Taking advantage of an overnight layover in Rome last summer, I hit the Roman roads for a run at sunrise and happened upon the Colosseum. I instantly thought of the Christian witness against the cruelty once celebrated within its walls.
On PBS NewsHour, David Brooks recently recalled Augustine’s account of his friend Alypius. In his Confessions, Augustine described companions dragging Alypius unwillingly into a Roman amphitheater. He closed his eyes, certain he could resist the spectacle. His ears, full of the roar of the crowd, invited his eyes to open. It wasn’t long before he was cheering along with the crowd. He eventually returned, even bringing others.
Chris Surber
Augustine wrote that Alypius “was struck with a deeper wound in his soul” than a fallen warrior might suffer in his body.
The Pentagon has announced plans to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. Pete Hegseth unapologetically announced that it will be made available to view.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended the proposed broadcast by saying, “No one has to watch it.” The trouble with the “don’t watch it if you don’t like it” defense is that fails to consider the ways in which repaying evil for evil keeps both men held captive by the spirit of violence.
Jonathan Capehart warned recently on PBS of this kind of spectacle aligning with an “atmosphere of menace and violence.”
“Repaying evil for evil keeps both men held captive by the spirit of violence.”
Frederick Douglass understood how cruelty could corrupt the person exercising power. In his 1845 Narrative, he described Sophia Auld, who initially treated him kindly before becoming hardened to core through the necessary menace required for keeping slaves. “Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me,” he wrote. “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone.”
The circumstances differ but the question of what cruelty can make of us remains. Why are we so willing to trade off little chunks of our souls for the sake of so shallow an impression of security?
For American Christians, punitive spectacle is at war with everything Jesus teaches about loving our enemies. For anyone on Team Human, are we really willing to accept that this is the baseline morality? Is this cruel brand of justice worth searing the soul through the eyes as we celebrate vengeance in the name of exercising justice?
I can’t help but fear what we are becoming when we sell free tickets to the Colosseum.
The greatest movements of moral growth in all the world, from Jesus to Ghandi, were built on the truth preserved in the New Testament book of Romans, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Brooks spoke of moral progress and moral regression. I am unwilling to accept the spirit of nihilism and apathy running amok in our culture that says moral progress is impossible in this world. I continue to hope it is not naïve to hope that hope remains worth hoping in.
If you want to watch, watch. But before we take seats for this punitive spectacle, perhaps we should consider what we are being asked to surrender.
Because the price for admission may be a little bit of our soul.
Chris Surber is senior minister of First Congregational Church Naples, Fla., and founder and director of Supply And Multiply.