HOW COULD ABU GHRAIB HAPPEN?

HOW COULD ABU GHRAIB HAPPEN? (May 16, 2004)

“The heart is deceitful above all things.” Jeremiah 17:9

How could Abu Ghraib happen? It is about two weeks ago we first began to learn of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in American prisons in Iraq . Each day brings new revelations that the pattern of abuse is far wider than originally stated and according to Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker magazine writer who broke the My Lai story a generation ago, it goes far higher.

Of course, it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been there in the first place. All major Churches opposed this war of choice from the beginning, including the Pope, who was categorical in his opposition, every major Protestant denomination except the Southern Baptists, and all the major Jewish organizations. All alike condemned a go-it-virtually-alone plan.

Abu Ghraib is an enormous set back for the U.S. Whatever one thinks of the war, it is clear this doesn't help win any hearts and minds. In the Arab world it is one of the worst things that could possibly have happened. And many are asking how could we have gotten so far off track?

Yesterday the counsel to the president wrote “The abuse of any prisoner is abhorrent. Americans, including the hundreds of thousands who serve with dedication and honor in our armed forces, viewed the images of the treatment of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison with disbelief and anger.” That is from the counsel to the president.

We started the war 14 months ago with “shock and awe”. Now we have “disbelief and anger”. Why?

Scripture has a three-letter answer: sin. Sin as defined in the Reformed tradition of Christianity takes many forms: it is unbelief or unfaithfulness, that is, a rejection of God. It is pride. It is rebellion. It is disobedience to the law of God, it is idolatry, that is, the worship of the creature rather than the creator, it is apathy or sloth. Sin is what God does not will. It is important to hear this diversity of explanations of what sin is because we are tempted to think of it only in terms of sex and sensuality.

When sin is perpetrated by a group who appear as individuals to be in many cases otherwise fine people we are often brought up short. Yes, a lone killer may grab the headlines – a Son of Sam or a Mad Bomber angry at higher education or the Washington DC snipers – but we pass them off as the acts of deranged individuals. But when ordinary people behave as a group in shameful and outrageous ways toward fellow human beings we find it hard to comprehend.

The worst case was the holocaust. How could such an absolutely terrible event happen in a society which produced Beethoven, Goethe, Bach, Einstein and Thomas Mann? How could that happen?. In our country, how could a southern society which produced so many great writers also tolerate segregation for so long? How did a My Lai happen in Vietnam , a terrible massacre of innocent civilians, a cover-up, and ostracize for so long the three men who alone acted to save a number of the innocents?

Abu Ghraib is not at all in these categories for sure. But we are hearing again how those who know the individuals accused cannot believe they could have done these things and taken pictures and even videos of themselves doing it.

Reinhold Niebuhr was America 's greatest theologian, after Jonathan Edwards, and his writings were avidly devoured by a whole spectrum of academics and politicians as well as church leaders and ministers. Niebuhr said that mankind in the collective is always less moral, less guided by reason, less able to comprehend the needs of others, more open to “unrestrained egoism” than the individuals who compose the group.

What he was saying was what every mother tells her child: watch out whom you play with. But sometimes we don't have a choice. And then “group think” takes over.

In the group it is easier to avoid responsibility. The group doesn't have to be large. Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the snake. In Psalm 1 the bad person is not someone who acts alone but who joins a group of scoffers, in the “counsel of the wicked”.

Reformed Christianity, of which Presbyterianism is a part, has always taken sin very seriously. One of the five main principles of Calvinism is “total depravity”. Now there's a phrase you hardly ever hear.

Total depravity does not mean that all of us are as bad as we could possibly be. Actually, we could all be a lot worse! And it doesn't mean that there is no good at all in human beings. Calvinism teaches that we are capable of doing much good in the world, but only with God's help. What total depravity means is that there is nothing about us, not even our very best efforts, which is not beyond the reach of sin. As two theologians at Pittsburgh seminary have recently written: most Christian believe in asking God to forgive them for their evil deeds, but Reformed Christians also ask God to forgive their good deeds because sin can lurk even there, especially when people are praising you. This is why you will often hear Reformed Christians say phrases such as “to God alone be the glory” and be hesitant about taking too much credit for themselves.

Woodrow Wilson was the son of a Presbyterian minister who was the country's president in World War I. Wilson had profound Presbyterian beliefs, as the Princeton scholar Arthur Link showed in his many books on the man. At the Versailles conference Wilson fought in vain against aspects of a treaty which humiliated Germany and you could never imagine Wilson standing on an aircraft carrier and boasting “mission accomplished”.

It is true that many people think less of themselves than they ought to and they need what is called “confidence boosting”. One of the good things a church can do is help people increase their self confidence. But many other people think more of themselves than they should. And nations that are powerful can think more of themselves than they should. It is called hubris – which is pride, the first and deadliest of the seven deadly sins.

Just the other day on television I heard someone talk about Abu Ghraib in terms of hubris. Hubris is a feeling you are above others and above the law. One of the laws which applied here clearly was the Geneva Conventions. Hubris entered – fed by the mystique that our cause was right, God-inspired, and therefore above scrutiny. Now we are paying the price for this hubris.

Most people are quite willing to apply the concept of “total depravity” to their opponents, believing the worst about them. Someone once said, “I believe everything the politicians say – about each other.” But Reformed Christians are unusual in that they insist on applying the concept of total depravity to themselves. No aspect of human life is exempt from the possibility of sin. Even church life, which is why Reformed Christians built so many checks and balances into the system. Even our best efforts – such as church life -- can be affected by sin.

It is because of that emphasis that Calvinists became firm believers in democracy. No one should have absolute authority, Calvin believed and taught. Even the most benevolent despot is subject to sin. It was Lord Acton who said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

We owe the idea of democracy to the ancient Greeks, no doubt about it. But the idea virtually died for almost 2000 years until it was picked up by the Reformers such as Calvin and Knox, who were at least a century ahead of John Locke and Montesquieu and two centuries ahead of Thomas Jefferson. Calvin and Knox came at it not the way the Greeks did, but from a profound view of sin and how it can affect everything you do, and so you need to build in a system of checks and balances and protections. . Reinhold Niebuhr, the great American theologian, said “Man's potential for good makes democracy possible, but his inclination toward evil makes democracy necessary.”

Jeremiah said “the heart is deceitful above all things.” St. Paul said, “the good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.” It is because of the deep seated nature of sin that a “radical” – that is, going to the roots – answer has been provided, the coming of God himself to earth, taking our human form, humbling himself even unto death, the death of the cross, and rising on the third day, so that we might know forgiveness, redemption, new birth and a new start, free from guilt.

“Thanks be to God,” wrote St. Paul , “who gives us the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ.”