Category: Theology

Scapegoating our Muslim Brothers and Sisters: An Example from Girardian Theology

Since his death a few weeks ago, I have found myself drawn to the theology and writings of Rene Girard. If you are unfamiliar with his ideas, I highly, highly recommend Richard Beck’s recent 7-part series at his excellent Experimental Theology blog that explains very well Girard’s mimetic theory and scapegoating. This is a series I wish I had written.rene-girard-scapegoat

I just want to use this as a prompt for a quick social commentary piece. The plight of Syrian refugees and Muslims in general has dominated much of the recent news, and much of my thought. I find it very interesting, in light of reading Girard, that 2015 America is reverting to a scapegoat mentality towards the minority among us.

In short, Girard’s theory says that for many thousands of years, human civilization used collective violence aimed at a minority or marginalized group, in the form of a sacrifice, to act almost as a “pressure-release valve” for human society. Beck summarizes Girard in this way:

1. Sacrifice was a real solution to communal violence.

2. But for that “solution” to work the truth about the sacrifical mechanics have to be systematically obscured.

3. Religion, via its mythical structure, provided this obfuscation.

4. The obfuscation was this: The voice of the scapegoat, the very personal cries of the one being murdered, had to be silenced. Thus, scapegoats were chosen (and are still chosen) from marginalized groups, powerless people. Further, the murder of the scapegoat must not be seen for what it is (i.e., a murder). It must be a divinely sanctioned “sacrifice.”

5. This scapegoating mechanism–rationalized, sanctioned, “religious” violence–still defines the human condition. Our collective Sin is this machinery of violence.

6. Thus, in order to save us, the scapegoating mechanism must be exposed.

The progression of Judaistic monotheism slowly unveiled this hidden mechanism by initiating a move towards identification with the scapegoat. The death of Jesus was the final act in the revealing, showing the ultimate futility of the sacrificial mechanism by disclosing the inherent innocence of our scapegoats.

We seem to have lost this conclusion. In a rush to assuage the primal fear we feel in the world, a fear of the different and of death, we have seized upon a voiceless and minor victim, that of the small Muslim community in America, and the innocent refugees fleeing violence elsewhere, and made them our scapegoat. And as the rage and anger and hate builds to a breaking point, we get closer and closer to that moment of collective violence that relieves the great societal tension that has been building for years and years.

The death of Jesus, of the innocent scapegoat, reveals the futility of such violence. It shows that safety and security, the future of society, our own personal well being, is not achieved by violence. Violence only begets more violence, until we have all operated as the scapegoat. Instead, by identifying with those we oppress, we can begin to feel compassion, and we begin to heal our world by striving for the betterment of all peoples.

We are at a crucial juncture in history. The revelation of violent futility in Jesus’ death did not end the scapegoating mechanism by any means. Many times in the subsequent 2000 years has collective violence been used to pacify the anxiety of society for a short time. We are dangerously close to living through another one of those moments, if we have not already crossed that event horizon.

May we find the clarity and sanity to recognize our trajectory towards death. May we find it soon.

Reflection on Holy Week: The Descent into Madness, and the Devastation of Absence

I’m enjoying Holy Week more this year.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it in the past. But I’m understanding it better now, as I grow in my knowledge and my faith. I’ve been able to focus on the progression of the week, the meaning of the days and the season as a whole. I’ve been able to just be present in this week.

Last year, I spent all of Lent and Holy Week terribly conflicted about what it all means.

This turmoil came out of my own personal Christology, for lack of a better term. As someone who views Jesus first and foremost as human, who doesn’t put much stock in miracles and virgin births and physical resurrections, I was rightfully having a hard time deciding just what was so important about Easter. My big epiphany for last year was while having lunch with my pastor at the time, who told me that all Christians believe in the Resurrection of Christ, but we all may have a different idea of just what form that resurrection took.

This year, I feel more at peace about Easter and Holy Week. I’m excited about it, I’m enjoying the many, many church services, and I am spending a lot of time thinking about what it all means without worrying about it. I’ve been focusing on two main themes.

First, the dichotomy of Palm Sunday and Good Friday has really struck me this year. In the span of five short days, the Passover crowds of Jerusalem go from hailing Jesus as a king entering his kingdom, to condemning him to death in the most painful and humiliating way. To think about Jesus on the cross, saying “Forgive them, they know not what they do,” is really powerful to me.

