Taking Jesus Seriously #3

02/04/10

• How does God judge the world?
• Is judgment necessary? Is judgment violent?
• Does God reject anyone?
• Is judgment human or divine?

In the 12th century BCE, the first historical Hebrew event–the Exodus–takes place. The Old Testament God of Moses (Yahweh) is portrayed as a God of justice. But this justice was not punitive. Rather he intervened on behalf of those deprived of justice in order to bring justice. He sets them free and gives them land. The fundamental judgment of God was an act in favor of the powerless and the poor.

The Old Testament has three main genres: the Law (Torah), the Prophets and the Wisdom books. Wisdom literature is common to many cultures, incorporating deep human reflection on the way things are and drawing on nature for examples. The book of Proverbs is one of these books. Proverbs 4:14-19 admonishes us to avoid the path of the wicked - “for they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong…for they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.” People’s fundamental sustenance becomes violence. They have embraced a retaliatory way of being. Killing becomes our food.

Mimetic desire
Rene Girard is an established thinker who has proposed the theory of Mimesis (imitation). In this theory the object of our desire is always mediated through others. We are informed about what is desirable by seeing what others desire. Desire is a general word for the huge lack or void inside humans, and seeing what others want and get fills the lack or void with the sense of what it wants or needs to get. Desire is at the heart of who we are and it is mobilized at root by imitation. Girard’s terms “mimesis” and “mimetic desire” reflect the imitative nature of human desire. We have advanced beyond the other animals because we are so adept at imitation.

About fifteen years ago neural science discovered mirror neurons which are themselves a feature of motor neurons. These neurons in our brains fire up when we see others doing something – in particular when the one we are watching grasps an object. The very same neurons that fire up for the person grasping the object also fire up in the observer’s brains as she watches. When we see someone score a goal on TV so many of the same neurons in our brains are firing – it feels like we just scored the goal! This is a useful survival skill – for example it teaches us what is good and safe to eat. But it also fuels mimetic desire. As we watch someone grasp an object, our mirror neurons fire up and we perceive that object as desirable. In a primitive situation we would move to take that object and conflict would quickly result. Animals control this urge through the instincts of dominance and submission. They may clash as rivals, but usually one will back down before blood is spilt. Humans have overcome these natural instincts. Laws with their threats of punitive violence have in some measure taken over this function of instinct. However, laws are never enough to completely suppress mimetic desire and rivalry. In fact the more people fight, the more we imitate this and the more we see fighting as desirable.

In this scenario mimetic rivalry ends in killing. Because desire for the same object is mutually reinforced it comes to blows and the blows to murder. Mimetic desire and rivalry escalate until they can only be discharged through killing. If we add in one further crucial aspect of Girard’s thought we get the final picture. In group situations—and thinking back to primitive groups at the very dawn of humanity—one individual is quickly singled out to be the victim of a crisis of violence. When two fight all are attracted to the fight and in a flash it is a battle of all against all. But a weaker individual, younger, more vulnerable, or simply different, even more beautiful perhaps, is quickly singled out as the enemy of all, the cause of all the terrible anger, the one to blame. This individual becomes the group victim. In the Bible this person is called the scapegoat. Once the scapegoat is cast out, killed, then order returns – until the cycle of violence begins again. Sacrifice is just a ritualized form of this process that keeps order by discharging our violence onto a formally chosen victim, human or animal.

Jesus stopped the sacrifices in the temple. He thus became the target of the political and religious interests of his time – the Pharisees, Sadducees and the Romans. He willingly stepped into the role of the scapegoat. In doing so he holds up a mirror of the whole blind system so that we can see how we are trapped in this cycle of violence. At the same moment he offers the forgiveness and of love and so he breaks that cycle.

Judgment in this light is self-inflicted
This is what judgment is. It is not Jesus, the willing victim, paying off an angry God. It is not the Protestant doctrine of substitutionary atonement or the Catholic doctrine of satisfaction. It is instead encountering absolute forgiveness, the irrational forgiveness of the enemy. It is realizing that we are loved by God without reserve. There is no one outside the circle of God’s love. This holds the whole human system up to an “unforgiving” light—there is no place for it to escape. In the short run this makes the human system more angry and dangerous. It inflicts judgment on itself by its continually redoubled violence, seeking to restore itself. But at the very same time and by the very same crisis the nonviolence and love of God become more and more evident, the only way forward. It is this experience of “judgment” in the midst of the world that changes us, that sets us free. We enter into a direct relationship with a God of love. God becomes our object of desire, or God’s own desire fills us, God’s self-giving love for the other. This is the meaning of “go and sin no more.” If God were to use threats or punishment then we would remain within the same human system of violence.

Mt 25:31-46 has the well-known passage of the final judgment. There are two scenes of judgment. The first is the semi-mythical description of the nations being gathered and sorted like sheep and goats. The second is the judgment spoken to and by the Son of Man (the human one). According to the Human One judgment takes place now in this world. It is not something to be decided in the hereafter. It is about how we relate immediately, in the here and now, to those around us – the weak, the abandoned, the hungry and persecuted. Judgment becomes a present lived experience based on our actions—“whatsoever you did to the least of these you did to me”. For example, decisions we make today about universal healthcare in this country, or about providing healthcare to resource poor nations, have direct consequences. We bring down free-floating anger (judgment) upon ourselves if we refuse. People deprived of access to healthcare in this country will become more desperate, violence then spirals upwards. Denying adequate medications to treat HIV in sub-Saharan Africa breeds resistant strains of illnesses associated with HIV – like drug-resistant TB. These ultimately threaten all of us because we are all connected. The parable, therefore, describes in advance the consequences of the revelation of the victim. Because of Jesus, the Human One, it becomes more and more difficult not to see the victim and if we insist on doing so we redouble the violence in the world (endless fire) which threatens to engulf us. Paradoxically at the very same moment, even as the fire grows, the love of God becomes clearer and clearer.



• We come together in peace
• Peace in our hearts, peace in our earth, peace to our enemies