Creating a Culture of Care

Creating a Culture of Care David Ketchum September 25, 2022

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        One of the great gifts my parents gave to me was a commitment to caring for one another. I watched them, and grew up helping out, as they would mow lawns, pick up groceries, provide transportation, babysit, and otherwise provide a helping hand to both family and friends. This was especially the case as people faced sickness and grew close to death. It was an expression of generosity and love, and (most of the time!) it was given without complaint. So, it wasn’t a surprise that, within months of the day I moved away to attend university, my childhood bedroom was converted into what became my grandmother’s hospice room. I would travel home on weekends to visit her and my family, often spending hours sitting on what used to be my bedroom floor, playing guitar and sharing stories with my grandma, and sleeping on the couch, before heading back for class. After her death, that room became the temporary residence of a series of other loved ones, who needed a combination of care, supervision, or just some extra help dealing with the ups and downs of life. 
My spouse had some similar experiences, and we carried these values into our own family life together, in various ways. One expression of this was that I spent a decade homeschooling our child. It was an incredibly rewarding experience, but it was also challenging. It was the kind of job that changed and got more difficult each year, so that, by the end, I was re-learning trigonometry and solid state chemistry in the evenings before teaching those lessons the next day. There’s nothing like dusting off twenty years of general knowledge each day for keeping the brain sharp!

But that was not the most challenging bit. I thoroughly enjoyed stretching my mind in that way, especially when it came to designing and teaching our elective courses. No, the real challenge was navigating the social aspects of being a stay-at-home, homeschooling parent and caregiver. I worked part-time in the community, and the three most common reactions I got when I answered questions about my life were: 

1. Why are you wasting your time doing that, when you could be making a bigger impact doing more important things?
2. Can you help me with this project since you don’t work and have the extra time?  
3. Your spouse doesn’t mind that you are basically freeloading off her hard work? 

Many of the stereotypes about homeschooling, especially in a state like Missouri that lacks accountability, are well-earned. Those assumptions and criticisms didn’t surprise me, and they didn’t usually bother me. After all, I also was – and remain – critical about the lack of educational value provided by many homeschooling families. But what I hadn’t expected was the generally condescending attitudes about caregiving in general. Because of my parents’ model of generosity, I had grown up with a respect for unpaid labor and the importance of informal and family caregiving, especially among us working class folks. But once I was exposed to some of the worst assumptions about caregivers, I began to see and understand how little we value care, and caregivers, in our society. This lack of support and respect for caregiving remains shocking, especially when we consider how vital caregiving is to the wellbeing of our selves, families, and communities. 

Undervalued and Overworked

In 2017, a report by the AARP estimated that 41 million family caregivers were donating 34 billion hours of unpaid labor, valued at $470 billion dollars. That figure was significantly higher than even out-of-pocket health costs (which were $366 billion in 2017) and also higher than several important industries. For example, even if we combined the agriculture and mining sectors in the US, that value was still $438 billion, $22 billion less than the value of unpaid care. Yet this economic value is even more significant when we consider that the $470 billion figure was determined using the average wage of paid caregivers, which was $13.81 per hour. 

        The fact that caregiver wages are so low is another reflection of the low value we place on care. As the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reminds us, “All wages in the U.S. economy are politically and socially determined, but given that care work is heavily publicly financed, care wages are especially determined by political decisions (via commission or omission).” Practically speaking, this means that we could more directly correct wage and labor standards for care workers using public policies if we wanted to do so, but we have not done it. Instead, we consistently and persistently undervalue caregiving, even though it is a huge component of our economy and vital to our social wellbeing. Why? 

Deep Roots

        Part of the answer is in the name: we care. Caregiving is vulnerable to this kind of exploitation because we are often motivated – by family bonds, love and compassion, a sense of self-giving, etc. – to provide that care regardless of the financial or social incentives involved. And because many people don’t think about these issues until they need to do so, when they are already providing or receiving care, there is a sense of just needing to get through this time. Suddenly, the oxygen tanks need to be picked up, the insurance claims need to be filed, the myriad of medical appointments need scheduled and attended, and a whole other host of responsibilities all need to be addressed at once and balanced with work, family, and personal life. Is there really time to think about and advocate for the transformation of the systemic roots of undervaluing caregiving? 