The whole thing just seems to be a big commentary on our own misunderstanding of what he meant, and of how quickly we can turn on something that seems great at first but ultimately disappoints. It’s a striking reflection of our own flightiness and tendency to follow the crowd. We are all complicit in that rapid change. A whirlwind turn of events begins, and we get so wrapped up that the next thing we know, Jesus is on the cross and we are standing there not even realizing just exactly what happened.

Part of my reflection on this theme has been focused on the Cleansing of the Temple. That  really had to be the breaking point for most people. It was such a jarring act, one with such significance and passions surrounding it. That must have been the point when those whispers from the Pharisees began to sink in, and the ball started rolling down hill, and everyone slipped into a blood lust they didn’t wake up from until a week or so later.

Except they probably didn’t wake up from it. They probably just went about their lives, and one day in the future remembered back to that crazy rabbi who threw the moneychangers out of the Temple and caused such an uproar. What ever happened to that guy?

Second, I’ve thought about the devastating absence the disciples must have felt after Jesus’ death. Here is a man they have dedicated their lives to for more than three years. He was wise, caring, loving, a force of character more powerful than anyone they had probably ever met. No doubt he had a mythical presence in their minds, a larger-than-life aspect of their lives as changeless as the seasons. Despite his assurances of his impending death, they clearly didn’t believe him, assuming he would always be there, and leading the way to great and wonderful things.

And then they wake up Saturday morning, and…he’s dead. His dead body seems a lot smaller than proportions it seemed to have taken on in his life. His words and teachings already seems like a distant echo.

And life goes on, and things are the same as before, and no one really seems to care except the  11 of them, the Women, and a few others.

And most of all, their teacher, their leader, their brother, their friend-their good, dear, loving, close friend– is dead. How devastating must that have felt that morning? What did the last three years even mean if here they are, alone?

Again, as someone who doesn’t believe in a bodily resurrection, this is where the questions deepen. Because it’s not just Saturday morning that they wake up in despair. It’s the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and so many more other days that they were supposed to be doing amazing things. Life must have seen empty in the days and weeks after the crucifixion, as these men and women tried to figure out how to go on  and what to do with their lives now.

And so the big question becomes, what does Easter really mean now? If it’s not about Jesus rising bodily from the tomb on that Sunday, what is it all about? That’s what I’ve really been pondering for a couple years now. And this year, I’m starting to get some glimpses of just what it may mean.

When I think about those lost and devastated disciples, I start to understand what Easter means. Because they didn’t give up, go into hiding, or return to their old lives. They built something new. They took up the mantle Jesus relinquished in his death, and began the process of changing people’s lives and spreading the message they had internalized.

That’s what Easter is about: the inability of death and darkness to prevail, even in the most depressing of times and situations. It’s a reminder to us to keep pushing forward, that Jesus’ life mattered for something and so does ours, and we have responsibility to engage in something greater than ourselves. That’s Easter. That’s Holy Week.

The questions keep coming, the pondering doesn’t end, but the meaning is there.

Musing on a Year Without God

I keep seeing a story popping up on my Facebook feed, generally from liberal friends and pages who specialize in religion-bashing. Have you seen it? It’s the story of the pastor who decided to live like an atheist for a year, and on the other side, he has decided to be an atheist indefinitely. Two types of responses pop up: from my atheist friends, it’s a confirmation that God is a bunch of baloney, and if everyone would just step away from the pew for a minute, they’d see that; from my religious friends, it’s that this proves the insidiousness of the devil and the magic he works on those who stray from the straight-and-narrow, and so we all must buckle down and quit allowing so much questioning of dogma.

I’ve been habitually annoyed by the presence of this in my newsfeed, and so have consequently avoided it like the plague. So, when it appeared in my RSS feed yesterday, yet another inward groan appeared. I have a hard and fast policy of refusing the skip over any articles that come through the feed, so I knew at last I was going to have to confront this story.

It turned out to be different from what I imagined, and from what the hype made it to be. If I had to caption it for Facebook, I would say “Pastor lives as atheist for a year, then decides to be a seeker.” I know, not as catchy or click-bait-worthy. But much more in line with what Ryan Bell, the former Seventh Day Adventist who the story is about, experienced. As the article noted, even before this project, Bell was already wrestling with doubt, something perfectly healthy and normal for a Christian. His church, however, didn’t agree, forcing him to resign as a punishment for his public struggle with God (a struggle, I’m sure, that resonated much too closely with his parishioners, hence their hurry to chase him from town.)

