The Violent Whims
“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.” (Gen 6:11)
Violence is the sin that God names, the only sin that God names, in the Noah story. It is violence which causes God to repent of creating humanity. Yet, God also covenants by placing the bow in the heavens so that God no longer wishes violence upon the earth. But violence is seductive and humanity has a penchant for loving violence. Even with evidence to the contrary, we ascribe violence to God to absolve ourselves of our violent actions.
If the only tool we have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. Sure, that’s trite. But when it comes to violence it seems that with the assumption that violence can solve our troubles, all problems look like metaphorical nails. If we disagree, we assign evil to our disagreements and desire to hit those with a hammer. Snuff out the disagreement, destroy the one disagreeing. Sort us all into categories that are too simple and too ignorant of the complexity of human relationship.
We see humanity as us and them rather than us so we can hate with impunity. We call empathy and compassion sin, but demand it when someone we like or follow is killed. We yell at one another over the differences and what abouts. I keep thinking to myself, the death of any human being is due grief. The cultural whirlwind we find ourselves at the cusp of the second quarter of the twenty-first century is one in which we are so insulated from one another than we forget we are all God’s children. The way of Jesus is narrow because it is truly almost impossible for us to love our enemies. Especially when the Church herself is enamored with violence.
We cannot dismiss our disagreements either, because they deserve to be seen. But if we make disagreement into chances to separate ourselves from one another such that we cannot see our shared humanity, then we are failing at being human. We are all, every single one of us, children of God. We all carry the “image of God” and it is that which I hope we can remember. When we say “all means ALL,” do we truly believe that? In a society in which hundreds of human beings die daily in violent ways at the hands of other human beings, how do we respond to the aggregate harm this does?
Can we find ways to sit in this suffering with one another without making the deaths of public figures into ammunition to insist upon purity of “our” side? I hope so. Can we also acknowledge the complexity of human beings who die public deaths? It is too easy to canonize or vilify based upon our (dis)agreements. Can we even acknowledge why we might respond differently?
Those of us in the United States live in a culture in which schoolchildren fear for their lives and must drill on the very real possibility that someone may come to inflict violence. We accept violence as a consequence of our secular freedom of the individual without considering the collective harm being done to our psyche. The earth is filled with violence, but we do not need to feed and participate in the violence.
I believe in a breadth of Christianity. Even though I have beliefs and theologize certain ideas, I recognize that those ideas and theologies with which I have stark disagreement are still Christian. That’s a hard tension, but consistency and my belief that we can find ways to disagree and still love each other make it possible. Christianity has room for both the expansive freedom to sit with questions and curiosity AND the hierarchal certitude of pat answers. While those two may not be able to exist simultaneously within denominations, they can within the Church catholic. I just hope we can discern which is the one we receive from those who forged our traditions while accepting our differences without violence.
I don’t know if we’ll find a solution to violence in my lifetime. God even decides that violence cannot be the answer to violence following the Noah flood story by acknowledging that the flood does not solve anything. Even the cross is not God’s doing, but God’s giving over in kenotic love by enduring the violence of humanity to show us a better way.
God save us from our violence and hatred.
God heal us from our sin
“Your kindom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
Yes, I mean kindom.