        But even when we do become advocates for change, that transformation is not as easy as we would think. After all, caregiving is truly nonpartisan. Most of us will provide at least some caregiving in our lives, and all of us lucky to live long enough will experience illness and aging that requires help. But, somehow, supporting caregivers and care-receivers still hasn’t been a priority. For example, in 2021, President Biden’s budget included a tax credit of up to $5,000 to help with caregiving expenses. As the budget debate heated up, however, the credit was reduced to $2,000 and, finally, cut from the bill entirely.  

     Many social analysts have drawn a connection between these kinds of failures to our society’s collective misogyny, xenophobia, and racism. Historically, caregiving jobs, such as the ever-present but often socially invisible nannies, nurses, and maids, were often relegated to marginalized members of society, such as Black workers and women. Even today, over 90% of care workers are women and are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. As Lenore Palloadino and Rakeen Mabud pointed out - 

“The undervaluation of caregiving labor and the people who perform it has persisted well into modern times, and the underlying sexism and racism that underpin such cultural norms—rooted in the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow—have made it harder to develop a robust caregiving infrastructure over the decades.” 

        Indeed, even the major paid caregiving fields – such as childcare, residential care, and home healthcare – are too often characterized by low wages for laborers and poor conditions for those receiving care. Too often, training is inadequate and career advancement is limited. As the EPI has reported, 

“The development of the care sector and disparities within the care sector are fundamentally intertwined with historical and current ableism, sexism, xenophobia, and racism. Globally and in the U.S., care work has been devalued as ‘women’s work’ and is primarily performed by women who face discrimination across other identities, such as immigrant and/or Black and Hispanic women. The devaluation of care work itself, along with the additional layers of discrimination many care workers face, in turn influence and perpetuate low wages and poor conditions in this industry.” 

What We Learned During the Pandemic

Those deep roots may have helped hide the devaluing and exploitation of care work. However, like so many of our intractable social and economic issues, the pandemic has intensified and exposed many of these problems. The number of unpaid caregivers doubled during the pandemic, and an investor’s guide from 2021 estimated that caregiving spending jumped to approximately $648 billion (outpacing even pharmaceuticals). 

        Further,  a CDC study of more than 10,000 adults showed that caregivers were at higher risk for poor mental health outcomes than non-caregivers. This was especially true of those who were simultaneously responsible for both parenting and adult caregiving. About 85% of them experienced adverse mental health symptoms related to their caregiving responsibilities, including 50% who reported suicidal ideation in the previous month. But the numbers for all caregivers were off the charts: about 70% of all caregivers “reported adverse mental health symptoms, including symptoms of anxiety or depression (55.3%), … or passive (39.3%) or serious (32.2%) suicidal ideation.” For comparison, only 22% of non-caregivers reported anxiety or depression, and passive suicidal ideation was under 10% and serious suicidal ideation was under 5% for non-caregivers. 

This pandemic study also exposed some of the underlying stressors. Family disagreements about caregiving and resentment about caregiving responsibilities tripled the risk of adverse mental health symptoms. Feeling underprepared for caregiving responsibilities, feeling a loss of personal freedom, and feeling increased financial pressures related to caregiving costs doubled the risks. (ibid) Those financial pressures included both lost wages and out-of-pocket expenses, which the AARP estimated at more than $7,000 per family for the year in 2021. The result was that caregiving cost about 26% of a family’s income. As always, those costs are more devastating for poorer families, as those average costs represent a higher percentage of their incomes. 

        This brings us back to our earlier observations about racial, disability, and economic justice. Michelle Singletary reported that racial and economic disparities meant that average caregiving costs for Black families reached 34% of their total income, while Hispanic families spent approximately 47% of their household income on providing care. Given these and similar realities, it comes as no surprise that another 2021 study demonstrated that Black and Hispanic caregivers were also at a higher risk of adverse mental health outcomes, as were disabled caregivers, younger caregivers, and those balancing caregiving with working long hours or as an essential worker. 

