The Tortured Christ and the Tortured
At the centre of the Christian faith is the history of the passion: the history of the betrayed, denied, tortured and crucified Christ. No other religion has a martyred figure at its centre. This has evoked revulsion among many aesthetes, from Cicero to Goethe. But among men and women it has evoked sympathy too. The helplessness and forsakenness of Christ awakens our compassion, just like the helpless baby in the manger. What does the torture of Christ have to say about torture in general? Does this torture justify torture by Christians, or the torture of the enemies of Christianity, either here on earth -- even more -- afterwards in hell? Or does the tortured Christ mean the end of torture, because he is the end of every possible justification of torture, whether it be religious or secular?
Christ's cross stands between the countless crosses set up by the powerful and the violent throughout history, down to the present day. It stood in the concentration camps, and stands today in Latin America and in the Balkans, and among those tortured by hunger in Africa. His suffering doesn't rob the suffering of these others of its dignity. He is among them as their brother, as a sign that God shares in our suffering and takes our pain on himself. Among all the un-numbered and un-named tortured men and women, that "Suffering Servant of God" is always to be found. They are his companions in suffering, because he has become their companion in theirs. The tortured Christ looks at us with the eyes of tortured men and women. (Jurgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today's World, Fortress Press, 1994, pp. 64-65).
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