Should I Look at Beheading Images?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Pastor John, in episode number 468,
00:00:07.520 | you talk briefly about ISIS
00:00:09.160 | and the terrorism in the Middle East.
00:00:11.800 | On this subject, it raises the question for us
00:00:14.200 | over whether or not Christian adults
00:00:16.040 | should watch the gruesome ISIS beheading videos online,
00:00:20.160 | or even look at the gruesome pictures of ISIS evil.
00:00:23.280 | Should we or not?
00:00:24.440 | How do you think through this question?
00:00:27.240 | - It seems to me, Tony, that there are reasons
00:00:30.800 | why it might serve a person to watch such a thing,
00:00:35.800 | and there are reasons why it might not.
00:00:39.840 | And maybe what would be helpful is if I mention
00:00:42.720 | a few of those reasons, and people then can decide
00:00:45.480 | which group they're in.
00:00:46.640 | Will it serve them or will it not serve them?
00:00:48.280 | Will it help them love people and love God to watch this,
00:00:51.800 | or will it not?
00:00:53.720 | And of course, that does imply,
00:00:55.280 | I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong
00:00:58.920 | with seeing this horror.
00:01:00.560 | I don't think seeing horror is necessarily sharing
00:01:05.440 | in the sin of the horror.
00:01:08.160 | So first, why or how might it be helpful to see it?
00:01:13.160 | And I'll start with a personal example.
00:01:16.080 | In June of 2004, I went back to check this.
00:01:20.760 | Paul Johnson, an American helicopter mechanic
00:01:24.160 | in Saudi Arabia, was kidnapped by al-Qaeda,
00:01:27.320 | and they threatened to kill him
00:01:28.960 | if prisoners weren't released.
00:01:30.400 | And of course, the prisoners were not released,
00:01:32.280 | and they killed him.
00:01:33.120 | And they put the video and the pictures
00:01:36.160 | of his beheading online.
00:01:39.120 | Now, that was the very first time in my life
00:01:42.120 | I had ever had the occasion to even think
00:01:44.320 | about looking at such a thing, and I did.
00:01:46.960 | I did.
00:01:47.800 | They found his head a month later in a refrigerator in Riyadh.
00:01:51.720 | I went to the news site, and I found the picture.
00:01:54.080 | I have it, and here's the weird thing.
00:01:56.040 | I copied it.
00:01:57.120 | It is in my iPhoto.
00:01:58.960 | So I looked at it again to get ready for this.
00:02:01.680 | His head is sitting on his back.
00:02:04.760 | I mean, I just thought of his wife or his kids,
00:02:07.520 | just the horror of such a thing.
00:02:10.680 | So, "Piper, what are you doing?
00:02:11.960 | Are you sick?
00:02:13.400 | Why did you even go there?
00:02:14.880 | And why, for goodness sakes, did you save it?"
00:02:17.960 | And here's what's going on in my head.
00:02:21.000 | I thought to myself, "We in the modern West
00:02:24.840 | are often so insulated from real, horrible, physical
00:02:30.760 | suffering and death.
00:02:32.120 | We have 911 and emergency rooms and antibiotics and morphine,
00:02:38.040 | and they've put us so out of touch
00:02:40.280 | with the kind of suffering and death
00:02:42.000 | that much of the world deals with constantly.
00:02:46.160 | We can hardly feel what it's like to really risk our lives
00:02:50.480 | or confront the most dangerous and horrible kinds of evil
00:02:54.440 | head on."
00:02:55.520 | And so it seemed to me that I needed,
00:02:57.920 | John Piper in 2004 needed to be confronted face
00:03:03.520 | to face with this kind of horror, this kind of evil.
00:03:06.640 | I needed to feel some of the revulsion or horror
00:03:11.760 | that many people around the world
00:03:13.760 | have to face daily, including Christians,
00:03:17.960 | and sometimes because they're Christians.
00:03:20.960 | And the biblical basis, I gave it some thought
00:03:24.040 | those years ago.
00:03:25.800 | Are you getting a biblical basis for this kind of thinking?
00:03:29.000 | And what I thought of in those days and reflected on again
00:03:33.800 | was Hebrews 11:37 that says, "They were stoned.