But the statistics do not capture the human feelings that go with those numbers. These stories are often extremely private and personal, especially in a society that cares so little for caregivers. Alexandra Drane, co-founder and CEO of Archangels, an organization dedicated to building a national movement for supporting and honoring caregivers, shared a powerful glimpse into what the stats look and feel like for many people: 

“One night in the summer of 2020, I had passive suicidal thoughts. At the time I had no idea that’s what it was called. I just felt worn. I was in a very active caregiver situation, and my caregiver intensity was high. I woke up one night at 3 a.m. and lay there reviewing all the ways I was failing: as a caregiver, as a mama, as a partner, and at work. And I just felt tired. And I found myself thinking, ‘You know—if I got COVID-19 right now and went to sleep and never woke up, I’d be OK with that.’ … Our most recent CDC study pegs the rate of passive suicidal ideation for sandwich-generation caregivers at 58 percent. One interpretation of that data and my middle-of-the-night weary was just this: I was normal. / And sometimes feeling normal about something that makes you feel really alone, or even ashamed, is a way to start feeling better. The first line of care is knowing you are not alone.” 

What Change Might Look Like

        That her story touches many of us so deeply, that this feeling could be considered normal, underscores just how deeply our society has failed and how urgently we need change. It is simply amazing that we have managed to devalue what is arguably the most essential aspect of a healthy society: offering and receiving care for one another. And we are left with the always looming question: what can we do? 

First, we can become more aware of and explicit about connecting caregiving with other justice issues. For example, providing universal healthcare would help caregivers both with financial limitations and accessibility to resources. Basic progress in economic justice, such as paying living wages and pension coverage, would make it more possible 1) for people who otherwise lacked the skills or didn’t want to be a caregiver to hire others to provide that care, and 2) for people who wanted to pursue a career in caregiving to financially be able to do so. Most, if not all, of the positions that disability justice advocates have been working toward would also improve conditions for everyone needing care and their caregivers. And progress in racial justice would help address those underlying factors we discussed earlier. If you are engaged in any of these, or other, justice initiatives, you can pay attention to how caregiving is impacted and include it in your advocacy and actions. If you are looking for specific policy analysis and recommendations, a great starting place is the Economic Policy Institute.

At the personal and relational levels, the most immediate action we can all take is to help build support networks for caregivers. Studies by Archangels concluded that feeling support from as little as one other person reduced the risk of depression by 40% and anxiety by 30%, and “having a sense of purpose” was the best protection against those adverse mental health outcomes. Much of this happens informally, in our families and communities, but it is easy to take it for granted. So thank you for taking the time to write those cards and texts, make a phone call, help clean house and cook dinner, run errands, and listen when a caregiver needs to talk. All of it is important. More formally, support groups for caregivers are a good resource for many people, and these are available in person in many locations and also online. Respite care, whether informally with a friend or formally with a program or voucher, is essential for many long-term caregivers. Archangels also maintains a resource page that is searchable by state. 

All of this will also help us transform our broader culture, too. A basic reflection that we can use throughout the day to help us be more aware of and committed to this transformation is simply: What might a society look like that reorients itself around supporting and valuing the giving and receiving of care? All of us require care, every day. Even when we can provide much of the care ourselves, we rely on our entire society to help provide the resources we need to enjoy life. We need to normalize that support and accessibility for everyone. There is no reason why we can’t build the infrastructure we need to support this basic social function. No one should ever be left to feel like a burden, and no one should ever need to feel burdened, by the giving and receiving of care. If we care about our future, we will care about caregiving, and reshape our society to reflect those values. Whatever action you can take, let’s work together to make this long overdue transformation something real. 

“Exploitive & Predatory”: Debt & Economic Justice

 “Exploitive & Predatory”: Debt & Economic Justice

David Ketchum
September 18, 2022

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         Chapter 16 of the Gospel of Luke contains what has been called one of Jesus’ “strangest parables,” a tale of a rich man with a clever manager, who wiggles his way out of economic and social ruin: 

 “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.  So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’  Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.  I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’  So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’  Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”  (Luke 16:1-8, NRSVUE)  

  I think it is safe to say that this text is not one of the top-ten-most-popular-texts-to-preach-about. Personally, I don’t remember hearing many sermons or reading many devotional texts about it. What I do remember is a vague emphasis on forgiveness, which spiritualized the economic aspects. It bordered on allegorical: the rich man became a symbol of God, the manager became a symbol of Christians, and financial/material debt became a symbol of sin. The moral of the story was that we needed to learn to forgive others, just as God forgives us. The line about not being strong enough to dig was used to condemn any kind of “salvation by works,” although I don’t remember the line about being “ashamed to beg” being similarly applied to salvation by grace.  

