http://www.lucifereffect.com Understanding how good people turn evil. http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=32 It was almost exactly a year ago that I sat in the living room of the man Vann Nath has described as “The Butcher of Tuol Sleng.” My interview with the former chief of guards at the Khmer Rouge interrogation and detention (read “torture”) center in Phnom Penh was an experience I’ll not soon forget. As I have written in earlier blogs, the hour I spent with the seemingly amiable Him Huy put me face-to-face with Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” and has haunted me ever since. My interview... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=31 Nobody, it seems, can make documentaries quite like Ken Burns. His recent series, “The War,” tells the story of America’s involvement in World War Two through the eyes of four American cities and towns, among them Mobile, Alabama. When war broke out, Glenn Frazier, a 17 year-old infantryman from Mobile, was serving in the Philippines under General Douglas MacArthur. In “The War,” Mr. Frazier admits that he had enlisted several months earlier with no thought of ever seeing combat, and... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=30 Sometimes heroes are people who stand between. In 1859 a young Swiss entrepreneur named Henri Dunant witnessed the battle of Solfertino, where the French and Italians were fighting to drive Austrians out of Italy. Three years later he published a book about the experience, A Memory of Solfertino. Dunant's book tells about the bloody battle, but its focus is on the aftermath—the fruitless attempt to help the wounded and dying. The book concludes with a proposal that all... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=29 The acts of genocide, which have no statute of limitations, mean any acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such: * killing members of the group; * causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; * deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; * imposing measures intended to prevent births within the... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=28 “Revolution’s victory over imperialism is not about inviting guests to a dinner party, not about writing a text, not about embroidering flowers, not about having the right education, not about being soft, not about being well-mannered and polite, not about fearing the enemy; the revolution is about seething with anger against one class, about striking and destroying that class” “We, the Communist Party, follow the correct and clear-sighted line.” “For the Angkar, there is no... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=27 Samuel said to Saul: “The LORD sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” 1 SAMUEL 15:1-3 (NRSV) For Christians and... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=26 The story of Daniel in the lion’s den is the perfect Sunday School thriller. There is the good guy, the hero, Daniel; the bad guy, the Evil King of Babylonia, Darius, who orders Daniel thrown among the lions simply for practicing his faith; and the lions, scary and dangerous, who mysteriously do no harm to Daniel. Children come away from this story, no doubt, impressed with the idea that if they, too, faithfully honor their religious teachings, they will be protected from danger. That... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=25 Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign; he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hamutal daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah. He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, just as Jehoiakim had done. Indeed, Jerusalem and Judah so angered the LORD that he expelled them from his presence. -- 2 Kings 24:18-20 (NRSV) Now here’s a passage that doesn’t get much play in your average Sunday School curriculum. I’ve not heard a sermon preached on... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=24 Thirty years ago, Nhem En worked as a cog in a machine of evil. Assigned to the Khmer Rouge’s infamous Tuol Sleng interrogation and torture center in Phnom Penh, Nhem En stood at the center of the firestorm of torture, brutality, and murder that swept over Cambodia in the late Seventies. What exactly did Nhem En do at Tuol Sleng? Was he an interrogator, inflicting unspeakable torture? Was he a guard, imposing severe punishment for minor infractions of arbitrary rules? Was he an... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=23 There is nothing obviously remarkable about Him Huy. Him Huy, like most of his neighbors, toils in the rice fields near his tiny village in Cambodia’s Kandal province. As he comes in from the fields, he bears an odd resemblance to Charles Bronson, but without the American actor’s trademark scowl. His home is little more than the characteristic Cambodian shack on stilts, and consists of two rooms. The walls are adorned with photos of Him Huy’s large extended family. Him Huy graciously... