Who We Are, Week 4: Principled
University Park UMC
11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 4, 2024
Scripture: James 1:22 – 25, 2:14 – 18
A lot of us here probably remember the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that took place in Iraq in 2004, where detainees were being tortured and held indefinitely without charges under U.S. Military command. The Army’s investigation resulted in 11 convictions of prison guards. Those who were convicted insisted they were following orders from their superiors, but after investigation the commanding officers were never charged.
All that made news at the time. What got less public attention was that what happened at Abu Ghraib came to light because of three soldiers who stepped forward and reported what they saw.
One of them, Joseph Darby, provided the shocking pictures that were all over the news. Darby said he agonized about the situation for almost a month. Finally he decided he had to say something. Talking about his decision later, he said, (What I saw) violated everything I personally believed in and all I’d been taught about the rules of war.”
Another soldier, Ian Fishback, also reported abuses. He wrote a letter to Senator John McCain, who had himself been tortured as a prisoner of war. Fishback wrote, “For 17 months, I tried to determine what specific standards governed the treatment of detainees by consulting my chain of command…Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers…I and troops under my command witnessed some of these abuses… I can remember, as a cadet at West Point, resolving to ensure that my men would never commit a dishonorable act; that I would protect them from that type of burden. It absolutely breaks my heart that I have failed some of them in this regard…we owe our soldiers better than this… Some do not see the need for this work. Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as Al Qaeda’s, we should not be concerned. When did Al Qaeda become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? …Our actions should be held to a higher standard.”
The third whistleblower, Samuel Provance, was less well known than the others, but in some ways his story was more damaging because he had more evidence: pictures, sworn statements from prison guards, diary entries from people who worked in the prison, videos of the abuse taken by some of the people who were eventually convicted. Much of his testimony remains classified and has never been released.
I wish I could tell you a comforting, morally unambiguous story about all this. I wish I could say those three soldiers were rewarded for the courage it took to do the right thing. I wish I could say they all lived happily ever after. But what actually happened is nowhere near that neat or clear.
Darby was originally told his name would not be made public. But then someone leaked his identity, and the New Yorker Magazine published it. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld named him in a congressional hearing. Immediately, Darby and his family were ostracized by their neighbors. Their home was vandalized. People harassed them on the street, telling Darby he was a dead man walking and his family had targets on their backs. They received multiple death threats. Eventually, the Army took them into protective custody, and for more than 10 years that’s how they lived.
Ian Fishback, like Darby, was initially applauded for his courage. John McCain and Senators John Warner and Lindsey Graham co-sponsored legislation to provide the guidance Fishback had not found when he was in Iraq. He continued to serve and eventually retired from the military in 2014. He became an instructor at West Point, and then went back to school for a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy. He was eventually awarded a Fulbright Chair in International Law. But by that time, he had begun to struggle with mental illness. He suffered from PTSD. He became profoundly depressed and schizophrenic and paranoid, convinced the government was trying to kill him because of his whistleblower status. He died at the age of 42, grossly overmedicated in a care facility in Michigan. It later emerged that he had gone to the VA for help but they turned him away because he didn’t seem suicidal or dangerous to others.
When Samuel Provance went to his superiors, he was initially ignored. Then he was interviewed and assured that his identity would remain confidential. But his name too was leaked, like Darby’s. He was interviewed again, and this time the interviewer recommended that Provance be charged with dereliction of duty because they said he didn’t file his report soon enough. His commanding officers ordered him not to tell anyone about what he had seen at Abu Ghraib. Eventually, he was threatened with up to ten years in military prison if he refused to plead guilty to a lesser charge. He accepted the deal, which convicted him of “disobeying a lawful order”, and as a result he was demoted.
These three men did the right thing in the face of tremendous pressure not to do it, and all three paid a high price. Which raises a question: why do the principled thing when it’s so hard? Why do the principled thing when it can cost so much?
Today is the fourth week in a sermon series called “Who We Are,” which is kind of an expanded version of a talk I heard at our United Methodist Annual Conference back in June given by Dr. Ashley Boggan, a Methodist historian. Boggan walked us through an essay written around 1750 by John Wesley, one of the primary founders of Methodism. It’s called “Advice to a People Called Methodist,” and it contains five basic points Wesley wanted to impart to this new religious movement. I think Wesley’s advice is just as valuable to us today as it was in 1750.