I suspect that this interpretation was often chosen because the preacher was unfamiliar with any other one. Or, if understood, the economic aspects might lead to conclusions that would be considered “too political.” I don’t intend this in a mean-spirited way. I have felt the same pressures. Even one of the lectionary resources I generally trust, while emphasizing that wealth is not neutral, focused on the importance of being good stewards in this life so we can also be trusted with eternal life. (In our defense, we are perhaps encouraged to rush past the parable by the verses that follow, which ask, “If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?”) But that’s where I always got stuck, because what if the story really was about money, debt, and justice in this world? After all, both Hebrew and Christian scriptures teach that how we relate to money and wealth, and how we treat each other, is a faithful reflection of our capacity to love. The texts are filled with stories and teachings condemning those who hoard wealth and extolling those who live with generosity and justice. This is consistent, from Deuteronomy, where we read: 

“If there is among you anyone in need, … , do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.” (Deuteronomy 15:7-8, NRSVUE)

to 1 John, when we are asked: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1 John 3:17, NRSVUE) 

With this broader context in mind, we can look more closely at the economic realities of first century Palestine. But here again, we may immediately get stuck. At least in the Christian traditions with which I am most familiar, there is a common obstacle to even beginning this inquiry: that tendency to associate the Rich Man with God. Once this assumption is made, even subconsciously, it can be difficult to look closely at the economic injustice of the day, because the Rich Man is not a heroic character. It’s not exactly flattering to associate the divine with greed, usury, and cruel exploitation. So, for the sake of exploration, I’m asking us all to set that assumption aside. 

The Rich Man was an elite. He needed a manager for a good reason, to oversee huge contracts. Scholars estimated that around 150 trees were needed to produce the approximately 900 gallons of olive oil in the story. And about 100 acres were needed to grow the wheat mentioned in the parable, a sum that equaled more than seven years of a common person’s wages. (Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech, 240) As these contracts made up just a part of the business, the hearers understood that this Rich Man was a big deal and part of the ruling class. That class included the political elites, along with some retainers and wealthy merchants. Below them were more retainers, merchants, peasants, and artisans. And at the bottom were what William Herzog called “the expendables.” These were most commonly day laborers, a position so unstable and uncertain that most of them died within seven years. Only the cruelty of the system replenished their numbers. 

This is why Herzog described agrarian societies as “agonistic societies.” The elites were constantly struggling with one another to get ahead, not minding who was crushed underneath them as they climbed upward. Rulers would use the competition to their advantage, “to divide the ruling class and promote factions favorable to them over others that were not.” They balanced this strategy with their dependence on the skills and knowledge of elites and their retainers to maintain the system, “building a bureaucracy with operatives drawn from the retainer class” in ways that expanded their own powers while trying to limit others’. (ibid, 59-61)

        It was a top-heavy system, with the top 2% controlling about 2/3 of the society’s wealth. The retainers, although only about 5% of the population, were essential to helping the elites maintain that kind of control with such huge social and economic disparities. They also provided a buffer between the elites and those they exploited. So, while the retainers were able to access some of the wealth and rewards, the proverbial crumbs from the rulers’ tables, they also were the easy targets of popular hostility and violence. They were, after all, the “agents of redistribution in the economy,” helping transfer the little the poor had to the elites’ ever-expanding hoard. (ibid, 61) 

        The manager was part of that system. The fact that he could be dismissed meant he was a retainer, instead of a slave. What we witness in the story is the manager grappling with the reality of losing his precarious position in society. His options terrified him, and not merely because he thought digging ditches or begging food was beneath him. That could have been the case, but the reality was also harsher than that. Losing his position would have meant dropping into that other class, the expendables, where he would have had to compete with others who were more accustomed to such a role. But the life expectancy of even the most successful expendables was very low. This was quite literally a life-or-death situation for the manager. 

        Remember the story’s start: “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.” The retainer was caught between the Rich Man and his debtors. How could he possibly keep both parties pleased, especially while taking his own expected cut, the “honest graft” that made up his livelihood? This was a rotten system, with no one innocent but with clear winners and losers, oppressors and oppressed. Suspended between the Rich Man’s greed and the debtors’ envy, the manager was constantly vulnerable to both. The debtors accused him, the Rich Man dismissed him, and the manager’s life hung in the balance. 

