The Myth of Redemptive Violence
Micah 4:1-4
Lent 5C
March 17, 2013
Lent 5C
March 17, 2013
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
Christians have
always had a troubled relationship with violence. On the one hand we know the words of Jesus, “All
who use the sword will die by the sword” and “[You] must not oppose those who
want to hurt you. If people slap you on
your right cheek, you must turn the left cheek to them as well.”[1]
On the other hand we
imagine that Jesus’ commands and expectations are more than a little, well,
unrealistic. I say imagine because there
are not many of us who fully embody Jesus’ way.
Even those of us who refuse to use violence to protect ourselves can
still be accused of hiding behind others—the men and women of the armed forces
and law enforcement—who are willing to use violence on our behalf. So what do we do with Jesus’ words, we who
are pledged to live as his followers?
I find myself
simultaneously on both sides of the question.
I know wars are fought for less than compelling reasons that have more
to do with the political ambitions of our political leaders than our actual
needs for self-defense. I know that even
when there are or seem to be compelling reasons strategic and tactical blunders
on the part of our military leaders will mean needless injury and death. There is no such thing as a war in which
ambition and stupidity have not played a part.
On the other hand, I
served in the Army during the Cold War as part of the front-line defenses of
Western Europe. I was a chaplain
assistant and that meant that, unlike the chaplains themselves some of whom
were conscientious objectors and none of whom were permitted to carry firearms,
I had to be willing both to bear arms and to use them to defend the chaplain I
was assigned to. While I am grateful
that my willingness was never tested, I am not ashamed of my service. I was glad when the Department of Defense
finally recognized, long after my enlistment was finished, that the Cold War,
too, was a real campaign. It was not the
same as a hot war, but it was real nonetheless.
I am glad that my effort—such as it was—is recognized
So let nothing that
I say be heard as disrespecting the men and women who have gone into dangerous
places in uniform. They have suffered
great losses. Some of them have been
killed. Too many have suffered awful
damage to their bodies, injuries that would have been fatal in any earlier war but
are now survivable. But even those who
have returned and look like they are in one piece carry injuries to their
hearts and souls that most will get past but none will get over. Some of the soul sick will not get past their
injuries and will take their own lives. Others
will medicate themselves with alcohol or drugs or the adrenaline of high risk
behavior until they can no longer handle their daily lives. All who put on uniforms have risked these
things and suffered whatever lot has fallen to them because we asked them to. We owe them more than we can repay and I
honor them.
It is not a lack of
respect that leads me to raise this subject among us. Violence and especially the institutionalized
violence of war are issues that are too important for us not to consider them
carefully. When, if ever, is violence
acceptable? When, if ever, is war
acceptable? Can a war ever be good? Under what circumstances?
These are questions
of ethics, of right and wrong, and of good and evil. They are important matters, but our power to
take them up is limited because our minds and hearts are in thrall.
We look out and see
a world that is shot through with violence, war and the threat of war. This seems almost normal to us. Only by straining can we imagine a different
world. Only with the greatest effort can
we see the dim outlines of a world in which war and violence have no
place. The measure of our slavery to a
violent worldview is that peace seems abnormal.
There is only one
thing that has that kind of power over what we see and what we think and what
we can imagine and that thing is myth. A
myth is a story. We usually think that a
myth is a false story, but that’s not necessarily the case, although most myths
are false. A myth is a particular kind
of story. A myth is a story we tell
ourselves to explain ourselves to ourselves.
A myth is a story we tell ourselves to explain ourselves to
ourselves. No matter who the characters
of a myth are, the subject matter is us.
No matter who might be in the audience when a myth is told, it is told
for our benefit. No matter who has asked
the question, myth is intended to speak to our own fears and doubts. A myth is a story we tell ourselves to
explain ourselves to ourselves.
All stories have a
certain power. While we are inside them
we are in another world, a world that may be like our own or strikingly
different. While we are inside a story
our thoughts, our feelings, and our intentions are subtly shaped to more easily
fit with the world of the story. Stories
have a certain power to shape us. Myths,
since they are about us to start with, have even more power to shape us. Does this sound like magic? It should, since the word “spell” is simply
the Anglo-Saxon word for “story.”
