A Bad Story makes Victims of us all
What if the winners and the losers are both victims of a bad story? What if the story of dominating, coercive power, might-makes-right is the social milieu in which we have been pickled?
I bristle when I encounter religious fundamentalists and their legalism. I bristle when I encounter for lack of a better descriptor, progressives, who can be just as nasty and legalistic as the fundies they resist. In the words of the modern psalmist Pete Townsend:
“Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss.”
In what seems as an increasingly polarized world many are left sensing we only have two options - this side or that. We are somehow required to be all in on one side or the other. No middle ground. No shades of grey. You’re in or you’re out. Winner or loser. Villain or victim. In championing our side we are required to demonize the other. Lies and part truths, falsely characterize and dehumanize. Then we don’t have to listen, we don’t have to be curious, we don’t have to care.
We can even feel justified and self-righteous while doing so.
In a binary world, an illusionary world created by stories of dominating power there are only winners and losers. But never you mind, because whoever is playing the role of the winner at any particular time inevitably employs the same tools of the principality - although some are better adorned than others.
But what if the winners and the losers are both victims of a bad story? What if the story of dominating, coercive power, might-makes-right is the social milieu in which we have been pickled? What if in the brine of the deeply entrenched domination story our humanity has been arrested in a perpetual loop of coercive power and its violence?
Back to our psalmist:
“There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are effaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight”
What if even those who claim to walk the Way, the way of love have not escaped the gravity of the black hole of this story?
What if those who claim to have insight into the God-who-is-love still tell the same old story? Or worse yet, tell a new better story with shouts of hallelujah but still behave as if they are stuck in the old story?
“Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss.”
Jesus simply refused to play the game of this age. Jesus turned this dominating power story on its head. Jesus came announcing a new story. A story of equitable, self-giving, uncontrolling Love. Jesus championed the poor and the victimized, and he also championed the oppressors towards a change of heart. No one is a write-off to the God of unrelenting love.
Wait! What?!
The domination story twists our sense of justice. It’s not really about justice, it’s about punishment. It’s about suffering - a guess-timate of suffering that is commensurate with the suffering they inflicted. However, even suffering in torment for an eternity will never satisfy justice of the domination story.
Justice in the story of Love is restorative, healing, and whole-making for both the victim and the offender. Love asks questions like: What happened to you that you are this way? Why are you so afraid? So angry? What story have you bought into? Come, let’s work this out. Let’s get you moving toward wholeness.
Love says from the cross, Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.
Love has compassion for the offender/the bully without in any way condoning their often terrible behaviour or forsaking or diminishing the experiences of the victim.
The story of the God-who-is-Love is that radical. The Love of God is that seismically profound, in ways that can only be described as a new creation - a new way of being human.
So please, Love! And for the love of God don’t substitute a few good theological ideas about love thinking you are actually loving. Resist the temptation to weaponize these ideas - that’s the wrong story! There’s a better story, one of radically inclusive and whole-making Love. A story where in Love, we all belong and can find home.
amen