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[vc_row el_class=”olive-branch-bg-r”][vc_column][vc_column_text]We live in a nation built on a foundation of violence. But that\u2019s not where we belong.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n We belong where our deepest longings can be fulfilled, our longings for peace, joy, a life of dignity and respect, a haven that nurtures us to be our fullest, sweetest selves. For some, these longings go largely under or unfulfilled under stifling oppressive or violent conditions. But none of us can fully realize the fulfillment of our longings until we recognize that the only way for any of us to fully belong is together.<\/em> We belong in a world built by Love, for Love, as living embodiments of Love.<\/p>\n So how do we get there from here?<\/p>\n To begin to answer this question, I will explore:<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_section el_class=”post-quote”][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1566306295282{background-image: url(https:\/\/ravenfoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/0c0caab3a0b06f49d1f4e4069f7acecc-e1562958862845.jpg?id=19638) !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text css_animation=”none” el_class=”quote”]<\/p>\n Forgiveness gives us the freedom to live into the goodness for which we are born.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n [\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n I seek ways to create belonging for all in a nation where belonging for some has been built explicitly on the exploitation and dehumanization of others.<\/p>\n Where segregation and prejudice have circumscribed the lives of people of color.<\/p>\n Where Muslims living in nations our military bombs are banned from entering ours,<\/a> descendants of immigrants build walls to keep other immigrants away, and the fate of the LGBTQIA community hangs precariously in the balance of the Supreme Court<\/a>.<\/p>\n A nation founded on the destruction of some will, in the end, be unable to hold up anyone. As Jesus once said, \u201cEvery kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Of course, Jesus wasn\u2019t talking about the United States, though his words apply, but about every human culture built and fueled on violence. The building of community on the exclusion of others is universal.<\/p>\n The only way we can fully understand and transform the destructive nature of our violence is if we first look at its constructive<\/em> nature, at the purpose it serves in creating bonds over and against scapegoats.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_single_image image=”20204″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mimetic theory reveals that the same driving force that can potentially lead to cooperation, empathy, and love often leads to conflict, enmity, and hate. That force is our human connection itself.\u00a0<\/em>(Check out the Intro to Mimetic Theory series to learn more about Mimetic Theory)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n We are not isolated individuals but interdividuals<\/em>, formed only in relationship with one another.<\/a> To be human is to need one another, not only to learn information, but to take emotional cues and receive our desires from one another. We are not programmed with single-path instincts but open to a variety of models who shape what we know, what we want, and who we are.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Conflicts can arise from an unwillingness to share mutual desires. As we compete with rivals for prizes of influence, power, wealth, or fame, we are fueled by their passion as they come between us and the object of our desires (which we desire all the more because of their desire).<\/p>\n The harder they fight, the harder we fight.<\/p>\n This pattern of mutual, exclusive desire leading to rivalry leading to ever-escalating violence has captivated humanity from the beginning. Violence spreads like a contagion as desire sparks wildfires of passion and fury. But from ancient civilizations through today, when crises of conflict erupted, they could be quelled by channeling accusation and violent energy against a particular victim.<\/p>\n A scapegoat, against whom the people could unite, provided protection by rechanneling the violence of all against all to all against one.<\/a><\/p>\n The convergence of blame, hatred, and violence on the scapegoat happens quickly because of our imitative nature; one who stands out for an arbitrary reason can capture someone\u2019s attention, and that attention multiplies rapidly. People are unconscious of the scapegoat mechanism at work within them, truly believing their scapegoats to be guilty.<\/p>\n When people converge upon a scapegoat, they can bond with each other over and against their declared enemy and feel a transcendent catharsis when that enemy is purged \u2013 often by murder or expulsion \u2013 from the community.\u00a0From the beginning, people mistook that catharsis for the divine.<\/p>\n The peace in the wake of the scapegoat\u2019s expulsion reinforces the myth that the scapegoat was responsible for the crisis of violence. But that peace is short-lived, because we remain blind to the origin of our violence and how to transform it.<\/p>\n It crucial to recognize how scapegoats have served a foundational function in our cultural evolution, how our cultures themselves have been forged by bonds over and against others. Shared enemies bind communities \u2013 from cliques to international alliances \u2013 together.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_section][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1566393555121{background-color: #f6ebdf !important;}” el_class=”optin”][vc_column][vc_column_text css_animation=”none”][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n A world built on scapegoating works… until it doesn\u2019t anymore. In a world of such broken relationships, where our connections become our divisions as we compete and violence becomes our connection as we unite in misplaced blame, we are vulnerable to the destruction we unconsciously wield.<\/p>\n That\u2019s<\/em> what Jesus came to save us from. Our own violence.<\/p>\n When humanity thought it found God in the purging of a victim, God came among us as<\/em> our victim.