day 24 Cruelty

Ive been thinking about the crucifixion.  Its a weird thing because it is simultaneously the thing I should probably think about an awful lot more and the thing I least want to think about.

A while ago I watched a film about Japanese prisoner of war camps. I shouldnt have watched it. It was mostly about resilience and bravery and comradeship. But it was also about the brutality of the Japanese prison guards. One scene was of someone being slowly and systematically beaten to death. It was brutal and vicious and despite the fact I knew it was a film being acted , I also knew it was portraying a reality that happened thousands of times in the war. And is probably happening all over the world today.

I find it so hard to even start to think about what Jesus suffered on the cross. He was lashed with a barbed multi stranded whip which dug into his flesh and ripped it off in chunks. Over and over again. The lashing itself often killed people. The shock and blood loss ..... unthinkable. Hit, spat on, his raw open back and shoulders strapped to a piece of wood. Thorns rammed into His head. Force marched up a hill in the heat. Screaming crowds. The lash and prodding of the Roman whip and spear. 

Then the nails and the bone- dislocating, suffocating slamming of the cross into place.  The pictures we have all seen of Jesus on the cross cant possibly bear any resemblance to what actually happened.  Isaiah says that   his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness  (52:14)   He was beaten to a pulp. Unrecognisable as a human being.   Not like the sanitised pictures of a man in a loincloth with some blood trickling down His face with which we like to console ourselves.  But a body mangled and broken and bleeding and butchered.  The levels of pain He suffered are unimaginable. And thats before He also took upon Himself all the sins of the world.  Its too much to think about for long.  

But what is almost more awful to contemplate is the mentality of the people who did the torturing.

In the second world war the Japanese were infamous for their brutality. Men who survived Japanese prisoner of war camps hardly ever spoke of their ordeal. The survivors of places like Auchwitz were, eventually, able to speak of what had happened to them. It was organised, mechanised mass murder. There were individual acts of brutality and madness. But the acts of violence were orchestrated by the Nazi machine. Japan (and Rome) was more personal, individual and demented.  Individual people systematically tortured people to death. These werent  crimes of passion. I think we might all be able to imagine a scenario where something pushed us to snap and we did something awful in a moment of rage. But this was different. This was someones job. How can a human being become a killing machine?    Im not talking about warfare here either. In battle people are paid to kill people where necessary.  Cleanly and quickly if possible.  Jesus's torturers were paid to make His death as slow and painful as possible. The soldiers at the foot of the cross seemed gleeful about it.  These men, the Japanese prison guards and so many others throughout history have somehow been overtaken by or infilled with evil.  I cant think of any other explanation.

And yet from the cross Jesus still says 'Father forgive them. They dont know what they are doing'.  This is what Easter is about. The inconceivable levels of cruelty and evil in men, meeting inconceivable mercy, forgiveness, love and grace in Jesus.

This week men and women are getting on board oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz knowing full well that they will probably be bombed out of existence.  Unbelievable bravery. Somewhere else someone is programming a missile.  The human heart is capable of so much that is noble and good, yet so much that is depraved and wicked.

Jesus took into Himself all of that wickedness, cruelty, selfishness and evil and somehow defeated it, chaining it all up and throwing away the key. It blows my mind. It makes my brain hurt and my heart sore.

Thank you Jesus.