Today’s Scripture Reading (August 23,
2015): Leviticus 8
The
phenomenon of the radicalization of believers in any religion is one that has
mystified us. Our current emphasis is on radicalized Muslims being recruited to
Isis, but it would be a mistake to believe that this is the only radicalization
that is happening. Every religion or faith that attempts to create a counter
cultural movement, a movement in a different direction from that of the
majority of the society, makes radicalization possible. Within Christianity
that radicalization often seem to take us to the extreme fundamentalist right. And
I struggle trying to understand the violence perpetrated by some Christian
groups on the far Christian right in the same way that my Muslim counterparts
fail to understand violence within their own faiths. We are just not all that
different.
This radicalization
seems to be an increased possibility when the faith group begins to see the dominating
culture as being sinful, because as a person of faith we believe that we have
to deal with sin. Homosexuality, music, movies are among the cultural elements
that many different faiths identify as serious sin in our culture, and these
create a lightning rod attracting our violent behavior – we begin to believe that
God justifies violence against the sinner, and so when we are violent, we can
begin to believe that we are simply carrying out the work of God (or Allah).
And it is in this moment that radicalization has become a reality. But it is
essentially a world dominated, not faith dominated, ideal that we are
following. It is a secular view that says that we must take care of sin by
attacking the person we believe is guilty of the sin. When we perpetuate
violence as the solution to spiritual problems, we have left the faith and
joined with the beliefs of the world at large. Yet this is exactly what seems
to happen – especially within a radicalized faith.
And as much
as the sacrificial system seems a little archaic to us today, it was designed
to take the violence that might otherwise be visited on each other – and hopefully
stop the radicalization of the faith. In this instance, Moses stood in the
place of the High Priest, but after this it would always be the High Priest who
would offer the sacrifice. And Aaron and his sons came as the offenders, the
ones guilty of the sin. Sin always results in some kind of punishment. But in
this case, the violence would be borne by the bull.
The passage
says that Aaron and his sons laid hands on the bull, but a better description
might be that they pressed down on the bull – that they impressed upon the
animal their sins. The bull became the substitute, and we sometimes still really
seem to need one.
In our
contemporary society the image is often lost, but the sacrificial system would
become an important cultural element in the society. The sacrifice took the sin
and allowed the person to function normally in their day to day lives,
hopefully without violence being brought on them because of their own failures.
The debt was paid and the book of wrongs was closed until the next sacrifice.
But, unfortunately,
the reality is that the sacrificial system failed on almost every point,
including its desire to stop the radicalization of the Jewish faith. In New
Testament times, the Zealots and, to a certain extent, the Pharisees seem to
have functioned as radicalized Jews. And the result of the radicalization was
the destruction of the temple in Rome in 70 C.E. But by this time the Christian
Church had begun to believe in the perfect sacrifice which could bring a
perfect peace – Jesus Christ. And the truth is that for Christianity to become
radicalized, first we have to demote Jesus to a lesser status in our thoughts –
because he continues to stand between us and the violence we would bring onto
the world. A radicalized Christian has to be one who has forgotten the
sacrifice that Jesus made for this world – and that is simply something that
none of us can afford to forget.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Leviticus 9
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