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CONFRONTING THE POWERS THAT BE

Breaking the Spiral of Violence
Session 6

Readings: TPTB - Chapter 4;  ETP - Chapters 7 & 8

In these chapters Wink discusses biblical notions of the violence attendingsacrifice and scapegoating in the scriptures and the antidote which Jesusoffers.

Wink cites Rene Girard's contention that the sacrificial system is a form of organized violence in the service of social peace and order. Violence against one or a few becomes a substitute for the violence of many. It distracts peoples' attention from the violence perpetrated by the Powers themselves and siphons off the anger and hate, directing it to another target.

The violence attributed to God in the Old Testament and the violence Godseems to have ordered Israel to perpetrate against the people of Palestinehave been a puzzle and problem for Christians, Jews and many others downthrough the ages. Wink writes:

God didn't order Israel to commit genocide in their occupation of Palestineany more than God ordered the Catholic Church in Spain to torture and executenonbelievers during the Inquisition.

In the New Testament the sacrificial system is ended. Rather than demandingsacrifice, God takes the place of the sacrificed. The execution of the wholly innocent Jesus undermines the scapegoating idea completely.

Jesus never called for revenge; he avoided any participation in violence, and his death exposed the scape-goating system as organized murder by the state.

Later, the church became established as the religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, and this understanding of a nonviolent, loving, always forgiving God, began to be replaced again by a warlike deity.

The church leaders began to limit the doctrine of the Atonement to a narrow salvation involving only the individual soul. This had the effect of making the church a captive of the state, chained to its war chariots, put in the position of blessing soldiers going off to war.

The passages in the New Testament on liberation from the Powers were moved to the background and those suggesting God required a bloody sacrifice to appease his wrath came to the fore. Wink exposes the fallacy of this approach:

Religious experience based only on winning God's forgiveness by believing in an atoning sacrifice often fails to change us deeply, because, Wink says,the whole social side of our ego bondage is not addressed. To cite an extreme result of individualistic thinking, witness Spanish priests in Latin America baptizing native people while the soldiers were enslaving, beating and killing them.

God is, as God, engaged against the domination of the Powers in a strugglein which we are called to participate. And even our full individual salvation,the liberation of our egos, depends on surrender also to our calling in this struggle:

For Discussion

1. Discuss: In the 1920s and 30s, leaders in the southern states prevented union organizing to a large extent by telling poor whites that Negroes were out to get their jobs and by preaching the racial superiority of whites over blacks. They divided and conquered. Where do we see racial prejudice being used as a tool of economic oppression today?

2. Why are liberals and conservatives split over abortion, homosexuality and the value of the public school system? In the past, denominations fractured over dogmas and doctrines. Today, we fight over issues for which we have little scriptural guidance. What are the blind spots on both sides?

3. Why is there such a wave of support for capital punishment in our country when most developed countries, and many others, have abolished it as inhuman?

Copyright © 1998 by Vern Rossman



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