“…They needed to kill, but they also needed to believe that killing was good. This is the basic (though hidden) political foundation of the world. It’s also evil. It’s an evil so well hidden that we hardly ever see it as evil. It’s an evil concealed behind flags, anthems, monuments, memorials, and the rhetoric of those who have won their wars. The hidden foundation of hatred and murder is why world history is little more than the record of who killed who, where, when, and what for.
In a study of world history, you will meet far more warriors than poets; far more generals than artists. Jesus testified against this violent arrangement of the world. Jesus wanted to show us that the “heroic” murder of our enemy brothers is, in truth, evil. But we don’t see it as evil. We see it as simply the only way things can be.” ( Brian Zahnd, “A Farewell to Mars” )
“…IF my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, THEN I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land… BUT if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.” (2 Chronicles 7:14-20)
America, we’ve got a problem.
Of course one could reasonably say that, together, we’ve got a good MANY problems, as any sprawling association of some 300 million human beings might. We’ve got violence problems. We’ve got political and civil discourse problems. We’ve got racial and immigration problems. We’ve got economic equity problems. We’ve got new, and historical problems. We’ve got consumerism, consumer and student debt problems. We’ve got depression and anxiety problems. We’ve got abortion, gun culture, death penalty, mass incarceration, militarism and human-life-ethic problems. We’ve got personal, and public policy problems. We’ve got natural disaster problems. We’ve got some serious corporate-lobbyist-legislative-stranglehold problems. We’ve got mental health, addiction and legal system problems… Let’s agree: We’ve got problems.
This past week, though, in the wake of another all-too-everyday American bloodletting, and in witnessing the all-too-predictable stalemate of “discourse” which follows, it strikes me that the underlying, cancerous reality behind nearly all of these things is at least in some way associated with this one thing:
We’ve got a repentance problem.
Namely, we don’t repent. Ever, really. It’s as if repentance - looking back to face, declare, and seek to address or repair the real consequences of our sins (national OR personal) - is intrinsically opposed to the American psyche and ethos. A people forever fixated upon the future, the perceived promise of the frontier, and blindly enamored with the myth of our shining meritocracy, we are hard pressed to look backward (or corporately inward) at ALL. History holds little interest for us, even if that “history” is mere moments removed from the present. So, always another tragedy, never the time to talk about it. Don’t clutter the moment with data, with introspection, with calls for things like policy reform. Systems are exhausting to decipher, and even more so to correct. Besides, there are idols in the ointment, here. That’s a can of worms we simply don’t have the will to crack open and face.
And so, with each new everyday tragedy come the predictable, desperate, if sporadic shouts into the yawing abyss of our ever-absent resolve: “No more!”, “Never again!”. We say these things; they are sentiments we may even FEEL, while never truly believing. Because we know, deep down, that to bring about a different world would first require different actions, and we in no way intend to DO anything differently. Our shouts: empty gestures of feigned moral outrage, devoid of power because they are divorced from repentance.
Considering the Prophets, it strikes me that in scripture the people of God come under the judgement of God for two main reasons: Idolatry (the worship of false gods) and Injustice (failing to care for “neighbor”, “least”, and “other” in the same manner that the Lord has so graciously cared for them and, furthermore, called them to the vocation of embodying his character and care upon the earth). Both represent violations of the Covenant between God and His people - violations, which carry with them “curses” and consequences - and one, Idolatry, is nearly always revealed to be somewhere near the root of the other, Injustice. Extrapolating outward, we could simplify and universalize this relationship by saying that, in Biblical terms, our INJUSTICE is inherently and essentially a symptom of our UNRIGHTEOUSNESS. To simplify it yet further, we could say that what we WORSHIP ultimately determines how we LIVE.
And so it follows: there is no pathway to genuine, just and righteous living divorced from the facing, and dethroning, of our idols. And there’s the rub. Because, in the United States, we’re quite fond of our idols, to be honest.
Our idols: of human/physical/military strength, of nationalism and “American Exceptionalism”, of individualism and libertinism, of violence and retributive “justice”, of whiteness and privilege, of capitalism and cash, of sex and masculinity and power, of political party and the self-reinforcing, tribal narratives thereof… One could go on. We’ve got idols.
And this is why, in my estimation, we live in the intractable, increasingly partisan logjam that passes for “discourse” around the life-and-death issues of our day: we’ve ALL got idols, but no one can abide a light shown on theirs. Our idols defend themselves against revelation at all costs; violently, if necessary. Any new input which might question or threaten the delicate, often logically inconsistent matrix of our own given blend of worship and worldview is attacked, deflected, smeared, or dismissed outright. We’re not simply dealing with differences in lifestyle choices or opinions on public policy, here. There are idols in the ointment. And those idols stand opposed to our fearless self reflection and genuine repentance. For in repentance, idolatry faces its undoing.
And so it strikes me: This is the precisely the conversation wherein the CHURCH of Jesus Christ here in these United States should find itself uniquely qualified to model and lead. We are, ostensibly, a people of grace, BIRTHED out of repentance, are we not? “Repent”, Jesus has exhorted us, “And believe the Good News.” But we do not lead. We do not repent, because in truth we do not believe. And to press yet further, it is because the idols of our culture are all too often stacked as high within the walls of the church as they are in the halls of our political, tribal powers. To us, too, the prophets may declare: that If the Church today be found guilty of collusion with ( or active tolerance of ) the fruits of injustice and violence, we may be sure there is idolatry not far from the root. And we have been duly warned: for idolatry, there comes a reckoning.
Idols have always demanded blood.