The crucifix

[pa___ul3]

I've been reading Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut and, this morning, I read a passage which struck me as very valid.
It goes "The most important message of a crucifix, for me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority." given that those men who carried out the crucifixions would, more than likely, only do something so barbaric in order to satisfy a commanding authority.
I found it quite ironic.

[Old_Geezer]

Whilst that is true, no one wants to question and receive the wrath of authority, I suspect these were more barbaric times anyway. It's possible the act of crucifixion wasn't seen as particularly out of place by "the chap in the street".

[jno]

crucifixion wasn't that unusual in those days and neither was cruelty. It wasn't just the Romans, either. Military history is full of tales of pyramids of severed heads, smallpox-ridden blankets being sold to the enemy and so on. I think most people expected to have a short, painful life and die in battle or childbirth, depending.

In war particularly, you need to think about whether you want to fight as dirty as your opponent; or is it better to be gentlemanly and maybe lose?

[sandyRoe]

After the Spartacus rebellion one of the Roman General, Crassus, had 6000 prisoners crucified, lining the Appian Way from Capua to Rome..

[Zeuhl]

Yes it is ironic

The God of Peace and his followers:

The Inquisition - they had imaginative ways of inflicting cruelty
The Holy Wars - my jesus is better than your jesus
The Missionaries - convert or lose limbs (or worse)
The Nazis - how a devoutly christian nation annihilated millions of 'inferiors'

Human Beings are extraordinary aren't they?

[jno]

crass by name and crass by nature

[Old_Geezer]

I reckon Crassus was just trying to win the 'Capua In Bloom' contest. Someone told him to hang gladioli from all the lampposts.

[Davethedog]

OG are you here all week :-)

[Zeuhl]

For when people went past on the omnibus or intram?

[Tups]

I wonder what would have happened to the Roman soldiers, had they not complied. Or indeed, to the Nazi prisoner officers in the concentration camps ... Would refusal have caused their own deaths and would this have changed the situation? I'd like to think I would rather die myself than be instrumental in the torture and death of others but would I ....?

[ll_billym]

I am sure that there were people then, and now, that would do that 'just for a laugh' and if there is/was some reason that they can do it without getting into trouble, or even getting kudos then all the better.

[naomi24]

I’m not sure whether other posters here have missed the irony that Paul mentions – or whether I have understood it differently - but it seems ironic to me that crucifixion, which is indeed so terribly cruel, was in fact the method chosen for Jesus by God – allegedly the supreme authority.

[Old_Geezer]

Unsure it was chosen by God, more allowed to continue, which seems to be God's usual modus operandi.

[goodlife]

History establishes that the inquisitors tortured those accused of heresy in order to extract a confession. In an effort to minimize the Inquisition’s guilt, commentators have written that torture was commonplace in secular tribunals too. But does that justify such activity by ministers who claimed to be representatives of Christ? Should they not have shown the compassion that Christ showed for his enemies? To view this objectively, we might reflect on one simple question: Would Christ Jesus have used torture on those who differed with him on his teachings? Jesus said: “Continue to love your enemies, to do good to those hating you. (Luke 6:27)

[naomi24]

OG, There are two lines of thought here.

1. If, as many believe, our lives are pre-ordained by God, (cries of ‘It’s meant to be’ spring to mind), then the method by which Jesus was executed must have been deliberately planned.

2. God is allegedly an omniscient being who sent his son to earth specifically to die. If we didn’t endow him with omniscience we could claim that he didn’t know which method of execution Jesus would be subjected to - but we do - and, therefore, he did.

God can’t avoid responsibility for this one.

[Old_Geezer]

I see your reasoning. But it does occur to me that since God created everything it is ultimately responsible for everything anyway.

That aside.

Lives could be considered pre-ordained in general terms but the details left to see how it all pans out. If one insists free will exists then this seems a likely get-out clause.

Being born into human form, bodily death was presumably accepted as inevitable. I accept the omniscience point implies God knew it was all going to happen, but I think that boils down to the old chestnut about conflicting super-powers. Can God create something so heavy that even it can not lift it ? Maybe, by definition, a God can not be omniscience, but merely nearly so ?

[naomi24]

I’m not sure that anything can be ‘nearly omniscient’’, but it seems we have to make our minds up about the nature of this God. Is he all-powerful, or isn’t he? If he is, then he has no excuse, and if he isn’t then he cannot be the Almighty.

[RATTER15]

Without "get out clauses" every religion would fall overnight!!

[Zeuhl]

The 'irony' for me in paul's OP is that the so-called 'religion of peace' was born out of an act of ruelty and sadism, uses it as an iconic image (indeed revels in images of thorns and blood) and tellingly has a history littered with sado-masochistic atrocities from forced conversions, through the Nazi Holocaust, the murder of prisoners by christian Serb militias to the perverse behaviour of Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.

The irony for me is that any one of those 'christian' groups would seem quite happy to subject their targets to crucifiction or similar

[andy-hughes]

I don't think that the notion of crucifixtion was a deliberately cruel death chosen by God as a symbol of his love - it was simpy the common criminals' death at the time. As Lenny Bruce said, if Christ had been executed in modern times, we'd all have little silver electric chairs on chains.

Relaitvely speaking, cruxifixtion is by no means the cruelest death that has been designed by man for his fellow man - read any of the number of books about torture through the ages, and you will see far more inventive, prolonged, sadistic and inhumane ways to kill someone which place crucifiction quite low down on the scale of prolonged suffering.

As far as the crucifiers being people who would 'satisfy a commanding authority' - I think you elevcate their mental processes far above their actual level.

In an occupying army - which Rome was in Palastine, you will always find enough soldiers who regard inflicting pain on their perceived enemies as a fortunate byproduct of their solidering, given that they were able to sell the clothes of the vistim to suplement their salaries.

You only have to be a regular on here to see the vast numbers of people who claim they would pull the leaver / throw the switch in order to demonstrate that their mooral outrage is more outraged than anyone else's. For the record, I think they are full of hot air - it takes a very particular kind of person to take a human life in cold blood, but that is another issue for another debate.

So for your Question - I think executioners throughout the ages have been of a certain type who are able to do the job becuase it needs to be done, and that has nothing to do with being forced into it by another authority. Some people have the capacity to kill other people, and some people have the capaicty to take an unbearlably painful and time-consuming route to doing it - twas ever thus.