What if I told you that I had a solution for America’s economic decline? It’s a simple solution, really. Our unemployment problems would cease as long we sacrificed the right number of illegal immigrants. We must bring them before the feet of Abraham Lincoln across from the Washington Monument. We will bind their hands and feet with rope. The crowds will gather, chanting their allegiance to our mighty nation. When we start the ritual lawn mowers the people will fall silent with anticipation. As we slowly drive over each Latino participant, grinding their flesh, crushing their bones, freeing their illegal blood to flow down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, America will finally be relieved of it’s economic burdens. We will have jobs again, brothers and sisters!
Don’t worry, fellow Canadians, we have a very similar solution. We can take all those Filipinos that mess up our food orders and take our jobs, and truck them to the Peace Arch. We set up barbecues along the fountains and flowerbeds. Our sacred ministers will roast them for each of us to eat. Canada will have economic peace, and be able to understand our drive-thru speakers once again.
Worried about the security of the Free Western World? We can lead a crusade against the Muslim world, lead by the harbingers of justice themselves, our nations’ leaders. The more muslims we persecute the better, for they are all fundamental radicals seeking the destruction of our homes. They started the fight, they persecute us. It’s about time our God blessed countries ended this all. A final solution for our holy war.
We have done each of these and more. We partake in these solutions even now, for it is ancient solution that has proved true through the centuries. René Girard has done incredible work tracing the development and employment of scapegoat sacrifices throughout humanity’s existence. It is our most basic human function, a flaw since society’s conception.
As a community lives its day-to-day life individuals must interact with one another. Humanity has a mimetic quality, allowing groups to progress at exponential rates as persons learn and observe each other. Mimetic psychology also explains how a group of people can descend into chaos so rapidly. As wrongs are committed and misunderstandings occur individuals become more defensive, initiating a vicious cycle of prejudices, preemptive strikes, and revenge.
In the midst of this ever-spiraling conflict, the community cries out for some sort of order. Desperate they look for the cause of their problems. After time, they realize that it must be the odd one out in the community. The sojourner, the dissident, the handicapped, or otherwise disadvantaged. The community stands in unanimous agreement: this contaminant must be purged. Frenzied with bloodlust, the crowd kills the outsider. When the dust settles, they find that it worked. Something miraculous happened. Those who were once in disagreement can now come together in friendship. Peace has come over the community and there is no more conflict. Paradoxically, the people honor that outsider that has been murdered. The individual is mythologized into some divine script.
That is the devastating truth of scapegoating: it works. There is peace after the violence, but it does not last. So it becomes a cycle, being repeated in a community over and over again. Each time it works it becomes more and more mythic. The victims are never recognized as innocent.
This is the cycle that Jesus meant to stop on the cross. He is the victim that cannot be ignored. (See Mark Heim’s excellent work, Saved from Sacrifice for a fuller treatment)
So, when we look at Jesus on the cross, we see God himself coming to throw a wrench in works of sacrificial violence. If we say Christ is Lord, then we say that God identifies with the innocent victims of our mimetic conflicts. When we see Jesus on the cross, we see the face of God and the face of every victim that has been hidden and tortured by sacrifice.
The primary principle of the concept of “Christian” is the identification of an individual with Christ. In Romans 6:4, Paul declares that baptism is a symbol of our death and resurrection with Christ. After the unmasking of the sacrificial system, we no longer just see the Divine and the Victim on the cross. We see our own face there. We identify with the victims. Furthermore, we look from the cross, and with Jesus we petition God to forgive our oppressors. With Christ we refuse to scapegoat anyone else. When Jesus resurrected he did not return with the vindictive loathing of the wrongly accused, but with outstretched hands of mercy.
I believe that systematic exclusion is just as much a part of the sacrificial mythos as the ritual killing itself. The domination of the weak, the assimilation of the unwanted, the inattention to the disadvantaged; this is how we try to sacrifice today when killing is too overt. Granted it does not work as well, so we must do it with more frequency.
Our media tells us who to hate. Our politicians facilitate the oppression. Our communities are the very cogs of the scapegoating machines. Our individual lives make up the parts of this ancient drama. But what role do our churches play? Do we advocate the victims we claim to be buried with? Do we feed the system that Jesus died to destroy?
As a church we must untie those laid before the feet of Honest Abe. As the body of the victimized Jesus, we must douse the coals that line the Peace Arch. As the voice of the risen Lord, we must denounce the attempts to make enemies out of those who could be our friends. God has done the work, now we must live it out in our faith communities.
Wild and Wandering Cries 