Long Nights

       This Sunday marks the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night, caused by the earth’s tilt during its transit around the sun.  While it is technically an astronomical phenomenon, it also seems to be psychologically and emotionally the longest, darkest time of winter, as well!

      Simply on the psychological and emotional side, the long darkness gets a large proportion of people kind of down and tired, and a significant proportion of people suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder linked to light deprivation.  Add cold, grey skies, fatigue, and all the last minute things to do and pressures to deal with, and many people find this time of year tough to cope with.

      Add in the emphasis on family and celebration between Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year which can be hard for lots of people because their circumstances don’t match the forced cheeriness of the advertising and seasonal images, and quite a few souls struggle this time of year.  In any year, a certain number of families have suffered significant losses and hardships.  Families who have lost members in the early winter find the Christmas season emotionally draining, but anyone who has lost family members or friends in the whole year feels an extra stab of grief in the midst of happiness as we miss someone during the first Christmas after the person’s death.  Likewise it is hard for those whose lives have been disrupted by a long-distance move, change in circumstance, family dissolution, or economic hardship.  The feelings just don’t match expectations of the season.

      I remind you to treat yourself carefully if you find yourself overwhelmed by the season, and to be mindful of others around you who may be experiencing sadness or depression or whatever, and to offer a kindly hand and companionship instead of trying to “make them feel better.”  Winters happen.  Winters of the soul happen.  Sometimes they take a while to pass, but it doesn’t help to tell anyone they need to “get over it.”  Keeping someone company in their long night is a powerful help.

      A great many churches, especially in recent years, have special worship services, usually on the fourth Sunday of Advent (close to the solstice) to address spiritually the darkness felt by many as sort of a counterpoint— a very necessary counterpoint— to the excessively “jolly” observance of the secular, shopping “Christmas” season.

      Blue Christmas services or Longest Night services take seriously not the just the psychological effects of the darkness but also the spiritual sorrow and grief felt by many.  Most such worship services dwell gently in that emotional eventide as well, allowing us to settle into it and work through it as the natural progressing of life and seasons and sadness.  So many times society in general is uncomfortable with those wintery dark feelings and experiences and tries to dismiss them or chase them away with all the lights and noise.  But just like having a floodlight blast you in the eyes in a dark room hurts your eyes, all the seasonal cheer hurts someone’s soul, giving them the same sort of squinting reaction.  Many such worship services use dim lights, quiet, and a chance for our souls as well as our eyes to get used to the darkness.  And, when we get used to darkness, we see and experience much more in the shadows: more grace, more calmness.  There is more helpful stuff there when there is less contrast from megawatts of decorations.  Darkness is not always bad.  A long night can provide spiritual relief and reflection.

      Oddly, the rising familiarity with Longest Night or Blue worship service provides a much deeper context for the Biblical Christmas story and the spiritual light dawning in human darkness.  We have become more aware of how many of us dwell in lands of deep darkness, into which the Light has shined, and the stunning hope and health which God offers us in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ makes much more sense, and becomes the best sort of Good News.  If there is such a worship service you can attend, I encourage you to go, and perhaps accompany someone who would value the experience.

      “The people who have dwelled in darkness, on them has light shined.”  On us has light shined.

                                                                                         In Christ,

                                                                                               
                                                                                         David


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Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible      2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
      From the Epistles              Romans 16:25-27
      From the Gospels             Luke 1:26-38

Moral Morass

      This has been another infuriating week for those of us versed in moral theology!
The release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program detailing not only the circumstances of the detention of prisoners by the CIA but also the euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques” by CIA officers and contractors is a stunning confirmation of concerns raised over time about the treatment of detained persons in the “war on terrorism.”  The careful bureaucratic language (based on careful bureaucratic recordkeeping, ironically enough) details what most people would call torture, rape, deprivation, abuse, and violence under the color of authority.
The summary report reveals a systemic abuse of human rights which happened because not just the legal and intelligence systems but also thousands of people lost their moral compass.  It confirms the worst expectations of many and has ignited yet another storm of opposing perspectives.  And a lot of ugly words.

      The study reveals stunning lapses— violations, really— when it comes to the moral and humane treatment of persons no longer combatants according to international law and according to just war theory.

      Clearly, the basic rationale for the mistreatment of persons was that the urgency of obtaining actionable intelligence to prevent or apprehend those responsible for terroristic activities, especially right after the 9/11 attacks, was extraordinary and that it justified unusual tactics.  The takeaway lesson of the study is that even by a brutal pragmatic analysis, the techniques did not advance their stated purpose.  So even the exponents of [philosophical] pragmatism (the disciples of William James, John Dewey, W.V.O. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and others) would have concluded that the abuses were not justified.  That is, the results were not justifiable even on a brutal cost-benefit analysis.  For those of us with theologies and philosophies having absolute values, the approach cannot be morally justified (unless your central values are fear, retribution, violence, greed, and subjugation of others).

