Browsed by
Tag: evil

killing bin laden

killing bin laden

Comments 0 Comment

Yes, Osama bin Laden did evil things. Yes, he despoiled the image of God that was put in him as well as in each of us. But if we allow his choices to change our choices, to make us people ready to kill — for the sake of “closure,” for the sake of “justice,” for the sake of “revenge” — then we have done the same. We have despoiled the image of God in us.

Strength, courage, and righteousness mean living the values we hold dear and not allowing ourselves to be transformed in reaction to the chaos and brokenness and evil around us.

When we are better than that, when we can uphold the value of life, all life, when we can love the humanity in any human being, even in a man consumed by evil, then we reveal something truly extraordinary, the likeness of the living God.

And so I did not find reason to celebrate this weekend over the news of bin Laden’s death. It was an occasion not for joy, but for sadness at the ongoing price all of humanity is paying for the hatred and suspicion and vengefulness that set us against each other.

torture hurts all of us

torture hurts all of us

Comments 0 Comment

I started realizing that most of the prisoners were innocent. We were torturing people for no reason. I started getting really angry and really remorseful and by the time I got back I completely broke down.

I’m from New York City. I’m college-educated. But you put me in Iraq and told me to torture, and I did it and I regretted it later.

I didn’t know I would discover and indulge in my own evil. And now that it has surfaced, I fear that it will be my constant companion for the rest of my life.

(Tony Lagouranis, discussing his service in Iraq as a military intelligence specialist, quoted in the International Herald Tribune: “We were torturing people for no reason.”)

Torture hurts all of us … ravaging the bodies and the souls of those who are tortured, human beings like us, some “guilty,” some “innocent” … leaving a creeping and hungry darkness planted deep in the bodies and souls of those who do torture, human beings like us, haunted now by their own shadows … touching too the bodies and souls of all of us who silently look away or make excuses or try to justify the torturing, leaving us less than what we were, less just, less human.

Some things simply must never be done, under any circumstances. What little is gained — in intelligence(?), in security(?), in the preservation of freedom(?) — comes at the cost of our souls, of all of our souls.