Sadism Is As Sadism Does
I’m reading the book “What Was God Doing on the Cross” by Alister McGrath, which is essentially a short discussion of the major atonement theories. Anyway. The first chapter begins in a conversational tone, getting into the cultural location of the execution of Jesus. The author is setting the scene, gearing up to tell the reader about how the Romans are oppressive, about how cruel they are, etc. Here are some of the highlights from his description of the scene at Calvary from pages 12-13 …
(The Romans) call the preferred way of execution ‘crucifixion’. The word, which sounds neat and clinical in its precision, refers to nothing other than legalized sadism. It is probably one of the most depraved forms of execution ever devised. … they begin by … whipping him … it tears the victim’s backs to shreds … usually they nail them through the wrists; if you nail them through the hands, they fall off, and you have to start again … it is a horrifying and pitiful scene … there have to be limits to the length of time it takes to crucify … they devised a neat way of speeding up the process … and, as we watch, such a pathetic scene seems to be happening in front of our eyes … victims are stumbling past … one of them seems to be in a really bad way (and) just collapsed, it’s a sickening sight.
Legalized Sadism. I couldn’t have said it better myself. We do these exact same sickening things (and worse) to animals by the millions every second of every day and most of the people around me in this particular religious tradition don’t see anything wrong with that at all. We obsess on how awful this violence is in one instance and completely ignore it in another. This narration could be taken straight from Gail Eisnitz’ book “Slaughterhouse“, or used as commentary to any of the undercover videos that animal advocacy groups manage to get at slaughter houses and factory farms. I’ve seen it myself, I’ve smelled it – the obscene mixture of vomit, excrement, and blood; heard screams of fear and the sickening sounds of a creature gagging on its own blood. Sickening doesn’t begin to describe it. It is obscenity beyond words.
Anyone who thinks I’m degrading Jesus’ death is missing my point entirely. First, you can’t degrade his death any further than it already was. Second, I’m not saying that Jesus is no different than a cow or a pig or a chicken. I am saying however, that obscenity is obscenity.
It makes me crazy (filled with sorrow and revulsion) to be in Church singing about how glorious God’s creation is, how “everything you’ve made was made to give you glory” on the one hand, and knowing how we actually treat it on the other; even more so considering how averse God’s people are to talking about the fact that animals are spirit filled (breath of God) creatures too.
As a result of God’s creative activity, both animals and people are “living creatures.” In this sense, all of animate nature is on similar standing. While most translations imply that Gen 2:7 is in some way different from 1:20, 24, the Heb. is the same in each instance. What separates human beings from the animal world is not that they are living souls rather than living creatures, but that they have been created “in the image of God.” ~ New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (haya; chayya)
How can we all nod our heads in agreement that all those things that happened to Jesus were just horrible and turn around and continue to inflict that exact same violence on the most innocent creatures on the planet (domesticated herbivores) and justify it by the fact that we really like to put their dead bodies in our mouths. We have our own legalized sadism and we seriously don’t want to talk about it. In fact, during the season of Lent we will spend 40 days essentially thinking about how awful that particular death was, how much He suffered at the hands of his violent executioners, and then Easter Sunday most of our celebrations will center around a product of that exact same violence. If the symbolism is uncomfortably analogous then you’re seeing it rightly. Violence inflicted upon innocent flesh is bad. Unless it’s tasty flesh, then we thank God for condoning the violence we inflict upon innocent flesh. Twisted. If we look at the cross and see an excuse to ignore violence haven’t we missed the point?
How is it that giving up meat for Lent makes you noble, and giving up meat permanently makes you a freak, an “other”, and a suspicious threat? What’s that about? Is Christian freedom really just an excuse to mete out the same violence we claim to abhor?
He was as defenseless, and as innocent, as a lamb is. Since, then, Scripture compares him to this inoffensive and unprotected animal, we may without presumption or irreverence take the image as a means of conveying to our minds those feelings which our Lord’s sufferings should excite in us. I mean, consider how very horrible it is to read the accounts which sometimes meet us, of cruelties exercised on brute animals. Does it not sometimes makes us shudder to hear tell of them, or to read them in some chance publication which we take up? At one time it is the wanton deed of barbarous and angry owners who ill-treat their cattle, or beasts of burden, and at another, it is the cold-blooded and calculating act of men of science, who make experiments on brute animals, perhaps merely from a sort of curiosity. I don not like to go into particulars, for many reasons, but one of those instances which we read of as happening in this day, and which seems more shocking than the rest is, when the poor, dumb victim is fastened against a wall, pierced, gashed, and so left to linger out its life. Now do you not see that I have a reason for saying this, and am not using these distressing words for nothing? For what was this but the very cruelty inflicted upon our Lord … Now what is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at cruelty to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching … There is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offense nor defense, that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought of it … Think then, my brethren, of your feelings at cruelty practiced on brute animals, and you will gain one sort of feeling which the history of Christ’s Cross and Passion ought to excite within you.1
1 Cardinal John Henry Newman on the passion and death of Christ, preached at Oxford in 1842 as cited by James Gaffney, “Can Catholic Morality Make Room for Animals,” in Animals on the Agenda, ed. Linzey & Yamamoto (London: SCM Press, 1998), 106.
