Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

David Mills on the easy corruption of jailors:

I had been thinking about the subject of today's Breakpoint column, Fallenness on Display, the famous psychological experiment in which students are divided into jailers and prisoners to find out how they respond to power and powerlessness. Predictably enough, to a Christian anyway, those who assigned to be jailers often become as brutal and sadistic as the experiment allows them to be.

I don't mean to suggest that many of us would have descended to the depths the criminal soldiers did, though as pride goes before a fall, no Christian should be entirely confident in his abilities to resist evil, however repellent is that evil. The pornographic element in the abuse is foreign to most educated, middle class Christians. It isn't, if you will, our style of depravity.

But except for the occasional saint, most educated, middle class Christians might in the same circumstances become abusers anyway. We'd begin by being nice and kind, but we'd also be thinking: the prisoners are the enemy, the bad guys, and besides, they might know something that would save the life of your comrades, only they won't tell us.