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The myth of redemptive violenceMonday, February 15, 2016
Leviticus 19:17-18 Creation, in other words, is an act of violence. Order is established by means of disorder. Evil precedes good. The gods are violent, and they create us. No wonder we too find violence so compelling (so redemptive) as a solution to our problems. The story in Genesis is a direct rebuttal to the Babylonian myth. God is good, and God creates a good creation. Good precedes evil, although evil comes soon enough as the first humans and the serpent betray God. But God's creation came first, and it was good. And so violence, instead of being at the basis of things, becomes a problem to solve. Moses speaks of God's solution: "Though you may have to reprove him, do not incur sin because of him: take no revenge and cherish no grudge." Far better to do what my friend at church yesterday described when he encountered a problem person in his life: pray! God's perspective is not the same as mine, and I need to see my enemy from God's point of view. Turn my eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth grow strangely dim. I can do this at times. But I live in contemporary America, which is part of the contemporary world, in which redemptive violence is the dominant myth. We are steeped in it. Wink calls it "the simplest, laziest, most exciting, uncomplicated, irrational, and primitive depiction of evil the world has ever known." This way of looking at things locates all evil outside myself or my tribe, whether that be in the world of sports or politics or religion or nationalism. Children grow into adults who tend to scapegoat others for all that is wrong in their world. Because we don't think about our own junk, we have trouble growing beyond our own early, immature egos. Jesus pushes back hard on this. "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone." Jesus recalls Abba Father, and reminds us to love as we are loved. Good precedes evil in Jesus' world, and we can let God show us the good again. You teach me your way, Lord, when I pray for my enemy, and give her something to drink, and visit him in prison, and bandage her wounds. We are all your children, God bless us, every one. You turn the evil we all commit into your good. That is real redemption, and we give thanks to you, O God. |
Theologian Walter Wink writes of the "myth of redemptive violence." This myth tracks back through our video games and movies, through the cartoons we watched as kids, all the way back (at least) to 1250 BC, to the Babylonian creation story, in which Marduk kills Tiamat, the queen of chaos, and then uses her body to create the cosmos.