        His back against the wall, the manager found a way to use the system to his advantage and save both his job and his life. Herzog goes into the details, and I encourage you to read his book, Parables as Subversive Speech, if this analysis interests you at all. But the strategy was brilliantly simple. Instead of protesting his dismissal, the manager acted before it was public knowledge, while the Rich Man awaited the final financial account. Instead, the manager summoned the debtors, one by one, and renegotiated their contracts. Not daring to hope that he would keep his job, the manager more realistically hoped that his quick thinking would make his services attractive to some other ruling family. But the strategy put the Rich Man in a tricky position. If he renounced the manager and insisted on keeping the original contracts, the debtors might turn their anger at him. If he accepted the new contracts and kept the manager – and receive the renewed obligations of the debtors. In Herzog’s words, “When the patron gives, he also indebts.” (ibid, 257) Those obligations turned out to be more valuable to the Rich Man in the long term, and worth any short-term losses. 

        This is the context of the Rich Man’s praise. The manager was not generous; he was shrewd. Both Rich Man and manager belonged to and benefited from an exploitive system, and the Rich Man recognized the value of having a steward who understood how the system worked and could navigate it so cleverly. If you are someone who cares about justice and peace, that’s not praise you are eager to receive. This is not a happy story, but one which reflected a deep understanding of the cruel economic situations that people faced every day. The parable honestly acknowledges the precarious lives of expendables, laborers, peasants, and even retainers, while also hinting at, or maybe aching for, the possibility of something else: a world without debt. 

        There are large gulfs between the world of this parable and the world we live in today. But, read this way, Jesus’ parable is much more relevant and useful than the spiritualized version I heard as a child, at least to me. Although our economic systems are very different, we can still connect with the experiences of those first century listeners.   A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 69% of US respondents said that the economy was helping the rich, while harming the poor.   About 2/3 of lower-income and 1/3 of middle-income Americans worried about how they were going to pay their bills each day. This assessment was as close to nonpartisan as the USA gets these days, as the report noted that “lower-income Republicans are roughly four times as likely as those in the upper-income tier to give the economy an only fair or poor rating.” 

A big part of these disparities is debt, from student loans to credit cards, medical debt, auto loans, payday loans, late fees, a combination, or more. From 1999 to 2016, household debt in the USA ballooned from $4.6 trillion to $12.29 trillion. In 2018, 71 million people (about 1/3 of US residents with a credit history) had debt in collection on their files. The most common reason for these debts was a “financial shock,” a reality that unmasks the economic fragility of so many of us, who live one catastrophe away from financial ruin. According to the Pew Trust, 40% of adults reported that “they would not have enough cash to cover an emergency expense costing $400, and 1 in 3 families report[ed] having no savings. Medical debt can be particularly devastating and accounts for more than half of all collections activity.” For many, the only choices are to sell their personal property, go into debt, or both.

But rather than addressing our economic system and changing it to provide more sustainable, healthier living circumstances, the US has largely responded by profiting off human tragedy. Buying debt has become a lucrative industry. From 1993 to 2013, “the total dollar value of debts purchased by debt buyers grew from $6 billion to $98 billion.” Collecting money is not generally an easy or pleasant job, so businesses have increasingly preferred to pass that task off to someone else. And the preferred tactic of collection agencies has become taking the debtor to court. According to the Pew Trust, “Two of the largest publicly traded debt buyers, Encore Capitol and Portfolio Recovery Associates, saw their legal collections grow 184 percent and 220 percent, respectively, from 2008 to 2018.” 

Lawsuits have become so common that debt claims doubled from 1993 to 2013, making up almost 25% of all civil court cases. In the most recent data available to us, that trend has continued. For instance, debt claims in Texas “more than doubled from 2014 to 2018,” topping 30% of the civil caseload. More than 70% of these lawsuits are resolved with what is called a default judgment, often because the debtor does not appear in court. (ibid )

There are many reasons why someone might miss an important court appearance, but the one I am most familiar with is that they never received a summons. For example, a collection agency might not have the current contact information of a debtor, but that doesn’t necessarily slow down the proceedings. In my own experience, I started receiving texts from a collection agency who were trying to contact a past owner of my new phone number. I tried several times to contact the collection agency to tell them that the person they were trying to reach was not at my number, but they continued to text me over and over again for some time. The texts finally stopped, but I’ve never stopped wondering about the fate of that phone number’s past owner. I hope they are well. In other cases, respondents could not afford to take off work, couldn’t get transportation, or were simply overwhelmed or confused by the lawsuit. Remember, the most common trigger for a debt of this nature is a “financial shock,” a situation that rarely leaves a person in the best circumstances for navigating a complex legal battle. (ibid)

