Lie #2 – Violence Is Necessary

from Helena Sorenson Aman:

Lie #2: “Violence is necessary.”

Necessary for punishment, necessary for redemption. Necessary because we don’t understand, don’t wake up, until someone has died. Because the greatest act of love in human history, purportedly, was an act of violence. Because God’s big plan for saving the world is to show up in the sky, guns blazing, and commit an obscene act of violence against the bad guys. You know, *them.* The ones who have to die to make the world a better place. Because violence is necessary.

Right?

I was in my thirties before I learned that hundreds of millions of Eastern Orthodox Christians do not believe God murdered his son to pay a debt that God, in his raging perfection, demanded. They believe God came to earth and refused to fight back against his government; that he submitted, in love, to humanity. And we killed him. Because in order to maintain control, in order to silence the voices that threaten the systems we built, violence is necessary.

Right?

Anyway, I was weaned on violence. Old Testament battles and genocides, rapes and beheadings, foreskins on a string (do you remember that story?). God’s instruction to slay your enemies down to the last sheep, the last infant. I took it all in like good medicine, like swallowed thistles, like seeds ready to fall into the fertile soil of the truth that I was made in the image of God. So that I could grow up to be just like my Father, to claim my birthright, to sign God’s name on my acts of bloodlust and call it holy. Because it’s a war, my friends, and Christians are soldiers. And violence is necessary.

Isn’t it?