HomeIt’s Practical, but is it Proper?
David Bryce – Hastings – December 11, 2005
Reading: The Magnanimous Nation George Washington (From his Farewell Address:
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay and temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature.
SERMON
Good Morning.
Russell Baker said, “Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
Americans have long been called a practical people. They are said to have the attitude that “if it works, it is good”. If something achieves its goals then we are said to be satisfied with it.
But I want to think this morning about whether actions can be in and of themselves bad or wrong.
That raises the first question to be answered: is there such a thing as “right and wrong”, do they even exist?
Hinduism and Buddhism and some forms of modern philosophy would say no. Hinduism and Buddhism both urge acceptance of what is, but they really refer, I think, to our value judgments of others and of what goes on around us. Both speak to the individual about right and wrong behavior. Judgment of our own actions remains even if we come to accept the world around us.
I want also to acknowledge a truth: circumstances can change what we do. When all is well, some acts are wrong that become acceptable or justifiable if our survival is at stake. If I go next door to kill my neighbor because I want his property, that would be judged by most here to be wrong. But if my neighbor was breaking into my house to kill me in order to take my property and I killed him first, most would judge that as justifiable or at least understandable and excusable. Even so, some acts are always wrong and the lesser of two evils is always still an evil—and ought to be acknowledged as such.
If there is no right or wrong, if everything behavior is acceptable, then I believe we would live in a terrible world.
If every behavior is acceptable, then let us acknowledge and let go of our rage at criminals, individual, national and international. Let us admit that the current war crimes trials taking place in the Hague and in Iraq are fraudulent propaganda exercises. Let us admit that they are taking place purely because we don’t happen to like the people who are on trial and we want some kind of political cover for putting them in jail or killing them.
That is the outcome if “right” is determined by what works.
I don’t accept that, but I acknowledge that some do.
I am too much of an idealist. I believe in right and wrong, I believe in morality and immorality.
If there is no right or wrong except what our desires lead us to, then we should recognize that the best captains of business are organized crime leaders. They focus on profits and they get them; and anything that brings in profits is good.
I reported a few weeks ago that Abiel Livermore, the first minister of this congregation, wrote a book in which he assessed the reasons the Untied States government put forward for the Mexican War of the 1840’s. He analyzed the reasons individually and rejected each one, calling them all “pretexts”, that is, lies.
The cynic would answer, “So. Aren’t we better off with all that territory we took from Mexico? If war achieves national goals then it is good. If pretexts and lies help to rally popular support for the war, they are good; and if they sow questions in the minds of the citizens of our opponents, and in the minds of the citizenry of foreign powers that might otherwise intervene, then that is all to the good”.
Remember that this nation was filled with a belief in manifest Destiny, the belief that God intended for us to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. So if war is necessary to achieve God’s will, that is good. And if we have to sweep aside the native peoples who live on the land, that is too is good, maybe even required.
If it achieves our goal, in this cynical view, then pushing the Indians is right; confining them to reservations is right, taking those reservations away from them if we discover something valuable there like gold or oil or casinos is right; lying and cheating is right; making treaties that we intend to break is right; giving them blankets impregnated with the smallpox virus is right; and outright genocide through military action is right.
Of course, in this view, what is right is judged solely by the locus of ones loyalty. If a person is solely interested in anything that they want, and if doing anything to get what they want is, in their view justified, we call that person a sociopath. But if there is no right or wrong, who is to say that they are wrong? Perhaps they are not sociopaths; perhaps there is a valid option.
And if one’s locus of loyalty is on the family, then only your family’s interests count, no one else’s do. And you may do whatever you like to others.
If the locus of loyalty is on tribe, nation or race, then genocide is okay if it serves the interests of my particular group. The slaughter of innocents is acceptable.
If religion is what is most important, then jihad is acceptable; suicide bombings are acceptable; the Inquisition is acceptable and maybe required by God.
Or if an ideology has my loyalty, then I can kill those who disagree with me.