Once a default judgment is issued, the debtor is usually in even more desperate circumstances. Every state allows the court to award collectors interest on the debt, and many states also allow collectors to be reimbursed for attorney fees. (This can be devastating, as in the case of a defendant taken to court for a medical debt. Although she had successfully paid off $8,500 of the original $9,861 debt, the court ruled that she owed an additional $8,500 in interest.) Then, once the case is decided, the debt has to be paid. To recover the money, a court may allow a collection agency to garnish wages or issue property liens. In some cases, the debtor is incarcerated. Although debtors’ prisons were officially outlawed in 1833, when Congress abolished them, and the Supreme Court has ruled that a person cannot be jailed for debts, debt imprisonment continues. This is because a debtor can be held in contempt of court, such as for failure to appear, and the agency can request a civil arrest warrant. An arrest like this can create a new cycle of debt from lost wages, loss of employment, and bond debts. (ibid)

The shrewd manager in Jesus’ story inhabited a very different world, but thinking about that world invites us to see our world in a different way. We have our own tiered economic system, with no one innocent but with clear winners and losers, oppressors and oppressed. We are invited to reflect on who our own society has made expendable, whose economic misfortunes have become a cautionary tale, but not a human worthy of compassion and justice. In reflecting on Jesus’ parable, Herzog concluded that:

  “Clearly, the issue at the end of the parable is the cancellation or reduction of debt. The twisted machinations of debtors and desperate scheming of the steward led to a lowering of debt to which the master, for whatever reasons, consented. The result was a glimpse for the debtors of another order, one in which forgiveness of debt would be more than a petition in a prayer.” (Parables as Subversive Speech, 258)

I’m not saying is the “right interpretation” or the only way to reflect on this passage. But it is a reflection that is worth our time, because our own society also needs to glimpse “another order,” where forgiveness of debt is not spiritualized, but real. More accurately, we need a spirituality that doesn’t separate economic needs from spiritual ones. And we need a society with true economic opportunity and security for every person, including policies that eliminate major debt sources, such as universal healthcare and education. Reflecting in this way, we can glimpse – and then co-create - a world where no one has to wonder if they are expendable, and everyone is valued, not for their potential for profit, but simply for this beautiful, complicated, incredible opportunity to be alive. 

“September 11, 21 years later”

“September 11, 21 years later”     9-11-2022     Dr. Roger Ray

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•       “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

 

 

 

 

The 19^th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, warned us, saying: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” On that Tuesday morning of September 11^th of 2001, the monsters showed up in New York, in Washington, D.C., and in Pennsylvania. Al Qaeda terrorists took over four commercial aircraft filled with unsuspecting civilian passengers who had innocently boarded airplanes that morning, going somewhere, for work or vacation, to visit family, or whatever the throngs of people crowding airports were doing that day.

 

Two were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, one crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, and the fourth did not make it to whatever the intended target was but was, instead, brought down in Pennsylvania by brave passengers who died putting up resistance to the terrorists. America and the world were in shock. At first it didn’t seem like it could have even been possible. Shock gave way to anger blended with fear.

 

There was resolve in our government to find out who was behind this bloody, cowardly attack and to punish them in a way that was revenge laced with warning. 

Al Qaeda had found an unwitting partner in Taliban ruled Afghanistan where they could base their terrorist training camps, and so that poor nation, filled with people who largely didn’t even have access to TV and radio news, who were broadly too illiterate to read about 9-11, were invaded by American troops and most of them had no idea why.  One of the American interrogators, one of my old college roommates from two generations ago told me that most of the people he talked to thought that the 9-11 attack was Afghanistan’s response to the American invasion of their country. They not only didn’t understand what was going on, they even had the sequence of events confused.

 

There was an 18-year-old Yemini man in Afghanistan at the time who thought he was on his way to college. He had sought letters of reference from his father’s government contacts in Saudi Arabia and in exchange for their support in getting him in to school, Mansoor Adayfi had been sent to do some interviews with Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan for a publication the government of Saudi Arabia wanted to print.

