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"Christian Reflections in a Time of War" - Part I -Written after the Abu Ghraib Prison Photos Were Released
...Our previous president had a love affair with a young Jewish intern. This was despicable to many of us, disgusting, dishonoring. Our current president also has a kind of special affection - with Evangelical Christianity. Many of us have an infatuation with him that may eventually hurt us as much as that young intern was hurt after her infatuation. Our current president certainly knows how to use our Evangelical language to woo us. In his State of the Union address in 2002, for example, he said, “The need is great. But there’s power, wonder-working power … in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.” He was borrowing from a popular hymn well known to nearly all Evangelical Christians, but he substituted “the goodness … of the American people” for “the blood of the Lamb.” Does that turn of phrase bother you? I do not believe the president meant to idolize the American people and imply that we are the world’s redeemers – that would be a blasphemous assertion for a Christian to make! I do not believe he had evil intent. I believe he very sincerely feels that America is in some way God’s chosen nation, so our hearts are a redemptive force in the world, like “the blood of the Lamb.” I believe he is sincere and well-meaning in these kinds of statements, but I also believe he is dangerously wrong. And if we do not see and name the danger, I fear we will become unwitting conspirators with it.

I am writing in the days after the release of photographs from Abu Ghraib prison. The horrible abuse of prisoners by our soldiers in Iraq tells us something – something that we may not want to hear. It tells us that Americans are simply human beings. Along with heroism and sacrifice, we are capable of terrible mistakes and unjustified violence, even torture. We are not above committing deplorable acts and violating our own high standards. In our zeal to do good (by obtaining needed intelligence from enemies, to save the lives of our soldiers), we may do terrible evil. We are capable of seeking a short-term advantage (brutally treating prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions) that creates horrific long-term consequences (when our enemies decide to do unto ours as we have done to theirs). In our desire to achieve good ends (to avoid another terrorist attack on our homeland), we may be corrupted by evil means.

I know this is hard for people to imagine, but I beg you to try: what if our decision to invade and bomb Iraq in the first place was an excessive and premature use of violence, no less justifiable before God than the actions of our soldiers in Abu Ghraib? What if our desire to do good (protect ourselves from further terrorist attacks) put us in temptation’s way to overreact and do evil? What if our violation of the will of the United Nations was no less egregious, with no less significant long-term consequences, than our soldiers’ violation of the Geneva Conventions? What if these recent prison abuse incidents are not anomalies – but are rather a warning, a mirror in which we can see what we are in danger of becoming, what we have to some degree already become?

Already, in the midst of tepid or qualified apologies, I hear ourselves defending ourselves. We try to push all the blame on a few individuals acting alone, denying that our system was in any way to blame. ...