Part-Time Pundit: Broken but not Beaten: Death with Dignity

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October 2, 2005

Broken but not Beaten: Death with Dignity

* Note: This is written from a Catholic perspective using some of the traditions that we have about the Crucifixion. It shouldn’t be outside the realm of other Christian trains of thought. This is a draft, comments welcome.

There is something implicit about being killed that presumes defeat in our minds. If someone dies, they’ve lost their fight. In the minds of the West, there is no there is no greater punishment we give than the death penalty. You can see in the words and actions of those who want to put someone to death that they presume killing that individual will give them victory over their crimes. We don’t understand suicide bombers that will sacrifice their own lives to kill others and as such we have a very large problem defending against them. Self-preservation makes sense to us, self-sacrifice does not.

When many Christians look at the Crucifixion, they see man putting God to death and celebrating a victory, though short-lived. It is the Resurrection that is celebrated because that is viewed as victory over death and rightfully so, but at an expense of seeing the Crucifixion for what it really is, a victory in itself (albeit not “the” victory). Paul proclaims “Christ crucified”, not Christ resurrected, as the stumbling block for the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. (1 Cor 1:23)

Ancientt Romans were not stupid. The understood priorities and resource utilization; you have to if you are going to run an empire the size of Rome. They knew that if a soldier was in one place doing one thing, he could not be somewhere else doing another. This is important because when Christ was sentenced to death, they used soldiers to torture him, prod him out to Golgotha, and then crucified him. For the scourging and mocking of Jesus, an entire company of soldiers was assembled and they all apparently participated (Matt 27:27).

The point of this exercise wasn’t to kill him. It is far easier and more efficient to just draw a sword, kill him there, and be on to other duties. The Romans, and by them the Jews, wanted to convey a message by killing Jesus, as they did with every crucifixion they ever did. It was to instill in the population a sense of fear in crossing Rome by destroying the pride and dignity of those who did commit crimes. There is something humiliating about those who go to their eventual death as broken and sobbing messes. That was the image the Romans wanted, someone who was not only killed but completely destroyed hanging naked on wood for all to come and mock. In that culture, being killed was bad in itself but some could justify it. Being killed with a shameful death is something that was unbearable to people and served as a good anecdote for people who thought to cross the Empire.

As an example, recent history has shown the willingness of certain sectors of Muslims to kill themselves for their cause. One way some have dealt with this is to take the bodies of the terrorists and to stuff them in pigs and bury the body. This act (which I think is immoral) has served as a somewhat effective deterrent to those who would commit such acts. The concept of a shameful and disgraceful death is a powerful deterrent.

When Jesus died on the cross and Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body, Pilate was surprised he had died so quickly, so much so that he did not believe that Jesus was dead until told by his own people (Mark 15:43-45). Crucifixions were commonplace in the empire. Pilate didn’t just show up that day and Jesus was surely not the first nor last person every crucified by his order. Jesus died far quicker than normal compared to most crucifixions. Both the thieves crucified with Jesus were alive after Jesus was dead (John 19:33). It wasn’t because of the Crucifixion that caused Jesus to die quicker than the others; it was what happened leading up to the Crucifixion.

According to tradition, Jesus was whipped 39 times by the centurions. 40 lashes are considered a death sentence. Another thing to consider is that this wasn’t just a whip made out of rope or leather. They would work broken glass or rocks into the whip so that it would tear the flesh as you were hit with it (which is why only 40 would usually kill you).

The point of physical torture is to emotionally and physically break someone down. For almost everyone it works. The US military, when training people to deal with being prisoners of war, does not expect people immunize people to torture. What they do train you to do is find ways to keep your dignity and prevent you from being broken down. There are many stories of American POWs coming up with clever ways to maintain resistance. Some would come up with believable lies for their interrogators (such as giving the names of their high school football team members when they ask for names of fellow soldiers); others would find culturally specific ways to resist that would be lost on the interrogators. For instance, the crew of the USS Pueblo would secretly stick out their middle fingers in staged propaganda photographs as a symbol of resistance while the Koreans believed they were creating useful propaganda pictures or they used sign language to sign the word “snowjob” to the cameras. The symbols were lost on them. The use of torture to break someone down is a centuries and millennia old act and it was not unknown to the Romans.

Most people react to torture by saying or doing whatever the torturers want. People become desperate quickly in order to make it stop. The thieves were probably tortured but not to the extent of Jesus. Most people would probably only take a few lashes before they were broken. In Jesus’ case, they had to stop beating him or they’d kill him before he was crucified and that would be unacceptable. They needed a public spectacle and having him die in private would deprive them of that. Jesus denied them the satisfaction of breaking him with torture.

That, however, did not stop the abuse. They merely switched from whipping him to mocking and harassing him. We live in a society that can turn the most mild-mannered soft-speaking individual into a raving lunatic spewing forth a stream of obscenities that would make a sailor blush just because they are caught in rush-hour traffic. People do not tolerate being the butt-end of jokes for very long. The soldiers slapped him around, spit on him, and mocked his kingship. If I were Jesus I probably would have responded by giving those soldiers festering boils in uncomfortable places. Jesus took it and said nothing. He denied them the satisfaction of breaking him with mockery.

Then they lead him out to the public spectacle that is a crucifixion. There is no evidence that attending crucifixions was mandatory as far as I know. The people who were there wanted to be there. There were some there who were friendly to Jesus, most however were not. The road was lined with people who mocked and hurled insults. Then he was stripped and nailed to a cross and left to die. Jesus was the main attraction of this even and the thieves crucified with him knew this. This is why the bad thief hurled insults at him with the rest of the crowd, he was trying to regain some sense of pride (Luke 23:29). The crowd and the bad thief mocked Jesus’ divinity, and he did not respond. He deprived them of breaking him before he died.

He took all the evil mankind had to offer and did not sway one iota from his message. He could have wiped them all out with a thought and didn’t. He could have let loose his tongue and cursed like a sailor but he said nothing. At the end of the day, he forgave them all. The point for the Romans and by extension the Jews, in crucifying Jesus was to get him to recant or otherwise abandon his own preaching. It was to break him to show that his words and his life mean nothing except failure. They tried to show the public that his message was empty and leads to humiliation. They failed.

Anyone can be killed at any moment of any day. It’s simply not difficult to kill someone especially in our day with the wealth of technology available for killing. Jesus was not defeated by being killed. Yes, he was physically and emotionally assaulted and eventually died. He, however, did not waiver from His message. He knew He was going to die and He approached that event with dignity and shrugged off all that humanity could pile on to Him. The Roman Empire could put anyone they wanted to death and there wasn’t squat anyone could do about it. But when they piled on all they could on Jesus to squelch his message and humiliate the messenger, they failed. Two thousand years later, Christianity is still here because the Romans could not defeat it then. Jesus was beaten but not broken, and when He died, He died with His full dignity showing that no one can take that away from someone. His death was a victory.

Posted by John Bambenek at October 2, 2005 12:00 PM