So as I began to read this article, I also began to plan the blog post I was going to write in response: “Conservative Christian gives up fundamentalist God for a year, realizes how freeing it is to leave that stifling atmosphere.” I would go on: “Ryan Bell’s experience with atheism, contrasted with the hateful, confusing, unrelenting God of Fundamentalism he had lived his entire life with, showed him a contrast that made that God unappealing, even compared to atheism. This goes to show the problem with fundamentalism, namely, it’s not a very appealing or happy form of faith.”

But then I read this passage from the article at Religion Dispatches:

Generally speaking, the response to this decline takes the form of some sort of repackaging. That is, it is assumed that the problem is not with the substance of Christianity. At its core, the thinking goes, the gospel or “good news”—that we are “sinners” who can find “salvation” through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the Son of God—remains a vital truth, one which all need and ultimately seek, whether we consciously know it or not. That basic assumption remains the case even in more liberal Christian circles, I would suggest, although it often takes the form of respect for other religions and/or an emphasis on the importance of spirituality, broadly defined.

In this way of thinking, people are not leaving the church because of its central message but because of the way that message is or is not presented. Hence the calls among some in more evangelical circles, for instance, for the abandonment of the skin-deep flashiness and alienating culture war rhetoric for a kinder, more authentic—and ultimately more attractive—faith.

There is something to that line of thinking. More than a few have left churches from a lack of authenticity—and feel a great sense of loss in doing so. Such emigrants would, perhaps, gladly return if offered something better. But that way of understanding the situation can not account for what Ryan Bell experienced.

What’s striking to me is the matter-of-fact way in which Bell describes that experience. In the interviews he’s given, there’s hardly any pathos, any handwringing over the faith he can no longer identify with. Rather than rehearsing a litany of loss and pining over something more authentic, he sees his shift away from religion as an opportunity, a window into what, for him, really matters.

Christianity is something that, ultimately, he no longer needs.

Can you say, “convicted?”

So, yeah, so much for that blog post. But, this raises another interesting thought experiment. How does the faith address those who no longer need it? How do we, as Christians, come to grips with what I believe is a very real mindset, that of the person who comes to a place where they do not find a connection to the Divine through religion and thus has no use for us, even if they sympathize? How do we continue to connect to these people, our brothers and sisters?

Bell is quoted with this answer:

“I think what is far more important to know about me is the way I choose to live my life. Once people have come to terms with the weaknesses or falsehoods in their belief system, the work has just begun. How we reshape or build the narratives by which to live our lives is the most interesting part of our work as human beings. My work to end homelessness, my interest in the crises facing our democracy and our ecosystem—these are the interesting aspects of my life and work. At least, I’d like to think so.”

Did you catch that second sentence? “Once people have come to terms with the weakness or falsehoods in their belief system, the work has just begun.” For so many people, the weakness and falsehoods they find in faith are what shake the foundations they operate on. To discover that this belief system, this relationship one has invested so much into has some gaps of reasoning or logic is quite devastating many, many people.

And the church just doesn’t help. Instead of facilitating this journey of discovery and questioning, so many faith communities shun question-asking and doubt. They instead demand certainty and adherence to the absolute beliefs they claim to represent, and anything outside of that is not permitted. And so these questioning and doubting people feel repelled and pushed away by this faith they grew up in, and find no purpose in it going forward.

This all-to-common occurrence has facilitated the much-heralded rise of the “Nones,” that group of spiritual-but-not-religious people who no longer find the big answers they crave in organized Christianity. For Ryan Bell, and many others, the church doesn’t have any answers. Nor does it even have a space to try to find answers. Instead, it is standing in the way of answering them, telling them their questions are unimportant, and they are wrong for asking in the first place.

If the church wants to be a relevant institution going forward, we have got to figure out how to talk to the doubters and the questioners. Instead of acting like Ryan Bell’s church and forcing them out because their questions make us uneasy, we have to grapple with the questions as a community, find answers grounded in Scripture and reason and tradition, and allow our faith to grow and evolve. Not one of us has a fully worked-out faith. Not one of us is done growing. Whether it be questions about the acceptance of LGBT people, or the divinity of Christ, or any number of the countless things we can debate, we have to be willing to listen and cultivate questions and be okay with not having all the answers. Otherwise, we will have many, many more Ryan Bell’s on our hands, and a lot more empty pews.