As if the event itself weren't painful enough, little bits of theological lunacy always seem to cling to days like that of the Sandy Hook Massacre. I'm thinking of two right now, though there are always more.
The
first should be easily dispelled by any thinking person of faith. The second
seems more difficult to shed.
Following
a similarly dark day years ago, I can remember the date and time that I
rejected this nonsense that “everything is part of God’s plan.” This blasphemy
images God like some sort of callous puppet-master who manipulates the course
of these horrific events in order to “teach a lesson” to some sinners whose
lives are, apparently, more valuable than those sacrificed in order to teach
them. The strength of this theological worldview is its convenience. Its
weakness is its god. Any god for whom this constitutes a “plan” is not a god
worth worshipping.
If
you haven’t already done so, please dismiss any thought of this calculating,
puppet-master god quickly and unceremoniously.
But when you do so make sure you have access to another image of God to
fill the void. I fear that much of our culture has rightly shed the
puppet-master god but at the expense of any thought of God whatsoever. It’s
much easier to unthink God than to rethink God.
I
say I fear this not because I’m silly enough to think that the “secularization”
of our culture is the problem (whatever that means, exactly) or that all human
brokenness could be fixed if we’d just “allow God in schools” by posting the
ten-commandments in the hallway or some other nonsense. Such a sentiment
assumes, in the most theologically naïve way, that the human heart can be
changed by what, in Lutheran theology, we call Law. Most of the Bible’s
thickness is devoted to the fact that this doesn’t work. The Law would be great
if it truly cured what is ailing humanity, but it doesn’t. Something else is
needed, namely Gospel…namely Jesus, God’s rash and irresponsible message of
unconditional love to the world.
It’s
because of Jesus that I’m only still learning, myself, to shed another
common explanation for the perversity of human evil, one that is equally false
but even more convenient and, for that reason, even more difficult to shed. A
succinct version of it was given to me by a trusted elder at a time when I was
younger and much more naïve. He said, “You know, there are two kinds of people
in this world: those who litter and those who clean it up.”
I was quite attracted to this worldview. Who wouldn’t be? I, of course,
must be one of the litter cleaner uppers, if not on a global average, then
certainly when compared to some of the worst litterers that come to mind.
Right?
And that’s why this explanation isn’t going away anytime soon, because
it’s just so darned convenient. Bad things happen because that other half of
humanity is bad. If I’m feeling optimistic, maybe the bad portion is just a
small fraction of humanity and most of us are basically good. If pessimistic,
maybe just me, “my church,” and a few of my closest family and friends are good
while most of humanity is going to hell in a handbasket. The size of the groups
doesn’t really matter. It only matters that this clever aphorism allows one
group, mine, to distance itself from the other and avoid any implication in the
darkness and violence that so obviously plagues the world.
It’s
convenient to think that only the one or two most immediate culprits are to
blame for such horrific days as we experienced last week—that, for instance,
this event is completely disconnected from my support of an entertainment
industry and media culture that cheapens life and glamorizes violence, or the
laughable fraction of the money I earn that goes to the mental health system as
compared with weapons development, or that I personally have spent a lifetime
not reaching out and showing Christ’s love to individuals who are at risk for
violent behavior.
Of
course, I can think through all of this in my head…but in my gut…before long, a
few images from the last week flash before me once again, and here comes that
visceral response I know so well. My face gets hot, my own blood-thirst wells
up inside of me. Forgiveness is a nice thought. But this is real life. Forgiveness?
Not for this. Not for this. For this, the only solution is the oldest law known
to humanity, the rudiment of all Law. One eye for one eye. One tooth for one
tooth. Show me the sicko. I’ll do it myself.
…And
there it is. That darkness that has plagued humanity for millennia has crept
into my very own soul. Of course, like Saul the murderer before he became Paul
the preacher, I’ll try to confuse the issue. I’ll justify myself and continue
to distance myself and will even convince many that my own inner violence is of
a completely different kind, perhaps even an admirable kind. “Well, that
monster is a cold blooded killer. I’m simply executing the wrath of God.”
What
eye for eye logic has going for it is at least the semblance of perfect
justice. What could be more equitable than identical recompense for any
violence committed? And, theoretically, it seems quite possible that the threat
of equal and opposite retribution should deter future violence, right? What it
has going against it is that it has never worked, and it never will.
…
Jesus
tried another option, one that is so stupid and so naïve that it wouldn’t even
be worth trying except that the other thing we’ve tried hasn’t ever worked
either. He abdicated the sensible solution that we all expected of a Messiah,
using violence (judiciously and sensibly applied, of course) in order to make
for less violence.
Instead,
he died. Peter took out a sword and tried the “stand your ground” method. But
not Jesus. He responded to our world’s violence by dying, dying by our very own
hand…and, at the same time, dying with us like a husband who, sick of seeing
his bride suffer from a chronic disease, would gladly take the disease onto
himself. The shorthand for his ridiculous alternative to the sensible and just
application of law is “the way of the cross.”
Of
course, our societies reflexively feel threatened by “the way of the cross.”
Predictably, someone will stand up at this point and say, “Here in the real world (apparently, not the one in
which Jesus lived) having no means of punishing or retaliating will give
criminals free reign. Just forgiving and turning the other cheek willy-nilly
will cause whole societies to spin out uncontrollably into a violent chaos.”
On
the other hand, the innocent one hanging there on the cross confronts us with
the fact that perhaps we had already spun out uncontrollably into a violent
chaos under our law. In fact, it was our law that crucified him.
Jesus
was put to death because he had the audacity to claim that the deeper hitch in
our otherwise reasonable logic—that if they,
out there, are littering, then we,
over here, have to clean it up—had little to do with the litter and had
everything to do with the “we” and the “they.”
We
were expecting a messiah who would come down hard on that bad half of humanity.
Instead we got one who died. Free grace is a grossly unpopular idea. It always
has been. People have been crucified for even suggesting it. The world can be a
horrific place. We want eyes and teeth, dammit!
Once
we realized what had happened, the sun went black. We bawled and mourned and,
that following Saturday, we began looking for someone to blame. “They
crucified him. They’re the litterers.
The chaos won. Now let us take to arms and try no more naïve experiments with
love.”
Such
is the wisdom of Holy Saturday.
But
the story doesn’t end there.
