Christianity/Peace/Violence

Violence and Not Learning from the Past (Part 2)

Posted on by stephen t berg / 3 Comments

I’m not saying that the mesmerizing power of mimetic (imitative, reciprocal) violence has abated. It obviously hasn’t. What I am saying is that the rising voice of the "victim" is slowly destroying any ability to coronate our violence with the mantle of divinity. But without sacred violence’s ability to curtail mimetic violence we face the reality of apocalyptic violence. We have been undone from within. And it is the fault of the gospel.

In this light it might be instructive to revisit Jesus’ statement: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." I used to wonder about this remark. But again, the fruits of a non-sacrificial reading of the gospel clarify things. Christ is making the simple and profound observation of what happens when the lie of "sacrifice" is exposed. When the mechanism of scapegoating, which is responsible for the founding of our religions and cultures, is destroyed, that is, when "Satan falls from the sky like lightening", we are in the most precarious of places.

No longer does "the peace that this world gives", hold. The spell of "redemptive violence" has been broken. But that’s dangerously good news.

For the first time, we are at a place where we can existentially "see" the gospel holding out our only hope. We are at the place where narrow fundamentalist interpretations of the gospel, that at one time allowed us to feel soul-safe while accepting an essentially fatalistic view of the world, no longer hold. No longer are we able to have heaven in our pocket while staying blind to our complicity in sacred violence.

Anthropologist, Rene Girard, has said in his book, "Violence and the Sacred", "For the first time we are faced with the perfectly straight-forward, even scientifically calculable choice between total destruction and total renunciation of violence."

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. (John 14)

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Christianity/Politics/Religion/Violence

Violence and Not Learning from the Past

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Rabbi Michael Lerner | End the Suffering in the Middle East"

The people of the Middle East are suffering again as militarists on all sides, and cheerleading journalists, send forth missiles, bombs and endless words of self-justification for yet another pointless round of violence between Israel and her neighbors," writes Rabbi Michael Lerner. This most recent episode of irrationality "evokes tears of sadness, incredulity at the lack of empathy on all sides, anger at how little anyone seems to have learned from the past, and moments of despair as we once again see the religious and democratic ideals subordinated to the cynical realism of militarism."

Rabbi Lerner’s, "anger at how little anyone seems to have learned from the past", cries out for explanation. If we are unable to learn from our past, is there something in the way we remember our past that hides from us the key to our education? What rationale, or what screen is laid over our minds and souls that keep us "ignorant" and so binds us to reacting in the same violent ways and reaping the same violent consequences?

It’s complex. And there are few survey sticks. But, could it be that the screen is "history" itself? When we write, for example, our "history" of a war, we automatically invest it with meaning. But that meaning is itself a screen, a veil. Why? Because inevitably our story of why and how the war was fought will be couched in primarily moral and "politico-religious" justifications. (If you don’t’ think that war is always "religious" go back and read the text of any "war-speech" by any President, Prime Minister or Chancellor.) These justifications of course provides our violence with an aura of respectability. For without this "aura" how can we have any sense of moral superiority with respect to our use of violence?

The interesting thing is how this aura of respectability is breaking down on all sides and how, because of this, for the first time, apocalyptic or "limitless" violence threatens our existence. And I don’t mean that our existence is threatened merely because we have the means to blow up the world. I mean that any restraint religion once had to bestow meaning and so sacrilize and sanction our violence, all violence, is almost exhausted. The Gospel has undermined sacred violence (another name for myth). The "myth" however, again, because of the gospel, no longer hides from us the humanity of the victims of violence and war. And this is why it is so amazing, not to mention paradoxical, to hear the last vestiges of Christian myth-making, Christian sacrilizing of war, by someone like Dr. Charles Stanley.

I’ll attempt to conclude this thought in tomorrow’s post…

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Christianity/Spirituality

The Hereness of Christ

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

I don’t know John well, he’s more like an acquaintance. He, however, considers me a good friend. I do nothing more than engage him in conversation when I see him, usually only at times like Hope Mission’s special events.

Seeing John at the our street BBQ last Saturday reminded me of the time, a few years ago now, that he came to see me.

It was a busy day. As I walked down the hallway toward him I was already deciding to tell him I couldn’t meet with him.

"Hi buddy, just came to see you. Lets have some coffee." He repeats this line three times in rapid fire succession.

John, around 40 years old now, lives with the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome. His particular malady is that his body jerks around as if on strings controlled by a spastic puppeteer. He is able to control himself enough to drink hot coffee. But stains on his shirt also show many failed attempts at eating and drinking.

He tells me of a friend that died three days earlier. His friend, he says, was like him. He means his friend also lived with a body that resembled a spasmodic marionette. He explains in short bursts, that his friend died while having a seizure.

And this was why John came to see me. He was grieving, not knowing what to do with all the feelings he was awash in. And then he cries; and I watch him. I had been thick to how much this friend meant to him. We sit in silence.

John finishes his coffee and says he needs to go but asks if I would pray for him. I take his hand and his convulsive movements calm. I pray. I feel the warmth of the moment and what I can only call the hereness of Christ; and my shame in almost rejecting this visit turns to something like humility.

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Atonement

Starbucks Log – Weapons of Mass Construction

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"It’s going to be a bad week.", was the comment that I inadvertently eavesdropped on as I settled into my chair beside the eight-foot windows…hoping for illumination. Yes, inadvertently, because who wants to hear THAT first thing on a Monday morning. "Things are getting goofier by the day.", came the reply. Now there’s a response I understand.

I listen without wanting to. A couple of cabinet ministers names are dropped, the word "INFRASTRUCTURE" bludgeons the air. (Can’t seem go through a day without hearing that word and recoiling from the sterility it conjures up. Listening to too much Alberta news?)

I finally gather that I’m listening to two provincial government bureaucrats. I wait for a rush of inner sympathy. Nothing comes.

But, funny how things line up sometimes. I am scrolling through Psalm 88. (My morning reading for the 17th day of the month.) Psalm 88 is an overcast Job-like lament that produces a little black blob which hovers over my head. And it comes to me. Black hovering blob plus disgruntled bureaucrats equals an implosion that brings positive energy. Two negatives make a positive. Redemptive math.

Perhaps this is one of the things those sodden-Psalms are for. They’re little cathartic grenades lobbed into all the Monday’s of our lives. Small weapons of mass construction. I know the Benedictines see the Psalms like this. They’ve been reading and living them for centuries; and with the fortification of this strange poetry, they quietly built Europe during the Dark and Middle Ages.

(Personal interlude: A smile for the anachronism of an earlier decision to create a little Monday morning breathing space.)

Now the bureaucrats leave and two women–fortyish–take over the table. "How was your holiday?" asks the first woman. "I hated it!", says the second. …Aaargh. The contagion has spread. Help me Job! I listen only long enough to hear about a bad sunburn on the first day… Sigh…

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