Root Cause # 1 – Our Image of God

Root Cause # 2 – Mimetic Desire

Root Cause # 3 – Death Anxiety

The Seven Stories

• The Domination Story: ruling over others

• The Revolution Story: overthrowing the rulers

• The Isolation Story: withdrawing into isolation

• The Purification Story: get rid of the people who are different

• The Accumulation Story: horde the resources

• The Victimization Story: no one has suffered as much as us

• The Reconciliation Story: love, forgiveness and service for all people regardless of race and culture.

Dismantling the Adamic Bomb

• From the beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures sin and death are intertwined.

• It is a slow unveiling (i.e. revelation) showing both the problems and the solution to violence.

• The Hebrew Scriptures will solely poke holes in six of the seven stories.

• There are stories that poke holes in the religious paradigm.

• There are stories that given anthropological and psychological revelations of the way forward.

Revelation One: Creation without Violence (Genesis 1:1-2:3)

• There are countless ancient creation myths that center on divine violence, but the Hebrew account is not one of them.

• God speaks the creation into existence.

• God wills creation into existence.

• Simplicity gives way to more and more complex creations.

• Humanity is not an afterthought, brought about because of incessant violence.

Revelation Two: The Psychology of the Expulsion from the Garden (Gen. 2:4-3:24)

• The second creation account is vastly different describing a God who places prohibitions.

• The “tree of knowledge” represents the desire to have unlimited knowledge and thus power.

• There is a rivalry formed between Eve and God. Adam will join in.

• They are exiled because of where mimetic rivalry always leads: to violence.

Revelation Three: The Founding Murder (Gen. 4:1-26)

• The Cain and Abel story begins with an assumption about God; the desire for sacrifice.

• This is the very thing that causes the sibling rivalry that eventually leads to the shedding of blood.

• Abel is seen as an obstacle for him in achieving favor with God and so he murders him.

• It was an unjust slaying and Abel testifies to the truth of it as his blood cries from the ground.

• In spite of Abel’s cry for retribution, God does not consent. God places a mark on Cain so no one would take vengeance.

• His goal is to stop violence dead in its tracks.

Revelation Four: The Cause of the Flood (Genesis 6:5-22)

• The account of a flood occurs in many different cultures.

• The uniqueness in the Hebrew version is what was deemed as the cause to the calamity.

• The human inclination toward corruption and violence.

• The Hebrew story reflects the theology of the day: God sends the flood.

• However, God in this version makes a promise never to do it again.

• The human enslavement to violence, and the divine commitment to abstain from it, are at odds from the beginning of time.

Revelation Five: Thou Shalt Not Desire (Exodus 20:1-17)

• Commandments six through nine are prohibitions that address violence in order from most to least overt.

• You shall not murder

• You shall not commit adultery

• You shall not steal

• You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor

• Then the writer get to the heart of the issue: the mechanism that leads to violations of the previous four: you shall not covet.

• The lawgiver seeks at first to forbid all the objects which they ceaselessly fight.

• The objects can be too numerous, so he turns to the heart of the problem – desiring what belongs to the neighbor.

Revelation Six: From Human to Animal Sacrifice (Genesis 22:1-18)

• It is important to remember the scapegoat at the core of human culture.

• What the ritual does is reenact the original violence against the community’s scapegoat.

• It is a violent system, based on culture’s need to unite together over a corpse.

• In the story of Abraham and Isaac we see the desire to sacrifice to appease God.

• Abraham believed the way to appease God is human bloodshed.

• He builds an altar but there is no sacrifice.

• As Abraham goes to kill Isaac , we see God stopping him.

• God rescues Isaac from this murderous, sacrificial assumption.

Revelation Seven: A Critique of the Sacrificial System (Jer. 7:21-23; Ps. 40:6; Hos. 6:6)

• We can see that within Judaism, there is a theological conversation that involves, at the very minimum, a harsh critique of the practice of sacrifice.

• We also need to acknowledge that in spite of the critique over the practice of sacrifice, it remained the center of the faith up to and through the life and times of Jesus – until the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

• Perhaps this is why Jesus quotes on multiple occasions the “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” passage from Hosea 6:6 (Matt. 9:13; 12:7).

• Perhaps it is also the reason the writer of Hebrews quoting Psalm 40 in Hebrews 10:6-8.

• Sacrifice is contrasted with doing the will of God.

From the Old to the New Testament

• We notice a progression away from violence toward mercy and peace.

• There is progressive revelation taking place.

• The revelation culminates in the person of Jesus Christ.

• There is a crucifixion of the violent portraits of God in the person, work, death and resurrection of Christ.

Root Cause # 1 – Our Image of God

• If God is one of violence and retribution, then we who are made in his image will naturally have the same DNA.

Root Cause # 2 – Mimetic Desire

• At the root of violence is desire.

• The Scapegoat Mechanism

• When violence is transferred from all against all to all against one, a peace does in fact ensue.

Root Cause # 3 – Death Anxiety

• Of all things that move mankind, one of the principle ones is the terror of death.

• Humans are unique in that we can use the pronoun “I” to describe ourselves.

• Because of this ability of self-awareness, we can create great works of art, music and literature.

• We can also carry with us the ability to ponder our mortality.

• The knowledge of our impending doom is a uniquely human characteristic.

• The lower animals are instinctual but lack a symbolic identity (“am I a Shih Tzu or a Pug?”) and the self-consciousness that goes with it.

• Soren Kierkegaard says that man is given the consciousness of his individuality and his part-divinity in creation, the beauty and uniqueness of his face and his name. At the same time, he was given the consciousness of the terror of the world and his own decay.

• So, what does this knowledge of death do to a person?

• To get to the answer we must also observe that humans are self-centered.

• Seen dramatically in the behavior of children wanting the biggest slice of cake, being the first to receive a treat and wants others to “look at me” every time they want to show off.

• The child is the center of the universe yet not every child can be the first to receive the treat.

• The desire to have self-worth, self-esteem, self-this and self-that, is paramount to our happiness.

• While this behavior is obvious in children, it is present in adults too.

• We become more subtle and calculating but want to retain the certain idea of self.

• We think of our self as a “hero”. Others should see the world as I do.

• The idea of self is so powerful that death must somehow be conquered to remain sane (c.f. Hebrews 2:14-15).

The Denial of Death

• Humans cannot function properly if they are mentally plagued with the fear of death.

• We do what we can to try to suppress it.

• Eventually we are hit in the face with it.

• We, as self-aware beings must live on after our bodily demise.

• We create immortality systems.

• We create such things as religions, cultures, sects and political ideologies in order to guarantee our immortality.

• We must defend (even unto to death ironically) these systems that protect our self- the hero.

• Defense of the Immorality System

• When we identify with one culture, religion or political ideology, we have potentially set ourselves up against all others.

• Because our system guarantees our immortality, we must view them as an absolute and immutable truth.

• If not, then everything we have constructed in order to protect our immortality may come tumbling down.

• Just notice how it is the most rigidly fundamentalists are the most violent.

• The systems become one story after another in the history of humanity.