Lent thoughts 1

Am doing the usual and posting through Lent and, having enjoyed sharing Advent so much with nodbear, we're sharing Lent, too. Of course, in my usual cussed way I'm not posting what I said I'd post to start with...

We visited Ripley's Believe it or Not at the weekend - one of the exhibits featured instruments of torture. There's a whole 'nother post in why people through the ages have felt the need to be so vile to each other, but this time I'm concentrating on a particularly nasty contraption used by the Inquisition on "heretics".

Where oh where in the gospels does Jesus give his followers the right to torture people into following him? Doesn't he state (in the parable of the wheat and the tares) that we're not supposed to be horrible to non-believers/those with different beliefs, or to "root them up"?

I'd never be ashamed of Jesus, but I feel deeply ashamed at some of the awful things which have been done in his name.