The word scandal is unfortunately common in Christian circles, but much of the modern use is not in line with the scriptural use. Our use refers to something important, but we sometimes think that we have handled the biblical doctrine of scandal (and it is a central doctrine) simply because we have dealt with our own “scandals.”
Here are the two kinds of scandals. The common kind occurs when a congregation, group, community, whatever is toodling along, minding its own business, and some kind of drastic and “scandalous” sin erupts. Everybody has to deal with the aftermath of it, and there is a big mess. In the church, this happens when the youth pastor runs off with the choir director’s wife. In a nation, it happens when the number two guy at Homeland Security is discovered to have been on the payroll of Al Qaida. In this kind of situation, some kind of high profile wrong-doing suddenly intrudes itself into the life of that society. People are scandalized, deal with the problem (rightly or wrongly), and move on.
But in the biblical worldview, scandal is caused by the intrusion of righteousness, not unrighteousness, occurring in such a way as to reveal the violent and self-righteous basis for that culture’s existence. This is why the cross is a scandal.
The former situation is in effect when a peaceful church is upended by some dramatic sin, and everyone is upset, but almost no one is confused. Everybody knows that it was wrong for so-and-so to have done thus-and-such. But the latter kind of scandal is almost certainly in effect when controversy, conflict, disputings, all of which make no sense, appear to be escalating without any sense of rationality at all. Almost everyone wants to know what is going on. “Surely this can’t be it?” Nevertheless, the cycle of conflict continues to ratchet upwards. What is causing this?
In what follows, I am greatly indebted to the insights of Rene Girard, who tied together for me a number of smaller biblical themes I have understood in isolation for some time now, but which I had never put together in any integrated way. If you want a good introduction to some of Girard’s insights, check out I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. But of course, in recommending his work, I am not going along with everything he says. Every author should be read with discernment. But for all that, Girard remains richly rewarding.
In the first scenario I described, the procedure that is outlined in Matthew 18 makes some kind of contextual sense. A man leaves his wife and kids, he is confronted by a friend, then by two or three witnesses, and so on. You are dealing with a discrete sin that has handles on it.
But how are we to understand the “hopelessly tangled” controversy involving scores or hundreds of people? What are we to do when the engines of the conflict seem to be invisible? Where is the energy for this disruption coming from? Many churches have gone through a dark time, a church split, a meltdown on the part of some of the members, or variant of any of the above, where every overture of peace makes things worse, where every blessing to some is taken by others as a violent insult, where plain reason makes no difference, where people switch sides in apparently irrational ways, where the closer the parties are to each other the more violent the conflict, and so on.
What Girard does so effectively is make the invisible engine visible. What drives this sort of thing? A good way to describe this is to juxtapose the tenth commandment and a comment from James the apostle. The tenth commandment says that we are not to covet anything that belongs to our neighbor, and James asks and answers a basic question for us. “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” (Jas. 4:1). Where does conflict come from? It comes from imitative desire.
The second greatest commandment, to love my neighbor as myself, is a summary of the second table of the law, commandments five through ten. Commandments five through ten culminate in the tenth commandment which prohibits the only thing which would make disobedience five through nine even possible. And that would be desire for what belongs to my neighbor, and it is desired because my neighbor has it. Who has not seen two toddlers playing in a room, where the floor is covered with toys. One of them goes over and picks up a toy in the corner that has been untouched all morning. Suddenly the second toddler has to have it, and the reason he has to have it is because his neighbor now has it. Before his neighbor had it, he didn’t want it. This is imitative desire.
Another way of putting it is that all my ethical duties are to be fulfilled with regard to God in the first place, and my neighbor in the second. The position of my neighbor in biblical ethics is profoundly important. And the closer I am to him, the more likely it is that I will be tempted to covet, want, and desire his stuff. Sometimes the desires are material; men want their neighbor’s car, or house, or wife, all of which are certainly prohibited in the commandment. But the commandment goes on to cover everything — “or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Dt. 5:21). This is where the source of the conflict can become difficult to see, because often my neighbor is in possession of certain blessings from God that are intangible. But the fact that they are intangible does not keep an envious neighbor from wanting them violently, even if he cannot see them. Some of the intangibles that are desperately wanted, or in the language of Deuteronomy, coveted, are things like a good relationship with a father, happiness, status, the position of being the firstborn, easy-going respectability, good looks, good fortune, etc.
