A Personal Response
To The Myth of Redemptive Violence

“Violence is the ethos of our times.
It is the spirituality of the modern world.
It has been accorded the status of a religion,
demanding from its devotees an absolute obedience to death.”
- Walter Wink

Inevitably humans end up at war with each other.  It seems to be entrenched in our very beings at times.  Over the course of history, peace seems to be a difficult place for humanity to find.  We war over land, over political differences, over ruling parties, over race, over religious beliefs and over natural resources just to name few. 

Many early religious traditions would suggest that war, violence, is inescapable, necessary and even good.   They would have us believe peace, even life itself, entails traveling a path that runs through chaos and violence.  It is a perspective which is still pervasive in our world.  It says that it is unfortunate but true that war is sometimes needed to achieve peace.  It is a myth – a myth of Redemptive Violence and it has many roots in religion.

"Nonviolence is a power which can be wielded equally by all…”
Mohandas Gandhi, Harijan, September 5, 1936

I stand over and against that myth.  I'm a pacifist.  I'm not the lay down and be stomped on like a doormat kind of pacifist, I'm the Jesus-wanna-be kind of pacifist.  The kind that looks to the lives of people like Martin Luther King and Gahndi as models for non-violent resistance.  Don't try to re-categorize me either.  I'm decidedly a pacifist.  Shedding blood should not even happen.  Period.  Jesus laid down his life, shedding the ultimate blood, to show us what love looked like.  Showing us that love knows no bounds. 

In Christianity the myth of redemptive violence hangs from a tree.  It is the ultimate story of redemptive violence is it not?  Through pain and blood, sacrifice and death, one man saves the world.  Clearly violence is redemptive, no?

No.  We miss a few things when we see it that way.  It was love that hung on that tree, not violence.  Jesus did not die for the sake of the War Machine, he died in resistance of the Powers That Be which are protected by the War Machine.  Jesus suffered that we might not have to.  Jesus suffered to show us how far love was willing to go.  Jesus' sacrifice show us that if love is large enough, no one should ever have to suffer again.

We are to live into that kind of love. We no longer need to make sacrifices of blood.  It has been done for us.  What that kind of love lived out looks like is seen in the life of Jesus and mirrored in the lives of King and Gandhi.

Seeing the world through the lens of non-viloent resistance, makes a day like today (Veterans Day, formerly Armistice  Day) an eternal conflict for me.  I grieve for the dead.  Those who died in their country’s service and those who died in the crossfire, sometimes coldly refereed to collateral damage.  I cry tears for their families, for their friends for their loved ones. 

But every year my tears fall like so many drops into an ocean of violence that is supported by the myth that violence begets peace, that loving one thing (your country) more than you love the reflection of God carried in the 'enemy's' eyes is somehow redeeming for humanity – growing us closer not only to God, but to the peaceable kingdom which we are to be ushering in.  Every year I see an inordinate number of the poor sent to the front line, while the economically powerful fight their war from war rooms and well decorated offices.  Every year the tears and the blood fall into the pools of the wars that preceded them.... and nothing changes.

So there is conflict and struggle in my heart, in my soul.  The War Machine co-opts a day like today, wraps it in patriotism and manages the difficult task of both relegating the dead to being secondary to it's own promotion of the myth of redemptive violence and (at the same time) suggesting that anyone who has problems with the day are dishonoring those who have served honorably.

So many drops of blood have been spilled.  With each drop, I weep.  With each drop, God weeps.  Each drop falls into the ocean of violence that came before it. 

Today I honor those who have died because of war, but I do not honor the War Machine.  I reject the  myth of dominance and redemptive violence, and substitute God's reality of love, peace and grace.  With each drop of the blood of Christ, humanity was given a gift.  We have yet to fully embrace that gift.  Until we do, love continues to hang on a tree, suffering so that we might not have to. 

I like to think I was pretty lucky as a kid, particularly when it came to sports.  My Dad seemed to be able to play every sport pretty well.  As a matter of fact, he coached almost every baseball team I ever played on.  There is this one thing that I'll never forget that he said over and over to me and the rest of the team no matter whether on offense or defense, “Keep your eye on the ball.”  

Now at first most of us kind of thought of that as a way of saying “stay focused,” and I guess in some ways it was, but the most important part of it was the directive to, “keep your eye on the ball.”  Once I actually started watching the ball all the way until it hit the bat, went in the glove, whatever... my game play increased three-fold.  

It is called baseball after all and it is amazing what kind of difference it made when I focused on...well, the baseball. It was what mattered.  And when I focused on what matters, I was a better player.

The Church needs to learn a lesson from baseball. We took our collective eyes of the ball a long time ago, and we need to get back to letting what matters matter.

Over time, many churches have become places were what matters has become less about what God says matters and more about what people want to matter.  In churches so many people busy themselves with the “work” of the church:  Keeping the kitchen spotless, monitoring the clothes people wear, worrying about what someone is or isn't doing, being bothered by the music, or the pulpit, or who is in it...

But the reality is, when you do that, when you get caught up in the busyness (some might say the busy-body-ness) of the church, all you are really doing is loosing sight of what really matters. What's worse is you are distracting others from what matters, following Jesus wherever he leads us (yes, and frequently it's places we don't want to go).

If you believe most of the same things you believed about God 20 years ago, you have taken your eye off the ball.  If you think God would not ask you to do something or go somewhere that makes you uncomfortable..you have taken your eye off the ball.  If you go to Sunday school, and spend some of your time complaining about the church instead of actually studying God's word...you have taken your eye off the ball.  

It is time to get to it - to get to letting what matters matter and to stop taking our eyes off the ball.  It is time to stop tidying up the dugout and to step up to the plate.  Those who take their eye off the ball and stop playing the game for what it can really be worth are likely to find their spirits growing thin, their anger growing more pronounced, their general sense of disgruntlement growing more restless.

When we take our eyes off of what matters, what really matters, we find ourselves growing away from the love, the hope, the peace that God offers us; we find that taking our eyes off of what matters allows space for thing that don't really matter to become important to us...and... we find ourselves unhappy more than we used to be, we find it harder to love our neighbor (particularly certain neighbors), we find that discontent and disappointment become more and more pronounced in our lives.  When we get caught up in the things that don't matter, the thing that actually does matter gets displaced.

It is called Christianity after all and it is amazing what kind of difference it will make when we focus on...well, Christ. Christ is what matters.  And when we focus on what matters, we will be better Christians and a better Church.