A Sound of Sheer Silence

I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope. So, as I terrorize Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls. I will let them believe they can survive so that you can watch them clamoring over each other to "stay in the sun." You can watch me torture an entire city and when you have truly understood the depth of your failure, we will fulfill Ra's al Ghul's destiny... We will destroy Gotham and then, when it is done and Gotham is ashes, then you have my permission to die. ****************** We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you... the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere. Do as you please. Start by storming Blackgate, and freeing the oppressed! Step forward those who would serve. For an army will be raised. The powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests, and cast out into the cold world that we know and endur...

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am a hardcore devotee of the ideas of Rene Girard.  I've tried before to set out, in a big picture way , why I think his ideas are so important and so fruitful--not just in terms of Christianity or religion, but in general.  But those things I mentioned are big-picture concepts, and can be seen as somewhat abstract.  If you want some specific idea of Girard's, one that is directly relevant to our current political and cultural situation, I think his most trenchant idea is his discussion of the Cult of Victimhood. In Girard's analysis, the Cult of Victimhood is, though unacknowledged by its practicioners, literally a Christian heresy (or more accurately, a Judeo-Christian heresy, if one can say that).  For Girard, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ reveals to the world the mechanism of scapegoating-- a victim is selected from among the people and sacrificed in order to discharge our rivalrous, imitative desires, an...

The previous posts in this scattershot series have been looking at various issues that come up from James Alison's book The Joy of Being Wrong.   Before diving ahead with that, I figured it made sense to circle back and ask a more foundational question--why bother with any of this Girard stuff in the first place?  Why do we need some outside source to further complicate an already complicated religion that is Christianity? The simplest answer to that question is that Girardian ideas have provided the best and most comprehensive set of answers to my questions regarding how to be a Christian in our time.  And because it seems that my questions are not particularly unique to me, but questions that lots of people seem to be asking, that means that Girard is providing answers to questions that people are asking. What are those questions?  I think there are four basic questions. 1.  What Should We Do About the Violence Around Us?   2015 was a year of violen...