Monday, June 23, 2008
"Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection" (Hebrews 11:35).
IDEA: Governments and religious groups resort to torture because of what they think it might accomplish.
PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate how torture by religious groups accomplishes nothing in people's hearts.
The writer of Hebrews 11 states that there are those who were tortured . . .
Why do governments or organizations, even people, resort to torture?
I. Governments resort to torture because they believe that it will give them a military advantage.
Prisoners captured in war are tortured because the military is looking for information about the enemy's plans.
Do you think that works?
Sometimes nations resort to torture to teach people the consequences of rebellion or of defiance.
Crucifixion was a standard method of execution. Rome wanted to teach people what it meant to be a rebel against the Roman government.
In Jesus' time a hundred rebels against Rome were captured and crucified and hung up on either side of a major highway. The executions were done in public, not in a prison. Why would Rome do that?
Governments have tortured enemy soldiers. We see it in Viet Nam and in World War II to frighten enemies into submission because the consequences of being caught are so severe.
II. Why would religious groups torture people in the name of religion?
Often the torturer believes that if he can just get the person to say that he denies a conviction he holds, the torturer will have made a convert.
Rome sometimes tortured and killed people who would not give worship to the Caesar who had become a god.
Once each year citizens of the Roman Empire were compelled to go to a temple erected to a Roman Caesar and drop a pinch of incense on the sacred fire and to say "Caesar is Lord."
Many Christians refused to do that, and they were tortured and killed. This was Rome's way of winning allegiance to the Caesar.
The Inquisitions (four between 1184-1834) were established by the Catholic church. The purpose of torture was to secure religious and doctrinal unity through the conversion and sometimes the persecution of alleged heretics.
In Islam, if a devout Muslim leaves the Islamic faith and becomes a Christian, that person is often persecuted or killed.
III. There is a little couplet that says, "People convinced against their will / are of the same opinion still." Do you think Christians can ever legitimately resort to torture in the name of Christ?