“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.”
A Basic Misconception
“In other words, the judgment of God in these matters was not a blind rage, but rather exquisitely just. And the other nations that were wiped out—what were they actually like? We have a controversy with God, and so we assume that they were all peaceful little Canaanites, flowers in their hairs, dancing in green meadows to the music of pan flutes. But that is not what they were like at all.”
The Sacrifice That Hides
“The ‘right’ to dismember a child is touted as an individual right, but it is actually the cornerstone of a particular view of civilization. We have to slaughter millions of children in order to be able to hide from ourselves the fact that we are slaughtering millions of children. We have to shed blood so that we will not come to know that we are a bloody people. Our shedding of blood is a vain attempt to cove up the fact that we are shedding blood.”