Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 488-490). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Prior to the domestication of the horse, plunder had been unrewarding, since one was forced to carry the loot on one’s own back. The horse and the wheel suddenly made conquest fantastically lucrative. And plunder included the seizure of desirable females as slaves, concubines, wives, and sexual toys (male captives were unreliable, and so were generally killed). The numerical excess of females depreciated the value of all females, and the system of patriarchy was either born or sharply expanded. 2 As warfare became the central preoccupation of states, taxation became necessary in order to support a standing army, a warrior caste, and an aristocracy. After 3000 B.C.E. we encounter evidence of warfare on a grand scale. Social systems became rigidly hierarchical, authoritarian, and patriarchal. Women were deprived of the right both to speak their minds and to control their bodies. The earliest documented effort to establish basic legal rights for citizens, Urukagina’s edict (c. 2300 B.C.E., Mesopotamia ), declares, “If a woman speaks … disrespectfully to a man, that woman’s mouth is crushed with a fired brick.”
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 494-503). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
This Myth of Redemptive Violence is the real myth of the modern world. It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 528-529). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The biblical myth in Genesis 1 is diametrically opposed to all this . (Gen. 1, it should be noted, was developed in Babylon during the Jewish captivity there as a direct rebuttal to the Babylonian myth.) The Bible portrays a good God who creates a good creation. Chaos does not resist order. Good is prior to evil. Neither evil nor violence is a part of the creation, but enter later, as a result of the first couple’s sin and the connivance of the serpent (Gen. 3). A basically good reality is thus corrupted by free decisions reached by creatures. In this far more complex and subtle explanation of the origins of things, violence emerges for the first time as a problem requiring solution.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 567-572). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The implications are clear: human beings are created from the blood of a murdered god . Our very origin is violence. Killing is in our genes. Humanity is not the originator of evil, but merely finds evil already present and perpetuates it. Our origins are divine, to be sure, since we are made from a god, but from the blood of an assassinated god. We are the outcome of deicide. Human beings are thus naturally incapable of peaceful coexistence. Order must continually be imposed upon us from on high: men over women, masters over slaves, priests over laity, aristocrats over peasants, rulers over people. Unquestioning obedience is the highest virtue, and order the highest religious value. Nor are we created to subdue the earth and have dominion over it as God’s regents; we exist but to serve as slaves of the gods and of their earthly regents.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 579-585). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The psychodynamics of the TV cartoon or comic book are marvelously simple: children identify with the good guy so that they can think of themselves as good. This enables them to project out onto the bad guy their own repressed anger, violence , rebelliousness, or lust, and then vicariously to enjoy their own evil by watching the bad guy initially prevail. This segment of the show— the “Tammuz” element, where the hero suffers— actually consumes all but the closing minutes, allowing ample time for indulging the violent side of the self. When the good guy finally wins, viewers are then able to reassert control over their own inner tendencies, repress them, and reestablish a sense of goodness without coming to any insight about their own inner evil. The villain’s punishment provides catharsis; one forswears the villain’s ways and heaps condemnation on him in a guilt-free orgy of aggression. Salvation is found through identification with the hero.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 611-618). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Another form this myth takes in American culture is the western. Here the heroic gunfighter settles old scores by shootouts, never by due process of law. The law, in fact, is suspect, too weak to prevail in the conditions of near anarchy that fiction has misrepresented as the Wild West. The gun-fighter must take matters into his own hands, just as, in the anarchic situation of the big city, a beleaguered citizen finally rises up against the crooks and muggers and creates justice out of the barrel of a gun (the movie Dirty Harry and, in real life, Bernhard Goetz).
