Unfortunately, for me, my husband is keeping up with the political showdown regarding the use of painful techniques to get information from terrorists. I caught him on the phone with a few Senator’s offices, and now I’m threatening to leave the house in November. If any of you can put me up for a few nights, I would appreciate it.
Some human rights advocates are convincing; others are not. I’m glad that we’re a country that respects human beings, even bad ones, but one liberal/evangelical professor compared the screams of terrorists to the screams of unborn children (Ironically, he’s pro-abortion). On the surface, it sounds convincing, but what is conveniently left out of the discussion is that unborn children are innocent; terrorists are not, and some of them refuse to give up information that would save thousands of lives.
This sort of myopic thinking affects all sorts of things, from defending our country to disciplining our children. We think of causing pain, whether physically or emotionally, as just that, causing pain, and we can’t imagine any good coming from pain. What is routinely being factored out of the equation is sin. The world cannot accept the fact that we are all just rotten sinners, accountable to a righteous God. When we reject the concept of sin, everything starts to unravel. For starters, without a category for sin, it’s hard to have a category for innocent, and who’s to say that the terrorist is not just someone’s hapless little brother, losing his way on a vacation to Saudi Arabia and struggling to define what it means to be a male in a pre-modern society. The law protects the innocent and condemns the guilty, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between the two. Even child predators are portrayed by judges and by the media as innocent victims of their own mental disorders.
Secondly, because of sin, pain is necessary and inevitable. (Anybody delivered a baby lately?) There’s no such thing as a life without pain and pain often brings us great joy in the long run. Success is the sweet reward of discipline and hard work. Depriving ourselves of yummies keeps us healthy and looking more human-like. And discipline in a child’s life is a gift—it opens the way to success, happiness, and life. No one wants her child to grow up to be lazy or a fool.
And lastly, not understanding how sin affects our world keeps us from understanding the long-term consequences of sin. War is awful, but could there be something worse than war—like subjecting millions of people to a brutal dictator? Leaders in this country have had to make heart-wrenching decisions. One president made the decision to use an atomic weapon; he decided that prolonging the war, sacrificing more Americans, and leaving the world vulnerable to more aggression was worse than using an atomic weapon.
Sometimes rejecting one option is necessarily choosing another option. I can reject making myself work today, but in doing so, I am choosing to let my house become a wreck, to let my family go hungry, and to let my soul suffer neglect. You can choose to not make your child unhappy this minute, but you may be choosing his unhappiness in the long run. Proverbs tells parents not to set their hearts on their child’s destruction. If we choose not to discipline, we choose (set our hearts) to destroy.
I’m not sure how far we can go to get information that we need to protect others, but to avoid all kinds of pain and disappointment is not realistic and ultimately painful and disappointing. I have a friend, a public school teacher, who is no longer allowed to give her students a “thumbs down,” because that connotes negativity. In protecting our kids from all negative feelings, we’re, ironically, setting them up for a life devoid of all positive feelings and ultimate happiness.
