A little early morning, assumption-challenging theology from John Hemmer:
All human conflict is about wanting what someone else has and desires – money, land, prestige, a spouse, a friend, power etc… In a society with no police force and no judiciary, the basic mechanism to stop this internal violence is scapegoating and sacrifice.
A group achieves initial unity by falling on a scapegoat (from inside or outside) and uniting against him and killing him. So all against all becomes all against one. Because all the internal tensions disappear when this mechanism kicks in, the experience is one of the scapegoat bringing peace…
The Bible comes to birth in a society where this scapegoating mechanism is fully operational, but it is the genius of Biblical revelation that it slowly unmasks this process and shows it up for what it is and offers an alternative…
The OT, slowly at first, tells of these events, but tells them from the point of view of the victim. This is not universally clear in the OT, but is dazzlingly clear in the Gospels. The central event in world history is the Son of God becoming the victim of this process, and then rising. In the passion story Caiaphas says:
It is better that one man should die for the people,
rather than that the whole nation should perish. (John:11:50)
His is the voice of everyone, every individual, every society which has tried to solve its problems by scapegoating; the voice of reason, the voice of political common sense, the voice which speaks up for the ‘common good’. It is the voice of pogroms, ethnic cleansings and final solutions, and has been heard countless times in history and has resulted in untold human suffering. But it is not the voice of the gospel. The gospel speaks with another voice, with the voice of the victim. That’s why the Gospel as well as being a unique piece of theology is a unique piece of anthropology.
There’s lots more to ponder — for atheist, skeptic, neophyte and devoted scripture-geek alike. E.g., the following, which I’m still wrapping my head around :
Mobs and vigilante groups usually fall into the trap of perpetrating evil much worse than the evil they seek to combat. Structurally what they are doing is scapegoating. The beginning of culture is shown up for what it is – murder.
More coffee needed… dog woke me up before dawn yesterday and I got involved in a good movie last night… the sleep dep reverberates to Saturday. Off to the funeral of a friend’s father… too young…
(H/T: One Year Bible Blog).
[...] it’s also true that with some of them (some sins, that is), it’s a whole lot easier to point fingers and scapegoat a small group and feel like one has somehow cleansed oneself by doing so. As they used to say when I was growing [...]
By: Forgotten Sin, Celebrated Sin « New Wineskins on July 3, 2008
at 12:31 pm
OTOH while the archetype for that sort of vigilante action is The Ox Bow Incident, much of the filmography that followed was a counter attack against blacklisting and other anti Communist activity. Not only were most of the “blacklisted” really Communists and their sympathizers, but also, the Left drove out a majority of the Right or neutral movie industry, giving us the sick and depraved Hollywood of today.
Otherwise, I like the Hemmer stuff you have shared. About a hundred years ago, Ethical Culturists, among others, were expressing a godless view of the same idea. They were not usually as vituperative, then, as the atheists of today, but their reason did stop short of what we see as its logical conclusions.
By: Michael on June 26, 2008
at 4:04 pm
Just a short note: One of the classic western movie themes was vigilante justice. In fact throughout history whenever a group forms up to punish some richly deserving criminal outside of the existing justice structure, the inevitable result is that the mob does not stop with just one criminal.
Flush from their success with the first one the move on to a second often lesser criminal, and by the 3rd or 4th the high minded principles and passion for justice degenerate to the point where one or two leaders turn the mob to their own ends. Eventually they are looking at those around them asking the question “Who will rid us of that troublesome ….” (Or some similar variant of Henry II’s complaint about Thomas a’Becket)
By: Tigger23505 on June 26, 2008
at 10:29 am