So in the past few weeks, we’ve covered three points of Wesley’s advice. He tells those early Methodists to remember that they are a new people, both in the sense of being renewed in Christ and of doing things in new ways. He tells them to remember that if they are faithful, they will offend and scandalize people, just as Jesus did. He tells the Methodists that when their ministry is hardest, they should place their whole trust in God and go on; that God’s sustaining presence will carry them even when their own strength fails.
Today, I want to look at Wesley’s fourth piece of advice. He says, “Be true to your principles…pursue with your might inward and outward holiness…a steady imitation of the One you worship.”
That notion, the imitation of Christ, is very old in Christian circles, and it was absolutely crucial to the early Methodist movement. One of the most powerful ideas of early Methodism is that Christianity must be lived. To follow Christ is to imitate Christ. Now we get this wrong all the time – or maybe I should put it in more personal terms: I get this wrong all the time. And no one does it perfectly. But I think that as we practice service and compassion and humility and kindness and courage, we come to know God better and God changes us through our practice. I love the way the Franciscan monk and author Richard Rohr puts this. He says, “we do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” Rohr’s a Catholic, but that’s a very Methodist insight. John Wesley could have written that.
I chose this morning’s scripture reading from the Book of James because I think it fleshes out some of what Wesley is driving at. James is focusing on the relationship between faith, meaning what we believe; and works, meaning what we do. James says faith without works is dead. You could say it’s not really faith at all. If we say we believe something, but that belief doesn’t influence how we live, you have to wonder whether we actually believe it.
Now, I think James is right about this. It’s a very clear, pragmatic understanding. But James also offers us a reason why our faith has to be lived, why we try to imitate what Wesley called the justice, mercy, and truth of Jesus. In the first chapter, the author of James writes, “if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” We imitate Jesus, try to practice his way of life, so we can remember who we are: not who we think we are, or who our egos want to be, but who we really are: the beloved of God, the people of God. Learning to remember that, to live grounded in that awareness, takes time. It takes practice, especially when the whole world is shouting that you should not be who you are; that you should abandon the principles that guide you.
In his essay, Wesley is not naïve about any of this. He knows that if we commit ourselves to practicing these Christlike principles of justice, mercy, and truth, we will meet resistance. Those three men, those whistleblowers, they knew how that works. They saw it up close. Wesley says some people will try to scare you out of your principles. They’ll say we’re facing an existential threat. Extreme times call for extreme measures; we have to live in the real world where we reckon with real and imminent danger. Others will try to shame you, tell you you’re doing the wrong thing, actually doing harm rather than helping. They’ll say you’re allowing evil to continue, and you should be ashamed of stopping people who are doing what has to be done. Still others, Wesley says, will mock you. They’ll say you’re a naïve idealist. They’ll say you’ve staked out a wishy washy position in the middle of the road, and the only thing in the middle of the road are dead skunks and yellow stripes, so get with the program and choose a side. But Wesley says, “hold fast to the truth of God in principle and in practice.” He says, Commit yourself to doing right. Call out evil for what it is. Oppose it with everything you have. But be the people of God: never allow yourself hatred or contempt for those with whom you disagree.
This is hard stuff. It takes practice. But if we can practice it, maybe we won’t just remember who we are. Maybe even when it looks like we’re losing; even when our cause looks hopeless, maybe in that moment we’ll remind others of who they are.
After all his testimony and his demotion, the whistleblower Samuel Provance was honorably discharged from the Army. He gave a few interviews, appeared in a few documentaries. And not long after, he reenlisted. A journalist heard about it and asked him why, after all he’d been through, he wanted to go back in. He said, “I decided not to give up on the Army or on our country. There are still good people doing good things.”
It’s hard to stick to our principles, to be the people of God, trying to love and serve all of God’s creation. We’ll be treated with contempt when we do. We’ll fail, probably more often than we succeed – or again, to put it more personally, I know I’ll fail more than I succeed. I do it all the time. But I still believe the practice is worth it, and not just for us. Through our practice, we can allow God to remind us of who we are. Through our practice, we can help remind others who all of us can be together. I can’t think of more important work right now.