<\/p>\n Jesus came and stood with those who were marginalized and cast out. The \u201csinners\u201d with whom the \u201cgood people\u201d would never be caught dead.<\/a> The blind<\/a>, the lame<\/a>, the lepers<\/a>, those thought to be punished by God.<\/a> The demoniac against whom a town measured its goodness.<\/a><\/p>\n Jesus came not only to restore those who had been pushed out, but to transform communities formed by their exclusion into communities of inclusion.<\/p>\n He died the death of a criminal to restore all who had gone the same way \u2013 those who had perhaps lived and certainly died by the sword. He died\u2026 and death could not hold him, because he refused to be enthralled in the process by which we unconsciously destroy others and thus ourselves.<\/p>\n And he rose to bring new life \u2013 a life in which we don\u2019t rely on the death of others. It\u2019s a life that calls us to recognize our interconnection, to recognize that when we seek to get ahead at the expense of others, we ultimately harm ourselves, because we are connected.<\/em><\/p>\n Jesus brings us into that new life by exposing our violence and answering it with mercy. In revealing himself to be the God who suffers with victims but forgives victimizers, Jesus reveals that the ultimate power that fulfills and restores us is not violence, but love. In the light of his forgiveness, we see our victims in all their humanity, and our deepest humanity can be restored as we confront and work through our fears in the shelter of grace.<\/p>\n Forgiveness says to us, \u201cStop! Don\u2019t be afraid! I know the worst of you. And I still love you. I am giving you the freedom to live into the goodness for which you were born.\u201d<\/p>\n It makes repentance and reconciliation possible.<\/p>\n But the possibility of repentance and reconciliation, even the eventuality of it, is not the present actualization of it. Humanity is still deeply entrenched in conflict and rivalry, and still largely blind to our own scapegoating. Nations are still built on the scapegoating mechanism. And the United States is no exception.<\/p>\n And the terrible truth is that the light of Christ\u2019s revelation \u2013 that God is Love, God stands with the victims of violence, and that the deepest and strongest bonds we can form are in service to each other rather than elevation over and against others \u2013 was dimmed and twisted in our nation\u2019s earliest colonial days.<\/p>\n Colonial expansion, displacement and killing of indigenous people, and slave labor that shaped our nation: all were rationalized by tragic misinterpretations of Christianity. New, brutal manifestations of scapegoating were justified in the name of the One who became humanity\u2019s scapegoat in order to expose scapegoating!<\/p>\n And the misuse of scripture and religion to exclude and condemn did not stop with racism. The revelation that was meant to lead us out of our rivalry was turned into a weapon against other faiths. Scripture has been interpreted to condemn the LGBTQIA community when, in fact, it does not expound on the loving same-gendered relationships of today but does\u00a0warn against judgment<\/a><\/em>. When we condemn others, we stand under the same condemnation \u2013 that is, human<\/em> condemnation \u2013 because we are blind to the harm we cause.<\/p>\n Antisemitism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia\u2026 all continue to be wrongly justified in the name of the fully human One who taught that our full humanity is found bound up in one another.<\/p>\n Which is not at all to say that God\u2019s infinite mercy has been ineffective in exposing and healing the brokenness in our hearts and relationships. God\u2019s mercy has opened our eyes to those on the underside of injustice around the world.<\/p>\n Models of mercy have influenced generations of peacemakers in all times and places.<\/p>\n Abolition, the Civil Rights Movement, progress in interfaith dialogue, open and affirming churches\u00a0<\/a> and communities of faith<\/a>\u2026 all are outgrowth\u2019s of God\u2019s compassion reaching into our hearts and igniting our own.<\/p>\n But.<\/p>\n Too many people are still hurt by institutional and personal scapegoating. While the revelation of the cross has been a mitigating factor, the weaponization of Christianity has been an exacerbating factor.<\/p>\n Perhaps you have felt estranged from an unwelcoming place of worship. Perhaps you are vulnerable to some of the incarnations of systemic violence in this nation. Perhaps you have seen religion used to reinforce rather than challenge injustice.<\/p>\n Perhaps you are uncomfortably awakening to ways you have scapegoated others, or ways social structures built on scapegoating have benefited you at their expense.<\/p>\n Our society has a long way to go as new rationalizations for scapegoating arise. In a nation built on militarism over and against others, on cognitive dissonance between the land of opportunity our nation claims to be and the land of inequity it has been from the beginning, we need healing from all manifestations of personal and systemic violence.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n [\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]And forgiveness can open the space for that healing.<\/p>\n But right now, there is confusion and polarization over what forgiveness means and how it is used.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]Marginalized people and people on the underside of power dynamics suffer under the weaponization of forgiveness<\/a> when it is folded into a placating ritual<\/a> meant to stifle dissent and keep people complacent with the systemic violence of a status quo built on scapegoating.<\/p>\n Far too often, public displays of forgiveness are exploited to demand \u201crespectability\u201d of those in pain, discrediting protests and movements aimed and changing systems and demanding accountability.<\/p>\n\n
A Nation Built On Exclusion<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Meaning Behind the Madness of Scapegoating<\/strong><\/h3>\n
A Better Way To Form Community<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Weaponization of Christianity\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Forgiveness: From Reinforcing the Status Quo to Transforming Violence<\/h3>\n