 

American’s were ill-equipped to hunt down Al Qaeda operatives on their own, and so they made the wretched decision to pay a bounty to Afghans who turned in members of Al Qaeda. So, without any proof or documentation, any poor Afghan could settle a dispute with an angry neighbor or just earn a cool thousand or two thousand American dollars by pointing at another Afghan and saying, “He was one of them.” 86% of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were captured in this way. Almost all of them. Most of them has no connection to terrorism and had no idea why they were being arrested and tortured for information they simply could not have known anything about. 

 

Mansoor was a kid. He was innocent. But he was held, first in Afghanistan, and then for 14 years in Guantanamo Bay. 

 

Driven by fear, determination, and a lust for revenge, Americans stared into the abyss of terrorism so intently, for so long, that the abyss began to look back and we became the monsters we had set out to fight. I rarely read long passages in our sermons, but I want you to learn about Mansoor’s experience in his own words.

I would love to encourage you to read the whole book but please, let me share a few paragraphs from Mansoor’s personal account in his autobiography: Don’t Forget Us Here

 

I waited in darkness for death. The interrogators were done with me. “You aren’t valuable enough to keep alive,” they said. I didn’t have the intelligence they wanted on al Qaeda’s chain of command. They bound my hands with duct tabpe, then taped my eyes and ears. They taped my mouth and then pulled a hood over my heard. They dragged me outside into the cold and forced me to my knees. I hadn’t see the light of day in weeks and I thought I would never see blue sky again. I’d been kept hooded or inside dark rooms, stripped naked, and beaten bloody for ai don’t know how long. Weeks. A month. Maybe more. 

 

I’d never been in a situation I couldn’t talk myself out of. None of that mattered when the United States started bombing and dropping leaflets offering reward money for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. The warlords got a better price selling Arabs to the Americans.

p. 3

A man cried close by. He begged someone to stop beating him. He begged for his life. This was new. In the endless darkness, I’d heard women and children beg, too. A soldier yelled and then there was gunfire, but it wasn’t for me. My heart pounded through my temples. I cried. Where would the bullet hit me? Would they shoot me in the head? In the chest? Would I feel pain? The rest of my life existed in these seconds and no more, I prayed again to Allah. I wished I wasn’t so cold.

p. 4

 

I’d spent weeks in darkness hanging from a ceiling, naked, beaten, electrocuted . . . until all that remained was pain, real pain, a pain I never imagined existed. I tried to figure out what I could say that would make them stop. I told them the truth – that I was a student, that I was eighteen, that I was from Yemen. I told them I wasn’t a fighter, that I didn’t hate America, that I wasn’t al Qaeda – but they didn’t want that. They wanted something from me I didn’t have to give. They wanted me to admit that I was a man named Adel, an Egyptian al Qaeda recruiter, a terrorist who planned bombings. Fine, I’ll be whoever you want me to be,” I said. “I’ll be your Adel.” 

p.5

They cut your clothes off, strip you naked, and hose you down. You’re barely nineteen and all your life you’ve never been naked in front of a woman. Now they make you stand for all to see and you see women soldiers watch you. The humiliation burns. They take photos of you, every part of you – even your genitals. All you can think is that you want to wake up from this crazy nightmare.

p. 18

They throw you to the ground and pile on top of you and hold you down while someone searches your ass again in the worst way. They laugh. They drag your naked body across rocks and stones and gravel and you feel your skin peel away but don’t feel the pain. 

p. 19

 

I look around my cage and found the foam sleep mat, a toothbrush, two blankets, a bar of soap, a pair of flip-flops, a canteen for water, one white bucket for shit and pee, and another white bucket for water. That was all I had now.

p. 21

 

The soldiers had so much hate and fear. I knew by now that they thought I was al Qaeda and that I had something to do with the attacks on September 11. I had heard about the attacks on the radio in a restaurant in Afghanistan, and I didn’t think anything of it. There were no TVs, no photographs of the event, and I couldn’t imagine airplanes flying into buildings or why someone would want to kill so many people.

p. 22

 

Weeks we thought, months at the most, and we would be set free. The older brothers who were educated and new about the world and international laws said the Americans couldn’t hold us forever without a reason – it was against their laws; it was against international laws.

 

But many brothers still thought we would be executed. They came from countries known to torture prisoners, and those prisoners never lived to tell about it. They were always executed instead of released.

How can they just release hundreds of men they have tortured?

p. 44

On 9-11, the news reached me while I was having my teeth cleaned at my dentist’s office. We all stopped and we watched on the little TV in his office as the media tried to figure out what was going on. He finished with my teeth and I went to my office. My staff were all sitting around, listening to the radio and staring out the window. We tried to be productive for a few hours but we closed early and I headed home. 

