On the Cruelty of Man
We live in an age of death. Journalists seem bound to report every wrongful death that occurs around the world. You get the feeling that we live in a dangerous time. Whether at a concert in Manchester, in the wasteland of Aleppo, or in your own neighborhood, the reports continue to flow in of people whose lives ended in tragedy.
This summer, I was in Berlin and someone asked if I had gone to see the concentration camps. I confessed that I had no plans to go, as I just couldn’t take it emotionally.
Not long after, I went to the National Museum of Scotland and beheld a guillotine, thumb screws, stocks and many other devices used to inflict pain, punishment, torture, and death upon others.
Like you, I have seen the news reports of Islamic radicals beheading people. I remember watching Braveheart and closing my eyes and ears to William Wallace being disemboweled. I study the history of the Reformation and learn about people being burned alive, drawn and quartered, or beheaded for their faith in Christ.
Man seems to find endlessly creative ways to inflict pain and death upon others. There are museums dedicated to these devices. The very horror of the concentration camps displays the terrible creativity men find to inflict death upon others.
Have you considered that this abominable artistry springs from man being made in the image of God, and subsequently distorted by sin? For God does have the perfect right to judge and to kill, and He has promised torment for those who rebel against Him.
Could it be that all the horrifically vile ways that man has created to torture and kill others is permitted by God to show us the even-more-terrible nature of what hell shall be? Perhaps the squeamishness we feel right now about man’s ability to inflict pain and death — whether by scalpel, firearm, blunt instrument, rope, electricity, or any other tool — is actually a plea by God for us to repent and follow Christ?
Luke 13:1–5 » Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”