Creative Chaos

by André Rabe

  Consequently, when ancient tribes encountered one another it often resulted in the annihilation of one or both tribes. This cycle of violence was repeated innumerable times and became deeply encoded in the human psyche. But all across the world a solution presented itself. Instead of unrestrained violence, a new form of violence was discovered that could bring an end to the senseless chaos. Instead of a war of all against all, a war of all against one - a single victim - was much more efficient, safe, and just as satisfying.

  The insight of Genesis 3 is again so pointed. One of the most characteristic qualities of the emerging human is the tendency to blame others for the difficulty faced and the experience of guilt.

  When tensions reached a boiling point within lawless communities, violence became a cathartic release. Such a release would either come through chaotic mindless violence or the single victim mechanism - scapegoating. Because this whole process is one of projecting anger and guilt, it is easy to once again divert the focus of the anger when a scapegoat is presented. The guilt of the scapegoat is confirmed by the anger of the mob, and those who are still able to discern the situation without being blinded by anger know that the survival of the community is more important than the innocence or guilt of the scapegoat. A consensus is reached and the victim is cast out or murdered. The myths hide this process, but it is exposed in the gospel of John when “Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish’ ” (John 11:49-50). Here is revealed what the myths hide, namely the innocence of the victim. The true motivation is the preservation of the community. And for that cause, the victim is sacrificed.

  Sacred Awe

  Why is this founding sacrifice sacred? Imagine that primal moment of the first communal murder. Blind rage subsides and, as if awakening from a slumber, we begin to see the body of our victim.This is a profound moment in the emergence of consciousness. The Lamb slain from the foundation of this world is the one who calls our consciousness into a deeper recognition. It is a moment of sacred awe, for two extreme contrasts confront us. The moment of slaughter is both abhorrent and beautiful. Abhorrent for the brutal violence against one of our own; beautiful for the redemption it brought to the community. The combination of fear, mystery, and peace bring about a new sense of the sacred. Coming face to face with one so much like us, who has suffered a horrific death, makes us question: Who or what is behind this? How can I avoid such a fate? What higher justice demanded this blood? And we ask these questions because we cannot bear the truth, namely: I am behind this violence! I killed! But this is an answer we are blind to, for it would drive us insane. And so, another answer is invented. Gods of retributive justice are created so that we do not have to bear the responsibility for such horror. This is where the human narrative became deeply twisted, where the evil of violence was hidden under the symbol of sacred sacrifice, and the voice of religion was invented to drone out the gentle voice of divine love.

  When the violence of pack animals causes the death of another animal, it does not result in a sense of sacred awe but, most probably, in the consumption of the dead animal. Why would the effect be different in primitive humans? Genesis 2 gives us a clue into the development of human consciousness even before the first recorded act of violence. When Adam perceives the woman as flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, it is a moment of unique recognition. Human consciousness recognizes self in another. Our awareness of likeness, and the sacred face-to-face intimacy we can participate in, highlight a development in consciousness that would make violence more meaningful as well.

  The human story takes a dramatic turn towards violence in the event of sacrifice. Gods are born - invented to validate the “truth” of our account. These gods may be known by many different names, but any god that exists to authorize our order and our violence is nothing more than a projection of our own deceptive guilt. It is all just an elaborate scheme to suppress the truth. Jacob deceived his father, constructed a deceptive narrative, and a delusional identity. In so doing he alienated himself from his father, from his unconscious (brother) and, consequently, from himself. But these words keep on ringing: Who are you my son? This is where the human story falls short of what it is called to. Good and evil become confused, for it is obviously good to save our community but the means by which we do so is evil. We have grasped for a solution prematurely.

  The immediate effect of this cathartic violence is peace. Magical peace! The radical change of a community on the brink of utter annihilation, of a community being consumed by the monster of chaos, now transformed into stillness and peace, is perceived as nothing less than divine intervention. This is the moment in which the scapegoat is slaughtered. It confirms both the guilt of the scapegoat and the divine sanction of the violence. In some cultures the scapegoat became revered as the divinely chosen one or as an actual god. Despite being guilty of crimes, the scapegoat also saves the community and magically overcomes the chaos that would have consumed them. This event becomes the very foundation of a new order of community. Consequently, many civilizations have an origin myth based on a founding death. For instance, the founding myth of Rome is the story of twin brothers, Remus and Romulus, in which the murder of Remus begins the new order of Rome.

  In reality, it was the anger of the mob, a demon of their own creation, that was projected onto the scapegoat. And the violence done against the victim was a type of cathartic exorcism. The problem was never the scapegoat. The origin of the chaos was always the internal turmoil of individuals that culminated in the chaotic mob. If the truth about this process is recognized, the practice of scapegoating would no longer be effective. But it is exactly because of the blindness of the community that the process works so effectively.

