From the Summit of the Moral High Ground

The execution of Jesus Christ is often framed as a tragic misunderstanding, a collision between religious disagreement and political circumstance. Yet historically, it is something far more direct: an act of state violence. Jesus was executed by the authority of Rome, under the governance of Pontius Pilate, using crucifixion—a punishment reserved not for theological error, but for those perceived as threats to order. But why does the state respond in this way to certain individuals? A common explanation is necessity—that the state must preserve stability, that it acts reluctantly but rationally to maintain order. This view, however, assumes that the state is fundamentally neutral or even benevolent. There is another, darker interpretation, one articulated by M. Scott Peck in his work People of the Lie . Peck defines evil not primarily as aggression or violence, but as a refusal to acknowledge one’s own faults. Evil, in this framework, is the active avoidance of truth about onesel...