It's all so unthinkable

Like your social media feed, mine has been blowing up recently with stories of people who have been deported, people who have been sent to the notorious megaprison in El Salvador, accused of being gang members.

I first saw images of this prison a couple years ago, when it was built. I don’t have a particular interest or expertise in Central American politics, but it was intriguing to see how El Salvador’s president had unilaterally cracked down on crime and sent many, many people to prison, and how it became much more safe. News outlets from around the world were reporting on the prison’s barbarity; essentially, a giant cage of men stacked on top of each other, brutalized into submissive silence, lights on 24 hours a day, masked guards without accountability. Journalists were asking then, essentially, “If this is the price of a peaceful nation, is it worth it?”

I watched with primal interest. As a boy, I used to be afraid of being falsely imprisoned. The vulnerability of it all scared me, the thought that I could be accused of something that I did not do, but that if other people thought I did it, I could be punished—and sometimes I even feared being executed. (I don’t know why exactly I thought these things, and anyway, if I did, I wouldn’t tell you—that’s a conversation for my parents and my therapist to have with me. :) )

When I saw these videos a couple years back, it really troubled me to think that someone may unjustly be in this prison—more deeply, I wondered whether this was justice at all, even for the actual gang members. But at least I could reason that what I saw on the screen wasn’t us—this wouldn’t happen here.

Then, of course, our government started using this prison as a way of doing business. And I read story after story of people who are sent to this place, using your tax dollars and mine, all of course without due process. I see photo-ops with Kristi Noem in that prison, prisoners as props to remind people of what happens when you cross us. I see cruel memes on the White House social media:

It’s all so unthinkable. I’m taken back to being that little boy, fearful of prison. Fearful, of course, more deeply of being misunderstood, of being unseen, of yearning to express what is true only to have people prefer darkness to light, lies to truth, cruelty to empathy. Fearful that others would see in me what they prefer to see rather than what is.

I know that the line that separates me from some of these deportees is thin indeed: it pretty much boils down to the fact that I’m a Real American, I guess. It’s scant consolation, because I look at them and I see me. Maybe, after all, that’s what Jesus would think and do—that’s what He did for me; He looked at me and did not turn away, but stepped into life and death with me.

What has become of us? Here I lay this not at the feet of any political party, but at our own. This reveals clearly who we have become. This is who we are, America. Church, this is who we are. This is deep down what we want. If we didn’t want it, our leaders wouldn’t give it to us, because they know that if they give us what we don’t want, they won’t get re-elected. They give us what we want.

We want to be so suffused with the righteousness of our cause that we can give vent to our fear and anger with total moral impunity. We want to be so sure that we are right that our righteous end really does determine the means. We want to jumble cruelty and virtue thoroughly and inexorably so that we can be as cruel as we like while feeling better and better about our choices.

This is a spiritual reality. And so it can only be solved through spiritual means. It can only be solved if we have the capacity to really look at our hearts with horror at how warped we have become, at how we have “called evil good and good evil,” as Isaiah put it. It can only be solved if we are willing to imagine that we are as needy and sinful as we sing that we are. It can only be solved if we follow the Jesus who commanded us to remember the humanity and reality of those who are in prison.