Evidence has come to light suggesting few police officers
are held accountable for unnecessary violence toward racial minorities and
street people. With lack of indictments in the killing of Michael Brown and
Eric Garner and the earlier acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of
Trayvon Martin, more and more questions are being raised about whether the
court system is equally to blame for a lack of justice.
The brutality of the CIA’s methods of questioning prisoners, detailed in a recent congressional report, is deeply disturbing. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and sexual violence seem to have been used as a matter of course to try to gain information. And with the use of drones in war zones, many are wondering how any discretion can be used in bomb or missile attacks in Iraq when the operators are closeted away in Nevada. Civilian bystanders easily become “collateral damage.”
Listening to those who defend these actions transports us back to the Garden of Eden. We can recall the conversation between its inhabitants and God when he asked, “What’s up with wearing clothes? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Adam says the woman God gave him made him do it and Eve says the serpent beguiled her, each one pointing a finger to blame the other.
Not much later Cain kills Abel, and when God can’t find him he asks, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain pleads ignorance and says, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” God replies that yes, actually, you are.
But in the matter of current protests there is little pleading ignorance or even blaming others. Instead it’s a litany of self-justification. We didn’t do anything wrong … what we did was legal … it was necessary … we had no alternative.
This is called deontic logic. We did it because we had no other choice. The middle school girl whom the teacher asks, “Why did you hit her?” responds, “I had to. She looked at me.” It’s a common theme among those who have been accused of failing their responsibility. “We had to use that kind of force. It was our only option. We were attacked/felt threatened/had the law on our side. We were legally justified in doing what we did.”
The final excuse, and an unprovable one, is that “it worked.” It is pragmatism run amok. The argument surfaces along with the revelation of the torture instances. We did what we did because we were able to gain vital information about our other enemies. No one seems to agree about whether the methods “worked” or not, whether the approaches were effective.
But they were still wrong. In the legal sense, they may have been acceptable, but in the moral sense, you should have known better. Or as Paul puts it in Romans, you did know better. You knew about God from the beginning and ignored what you knew to be true. “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done.”
The solution, in addition to honoring God, is to see past quick solutions, black and white thinking, and refusal to take personal responsibility for one’s actions. It is to ask, “If we do or say this, what kind of world are we potentially making for ourselves and others?” And to ask whether there are any alternatives to dealing in brutality, torture and death.
The brutality of the CIA’s methods of questioning prisoners, detailed in a recent congressional report, is deeply disturbing. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and sexual violence seem to have been used as a matter of course to try to gain information. And with the use of drones in war zones, many are wondering how any discretion can be used in bomb or missile attacks in Iraq when the operators are closeted away in Nevada. Civilian bystanders easily become “collateral damage.”
Listening to those who defend these actions transports us back to the Garden of Eden. We can recall the conversation between its inhabitants and God when he asked, “What’s up with wearing clothes? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Adam says the woman God gave him made him do it and Eve says the serpent beguiled her, each one pointing a finger to blame the other.
Not much later Cain kills Abel, and when God can’t find him he asks, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain pleads ignorance and says, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” God replies that yes, actually, you are.
But in the matter of current protests there is little pleading ignorance or even blaming others. Instead it’s a litany of self-justification. We didn’t do anything wrong … what we did was legal … it was necessary … we had no alternative.
This is called deontic logic. We did it because we had no other choice. The middle school girl whom the teacher asks, “Why did you hit her?” responds, “I had to. She looked at me.” It’s a common theme among those who have been accused of failing their responsibility. “We had to use that kind of force. It was our only option. We were attacked/felt threatened/had the law on our side. We were legally justified in doing what we did.”
The final excuse, and an unprovable one, is that “it worked.” It is pragmatism run amok. The argument surfaces along with the revelation of the torture instances. We did what we did because we were able to gain vital information about our other enemies. No one seems to agree about whether the methods “worked” or not, whether the approaches were effective.
But they were still wrong. In the legal sense, they may have been acceptable, but in the moral sense, you should have known better. Or as Paul puts it in Romans, you did know better. You knew about God from the beginning and ignored what you knew to be true. “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done.”
The solution, in addition to honoring God, is to see past quick solutions, black and white thinking, and refusal to take personal responsibility for one’s actions. It is to ask, “If we do or say this, what kind of world are we potentially making for ourselves and others?” And to ask whether there are any alternatives to dealing in brutality, torture and death.
