Imagine There’s No Scapegoat
The Rev. Canon George M. Maxwell, Jr.
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
17 September 2006
Did you follow the controversy last week over the Pope’s comments?
Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech about the relationship between faith and violence at a German university where he used to teach. He argued that Christians see a God who is intrinsically linked to reason (the Greek concept of Logos), while Muslims see a God that is “absolutely transcendent … not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.” The problem with the Muslim view, as he described it, is that it allows believers to justify the irrationality of violence, if they believe it is God’s will.
While making his argument, the Pope quoted a medieval ruler as having said, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
Many in the Muslim world responded with outrage. A number of leaders called for a personal apology, while many other believers took to the streets in protests that resembled the reaction to the cartoons disparaging the Prophet Muhammad that appeared recently in Danish newspapers.
This morning, the Pope expressed his regret at the reaction caused by his comments, and suggested that he had intended for the address to be a call to “frank and sincere dialogue.”
I find myself wanting to defend the Pope.
I believe that he thought he was telling the truth. And I believe that he has the right, if not the obligation, to speak out against violence. I don’t believe that he should shrink from naming the sources of violence just because they are going to respond violently. In fact, I suspect that the violent responses to his comments are just what he thought he was talking about.
I can even understand how the Pope might have thought he was doing more good than harm. He was calling for a dialogue between cultures, and that dialogue can’t be meaningful if it is not moderated by the truth. The Pope shouldn’t avoid speaking the truth just because some people are offended by it, or fear that it will undermine the hopes that they have for their future.
Yet, although I want to defend the Pope, I also want to say that speaking out against violence is not enough to stop violence and may have the pernicious effect of leading to more violence.
Hear again what the Letter of James (3:1-12) has to say about speaking out. James is talking to those of us who speak out for a living, and seems to be warning us about the mechanisms of violence and the ways that our words can trigger them. He warns us specifically about inflaming the “cycle of nature.”
Today, we might call this cycle the process of creating a scapegoat. You can think of this process as having four stages.
In the first stage, we notice that we want what someone else wants. We’re in the first stage when we catch ourselves wanting a particular kind of coat just after we saw someone else wearing it.
In the second stage, we become their rivals. We move to the second stage when we realize that there is only one more of those coats at the store, and we know several people who want it. This rivalry gets a little more intense, of course, when we move beyond coats and start talking about something more important to us – say, colleges, jobs, or oil. As the rivalry gets more intense, we often find ourselves isolated from each other and doing things that we would not ordinarily do. It can feel like things are falling apart.
In the third stage, we look for a scapegoat. When it feels like things are falling apart, we generally look for someone else to blame. We usually look for someone who really is different from us, so that we don’t have to see the part we played in creating the problem. And the more fear we feel the harder and faster we look.
In the fourth stage, we get rid of the scapegoat. Getting rid of the scapegoat seems to make us feel like we have put everything back together. By the time we get to this stage, we are often willing to use violence. It seems reasonable. It may even seem like the only way to avoid even greater violence.
The point is that just speaking out against violence – if it perpetuates this cycle – can actually lead to more violence. To really stop violence, we have to get out of the cycle. We have to get out of the business of creating scapegoats.
Unfortunately, the Pope missed a chance to lead us out of the cycle. By failing to mention the long history of Christian violence, or the record of nonviolence within Islam, the Pope just fanned the flames of existing rivalries. He didn’t do anything to get us beyond our natural tendency to blame Muslims for all of the violence that scares us – of laying on them our own sense of guilt and insecurity. He didn’t do anything to get us out of the business of creating scapegoats.
Getting us out of the business of creating scapegoats, I think, requires us to take the next step and actually be nonviolent.
Hear again what the Gospel of Mark ( 8:27 -38) has to say about actually being nonviolent. The disciples are looking for a Messiah who will be a warrior King. Jesus tells them about a suffering servant. They are looking to control violence for their own security. He tells them to submit to violence for their own freedom. They are looking for a way to avoid death. He tells them about a way to give life.
Nonviolence is not just a passive posture. Jesus is not calling his disciples to stand to the side and avoid using force or causing harm. He is calling them to do something. He is calling them to show others how to live life a different way. And, he is telling them that this life will require them to deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow him.
To get out of the business of creating scapegoats, in other words, Jesus is telling his disciples that they will have to learn to see life through the eyes of the victims. They can break out of the cycle of rivalry only if they refuse to create scapegoats themselves and prevent others from doing it too. But, to do that, they must run the risk of becoming scapegoats.
The message seems clear. If we really want to get out of the business of creating scapegoats, then we are going to have to put ourselves at risk. We are going to have to run the risk of becoming a target of the very violence that we are trying to end. This is what it really means to be nonviolent.
I want to close with a story.
In 1993, during the holiday season, someone threw a piece of a cinder block through the bedroom window of a young Jewish boy in Billings Montana (pop. 83,000). He had stenciled a Jewish menorah on his window. The menorah, as you may know, is a symbol of Jewish freedom which is often displayed as part of Hanukkah celebrations.
The town had recently experienced a growing number of hate crimes, so the investigating police officer advised the family to remove the menorahs from their home.
But, when a mother, who also happened to be the head of an association of churches, read about the incident in the paper, she began to think about how it would feel to tell her children that they had to take down their Christmas tree to avoid being attacked.
She also remembered a story about the Kind of Denmark during World War II. The Nazis ordered the King to force all of the Jews in Denmark to wear a yellow Star of David for identification. The King and many other citizens decided instead to wear the star themselves, even though they were not Jewish. Their courage and sense of solidarity prevented the violence that the Nazis had planned because they couldn’t tell who was who.
So, she called the leaders of a number of different churches and suggested that their Sunday school children make menorahs and put them in their windows as signs of solidarity with the family who had been attacked. The following week, menorahs began to appear in windows all over town. The local paper published an editorial supporting the idea and urging everyone to join in. Ultimately tens of thousands did, but not without cost.
The violence escalated at first. Windows in cars, homes, stores, schools and churches displaying the menorahs and other signs of solidarity were broken with bricks or bullets. But, eventually, the violence stopped.
The violence stopped because the people of Billings decided to get out of the business of creating scapegoats. They spoke out against violence, but more importantly, they broke out of the cycle of rivalry.
They broke out by learning to look at life through the eyes of victims. They broke out by running the risk of becoming a target of the very violence they were trying to end. They broke out by being nonviolent.
And so, I believe, must we.
We live in an increasingly violent world. It is not enough to remain quiet. But, it’s not enough just to speak out either. Words alone may do more harm than good. To defeat violence, we must be prepared to be nonviolent. We must be prepared to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow the example of God in Christ, who was willing to become the scapegoat for the life of the world. We must begin to imagine a world where we don’t create any more scapegoats.
It is our only hope.
AMEN.
Comments? Contact George Maxwell at: GMaxwell@stphilipscathedral.org