 

I was shocked to see the parking lots at grocery stores full and there were long lines at the gas stations. Did people here in southern Missouri believe that we were going to run out of food and fuel? When they heard that thousands of people had died in a terrorist attack, their first thought was to fill up their refrigerator and their gas tank?

 

The only Muslim I knew in town at that time lived across the street from me. Fearing an anti-Muslim reaction all over the USA, I went over to check on him. His wife was in tears, and she said that he was in hiding. Threating messages from some co-workers made him realize that he might be the target of red-neck reprisals and so he booked himself a hotel room and hunkered down. I didn’t know what to do, so, I mowed his yard. It needed to be mown and I needed to show him a sign of kindness and acceptance that I was afraid he wouldn’t get from the rest of the neighbors.  

The next day I noticed that those annoying “What Would Jesus Do” bracelets had disappeared from convenience store counters. I even when to some of the places where I was accustomed to seeing them. They had all disappeared over-night. No one in this overtly religious community wanted to ask that question right now.

They knew what they were going to do and, at least at some level, they knew that Jesus wouldn’t launch an all-out attack on anybody, so Jesus’ stock value fell hard on 9-11. 

 

At the risk of stating the obvious: Terrorists do what they do to make people feel afraid. And on 9-11, most Americans were all too willing to react exactly the way that Osama Bin Laden wanted them to react. People were terrified. They thought of themselves first. They rushed out to buy supplies before anyone else could get them. Many people even covered their windows with plastic and duct tape in case chemical warfare was next . . . and since Springfield, Missouri is so strategically important to the defense of America, many of our neighbors acted quickly. 

 

But fear does stay in its most simple form of trembling and hiding. Fear becomes anger. If you didn’t know it before, please hear me now, the root ingredient of all anger is fear. If you are angry, the first thing you should ask yourself is, “What am I afraid of?”  In the aftermath of 9-11, we were afraid that they would do it again.

 

Our anger needed a target but al Qaeda isn’t a nation. They had training camps in Afghanistan but the Taliban ruled nation of Afghanistan had not attacked us. They may have been complicit in letting al Qaeda have camps there but they were not organized enough to keep the Girl Scouts from having camps there. But we were angry, and so we didn’t just attack al Qaeda training camps. We attacked the whole nation of Afghanistan and went after the Taliban. 

 

And because we were still afraid, we invaded Iraq too. They had nothing to do with 9-11 or al Qaeda but Dick Cheney had been looking for an easy war to start and win and Iraq was just sitting there…. Disarmed, no air force, no navy, and a lot of Muslims. And very few Americans objected because, we weren’t just afraid of al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden. We didn’t understand Muslim extremists and so we were just afraid of all Muslims. Not at all unlike assuming that all Christians are like Timothy McVeigh of Oklahoma City bombing fame. 

 

We were the victims of a heinous terrorist attack on 9-11; an attack that killed nearly 3000 innocent people. In response, we have attacked two nations and sustained the longest wars in American history who had nothing to do with 9-11, killing millions and impoverishing millions more. In the process of conducting a War on Terrorism, we became terrorists. 

 

We swept up thousands of innocent people and disappeared them to black sites no journalist has ever seen where they were tortured, many to death. Then we established this prison off American shores, in Cuba, where the prying eyes of the media couldn’t see what we did. We debated whether or not water boarding is torture, but, not to dismiss water boarding, but, you know, this wasn’t about water boarding. 

 

This is what fear does to us. We gaze into the abyss until we become the monsters we feared, and millions are killed, wounded, impoverished, or, frankly, radicalized by what we did. Mansoor Adayfe was just a kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time when America went crazy with fear. His story is just one story, of thousands of people that we tortured, illegally, immorally, and for years and years after we realized that torture almost never produces reliable intelligence, especially when you torture a kid who has no information to surrender. 

What I am asking of you today is to simply stop being afraid. 

I want you to stop being afraid of other religions. 

I want you to stop being afraid of immigrants. 

I want you to stop being afraid of other races. 

I want you to stop being afraid of people who have different sexual orientations, or accents, or politics.

And please, please stop becoming allies to terrorists by doing them the favor of being afraid, which fuels your anger, because anger can turn America into a monster.