“Preaching a propitiatory sacrifice is something that disrupts the way of the world. It unhinges how the world works. It gets in the way; it jams the signal. It cuts of the power that makes all the machinery in Satan’s factories hum so nicely.”
Going On All the Time
“This is the kind of thing have when you have two men, the best of friends, calling in love with the same girl. It happens when you have twin brothers wanting the favor or blessing of their father or the rule of the city. It happens when one church is enormously blessed where the other church across town ‘should have been.’”
The Way of the Old World
“Mimetic rivalry and conflict have taken root in that society as the ultimate contagion, and the hostility ratchets steadily upward. The ‘old way’ of dealing with this was to allow the crowd to spontaneously choose a victim, in whose guilt they had to absolutely believe. They killed or exile this person in a spasm of righteousness, and the cathartic effect takes effect. Peace is restored. It is fitting that one man die for the sake of the people, as one operator of this system once put it.”
VIrgins and Volcanoes
“We are living two millennia after Jesus died. Victimage still goes on, certainly, but not the robust way it did back when respectable people could still throw virgins into volcanoes” ().
And It Does Too
“One time many years ago, I went to a football game with my father. We entered the dome, where all the fans were whooping and hollering and carrying on, and my dad looked around—with a true instinct for this kind of thing—and said, ‘Well, it beats a public hanging.’”
Grabbing for the Same Thing
“Two toddlers in one room wanting the same shiny toy come into conflict. There is no conflict between either of those two toddlers and a dog across town, the one playing with a stick. Two similar individuals want the same thing. One of them gets there first, and the fact that he clearly wants that object makes the silver medalist want it even more. The winner sees that the runner-up wants it, and this makes him cling to his prize all the more. A mimetic loop, a mimetic escalation, occurs. Conflict is the inevitable result.”
Without Admitting It
“If we reject the substitution of Jesus, then we will continue in the ways of killing in order that we might hide from ourselves the fact that we are killing all the time.”
Seeing the Blow Land
“That is what the substitutionary atonement of Christ did in history—it made all other sacrifices impotent, precisely to the extent that it was a real sacrifice. That is what penal substitution was for.”
The Importance of And
“The real problem, the problem of justice and heaven, is resolved in the cross. Christ died as a blood atonement so that God could be both just and the one who justifies. God could be just and send us all to Hell. He could be the one who justifies and let us all into Heaven on a boys-will-be-boys basis. But in order to be both just and the one who justifies, Christ had to bleed. And that is our final theodicy. Christ is the one who bled.”
Not Even Close to Innocent
“If we were a race of innocents, and some arbitrary and capricious god were flipping coins to determine who would be lost and who saved, then there might be something to talk about. But we are not a race of innocents. Look around.”