Under these circumstances the only thing that is “wrong” is when something is aimed at me or at my group.
I don’t accept any of that. I believe there are evil acts, acts which are evil in and of themselves.
Some do not; but even those who accept the concept of evil acts sometimes engage in them. People do so for different reasons. Some do because they take pleasure in hurting others. Some do so out of Anger. Some do so out of Fear. Still others do so for some “good” purpose. Some inquisitors who tortured and killed in the name of God even convinced themselves that they were doing so for the benefit of the victim soul.
Whether in the name of god or in the name of good, some acts are just wrong.
When nations or religions use torture they institutionalize all of the reasons for torture. They give permission both to the Inquisitor and to the sadist to abuse others.
Secretary of State Rice stated in a news conference last week the “torture is defined by law” She is wrong; torture is defined by pain. Our law strives to ban the pain.
I have listened to people in the current administration over the past few weeks, and they have repeatedly said that we do not torture anyone. But they have then said other things that call this into question.
We do not torture, but “our laws do not apply to Americans working overseas”;
We do not torture, but “we need an exemption for the CIA from any legislative ban on torture”;
We do not torture, but “people confuse torture with cruel and inhumane treatment”.
What message does all of this send to the sadists and inquisitors in those secret CIA prisons.
We do not torture, but we send people to nations that we know do use torture.
I hear and read all of this, I think about how words are being parsed and carefully used and I am sorry to say and sad to say that I do not believe the members of this administration. I believe that they are lying to us. I believe that we do torture. And I believe that they know we torture.
Secret arrests, secret prisons, secret interrogations, secret trials; all of these encourage abuse and torture. That is why the founders of this nation banned them in our Constitution. They knew that secrecy encourages abuse.
Is torture justified in your mind?
Then I ask you to consider, would it still be justified if it were you?
What if it was someone you love? What if it was your parent? Your sibling? Your life partner? Your child? Would it then be okay? Just because someone thinks they might have some information that we might want?
Oh, but you say to yourself, that would never happen to them; this is just used against evil people who are trying to do us harm.
First, we do not know that; we do not know they are evil. A German man was picked up in Macedonia and transferred to a prison in Afghanistan where he reports that he was abused for month. In a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Secretary of State Rice admitted that this was “a mistake”. He disappeared into our prisons, was abused for months, and it was a mistake. We do not know that the people being tortured are evil people.
But I want to stress that the fact that this was a mistake only magnifies the horror. Even if we are correct in identifying people who do evil acts, torture is wrong.
When we practice it, we become the evil ones.
We ourselves, we individually, need not become Inquisitors; we need only allow the Inquisitors to go about their grim business in our name.
I was watching the Saddam Hussein trial coverage on BBC America last week, they carried the delayed feed of the testimony from the first witness against Saddam Hussein. He was speaking about Hussein’s reactions in that small town where an assassination attempt had taken place, about how people were killed and arrested. He said that his brother had been arrested and they had not seen him for four; for four years they did not know whether or not he was alive. That was one of the charges against Saddam Hussein. They broke from the trial to cover Secretary Rice’s press conference about Renditions. I found that to be a stunning juxtaposition. Twenty years from now will there be a war crimes trial of our leaders? Whether there is or not, there is a moral trial taking place in the world right now, and we are being found guilty.
In the name of good purpose we now engage in evil acts; in doing so we betray ourselves.
Pour Unitarian heritage, which believes in the inherent worth and good of every person, will not allow us to do this. Our Universalist heritage which tells us that every person is a child of God—or a child of the cosmos or the universe if you prefer—will not let us do this.
I asked before whether you would approve of torture if it were being applied to your sibling. It is. Universalism tells us that these are our brothers and sisters yours and mine.
I have asked the Social Action Committee to prepare letters either for you to sign or to use as a template for your own letters to your members of Congress. They are available in the lobby along with lists of local Congressional Representatives. I urge you to join me in sending letters telling them that torture is not acceptable.
Return to
Home
Return to Sermons Index