      Violence begets violence, even by “nice” U.S. personnel, and it appears to me that rage and retribution fueled far more of the interrogations than we thought.  Oddly, those who object to the release of the document because it will inflame anti-U.S. sentiment are supporting that era’s U.S. anti-arab sentiment, that, so inflamed, led to abuses being so easily justified.  A less emotional calculation would have suggested to the CIA that the fallout of the abuses would have been far greater than the gains, leading to a pragmatic decision not to use torture.  To say nothing of avoiding charges of human rights violations in international tribunals and public opinion.  To say nothing of a moral decision not to use torture.

      Moral theologians and philosophers have long warned of the slippery slope of looking to future harm not caused as a basis for decisions, because the human ability to predict circumstance that have not yet happened is limited at best, and it cannot be used as a primary term.  In this case, there should have been calculations of how likely future terrorism might be, and whether that likelihood greatly exceeded the real harm caused in preventing it.  In retrospect, in both pragmatic and just war theories, the program did not meet that threshold.

      The report also raised concerns that official legal opinions and permissions somehow make something legal or moral.  In short, does declaring that certain enhanced techniques are legal and not torture, in fact, mean they are not, or is there another standard against which techniques must be evaluated, such as violating U.S. or international law or as meeting the accepted definition of torture.  Or, more broadly, does “legal” actually mean moral and permissible.  I expect there will be lots of discussion on this both in courts and public opinion.

      It has taken me many paragraphs simply to get to a religious or moral evaluation of these abuses of human rights.  As citizens of the U.S., we have certain shared values of how we as a nation act and how we wish to be regarded around the world.  Our history has many examples of our shared desire to be “moral” and “good.”  We have typically declared our support of the victims of oppression or invasion, and have long called to task regimes past and present for their abuses of human rights.  Our schools and faith communities teach those broad truths and values, and this includes our military training.  So it appears to me that we have certain moral standards we believe in, and for which many have fought and died to preserve.  Those implicit values are violated by the activities of the CIA and others.  So by historical U.S. standards, the behaviors in the report are immoral.

      For those of us adhering to traditional Christian moral theologies, the report is even more horrifying, for we root the humane treatment of others in the revealed will of God, variously defined.  I am astonished that persons reared within Christian contexts would have been comfortable participating or justifying such abuses.  (I expect there was a lot of psychological compartmentalization or distress among the perpetrators, and I worry about them.)  The constant Biblical reminder that only God knows the future calls into question all calculations about preventing further enemy actions; we just cannot know that for sure, much less cause great harm to forestall undefined potential harm.  Even the somewhat coarse histories of the Hebrew testament fence violence and imply that it must be morally justifiable for the safety of the nation.  There are several notable occasions where abuse of others by those in power have led to their removal, execution, or destruction by God.  No one is apart from God’s judgment.

      The revelation of God’s love in Christ Jesus places the abuse of persons in even starker light.  I have seen dozens of references to how wrong it is for followers of a person tortured to death by authorities to support the torture by authorities of anyone, in this context and in the context of police violence.  Jesus himself reminds the powers-that-be many times that they are not above God’s laws and justice.  The New Testament has many reminders that it is our duty to protect and support the weak and powerless, the hungry and cold, the least of our neighbors.  And, explicitly, the Bible speaks of protecting and helping the prisoner.  So there is a well-defined and long-held moral imperative in Christian thought against human rights abuses and torture, particularly since World War I and II and persisting even through the moral ambiguity of Viet Nam.  If anything, Christians would seek to be on the side of the victim instead of the torturer.
     
      So pragmatically, philosophically, theologically, morally, and religiously, the human rights abuses of persons who are not still active combatants is wrong.  As in immoral.  Calling something an “enhanced interrogation technique” does not whitewash torture.  I believe it is our duty as citizens and our calling as followers of Christ to repudiate the actions detailed in the study and seek justice and righteousness and forgiveness instead.

                                                                                         In Christ,

                                                                                               
                                                                                         David


Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible     Isaiah 61:1-4
      From the Epistles             1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
      From the Gospels             John 1:6-8, 19-28

Woeful Days

      The non-indictment in the Eric Garner case honestly stunned me.  And knocked the smugness out of me about the non-indictment in the Michael Brown case.  I had hoped for better, although I don’t know why; I am way to aware of systemic racism and the self-protective nature of the criminal justice system.  No way to escape it: it’s not just in the South, nor in the border states like Missouri, but in New York and New York City and Ithaca and Elmira.  We’ve known it all along, but this makes it too obvious to continue ignoring.  White privilege and systemic injustice cannot be ignored, and it is time for people of conscience, faith, and morality to confront it personally and societally.