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=22 “It’s all fabrication,” the social worker said when I relayed what the children had told me. And the judge refused to admit into evidence the psychologist’s report on the emotional harm they have suffered. “Hearsay!” How can we prevent domestic violence if our society refuses to listen to children? Allan G. Johnson’s fascinating study The Gender Knot tackles the complexity of male “privilege” embedded in our society’s culture. "Privilege" is any unearned advantage available... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=21 When investigating criminal activity, I think most law enforcement agencies would concur that it is best to consider all who may have been involved in an illegal enterprise and assess their potential liability. This is especially true when dealing with major crimes requiring coordination among many different players. In the case of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, however, that principle apparently does not apply. Under Article I of the 2003 Agreement between the United Nations and the Royal... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=20 Back in the year 2000, a really fine little film, deceptively entitled “The Big Kahuna,” was quietly released. Even with the star power combo of Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito in the lead roles, “The Big Kahuna” died a fast death at the box office. According to the National Association of Theatre Owners, “The Big Kahuna” grossed only a miserly little sum of $3.1 million. And that is unfortunate. This is a film that needs to be seen. Based upon the stage play “Hospitality Suite” by... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=19 The names of individuals have been changed but the stories are true. When a group of six teenagers heads out into the wilderness for two weeks, their twenty-something trail guide has his or her hands full. YMCA Camp Menogyn, in northern Minnesota on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area, has an 86-year tradition of taking girls and boys out “on trail” for challenging experiences that test their characters and help them grow. The six boys have been out with trail... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=18 Kimmie Weeks, one of many children victimized by Liberia’s nearly 30 years of intermittent civil war, almost died at the age of nine from untreated diseases for which there are treatments and vaccines. The grave was ready; he was wrapped in a shroud; he opened his eyes just before they laid him in the ground. And that's when he decided to be a hero. I’m sure he didn’t think about it in those terms. But Kimmie did think, in the way young children do, that it “wasn’t right” that adults... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=17 Back in the mid-to-late-eighties, I was off in a whole different professional world, pursuing a career as a young corporate lawyer. How I got there is a long story, and how I got from there to ordination as a Presbyterian pastor is an even longer story, neither of which will be told in this post. The essential point is that, after serving the customary apprenticeship slaving away for a few years in a large national law firm, I had made my way to the legal department of a major financial... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=16 What do the surviving victims of the Khmer Rouge holocaust think about the prospects of a trial of the senior leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity? Prime Minister Hun Sen has proclaimed that Cambodians should “dig a hole and bury the past.” Reports have routinely circulated in the Western media declaring that most Cambodians want to put the Khmer Rouge years behind them and move on. Getting a handle on the pulse of public opinion in Cambodia is a tricky exercise. Much of the... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=15 The joint U.N.-Royal Government of Cambodia Khmer Rouge Tribunal made its first formal charge against a former Khmer Rouge leader on July 31, citing Kang Kek Ieu, otherwise known by his revolutionary name "Duch," for crimes against humanity. Duch, who has been held in detention by the Cambodian government, has been transferred to the custody of the Tribunal. Duch was the head of the infamous S-21 detention and torture center at the former Tuol Sleng high school in Phnom Penh during... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=14 Cambodia was once described to me as “a land without forgiveness.” While that description is neither literally true nor entirely fair, it does illuminate the cultural reality of “disproportionate revenge” identified by Alexander Hinton and explored in Part I of this series. In Cambodia, a grudge may be held and nurtured for decades before the aggrieved party strikes back. Buddhism teaches that forgiveness and forbearance are virtues, but the anthropological and cultural evidence suggests... http://www.lucifereffect.com/theologyblog.htm?articleID=12 On Sunday, May 20, 2007, somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand Cambodians gathered at a place called Choeung Ek (rough pronunciation: “Joing Ike”), which lies about 13 kilometers to the south of Phnom Penh. The crowd looked on as a group of actors presented a disturbing drama based on gruesome events from Choeung Ek’s recent past. In the shadow of a huge glass tower containing hundreds of skulls of the victims of Khmer Rouge genocide victims, actors portraying political prisoners with...