An Itch in the Moral Consciousness

The Cross was Christ’s greatest victory.

I don’t need to dramatize the human suffering of Our Lord; God save us from people who gild the lily. But I wonder how much it cost Him to show compassion to Pilate? In the midst of dying, He called for the Father to forgive them. But He also said, “Greater works than these shall you do” (John 14:12). Don’t tell me that loving your enemies isn’t one of the greatest miracles of all. That miracle is not outside the boundaries of what He wants for you.

What do you make of the story about the WW2 correspondence from a doctor who helped “liberate” one of the Nazi prison camps? Our culture is crazy in its binary obsession, that things must be either A or not-A. That’s okay if you are playing with rocks, but it won’t work with the human soul. So this man sworn to the Hippocratic Oath relished the torture and plundering of his former enemies. And his life was afterward filled with more contradictions. Whatever else that man was, he was an average Westerner.

But the story is propaganda. On the one hand, the author grudgingly admits that war can make you do crazy things. On the other hand, the doctrinal spite against some long dead enemy must be justified at all costs. “Gotta keep your eye on those Germans.” Our troops were just human, but the other side was demonic and evil. And may the approved deity forbid that anyone should ever question the orthodoxy of the Sacred Holocaust, nor permit anyone else to claim that they faced their own holocaust, lest it somehow diminish the mighty god to which they bow down. That anesthesiologist certainly believed what he was told.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I don’t dispute how awful it was to be Jewish in Nazi Germany. But nobody wants to hear about how awful it was to be German in the Post-WW1 Europe when everyone was trying to exterminate that nation. Even the much-loved Eisenhower was ready to slaughter every German living on the earth with bitter hateful glee. We cannot honor one truth by lying about everything else. The Allies were no more just and compassionate with their enemies than were the Germans to theirs. Maybe less so. I think the Defenders of the Sacred Holocaust are more rabid than Muslims who rise up against an insult on the Prophet.

Context is everything.

During my service as a Military Policeman, it was impossible that we didn’t encounter federal agents chasing some investigation. Those guys are hideously compartmentalized. On the one hand they often exhibited the most perverted sense of humor I’ve ever seen. It was damned nasty at times. On the other hand, they have zero sense of humor about something they encounter on the hunt for evidence. It’s bad enough we deal all day long with people who don’t quite understand the subtleties of sarcasm, but the feds must have taken advanced courses in how to be stupid. Not just hiding their own wit from their conscious minds, but they tend to be egregiously, hatefully stupid. Pull stuff out of context? It’s obligatory for them.

So we have wild accusations that some fellow named Chris Roberts commandeered an airliner and almost caused it to crash. He openly admits he did something like that, but it was in a computer simulation. Roberts is not a mass murderer, nor is he some kind of obsessed hacker willing to slaughter thousands because he can’t think beyond the thrill of cracking into a computer system. No, he spent the last few years warning everyone who was supposed to be responsible for fixing the problem that aircraft were wide open to such hacking. They paid no attention at all. So when he tried to force them to pay attention, they tried to arrest him.

And just who is the real threat to our safety when flying? Just about everyone officially charged with our safety — the aircraft manufacturers, the avionics and software makers, the NTSB and all the other alphabet soups, including the TSA who let him on the airplane. His restraint and care is exemplary. Whatever it was he did to test his claims in a real-world situation was so insignificant that the pilots never noticed.

Unlike Luke Rudkowski and John McAfee, I’m not going to insist you agitate for change or for realistic treatment of Roberts for his efforts to save our lives. What I ask is much simpler, well within your reach. Exercise compassion. It’s like a muscle, but without the inherent limits of flesh. When you use it, you let it use you, and it grows bigger than you. That’s what this business of “love your enemies” is all about. There are plenty of Herods in your life, for whom it’s too late and there’s not much you can do. Let God sort your Herods out, as Christ did while under arrest. Talk compassion to those who can hear it, as He did with Pilate.

Pilate performed his duty, but you can bet he was changed after that. While we would surely rejoice at manifestations of redemption, we aren’t really that concerned with real-world change. Jesus still went to the Cross, in part because it was a political necessity for the folks involved. God uses human politics for divine necessities that the people involved could never comprehend. Most of the world serves God unknowingly and unwillingly.

By contrast, we are unwillingly part of this world, consciously belonging to another realm of existence that humanity cannot know. We have to participate in His redemption willfully. This world will pass away, but His compassion lives eternally. We don’t join political organizations as if it really mattered. We aren’t that kind of change.

Take up your cross.