Well, instead of looking at something you don't understand and declaring it to be evil, you could ask why the religion expresses itself the way it does.
The Cross is most certainly a torture device. But, in the Christian context, the symbolic value cannot be separated from the rest of the Pascal Mystery; that Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh, voluntarily underwent humiliation, suffering, and death out of love for His creation, and it is in this act of self-giving of Oneself for the sake of others (graphically symbolized as a sacrifice) that God reveals His nature and unites the rest of the universe to It.
Namely, that God, in Jesus Christ, confronts a world of violence and hatred, declares it to be His enemy, and yet does not resort to that hatred and violence to make things right. It is in the confrontation with hatred without resorting or succumbing to the inner logic of this hatred, the choice to take this violence upon Himself instead of unleashing it in overwhelming force against others, that God casts judgment on it. The might, the power, the rage of this world pours itself on Christ, who accepts it without reciprocating it, thus rendering it impotent. Because in this voluntary choice to allow Himself to be slain, Jesus Christ reveals a power stronger than hatred and death.
And that power is love: "But God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Having declared the world and its violence and hatred His enemy, God nonetheless chooses its well-being over His own, giving it His very Self sacrificed on the Cross; and this act of self-giving, of surrender, of making Himself vulnerable by giving and giving and giving even as the world takes and takes and takes, is vindicated through the Resurrection of Christ, which shows that the forces of evil do not have the last say; this gratuitous love does.
So the Cross, once a symbol of the mighty and strong inflicting their power on the weak and the helpless, finds itself to be the vehicle of a new set of symbolic values; the Cross, still a horrific torture device, can no longer be read separate from the Resurrection that follows it. Now, the Cross is the symbol not of the forces of violence and evil imposing themselves on others, but a symbol of the weak and the lowly allowing themselves to be the oppressed rather than the oppressor, choosing to confront the evils of this world without being enslaved by those same evil impulses, and discovering that by the very act of giving their lives for others they find what it is to truly live.
In the Cross, God reveals Himself as He is most Himself; in that disfigured, agonizing figure who nonetheless says "Forgive them, Father," God is made manifest in His deepest, most exalted glory; allowing Himself to be conquered from the perspective of the world, He transmits a love that makes all who receive it and participate in it unconquerable.
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