufficient resources and power could answer these questions.

While even our President has said that we shouldn’t “look back,” a refusal to investigate our past will lead to an inability to heal in the future. As one person put it: “We need to bring what has been done in the shadows into the full light of day, and see how it looks when exposed to that cleansing sunlight…Once our nation’s acts have been exposed to the clear light of day, with nothing any longer hidden…we would demonstrate the moral courage to acknowledge responsibility for wrong acts…[and] commit ourselves to a new course of action.”[v]

Only as we look at what we have done can we choose new actions. Only as we look at where we have been can we look toward a new and better destination.

This day, and it the days ahead, let us look toward the future of peace, as we are called to do on Memorial Day. Let us pray for the future of peace, vocally and loudly.

Let us honor the image of God in ourselves and in each human being.

Let us honor the image of God and stop torture now.