Last year, I attended a Good Friday service for the first time in over 20 years. I was a little nervous to find myself back in the pews: as a young man, I had rejected the Midwestern Catholicism of my childhood, and had instead embraced the agnosticism that seemed to be the spirit of the era. .
However, in recent years, I had become disillusioned with the modern secular worldview and began attending Mass again. Still, my skepticism toward Christianity remained, and I certainly didn’t feel like I belonged in this place on this day. In the Catholic Church and many others, the holy day is “celebrated” with the Stations of the Cross and the Passion Play, both reenactments of the horrific events leading up to the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.
It was Passion Play that got me. I had forgotten how the troupe was expected to participate in the play. At key moments, we were asked to play the role of a murderous mob, shouting, “Crucify Him!” Crucify him!”
I thought, this is so strange. And heartbreaking. Christian tradition asks us to imagine that the Son of God was tortured and murdered by a bloodthirsty gang while the apostle Peter disappeared from sight. And then it asks us to identify not with the suffering Christ, but with the evil crowd that cheers his death.
If you were a mad scientist designing a world religion in a lab, hoping it would appeal to the masses and spread around the world, I think it’s unlikely you would have designed it that way. Would have been made from. What is this strange story?
In search of answers, I looked to the French polymath René Girard, who spent the last 15 years of his life in the French department at Stanford, perhaps because he couldn’t figure out where else to put them. Girard is primarily known for his theory of “exemplary desire”, the idea that humans want certain things because we see other people want them. This is a powerful idea, and Girard uses it to develop a provocative theory of culture and violence. But it is another aspect of his thinking that caught my attention.
Girard challenged the dominant spirit of agnostic Jungianism in the humanities. In his time, it was fashionable to look for commonalities between different world cultures. For example, Joseph Campbell tried to prove that all myths around the world drew on the same ideal, participating in a great “monomyth” that shapes us all. George Lucas used these ideas to create star wars, a mythology that has taken over the world over the last 40 years. It was the ideal theology for a non-judgmental, multicultural age.
But Girard says, no, these myths are not all the same. In Paganism and other archaic religions, mythology is used to maintain the existing social order, justifying whatever violent acts brought it into existence. Indeed, for Girard, every social system – not only every government, but every human culture throughout space and time – is based on violence. It is only Judaism and Christianity that condemn this violence as unjust or sinful. For this reason, he believed that there was something fundamentally different – even subversive – in the Judeo-Christian worldview. It represents a radical break from the past.
You can see it in Genesis. In Girard’s view, the story of Cain and Abel represents the murder of an innocent victim as the founding act of human civilization. After brutally murdering his brother, Cain establishes a city. This is the first example of “scapegoating”, the process by which we identify a victim and then expel or kill him, which strengthens the bonds that bind us together as a community. Let’s tie it together.
This story also illustrates Girard’s theory of “mimetic desire”. Ultimately, it is Cain’s desire for God’s approval – a desire he shares with Abel – that has been thwarted, provoking his jealous, murderous wrath. Girard traces these patterns throughout the Hebrew Bible in the stories of Adam and Eve, Jacob and Esau, the Hebrew prophet, and the suffering servant. In fact, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is an echo of the murder of Abel – although in this case, the Church says we are all participants in the death of Jesus.
“I have come to believe that a person’s capacity for evil should never be underestimated.”
As a young man, I was always skeptical of the doctrine of original sin. Why are these people trying to convince me that there is evil in my heart? All things considered, I’m a pretty good person, right? Yet as the years passed, I became convinced that a person’s capacity to do evil should never be underestimated, and that included my capacity.
But Girard’s explanation of original sin is more complex. Simply by participating in our culture, by becoming a member of human society, we are all participating in the violence upon which that society or culture is built. Judaism and Christianity work to expose the system of scapegoating by portraying the victim as innocent. But this does not mean that the danger has gone away.
Girard would be the first to admit that Jews and Christians are not immune to scapegoating, despite the destructive nature of their stories. Furthermore, by portraying the victim as innocent and the mob as guilty, the Judeo-Christian tradition undermines the mechanisms previously used to protect public order. In recent years, it seems that Judeo-Christian ideals have been used to weaken social bonds of all kinds, including Judaism and Christianity. Myths and customs that have existed for thousands of years have been dismissed as superstitious, judgmental and chauvinistic. But, if Girard is right, these ancient stories and rituals helped us process our most insidious instincts. In their absence, can we keep those instincts at bay?
Although he died in 2015, I doubt Girard would be surprised by the brutality of today’s political climate. On both the right and the left, efforts are being made to demonize the opposition and expel or eliminate those who pose a threat to a particular worldview. Girard also predicted the emergence of “super-Christianity”, which reduces everything to oppression and persecution. “I think this is the totalitarianism of the future,” he told Canadian journalist David Kelly. “Marxism was probably its most primitive form.”
For a civilization as rooted in Christianity as ours, the current rise in anti-Semitism is a particular cause for concern, as it may be an early warning sign that we are entering a potentially dangerous phase of scapegoating. It is always tempting for Christians (or perhaps even post-Christians) to believe that it was jews Who killed Christ, and we had nothing to do with it.
Girard is fascinating to me, but I confess I don’t find much comfort or envelopment in his ideas. There are forces at work in the world that we can only dimly perceive, if at all. And Girard gives me even more reason to remain silent by thinking about the passion of Christ. Saying, “Crucify him!” Speaking out loud in a church full of believers only serves to remind me that I too am a participant in the sins of mankind.