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 623-627). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The myth of redemptive violence is the simplest, laziest, most exciting, uncomplicated, irrational, and primitive depiction of evil the world has ever known. Furthermore, its orientation toward evil is one into which virtually all modern children (boys especially) are socialized in the process of maturation. Children select this mythic structure because they have already been led, by culturally reinforced cues and role models, to resonate with its simplistic view of reality. Its presence everywhere is not the result of a conspiracy of Babylonian priests secretly buying up the mass media with Iraqi oil money , but a function of values endlessly reinforced by the Domination System. By making violence pleasurable, fascinating, and entertaining, the Powers are able to delude people into compliance with a system that is cheating them of their very lives. Once children have been indoctrinated into the expectations of a dominator society, they may never outgrow the need to locate all evil outside themselves. Even as adults they tend to scapegoat others (the Commies, the Americans, the gays, the straights, the blacks, the whites, the liberals, the conservatives) for all that is wrong in the world. They continue to depend on group identification and the upholding of social norms for a sense of well-being.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 660-670). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
An even more significant aspect of the myth of redemptive violence is its contribution to international conflict. In this myth, the survival and welfare of the nation becomes the highest earthly and heavenly good. Here, a Power is made absolute. There can be no other gods before the nation. Not only does this myth establish a patriotic religion at the heart of the state, it gives divine sanction to that nation’s imperialism. The myth of redemptive violence thus serves as the spirituality of militarism. By divine right the state has the power to demand that its citizens sacrifice their lives to maintain the privileges enjoyed by the few. By divine decree it utilizes violence to cleanse the world of enemies of the state. Wealth and prosperity are the right of those who rule in such a state. And the name of God— any god, the Christian God included— can be invoked as having specially blessed and favored the supremacy of the chosen nation and its ruling caste.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 703-710). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The myth of redemptive violence serves as the inner spirituality of the national security state. It provides divine legitimation for the suppression of poor people everywhere, and the extraction of wealth from the poorer nations.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 716-717). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
That it is a privilege to engage in God’s wars is clearly seen in the Psalms, perhaps nowhere better than in Ps. 149: 5– 7, where the saints sing for joy on their beds while they contemplate warring against God’s enemies, or Ps. 58: 10, “The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.” Those who cannot say “Amen” to such sentiments have not yet learned to think God’s thoughts after him… . We have no problem rejoicing in His judgments, or in seeing it a privilege to be called to execute them… . The righteous … are called by God’s law to exercise a holy “violence” against certain of the wicked, thereby manifesting God’s wrath.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 731-737). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
As one man put it at an Ohio church meeting during a debate on freezing the deployment of nuclear missiles, “You’ve got to remember: we are Christians, but we’re Americans first.” Put it to the test; which would cause the greater outcry, removing the American flag from your church sanctuary or removing the cross?
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 740-742). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Why, for example, do American blue-collar workers, who are among those most victimized by the ruling elite, continue not only to support their oppressors but to be among their most vociferous fans? (A majority voted for Ronald Reagan, for example, who rewarded them with declining real income while handing the wealthiest five percent the largest tax break in the nation’s history.) One reason they put up with it is the promise of salvation. The myth of redemptive violence offers salvation through identification with the modern Marduk and his earthly regents.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 742-746). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Salvation through identification: whether it be in cartoon shows or westerns or confrontations with foreign powers , one’s personal well-being is tied inextricably to the fortunes of the hero-leader. Right and wrong scarcely enter the picture. Everything depends on victory, where one has the thrill of belonging to a nation capable of imposing its will on other nations. For the alternative— ownership of one’s own evil and acknowledgment of God in the enemy— is for many simply too alien a concept. This longing to identify with a winner was glaringly evident after the Gulf War. Quite apart from the rightness or wrongness of that war, the orgy of euphoria that the public expressed in the United States victory was revealing. Theologian Michael Novak declared on National Public Radio that we should all thank God that so few died in the fighting. He was apparently referring to the 148 or so Americans who were killed in the enterprise. At that point the casualty estimate for the Iraqis was 100,000, all of them children of God loved infinitely by their Creator.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 752-759). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The myth of redemptive violence is, in short, nationalism become absolute. This myth speaks for God; it does not listen for God to speak. It invokes the sovereignty of God as its own; it does not entertain the prophetic possibility of radical judgment by God. It misappropriates the language, symbols, and scriptures of Christianity. It does not seek God in order to change; it embraces God in order to prevent change. Its God is not the impartial ruler of all nations but a tribal god worshiped as an idol. Its metaphor is not the journey but the fortress. Its symbol is not the cross but the crosshairs of a gun. Its offer is not forgiveness but victory. Its good news is not the unconditional love of enemies but their final elimination. Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy. It usurps the revelation of God’s purposes for humanity in Jesus. It is blasphemous. It is idolatrous. And it is immensely popular.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 767-773). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
I believe that Jesus’ gospel is the most powerful antidote to the myth of redemptive violence that the world has ever known.
Wink, Walter (2010-02-19). The Powers That Be (Kindle Locations 780-781). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
2010TPTBWW
