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CONFRONTING THE POWERS THAT BE

When the Domination System catches the merest whiff of God's new order, by an automatic reflex it mobilizes all its might to suppress that order. What killed Jesus was not irreligion, but religion itself; not lawlessness, but precisely the law; not anarchy but the upholders of order. It was not the bestial but those considered best who crucified the one in whom the divine Wisdom was visibly incarnate. And because he was not only innocent, but the very embodiment of true religion, true law, and true order, this victim exposed their violence for what it was: not the defense of society, but an attack against God. (ETP 139-140)

They stripped him naked and crucified him in humiliation, all unaware that this very act had stripped the Powers of the last covering that disguised the towering wrongness of the whole way of life that their violence defended. They nailed him to the cross, not realizing that with each hammer's blow they were nailing up, for the whole world to see, the affidavit by whichthe Domination System would be condemned. (Col. 2:13-15). (TPTB 83)

In these chapters Wink discusses biblical notions of the violence attendingsacrifice and scapegoating in the scriptures and the antidote which Jesusoffers.

Wink cites Rene Girard's contention that the sacrificial system is a form of organized violence in the service of social peace and order. Violence against one or a few becomes a substitute for the violence of many. It distracts peoples' attention from the violence perpetrated by the Powers themselves and siphons off the anger and hate, directing it to another target.

The violence attributed to God in the Old Testament and the violence Godseems to have ordered Israel to perpetrate against the people of Palestinehave been a puzzle and problem for Christians, Jews and many others downthrough the ages. Wink writes:

The violence in the Bible is the necessary precondition for the gradual perception of the meaning of violence...The violence of Scriptures, so embarrassing to us today, became the means by which sacred violence was revealed for what it is: a lie perpetrated against victims in the name of God. (TPTB 85)

In the New Testament the sacrificial system is ended. Rather than demandingsacrifice, God takes the place of the sacrificed. The execution of the wholly innocent Jesus undermines the scapegoating idea completely.

Jesus never called for revenge; he avoided any participation in violence, and his death exposed the scape-goating system as organized murder by the state.

Later, the church became established as the religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, and this understanding of a nonviolent, loving, always forgiving God, began to be replaced again by a warlike deity.

The church leaders began to limit the doctrine of the Atonement to a narrow salvation involving only the individual soul. This had the effect of making the church a captive of the state, chained to its war chariots, put in the position of blessing soldiers going off to war.

The passages in the New Testament on liberation from the Powers were moved to the background and those suggesting God required a bloody sacrifice to appease his wrath came to the fore. Wink exposes the fallacy of this approach:

But rebirth is not a private, inward event only. For it also includes the necessity of dying to whatever in our social surroundings has shaped us inauthentically. We must die to such things as racism, false patriotism, greed, and homophobia. We must, in short, die to the Domination System in order to live authentically. (TPTB 95)

God is, as God, engaged against the domination of the Powers in a strugglein which we are called to participate. And even our full individual salvation,the liberation of our egos, depends on surrender also to our calling in this struggle:

...This means our abandoning egocentricity not only as individuals, but as cultures, as nations, even as a species, and voluntarily subordinating our desires to the needs of the total life system. And because the ego has been entangled with thousands of tendrils from the alienating system of domination, the process of dying to one's conditioning is never finally over. (TPTB 97)

2. Why are liberals and conservatives split over abortion, homosexuality and the value of the public school system? In the past, denominations fractured over dogmas and doctrines. Today, we fight over issues for which we have little scriptural guidance. What are the blind spots on both sides?

3. Why is there such a wave of support for capital punishment in our country when most developed countries, and many others, have abolished it as inhuman?

Copyright © 1998 by Vern Rossman