IDEOLOGY
Here is a newspaper account of torture practised in modern concentration camps.
The victim is bound to a metal chair then electric shocks ore administered to him in increasing intensity till he confesses.
The torturer cups his hands and slaps the victim on the ear repeatedly till the eardrum breaks.
A dentist straps the prisoner to a chair and drills till he strikes a nerve.
The drilling goes on till the victim agrees to cooperate.
Human beings are not naturally cruel.
They become cruel when they are unhappy —
Or when they succumb to an ideology.
One ideology against another;
one religion against another.
And people crushed in between them.
The men who crucified Jesus could very well have bean gentle husbands and loving fathers who practised cruelty to maintain a religion or an ideology.
If religious people had always followed the instinct of their heart rather than the logic of their religion we would have been spared the sight of heretics burning at stakes, widows walking into funeral pyres and innocent people slaughtered in wars that are waged in’ the name of God.
Compassion has no ideology.
THE SONG OF THE BIRD
Anthony de Mello S. J.
