Okay, this wasn’t exactly what I had wanted to write about the week before Christmas! But events made me decide that I ought to take some time and think in print (otherwise known as blog) about this.

Joe Carter, over at the Evangelical Outpost (a must read Christian blog IMHO, and one of the most thoughtful Christian bloggers I know of) and Justin Taylor are hosting an online symposium responding to Charles Krauthammer’s essay, “The Truth About Torture”, in The Weekly Standard.

I read over some of the entries and was impressed and challenged and a bit frustrated as well. I encourage you to check them out if you are interested and willing to do some deep thinking on a troubling issue.

Just so you’ll know I’m no theologian, ethicist, Dr. of anything etc. I’m just a simple Pastor of a small town church with a BA in Christian Ministries, which I recieved in 1975 for heaven’s sake!

If you think that this disqualifies me from the discussion so be it.

My take on this issue is multifaceted because it is a complex issue. I say this dispite people on both sides who will tell you it’s obvious what’s right and wrong!

The problem is that you’ll find intelligent believers and non-believers on both sides of this issue!

The first thing to remember is that, as I pointed out in my post on the death penalty, there’s a huge difference between what individuals can and ought to do, and what the government is commanded to do.

So while Christians shouldn’t be going around knocking off people who murder, the government has the right to do so. Of course whether or not that’s wise is a subject of much disagreement. But Biblically (see Romans 13)there’s little doubt God created government to keep order in a disorderly fallen world.

Government is also supposed to bring peace and to keep the people under it’s authority safe. Obviously terrorists are dedicated to destroy not just governing authorities, but as many of the people in our nation as well.

Therefore God’s Word would give full authority to a government to fight a war against terror and those who support and enable it.

So far so good, but the real rub is in how that war ought to be fought? Can we condone torture, or brutal mistreatment of prisoners inorder to save the lives of the innocent victims of terror?

Or as Christians must we stick to our principles even if doing so will allow terror to not only exist but to flourish and slaughter the innocent?

As Dr. Krauthammer points out both terror and torture are bad. So in the classic scenario of a terrorist prisoner who knows where the atomic bomb is located, do you torture him to get the information? Or do you let the bomb go off killing and maiming hundreds of thousands if not millions?

So can a government torture in this scenario? After all there is no such thing as a “Christian government anymore than there are Christian buildings, music, food, books, science or Christian Cows!

Only human beings who put their faith in Christ can be Christians. Therefore you could say that government can justly protect is citizens by doing things that are unChristian couldn’t you?

But then how could the Christians in said government take part in or support those things? Wouldn’t that be one of the highest forms of hypocrisy?

I think that in the end what this all comes down to is choosing the lesser of two evils.

It’s evil to torture, and it’s evil to allow thousands or millions of people to be murdered too.

How do you choose?

Here’s another classic. Someone breaks into your house and is about to hurt or kill your family, you have a gun, do you use it?

On thing about torture, you don’t have to kill people to make them talk. Killing them rather defeats the purpose doesn’t it? From what I’ve read the use of drugs, discomfort, pain etc. is used to make people tell what they know.

Of course how reliable that information might be is another question.

So, we are left on the horns of a dilemma, one that is faced everyday by the men and women who seek to protect us in the war on terror.

Where ever you come down on this you ought to try and be charitable to those who disagree. As I hope this post proves, the issue isn’t as cut and dried as you might think.