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Human evil remains a mystery. Somewhere in each of us there is a potential for evil. (See Romans 3:10-18, where Paul piles high the Old Testament teachings on human depravity.) Call it the Lord of the Flies factor. Novelist William Golding said that his book's theme was "an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature." Without the restraining influence of God's grace, we are all prone to mistreat others. We are, as Augustine put it, bent in on ourselves, and this spiritual deformity means that we are likely to mistreat others. Thus we should not be surprised by outbreaks of human evil. We are, however, shocked and outraged, and rightly so.

What can Christians do in such a time of shock and outrage? Certainly, we must demand more rigorous accountability in the military. Also, we should wisely work to avoid creating circumstances (such as badly supervised prisons in wartime) that give rise to abuse, torture, and murder. But whatever we do, we should, individually and as a nation, first engage in self-examination and avoid scapegoating. Appropriate punishment is due those soldiers who failed in their duty at Abu Ghraib, but scapegoating is casting blame in order to avoid the kind of interior examination that leads to understanding, compassion, and action.

Stanford psychologist Zimbardo demonstrated that "deindividuation" techniques, measures that obscure an individual's identity and provide a degree of anonymity, are a common thread in the tapestry of human evil. But Christians know that they are never anonymous before God, and practicing the presence of God should be a powerful deterrent to abuse and a motivator for compassionate action.

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More on the Christian response to Abu Ghraib, and prison abuse is available on our hot topic page.

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July 2004, Vol. 48, No. 7