I was in Dublin a month ago when the city was galvanised by an exhibition of tableaux by Edward Kienholz. I use the verb deliberately. The tableaux were shocking, composed as they were in threedimensional assemblages to present a particular concept, and that concept worked out to the smallest detail. One of the most shocking was ‘The State Hospital’, and the following extract from Kienholz’s blueprint of the work gives some idea of the nightmarish experience undergone by the viewer, who has to peer in through a small grille:

To assure ourselves of the benefits of the theory and practice of behaviour modification, and to avoid the dangers, which are obviously immense, we urgently need a comprehensively critical ethical theory, on the basis of which what is good for individuals and for society may be reasonably determined on the evidence, and not depend simply on arbitrary flat or the whim of the majority or arty powerful group. Once such a theory is outlined, it will, I am afraid, be found to be incompatible at first sight with the theoretical basis usually taken to underlie the most sophisticated techniques of behaviour modification. However, I shall argue that an appropriately restricted and modified behaviourism will be quite consistent with the required ethical theory.

In reading the literature on this and related topics, one is made most painfully aware of the yawning gap which there is in the place where a rational ethics ought to be. (If anyone is to be blamed for this, it is the moral philosophers rather than the psychologists.) One can hardly wonder at the fear expressed by some members of the public that, the more efficient our techniques of behaviour modification become, the less notion we have of what ends we ought to aim at, what states of affairs we ought to avoid, in our employment of such techniques.

We have come together today as members of a Christian community because of our concern for the many thousands of men and women who are suffering persecution and torture throughout the world. Just as any divided family will forget its differences in times of crisis, so we are today united before God by that very problem.

Part of the excitement and also the difficulty of being a Christian is that it is a continuing process of exploring what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Just when we think we have got it sorted out, something happens to upset our complacency so that we are left, a little bruised, saying “where did I go wrong”? The only thing to do when that happens is to go back to the Gospels and look again to see how Jesus did it. As Paul tells us “Christ is the image of the unseen God”. It is only by looking to Christ that we shall learn how to walk towards our Father.

I would like, then, to explore with you for a few minutes the stance of Jesus Christ in the face of torture — what he taught his disciples and how he faced his own torture and death. By focussing on the man Jesus we should then be able to widen our gaze, to look beyond his death on Calvary, to the continuing crucifixion in our own time.

The trouble about the gospels for many of us is that they become so familiar that they lose their impact; we cease to be rattled, unnerved, by what Jesus is saying. Take for example, Christ’s assurance to his followers that they would be persecuted. “You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake” (Mk. 10:18), “Brother will betray brother to death and the father his child ... You will be hated by all men on account of my name”.