When Did We Become Comfortable With This?
Reflections on the things we are learning not to feel.
There was a time when certain things troubled us.
Not because we were weak.
Not because we didn’t believe in justice, or consequences, or the responsibility of a nation to protect its people.
But because somewhere deep within us, we understood that there are things human beings should never learn to enjoy.
I’ve been thinking about that this week.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently announced plans to livestream the execution by firing squad of a man responsible for the horrific murder of thirteen people at Fort Hood.
Thirteen lives. Thirteen families forever changed. A terrible act of violence that deserves justice.
And yet, somewhere along the way, someone decided the rest of us should be invited to watch another human being die by execution .
And I find myself pondering…
When did we become comfortable with this?
Not the question of capital punishment. That’s an important conversation, but it’s not the one I’m having here.
I’m asking something beneath that.
Something about us.
About what happens to a people when the public display of death begins to feel like a demonstration of strength.
What is happening to us when punishment becomes performance, and the taking of a life becomes something to broadcast.
And perhaps what troubles me most is hearing Christians defend something I would have hoped our faith would cause us to question.
I understand the argument for justice. I understand the desire for accountability. I even get the deep anger that arises from within when innocent lives are ruthlessly and violently taken.
What I don’t understand is how followers of Jesus have become so comfortable confusing the public display of power with moral courage.
Those are not the same thing.
There is a strange thing that happens to us when we spend enough time around cruelty.
At first, it shocks us.
Then it becomes familiar.
Then we find reasons to explain it.
Eventually, if we’re not careful, we start applauding the very things that once disturbed us.
And the frightening part is that we rarely notice the change.
We just call it being realistic.
Being strong.
Standing for what is right.
But I wonder if something else is happening.
I wonder if we are slowly losing our capacity for reverence.
Reverence for life. For human dignity. For the sacred responsibility that comes with power.
Even when that life belongs to someone who has committed unspeakable evil.
Especially then.
Because dignity is not something we bestow upon people once they have earned our approval.
It’s something we recognize because they are human.
And if our understanding of human dignity only extends to people we consider worthy of it, then perhaps we have misunderstood dignity altogether.
Which brings me to something that has been bothering me even more.
Jesus.
The center of our faith.
A man publicly executed by the governing authorities of his day.
His death/execution was meant to send a message.
To demonstrate power.
To warn others.
To make an example of someone.
The Romans knew what they were doing. Public execution was never simply about ending a life. It was about shaping the imagination of everyone watching.
This is what happens when you challenge our authority.
And the astonishing claim at the center of Christianity is that God was present in the one being executed.
Not in the spectacle.
Not in the machinery of power.
But in the suffering human being.
I wonder what would happen if we really allowed that to sink in.
If we allowed the story of Jesus to shape not just what we believe, but how we see the world.
Maybe we’d be a little more careful about celebrating the humiliation and death of another human being.
Maybe we’d be quicker to recognize when violence is being presented as strength, or cruelty is being dressed up as righteousness.
And maybe, before joining the applause, we’d find ourselves asking whether any of this actually looks like Jesus.
And yet here we are.
Living in a moment when some of the loudest defenders of Christian values seem increasingly willing to defend things that bear so little resemblance to the Christ whose name they carry.
I don’t say that glibly.
I say it with sadness.
Because I believe the Church has something profoundly beautiful to offer a world that seems determined to keep lowering the bar of what it means to be human.
We are supposed to be people who help lift the human imagination.
People who remind the world that strength and cruelty are not synonyms.
That justice does not require spectacle.
That accountability does not demand humiliation.
That power is most trustworthy when it is restrained.
And that the measure of a nation’s greatness is not simply what it has the power to do, but what it has the moral wisdom to refuse.
Maybe that’s what troubles me most about all of this.
Not simply the decision to broadcast an execution.
But how quickly we can find ourselves defending the indefensible when the people making the decisions happen to be on our side.
And before we point fingers too quickly, perhaps that’s a question for all of us.
What have I learned to excuse?
What no longer troubles me that once would have?
Where have my loyalties quietly begun to shape my conscience, rather than my conscience shaping my loyalties?
Those are uncomfortable questions.
But discomfort is not always something to overcome, sometimes it’s the soul reminding us that we haven’t lost our way entirely.
That there is still something within us capable of recognizing when we are becoming less than we were created to be.
I want to believe we can recover that.
Not by becoming louder.
Not by finding another group of people to condemn.
But by refusing to surrender our humanity in the name of defending it.
By recovering a deeper reverence for life.
By remembering that the way of Jesus has never been about proving how powerful we can become.
It’s about revealing what love looks like when power is placed in its hands.
We can believe in justice without becoming fascinated by death.
We can hold people accountable without turning their suffering into a public event.
We can grieve the victims of terrible violence without allowing that violence to determine the kind of people we become.
And we can love our country enough to say, without embarrassment or apology:
We are better than this.
Or at least, we should want to be.
Because the real question isn’t whether we have the power to broadcast a man’s death.
It’s what happens to us when we want to watch.
And what happens to our souls when we no longer know why that question matters.