00:03:38.640 | They were sawn in two."
00:03:40.280 | Think of it.
00:03:40.920 | They were sawn in two, probably alive,
00:03:45.080 | with one of those big two-man logging saw type deals.
00:03:49.560 | They were sawn in two.
00:03:52.600 | They were killed with a sword.
00:03:54.040 | They went about in skins and sheep and goats,
00:03:56.640 | destitute, afflicted, mistreated.
00:03:58.800 | And that last word, mistreated, it's not a light word,
00:04:03.240 | like a slap on the cheek.
00:04:04.560 | It's a horrible word, and it's used one more time
00:04:07.440 | in the New Testament, namely chapter 13 of Hebrews,
00:04:11.240 | verse 3, where it says, "Remember those in prison
00:04:14.520 | as though in prison with them and those who are mistreated."
00:04:20.040 | These are like people who are being sawn in two.
00:04:22.280 | Those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.
00:04:26.000 | And I don't think that means in the church.
00:04:27.720 | I think that means you have a body.
00:04:29.920 | They have a body.
00:04:30.760 | You have a body.
00:04:31.480 | They're being slaughtered.
00:04:33.360 | You have a body.
00:04:34.160 | Can you imagine what it's like for them to be slaughtered?
00:04:36.560 | I think that's the gist of this text, getting inside their skins
00:04:40.440 | and sharing.
00:04:41.360 | And so I thought, I have a body.
00:04:43.800 | I need to feel a little bit of what
00:04:47.240 | it would be like to have a knife at my throat with somebody
00:04:49.880 | saying, will you renounce Christ?
00:04:52.920 | So I think it may be good for some of us
00:04:56.360 | who feel a bit cloistered and sanitized and distant
00:05:00.240 | from the horrors of the world, whether murders in our cities
00:05:03.920 | right here or terrorism around the globe,
00:05:07.280 | to have a little bit of exposure to this horror
00:05:10.720 | so that we're not naive and at least not as naive.
00:05:14.720 | Maybe we can't really prepare ourselves
00:05:17.680 | for what that would be like, but it sure is good to try, I think.
00:05:21.760 | So the day is going to come.
00:05:24.920 | If I read the book of Revelation rightly,
00:05:26.640 | the day is going to come when such horrors will be more
00:05:29.920 | common and more close to home.
00:05:32.400 | And if we've not come to terms with them theologically
00:05:35.320 | and emotionally, our faith may collapse when face to face,
00:05:41.320 | we see this horror.
00:05:42.880 | I mean, I can imagine a lot of Christians
00:05:45.280 | whose theology is so weak when it comes to God's sovereignty
00:05:48.480 | and suffering in sovereignty, that when they see something
00:05:51.320 | like that, they just become emotionally unglued.
00:05:54.600 | They are totally undone and throw away their faith
00:05:58.520 | in a good and sovereign God.
00:06:01.200 | But I said there were reasons both ways.
00:06:04.320 | On the other hand, it's not a duty.
00:06:06.960 | I don't mean to put anybody under any kind of pressure
00:06:10.000 | to do this.
00:06:11.480 | There's no biblical mandate to look at a horrible picture
00:06:15.640 | or to see horror.
00:06:17.160 | And we need to know ourselves.
00:06:20.440 | If it's going to give you nightmares,
00:06:22.840 | if it's going to otherwise decrease your ability
00:06:26.440 | to function in a loving way, then don't by any means
00:06:29.880 | look at it.
00:06:30.720 | So that's the criterion in the end.
00:06:32.880 | Will looking at such a thing increase
00:06:36.520 | your emotional capacities to do good to others,
00:06:39.200 | or will it decrease them?
00:06:42.640 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:06:43.680 | And we have talked about this more in the past.
00:06:46.120 | In the episode we titled "Facing Death Faithfully,"
00:06:49.160 | that was episode number 91 in the archive.
00:06:51.880 | It's valuable content to check out.
00:06:53.960 | We return on Monday with a more happy theme.
00:06:56.600 | And we'll hear from a listener in Dubai
00:06:58.320 | who is wondering whether or not her wedding needs
00:07:00.840 | to be conducted in a church.
00:07:03.160 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:04.160 | Have a great weekend.
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00:07:12.200 | you