      We have a racism problem, and, I believe, we have a prophetic problem.  Our contemporary mainline church (and certainly most societies in the world now) are mostly on the receiving end of the words of the Biblical prophets.  We would like to imagine ourselves being prophetic, but in fact, we may need to reform ourselves to the words of the prophets.  Maybe we are the “them” the prophets preached against.

      For example, the prophet Amos was an outsider, a freelancer in an age when there were lots of hereditary established professional prophets, who mostly reinforced the establishment’s line.  Amos rather unpopularly reminded Israel that God was watching their behavior when it came to the poor and vulnerable and outcast and outsider.  The rich were getting richer at the expense of the poorer by setting things up so the poor had to pay and pay, until they were so in debt that the rich could simply take over their property.  The ethnic outsiders and resident aliens (the non-Israelites) were marginalized and penalized.  Amos said woe to Israel for violating the laws of God protecting the vulnerable.  Isaiah and Jeremiah also scorched Israel of their days for consolidating wealth and privilege and power at the expense of the small.  Jesus refrains their words with great regularity, directing his words to the religious and economic establishment.  The lovely Magnificat is Mary’s exultation that the mighty are toppled and the poor elevated by God’s new creation.

      For most of our existence, the Christian Church has given lip service to the words of justice and right social behavior and fair distribution of wealth, presuming we are on God’s side.  I fear that seems pretty hollow these days, and it is time to read those “Woe untos” as directed at us.  The good news is that enough times the powerful and privileged in the Bible listened and repented and redirected themselves and reformed.  Sometimes not, but I’m hopeful we can read and learn and apply the prophets to our day.

      I have a systems approach.  Vocationally, it is a good perspective for diagnosing and improving how congregations live.  Theologically, it also gives me a perspective on social systems in general, and racism and police violence in this particular instance.  Paul’s use of “principalities and powers” might well be useful again.  Where the ancient Greeks used those words cosmologically about tiers of heavenly and infernal and earthly hierarchies, I would apply them to the big, impersonal, corporate and societal systems that have their own internal logic and way of perpetuating their existence by subtly inculcating their values and processes and structures into those participating in them.  After a while, the structures are so strong and so invisible that no one even realizes that they are shaped by the structures, or, even, pushed into acting certain ways because “that’s the way it’s always been.”  It’s even hard to step outside the systems you are within to see them, much less to change them.

      That’s why we can have nice people perpetuating bad things unintentionally.  We can have structural racism without being individually racist.  And it is why things are so resistant to a solution.  The powers and principalities are tough.

      We have to read our Bibles from a different direction than we used to.  We may need to read from the other side even.  We have to dig into the prophetic polemic against injustice and harming the poor or unnoticed… the vulnerable.  God has a powerful and persistent preferential bias for the least of God’s human children, a theme constantly throughout the Bible and Biblical prophets and throughout church history and succeeding generations of prophets, through Martin Luther King Jr. and those in the streets of the U.S. this week.  WE may need to listen more willingly than ever before, but we are not unequipped.  The liberation theologians and feminist theologians and urban theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries give us the tools to re-think and reframe our actions.  Like Amos, they have warned us to get with God’s program of justice and righteousness, even in the face of privilege.

      Mind you, we cannot romanticize this and pretend it will be easy or non-costly to us.  Jesus constantly warns his followers how ancient Israel “killed the prophets before them” when they raised God’s preference for protecting the vulnerable.  The deaths throughout the civil rights era are close at hand, as are the recent deaths.  A difference in which I find glimmer of optimism is that the prophets and modern martyrs were one person at a time protesting unrighteousness; now we have the chance for many, many, too many to kill prophets to raise their voices and change their presumptions and reform the way we interact in society.  Many can take the side of the vulnerable.

      We are at another of those watershed moments in our common life.  Do we choose to stand with the disenfranchised and demeaned and dying? Do we stand with Jesus who loves the least of our sisters and brothers?  Or will the prophets’ woes fall on our deaf ears.  Israel listened.  In our best moments, the church of the past listened.  Today, will we? Protests can be prophetic.

                                                                                                          In Christ,

                                                                                                                

                                                                                                          David
                                                                                                          

Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible     Isaiah 40:1-11
      From the Gospels             Mark 1:1-8