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Abundant Life Since we human beings are profoundly social creatures, having joyous and fulfilling lives necessarily involves having healthy and happy relationships with those of our fellow human beings whom we have any relationship. Having such a life can be called having life abundantly. Flawed interpersonal relations are a chief source of human unhappiness as well as evidence of a less than abundant life. Virtually everything we call sin involves in some important way flawed interpersonal relations. In
the Old Testament one of the ritualized ways the Hebrew people purged
themselves of sin was to symbolically place all the sins of those in the
community on a goat and run the goat out into the desert to die, taking
their sins away with it. This
goat was called the scapegoat. Today
we use the term scapegoat to designate someone or some group made to bear
blame that rightly belongs to others. But
strictly speaking anyone who is the target of rage and/or resentment of a
person or group and whose elimination would bring about whatever utopia
(major or minor) that person or group espouses is a scapegoat whether
actually guilty of the charges or not. That Old Testament ritual was a reenactment ritual, reenacting in a relatively benign fashion (except to the goat) an act of violence arising from uniting against a common enemy and eliminating that enemy. When flawed interpersonal relations are rampant in the community, when the populace is in a disturbed state, nothing relieves the tension like discovering a common enemy, ganging up on it, and eliminating (typically killing) it. This collective violence is a cathartic process that purges the interpersonal friction in the victorious community by engaging it in something that is both very moving and much larger than their differences. This purging was very important to the health of the community. A disturbed, tense populace is a breeding ground for sporadic violence – violence which if allowed to spread could destroy the community. The
newly found social cohesion will eventually dissipate if it is not
periodically recharged. Until
the late Bronze Age – the time of Abraham – human sacrifice was
apparently the preferred ritual reenactment (of the collective violence)
that provided the cathartic restoration of social unity. This would occur
as a public or semi-public event. Even
in those rough times, the bloody sacrifice of a child on an altar was a
profoundly awe-inspiring sight. In
the Old Testament where there is reference to children being passed
through the fire, what is being described is a child sacrifice, the murder
of a child, ostensibly to appease whichever god they worshiped, but
serving to cathartically remove the friction in the community.
These sacrificial rituals were understood as religious acts, sacred
acts, to appease their god, not as means of social control.
The peace that ensued was seen as a gift from the appeased god.
Eventually there was a transition to animal sacrifice to serve this
purpose, but the ritual had to be repeated more often as the sacrifice of
an animal is not as cathartic. The
story of Abraham could be read as symbolic of this transition. Laws
were an adjunct to ritual in helping minimize violence.
Laws, among other things, reserve violence to the state.
The state will avenge murder.
That way the tit-for-tat Hatfields vs. McCoys violent feud between
the families of the victim and the murderer, which could spread to their
respective friends and neighbors and escalate dangerously – all this
violence – is usually averted. Old
Testament times were pretty wild and wooly. The grim law we know as “an
eye for an eye” was instituted to sharply reduce
the scope of revenge considered legitimate.
This became the Judaic standard for acceptable revenge and did not
change until Jesus preached a new standard: no revenge at all, rather
forgiveness. As
profoundly radical as the new forgiveness standard was of itself,
Christians hold up the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as far more
important, in fact as the
pivotal event in human history. As
such this should be easy to relate to what enables abundant life, as
Scripture says that is what Jesus made clear He intended for us.
First it is important to understand the form of Jesus’ death. It was at the hands of a mob. The Jewish mob was apparently enraged by the profoundly disappointing failure of Jesus to lead them in an uprising against the oppressive Roman rule – what Jews at that time believed the messiah would do – and just when the time (as they saw it) was so ripe to do it. Witness the reception that welcomed him into Jerusalem. The only other reason that may seem to be supported by Scripture is that the mob was, cookbook style, “fulfilling Scripture.” The former seems far more likely. The
Gospels tell us that Jesus eluded death many times – times
when it would have come as a relatively isolated event. Instead,
apparently He quite purposefully walked into a very public death at the
hands of a large mob. From
this it seems reasonable to assume that there was something about this
particular circumstance that was important to the meaning of His death and
resurrection. Certainly
not insignificant is that this was the first time in history that the
story of a significant victimization/victory was ultimately told from the
point of view of the victim. Before
this (and too many times since, to be sure), the story of the victory was
always told from the point of view of the victors and victimhood had no
status. One obvious result of
this reversal of history, so to speak, is a tendency to hear the voice of
the victim. This tendency is
inexorably increasing and diluting the thrill of victory as it slowly
permeates humanity. Jesus’
death and resurrection combined with His explicit and unprecedented
forgiveness of the mob that killed him can be seen as a stark illustration
of the abject wrong of scapegoating.
This is presaged in the later books of the Old Testament, where God
is repeatedly quoted as saying He desires mercy, not sacrifice.
Jesus, referred to as “the lamb slain since the foundation of the
world,” represents all victims of scapegoating violence before him and
all who come after. So how does all this relate to our having life abundantly? Scapegoating comes in so many varieties in human experience: wars, mob violence, murders of passion, one-upmanship, gossip. These are all prime examples of broken interpersonal relations. Envy and covetousness are also, and often lead to scapegoating. Perhaps this is why they are so prominently proscribed in the Ten Commandments. Jesus called the abundant life that He wants for us the Kingdom of God. This kingdom is a community of humility, compassion, forgiveness, and service to others, where words and actions are (among other things) healing not hurting, uniting not dividing – a community where we have healthy and happy relationships with our fellow human beings. Obviously, scapegoating and its precursors are antithetical to all of this. We have all probably, at some time or other, been asked the question "Are you saved?" Whether one answers yes or no, another question should have come to mind: "Saved from what?" What I have attempted in this essay is to provide a partial answer to that second question. At least part of what Jesus saved us from is getting caught up in the soap opera of scapegoating. It is up to us whether we accept that element of salvation. If we do accept it, a significant feature of our striving to have life abundantly is to do whatever we can to avoid scapegoating – to resist its powerful temptation – and to find gracious ways to discourage it in others.
With thanks to René Girard and Gil Bailie, whose ideas and writings form much of the basis of this essay. |