An Example of What is Wrong With Christianity Today

A big problem I have with modern Christianity is the way intellectual progress in theology is kept locked up in an ivory tower, while the masses are essentially given the same ideas they've always been given recycled. Oh there are exceptions. There is the odd priest here and there that will talk about panentheism or bring up an idea from Clark Pinnock or Reinhold Neibuhr, but for the most part, much of what theologians are doing in seminaries and universities is all but sealed off from the believing public.

The truth is that a lot of theologians have come up with some really good ideas that solve many of the age-old problems of Christian thought. A great way to encounter these ideas is from this website: http://meaningoflife.tv

It is amazing, a series of thinkers from across the religious board, but most of them believers in God, talk about some of the new ideas that people have come up with to give us a more accurate picture of God. Great thinkers are using some of the processes that have made philosophy and science so progressive,a nd applying them to theology. The results are astounding, and can really make for a deeper spiritual life and bring people closer to God & Christ. But because the ideas are complex, and can easily be misinterpreted or misused, the Church community has tended to keep them bottled up in universities and seminaries. They don't trust the general religious populace to be intelligent enough or subtle enough to really imbibe the ideas. This royally ticks me off.

In my own ministry, I'm pretty up front about all I have learned from scholarly theology. The results have been overwhelmingly positive. Many youth have come up to me years later and said that they were able to remain Christian through college in part because of the new perspectives on Christianity that they learned from me. I think that be all-out with the progress made among Christian intellectuals is the only way to really reach the younger generations for Christ. People rise or fall to your level of expectations. I think that the "oh that's a good idea but don't tell everyone about it because they can't handle it" attitude betrays low expectations on the part of religious leaders. And a weak, and low Christian community is what we get.

A great example of this is Rene Girard. Never heard of him? I'm not surprised. The name is all but unknown among most Christians. But I have met thinkers, scholars, and priests who consider him the most important Christian thinker of the 20th century. That is not the prevailing view (most would give this prize to Karl Barth), but what is true is that every well-rounded Christian should be familiar with his ideas. No, scratch that, EVERY Christian should be familiar with his ideas.

So off and on I am going to do some Girardian theology. I'll take a text and show you how Rene Girard might look at it. Girard's theology is deeply Biblical. It is an analysis of the entire biblical tradition. Girard kind of uses the Bible to interpret history as a whole. Girard believes that most polytheistic religions were based on a pattern of scapegoating that dominates human culture. Social groups of all sizes and stripes experience internal conflict, for various reasons. Hard times hit everywhere, and when they hit a community it often starts to break apart. So social groups will find some individual or set of individuals within them that they can collective blame for their problems. The group will violently attack those individuals, often killing them. These scapegoats are ultimately sacrifices, destroyed to help end the dangers and internal strife that afflict the community.

The act of sacrificing the scapegoat has real spiritual power (for Girard, a satanic power). Once the scapegoat is killed or otherwise harmed, the social tension ends and so it looks to the community that the sacrifice was the right thing to do. At first, the scapegoat is hated as a demonic force that had caused the problems the community faced. Over time, Girard thought that this demonic evil was transmuted in the mind of the community to a heroic good. Cultural memory sometimes only holds on to the truth that the death of the scapegoat saved the community. So the scapegoat is raised to the level of savior, and made divine in the minds of people. They will become the very force that later scapegoats are sacrificed to. They are treated as gods, but for Girard they play the role of the devil. They command the death of individuals and groups to maintain social cohesion.

Rene Girard thought that the entire Bible was God slowly making this pattern of scapegoating apparent for all to see. God reveals Himself as an enemy of scapegoating, and of scapegoating itself as demonic. For Girard, the devil is a disease, a cultural disease that results from tensions building up over envious desires. I want what you have, I mimic your desires. Since I can't have what you have, I have hate within me. This hate builds up, until by its own power or by the power of outside crises, this hate bubbles over into internal strife, strife which threatens the community. The only way to relieve the tension is for the community to engage in collective violence against some designated 'cause of all our problems'. This cultural pattern, this disease is satan. The Bible is God entering into human history, to make this pattern plain for all to see, to make the disease known, and to raise us up, to divinize us, to enhance our spiritual stature so we can move past all of this. God wants to inoculate us against the disease of the devil, of collective scapegoating violence.

Girard sees in all of this a new way to look at the atonement, and indeed the entire Bible is looked at through this lens. I will, piece by piece, take some of the passages that matter to Girard and show how a Girardian framework changes the way we look at the Bible. I am not arguing that a Girardian framework should be accepted uncritically (I am not, strictly speaking, a Girardian), but this alternative way of looking at the Bible is one that can enhance one's grasp of the overall.

Let's take the eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Girard points out that the snake plays the role of demonic contagion. He prods Eve by making Eve jealous, by creating a fundamental conflict of desires between man and God. The effect of eating the apple is apparent, to Girard, in verses 12-13. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the snake. We see, then, the very beginnings of the scapegoating pattern. For Girard, the problem with Adam and Eve 'knowing good from bad' is them knowing what 'they should want'. It is a matter of Adam and Eve being knowing what is good and bad FOR THEM. Good and bad should not be taken as moral 'good and bad', but as good and bad in an aesthetic sense. They know wanting from not-wanting.

But God will not have any of their scapegoating. His blame is placed on everyone. Everyone is punished equally. This is the most important point, for Girard. The entire chapter reveals the scapegoating practice as a falsehood. The lies of the devil are made clear: Adam and Eve do face mortality for having eaten the apple. And God's position on the matter is equally clear: all are guilty, for all gave into desire and jealousy.

This is the first of the Girardian re-analysis of the Bible. I would suggest that you not judge the merits yet until you see how the rest of his analysis plays out. When you step back and see the entire Girardian project, it is impressive. My main point here, though, is this: it is time ideas like this one became better-known.