An End to Scapegoating

Jesus dealt with a lot of people who were pretty sure they were right about most everything. They had lots of rules that they followed that functioned to help a small tribe of folks keep separate from the Romans or whatever culture was oppressing them in the moment. The rules helped them have an identity and they made them feel very safe (and sometimes) very superior.

While they were perhaps "right" about the rules, Jesus insisted that  the fruits of their rule following were pure hatred in the form of scapegoating. 

The rulers of Jesus’ culture even thought that people who were unclean or violated rules angered God. What followed for them is that they thought that game them the authority to  blame someone for their problems. 

Scapegoating addresses a problem, tension, issue, misfortune, etc. by investing energy in violence and retribution. Many of the people who marched in favor of white supremacism in Charlottesville were more than likely energized by their belief in the scapegoating mechanism. When human beings employ scapegoating, all we do is suppress violence, hate and other evils even while the root cause of them remains. We do nothing to address the fear, sorrow, anxiety or despair infecting our own hearts and driving us to live in a state of anxiety. 

Even those of us who arise to march against hatred have to guard our hearts against the tendency to scapegoat others. St. Martin Luther King, Jr. of Atlanta and his friends worked intentionally to deal with their own hatred and anger (and believe me, they were right to have plenty!) before marching or counter-protesting. King believed that “self purification” was always a precondition for any kind of action against hatred or injustice. Before we can resist evil, we have to do the hard work of looking what of it exists in our own hearts and lives, he reasoned, lest we fall in to the same patterns of evil we are fighting against. Otherwise, we are participating in the same mechanism of scapegoating that perpetuates violence and division and continues to keep our world broken.

Please, do not hear me aligning myself with the "there was hatred and bigotry on all sides" argument here. I observed that the origins of must of the publicly visible hatred in Charlottesville came from the individuals marching in favor of racist ideas. When the public symbols you carry, the dress  you choose to wear, and the things you chant are, from the start, in support of a return to a world in which things like "racial purity" were ever acceptable, you are automatically aligned with hatred and worthy of protest. While some people from the counter-protest side did resort to violence (some in self-defense, others out of their own anger), I am not of the opinion that those people were, in any way, "equal to" the racist marchers in their hatred or bigotry. What I am speaking of here is just a way forward for those of us who want, passionately, to push back against this kind of evil. We have to love those who hate us.  

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection communicates that scapegoating is not God’s way. Jesus was the last scapegoat because he demonstrated that it just does not work.

The White Nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, rather than working to solve problems through dialogue and peaceful means, elected to project all of the problems in the world upon the other. Swastika flags stand for an age when a charismatic leader once mobilized an entire nation by blaming all the problems it suffered on people who were Jewish. As Americans, we honor their exercise of free speech, but we have to reject not only the content of their message, but the greater spiritual ill that lies beneath it. Sometimes that will mean showing up, chanting our own slogans, and being prepared to resist the urge to strike out.

Even in the face of the violence and hatred of other people, what comes out of our mouths will be indicative of the work we are doing in our hearts, minds and souls to repent of hatred. Pray that God gives us the strength and courage to gather together as a church, undergo our own “self-purification” and begin to address scapegoating for what it is- evil’s oldest trick for keeping the world broken, in darkness, and full of pain.  Shalom- Tim