Walter Wink has
identified and named the myth that keeps our hearts and minds in thrall to
violence. It is, he offers, the Myth of
Redemptive Violence. In its simplest
form the Myth of Redemptive Violence is the plot that underlies Saturday
morning cartoons:
“…an
indestructible hero is doggedly opposed to an irreformable and equally
indestructible villain. Nothing can kill the hero, though for the first three
quarters of the comic strip or TV show he (rarely she) suffers grievously and
appears hopelessly doomed, until miraculously, the hero breaks free, vanquishes
the villain, and restores order until the next episode. Nothing finally
destroys the villain or prevents his or her reappearance, whether the villain
is soundly trounced, jailed, drowned, or shot into outer space.”[2]
The Myth of
Redemptive Violence provides the basic plot of many creation stories, all
action movies, every Western movie I have ever seen, much of our foreign policy
and even some forms of our religion.
In the Babylonian
creation myth we have one of the earliest known forms of the Myth of Redemptive
Violence. The first divine couple, Apsu
and Tiamat, give birth to the gods. The
young gods make so much noise that their parents plan to kill them so they can
get some sleep. (It’s not hard to see
where that idea may have come from!) The
young gods discover the plan and kill Apsu. Tiamat, the dragon mother of chaos,
vows revenge.
The youngest of the
gods, Marduk, offers to kill Tiamat if he can rule over the other gods. Marduk catches Tiamat and kills her. From the front of her corpse he creates the
earth and from her back he creates the heavens.
Out of the blood of one of the gods who fought on Tiamat’s side, Marduk
creates human beings to be the servants of the gods.
At its base the Myth
of Redemptive Violence offers a simple understanding of the world and of our
place in it: Creation itself is an act of violence. Our life comes from the violent slaughter of
one god by another. We exist to serve
this same violent god. Order is
established over chaos by violence. Whenever
and wherever there is chaos the myth tells us that violence will restore order.
We no longer believe
in Apsu and Tiamat. We no longer worship
Marduk, at least not by that name. But
the myth survives and it is everywhere. It
is impossible to overestimate the power of this simple plot line. Wink calls it, “…the simplest, laziest, most
exciting, uncomplicated, irrational, and primitive depiction of evil the world
has even known.”[3]
But the Myth of
Redemptive Violence is not the only story in town. There is another. In the creation myths of the descendants of
Abraham we hear the story of a God who creates, not by violent combat with his
grandmother, but by speaking the world into being with all its forms of life, us
included, a God who fashions us, not out of the blood of a rival god, but out
of the good earth, the same earth that is the root of all life, a God who
enters into covenant with us not to be served but that we might serve each
other.
This God has a
vision of life for us and how our world might be and will be:
God
will judge between the nations
and
settle disputes of mighty nations
which
are far away.
They
will beat their swords into iron plows
and
their spears into pruning tools.
Nation
will not take up sword against nation;
they
will no longer learn how to make war.
All
will sit underneath their own grapevines,
under
their own fig trees.
There
will be no one to terrify them;
If we spend the kind
of time and energy and love on this story that we have spent on the Myth of
Redemptive Violence, the grip of that myth will loosen. Turning our backs on it we will be able, in
the words of our baptismal promises, to “renounce the spiritual forces of
wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world… [and] accept the freedom and
power God gives [us] to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever
forms they present themselves.”[5]
If we allow God’s
dream for us and for all who share this planet to soak through our skin, to
sink into our bones, to become the plotline for the stories we tell, then I am
convinced that we will begin to see that Jesus’ words, “All who use the sword
will die by the sword,” are a curse under which we no longer need to live. We will begin to see that war and violence only
make any kind of sense in a world fashioned by the Myth of Redemptive Violence,
a myth that we no longer have to accept or live within. And then we shall be free.
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[1] Mt
5:39, CEB.
[2] Walter
Wink, “Facing the Myth of Redemptive Violence,” Facing the Myth of Redemptive
Violence, May 21, 2012. http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/cpt/article_060823wink.shtml. Accessed March 15, 2013.
[3] Ibid.
[4]
Micah 4:3-4.
[5] The
United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville, TN: The United Methodist Publishing
House, 1989) 34.
