The Raven Foundation

If you are like me, you believe New Year’s Resolutions are made to be broken. I struggle with resolutions. I’ve already failed three of the top twelve resolutions Americans make.  Lose weight? I always break that during football games on January 1^st. Stop drinking? Again, January 1^st football games. Eat healthy foods? Nachos, pizza, and burgers, all on January 1^st.

January 1^st is the day I resolve to make the hardest resolution I’ve ever had to make (and I make throughout the year) – to forgive myself.

To be more forgiving of one’s self and of others is certainly a resolution worth making, but the Iowa Caucus tonight reminds me of another resolution worthy of discussion. It’s a resolution few people will make this year. And it’s a resolution you are bound to break. Sometime during this first week of 2012, you are likely to be asked, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” Imagine their response when you reply, “I’m going to end scapegoating.”

It’s a big task. Scapegoating infects our culture, our lives, and our politics. For example, the Iowa Caucus is tonight and we find candidates scrambling to define themselves over and against their opponents. Mitt Romney, who seems to be the front-runner in Iowa, has attacked President Obama, accusing him of creating an entitlement society in the U.S. Romney said that Obama’s continued policies would “poison the American spirit by pitting one American against another and engaging in class warfare." He went on to say, “I prefer an America that is one nation under God and I will keep it that way.” While Romney attacks Obama, a Super PAC backing him has spent $3 million on ads slamming Romney’s Republican opponents. And Romney’s opponents have responded with similar attack ads. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post warns that this is just the beginning of negative ads run by Super PACs:

We are going to see hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ads bombarding millions of voters for months on end, with no knowledge of who is paying for them, no accountability at all for the candidates who are directly benefiting from them, and no meaningful effort to rebut the countless lies, distortions and sleazy attacks they’ll be leveling on a daily basis — ones that will directly impact who controls Congress and the White House next year.

That disturbs me, but it doesn’t surprise me.  After Christmas and New Year’s Day, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that average folk like you and I spend much of our time in rivalry with others. You can always tell when you are in a rivalry with another person or group. You know that feeling you get when your uncle starts making political comments during Christmas dinner? Or the feeling you get when you arrive at your office and your supervisor won’t stop talking about her New Year’s weekend, and you know that in two hours she’ll come back and ask why you haven’t been productive? Your blood starts to boil. You need an outlet so you gossip to your cousins or your coworkers.

(Not that I know from experience.)

It’s true. Politicians are corrupted by rivalry and scapegoating. But so are we. We are, as James Alison says, formed in rivalry and scapegoating.  “Our programming,” as Alison states in his book, Knowing Jesus, “forms us in rivalry, and the techniques of survival by exclusion.”

I can guarantee you one thing during this election year: The rivalry and scapegoating will heat up. Republican candidates and President Obama will continue to define themselves over and against one another in hopes of gaining a sense of superiority.

How do we end scapegoating? There are four key steps. First, I think it’s important to admit that we scapegoat others. Yes. You and I scapegoat. We scapegoat whenever we feel a sense of superiority by hating another person or group. Second, we can stop scapegoating when, instead of feeling superior through scapegoating others, we begin to mourn our scapegoating tendencies. Third, we know we are on our way to end scapegoating when we begin to honestly listen to our rival’s story. And fourth, to truly end scapegoating, we need to develop the courage to admit that maybe, just maybe, we don’t hold the truth, we were wrong about the truth of our rival’s story, and we were wrong about our feelings of superiority over and against our rival.

It’s 2012. And it’s time to end scapegoating.

(For an example of how to end scapegoating, see "Rick Perry and Jesus: Strength and Weakness.")

We at Raven were honored when we read Robert Koehler’s latest article over at the Huffington Post entitled “Captives to the Logic of Violence.”  In his article, references our new project “Be a Hero for Peace” and cogently argues that during the last 10 years the United States has been held captive by violence.  In the name of “freedom” we have enslaved ourselves to violence.  Bob claims that after 9/11, “What fell into place was armed insanity as perpetual background noise, and any reach toward global community, understanding and forgiveness went on permanent hold.”

Of course, our captivity to violence is not isolated to the War on Terror.  It infects every aspect of our lives.  The logic of violence, including verbal, emotional, and physical violence, permeates American culture.  As I read Bob’s article, I was reminded of another article written this week by Brian McLaren. Brian alluded to the infection of violence, provocatively referring to it as a “Spiritually Transmitted Disease.”

We saw an example of our captivity to violence and its spiritual transmission last night at the Republican presidential primary debate.  Before, after, and during the debate, most journalists revealed their captivity to the logic of violence by setting the event up as a “battle” between the two former Governors Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.   They used phrases like: “The fight,” “traded attacks,” “went at each other like heavyweights,” and “We’ll get right to the important horse race question: Who won?”  Of course, journalists use violent phrases because they know the rest of us are held in the same captivity of violence.

There is a big problem with the spiritually transmitted disease we call violence: It is mimetic.  Violence is imitative and in that imitation we become just like our enemy.  We saw this last night, too.  Perry and Romney didn’t fail to live up to our violent expectations.  As they threw jabs at each other and tried to make distinctions between themselves, their “differences” were put aside and they looked remarkably similar.  As the New York Times reported:

Mr. Perry attacked Mr. Romney’s record of creating jobs in Massachusetts and his championing of health care legislation when he was governor.  Mr. Romney, in turn, cast Mr. Perry as a career politician.

“Michael Dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did, Mitt,” Mr. Perry said, referring to the former Democratic governor who ran for president in 1988.

“Well, as a matter of fact,” Mr. Romney replied, “George Bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than you did, Governor.”

The crowd or Republicans burst into laughter.

The American captivity to the spiritually transmitted disease of violence was on full display.  In this example, the infection worked like this: If you insult me, I insult you back.  I’m not sure why the crowd laughed, but sometimes laughing is all you can do when witnessing mimetic doubles.  They fervently tried to assert their differences, but the paradox of violence is that in asserting our differences we become the same – mimetic doubles or enemy twins, as Rene Girard calls the phenomenon.

Fortunately for Perry, Romney, and the rest of us, there is a way out of the captivity.  Koehler and McLaren both point to the solutions in their articles.  That solution is the courageous spirit of love and forgiveness.   Brian states that loving our enemies does not mean we cowardly submit to them.  Rather, it means “standing up courageously—and in refusing flight, submission, and retaliation—you become less like your opponent.  Previously unimagined creative responses become possible.  You don’t submit to the game in order to win it: you change the game entirely.”

Bob puts flesh and blood on this principle through the story of Rais Bhuiyan.  He is an example of someone who changed the game entirely.  Bhuiyan, a Muslim immigrant living in Texas, was shot in the face just after 9/11 by Mark Stroman.  Bhuian was lucky; two Muslims didn’t survive Stroman’s killing spree.  Stroman was soon sent to death row.  (State sanctioned murder … another sign of our captivity to mimetic violence.) Bhuian did something remarkable: He “changed the game entirely” by campaigning to save his assailant’s life.  Bhuiyan has since dedicated his life to forgiveness, claiming, “We need to educate people about the healing power of forgiveness.”

We have two choices before us:  The mimetic spirit of violence or the mimetic spirit of love and forgiveness.  Please.  For the sake of our future, choose love and forgiveness.  It’s what our post 9/11 world needs.