With A Few of My Friends at the March For Our Lives Rally and March in Orlando 

Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian

June 10, 2022

God and Our Violence

“The dream that in heaven people who hear the law bless them instead of a preacher curse them was itself the origin of enthusiasm’s original sin” (Luther’s Outlaw God: Vol. 2: Hidden in the Cross,  Steven Paulson, 2019)

Original Sin is not disobeying the law but rather is using the law, by our action, to be blessed by it, by the Law, by God (God is the Law). 

If we can rather than that application of the law, our use of the law to fulfill our dream of beatitude, do this: know, see, realize that the law never blesses, it only curses, then we have come to the tipping point, the fulcrum of faith. Only Promise provides relief from the imposition of the demand(s) of God, whether real or imagined it matters not, upon us. The violation of our personal autonomy and agency sends us reeling and railing and turning to rebellion against the God who hems us in by deciding, without regard for merit or demerit, who is in and who is out (the “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” of Exodus 33:19). There is no using of the law for any purpose in building or maintaining a relationship with God. 

I want to draw a connection between this view of Original Sin and Crossan’s look at Exodus 4 where sin is the turn to and the use of violence (How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation, John Dominic Crossan, 2015). Could it be this: that we normally view the turn to violence as one of two options for us. The other option is non-violence. But what if that is a false narrative or false choice? What if we have no choice in the matter – we cannot not, we will not not, turn to violence. It’s what we do. It’s innate. It’s what we do: we rise up and kill because somebody is standing in the way of our autonomous station, place, being. Thus the Adam and Eve account is not a story of a magical land that we can return to once we only get to obeying again like we once did (even if today the obedience is in the form of a belief statement or Creed). It is rather an accounting, a description, of what only is and perpetually is and always has been a rebellion against God’s sovereign and immutable will. There is no Garden where the uprising doesn’t occur. There is only the Garden where the uprising happens. Thus, too, our violence in our homes, schools, and streets should not surprise us as if it’s an anomaly, a strike against a better human nature.

The move to non-violence is not an option for us to choose. We simply will not do that because it means the death of our agency. This non-violence must be imposed, put upon us, and we must be schooled in how to live it out. This is holy spirit work, the work of God, upon us. The Sacrament of Baptism is thus an entry into God’s transforming work on us that imposes non-violence upon us. 

The relationship of this imposition of non-violence that kills violence, the gift of the Holy Spirit, can then be seen in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus arrived non-violently to eliminate the violence of the world. Instead, of course, the violence killed him. The violence will out. It will always out, and is only defeated when it has no place left to go, no one left to kill. And so Jesus defeats violence by letting it have its way with him. This is not some salvation formula. This is simply the way of God. 

Will we follow this way? No, we will not. But God takes us there, puts us there (Colossians 1:13). God will out. And nothing will hinder God. This is the good news that mere mortals discover in Jesus Christ.