So where does crazy, inexplicable conflict come from? “Ye lust, and have not” (Jas. 4:2). I have counseled people before who were gracious, kind people, well-thought of, obviously under the blessing of God, and their problem was a irrationally snarky sister, let us say. And the better they were to her, the worse it got. Where does this come from? It comes from lust, imitative desire. Not lust in the sexual sense, but a deeper, more profound lust, of which sexual lust is just a subset. This is the lust — the fundamental carnal desire — to be friends with the world (Jas. 4:4).
James goes on. “Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God . . .” (Jas. 4:5-7a). This is the kicker, because after James analyzes the problem for us, what he tells us to do with it will only (at least in the short run) make things worse.
If someone is the recipient of a host of gracious intangibles, what is the result if his neighbor “wants” those? The result is inescapable conflict. And in many cases it is conflict that cannot be erased because the gracious intangibles cannot be abandoned. If God is blessing someone, then God is blessing him, envious neighbors or not. What could Joseph have done to keep his brothers from being in conflict with him? Keep quiet about his dream, you say? I used to think that, but have come to see that the problems between him and his brothers were so deep, and so much the brothers’ problem, it would have come out somehow. The blessing of God cannot be hidden away for the sake of the carping and envious onlookers.
Note what James tells us. There is conflict in the world that comes from lust, desire, envy. He says that the spirit in man tends this way. This is not an occasional problem for the occasional person. It is pervasive and we all have to deal with it. But God intervenes in our lives, and He gives “more grace.” There are two kinds of people in the world. Both kinds are sinners, but one of them has received the kindness, forgivness, acceptance, and blessing of God. The other category remains in sin, and God resists the proud, meaning that He does not give grace to them. He gives grace to the humble, those who submit themselves to God. Now if the initial problem was caused by a proud man envying the grace that had been given to another, what will happen if the gracious man understands this grace of God, and submits to it further, humbling himself? God will give more grace. And the proud is now in the position of being resisted by God. This, in terms of the conflict, will only make things worse.
The more obviously God pours out His blessing, the worse it will get, at least for a time. In the case of Joseph’s brothers, they finally came to repentance when the grace of God in Joseph’s life was overwhelming. But this was also the grace of God in their lives. Prior to that intervention of God for their blessing, any blessings for Joseph did nothing but exasperate the situation.
The ultimate example of this, of course, is the treatment that Jesus received. Never has a human being been so blessed by the Spirit of the Lord as He was. Never man spoke as He did. Never had the blessing of God been so evident in anyone, anywhere. And what happened to Him? Him continuing to live in human society was obviously intolerable.
This reveals that “worldliness” consists of a profound commitment to resist and suppress the truth of how righteous scandal reveals the emptiness and deceitfulness of the world. This is why the cross is the ultimate scandal, according to St. Paul. All secular cultures and civilizations are built on violence and murder, deceitfully covered up. From Oedipus to Romulus, to the tombs of the prophets built by Christ’s Pharisaical opponents, civilized respectability hates any intrusions by the grace of God.
And when the grace of God is poured out in any place, one of the first things that happens is that reactionaries start to marshall their forces in order to attack and suppress things that nobody in their right minds could be against. Why must these people be suppressed as enemies of “our way of life?” All kinds of trumped up charges are alleged, and circulated widely. The early Christians were accused of incest and cannibalism. We have seen the same kind of thing here. One of the funniest charges leveled against us here in Moscow was the charge that everybody in our church was forced to make his own toothbrush. Where is all this coming from? The charges are one thing, the reasons for them are another. The reason for them is the appearance of blessing in human communities.
One other thing needs to be said. The grace of God is grace. In other words, there is no foundation in it for boasting anywhere. The ones attacking often do so because you “think you are better than everybody else. You have that holier-than-thou smirk.” To protest that no, it is all a gift from God only inflames the resentment further. “So why did God give you all that, and give me this?” Christians often think that if their blessings were the result of their own work, that would be the cause of the world’s enmity. No, then the enmity would cease. The cause of the bitterness is the sovereign, efficacious, infinitely kind grace of God. Persuade an unregenerate enemy that you really don’t deserve any of what you currently enjoy and he will only hate you more. Persuade him that you did it all yourself and he will probably let you be — because maybe he could accomplish it to.
In short, when St. James tells us where conflict comes from, he is not talking about the relatively rare kind of conflict, where two men fight over a parking spot, two women over a man, or two dogs over a bone. These are examples of what he was addressing, but they are only the most obvious examples. James is teaching is about all conflicts, and in particularly, I believe he is explaining the mysterious conflicts to us, the ones we don’t understand.