  Ritual, Religion & Law

  The dramatic effect of the scapegoating mechanism to bring an end to uncontrolled violence became the basis for ritual. Whenever it seemed as if chaos was about to erupt again, there was an attempt to replay the same events that redeemed the community from chaos before. Because we did not know exactly what caused the magical peace, the steps that lead up to the sacrifice are repeated in ritual.

  Before the writing of mythical origin stories, they were told in ritual. Some of these ancient rituals are still practiced today. These rituals re-enact the events that lead up to the sacrifice, the sacrifice itself, and the consequent peace. Because the actual causes of the chaos and the sacred peace following the sacrifice are hidden, the rituals differ as they lead up to the sacrifice, but in the act of sacrifice they are remarkably similar.

  Ritual became a key ingredient of religion and law. The first recorded law codes are all concerned with limiting violence. Violence gave birth to religion and religion became a way of containing violence. The Ten Commandments seem to recognize the actual source of violence as covetousness - which is to desire what belongs to your neighbor. Girard’s book, Violence and the Sacred , caused a stir because it shed light on the process of violence and its relation to religion. At the time, it was rather fashionable to blame religion for violence. Girard convincingly argued that it was not religion that caused violence, but violence that caused religion. Humans were violent before any religion or civilization came into existence. These institutions were formed, partly, to contain the problem of violence.

  Myth Subverted

  Once we recognize that real events are the basis of these myths, it becomes important to understand who wrote them, for our perspectives are always subjective.

  It was the surviving community that first preserved the myth in ritual and later in writing. The newly established order that was birthed out of the chaos and redemptive sacrifice used myth to promote its legitimacy. With the exception of a few, which we will look at later, all such stories were told from the perspective of the victors, not the victims. It was precisely because the noisy voice of the victim was unbearable that they were killed - the victors did n
ot want to hear that perspective. And death is the most convincing way in which to win an argument! The art of writing was also the exclusive domain of the elite and practiced within the courts of kings.

  The sacred act of violence therefore was always portrayed as a heroic, necessary and completely justifiable act. The victim of this violence is always portrayed as deserving of this fate, or in some cases, as a self-sacrificing hero. But never is the actual act of sacred violence, or in religious terms, sacrifice, ever condemned.

  The bias of the story shows that the myth not only seeks to reveal truth, but also to conceal truth. It does not seek to conceal truth consciously, for the authors most probably sincerely believed that they were justified in their actions. However, the gentle voice of truth still found utterance in what these myths tried to hide. That is, that an actual murder took place, and whether the victim was guilty or not was not that important. The actual motivation for the violence is the necessity to preserve the status quo, to secure the peace, to silence the “noisy workers.”

  Most of these origin myths therefore have blindspots, moments that they hide or quickly glance over, to justify the act of violence as sacred and necessary. The innocence of the community and guilt of the sacrificial victim are emphasized.

  Narrative Conversion

  It was while Girard was writing Mimesis, Desire and the Novel, that something completely unexpected started happening in himself. Girard recognized that mediocre novels are nothing more than the author’s blind attempt to justify him/herself. Great novels, however, include a type of conversion, an event in which the author recognizes his own hidden desires portrayed within the characters. This recognition leads to a new honesty that frees the authors from the chains of mediated desire. And so it results in a work of literature that is significantly different from what it was originally planned to be. The conversion of the author is mirrored in the novel. Does this sound familiar? A story that is open to new possibilities, to the influence of the unconscious results in something much richer.

  Regarding the writing of Mimesis, Desire and the Novel , Girard noted: “I started working on that book very much in the pure demystification mode: cynical, destructive, very much in the spirit of the atheistic intellectuals of that time. ” 4 But Girard too would come to recognize the mimetic nature of the desires that formed him. The conversion process he recognized within the novels he studied suddenly found a reflection in himself. In Cynthia Haven’s biography of Girard, Evolution of Desire , she notes:

  His conversion began as he traveled along the cluttering old railway cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad, en route from Baltimore to Bryn Mawr for the class he taught every week. While reading and writing as he chugged along between the cities, he underwent what in today’s clinical and somewhat prissy modern jargon are called ‘altered states’ - and they apparently continued with more or less intensity for several months. 5

  Up to this stage, Girard was rather proud of being a skeptic. But this conversion experience, which he later described as a type of understanding, could not be denied. Once you understand, you cannot simply go back to not understanding. This process that began in 1958 came to a crescendo the next year: “Everything came to me at once in 1959. I felt that there was a sort of mass that I’ve penetrated into little by little … I’m teasing out a single, extremely dense insight.” 6

  Themes of mimetic desire, violence, sacrifice, and religion naturally drew Girard to the Bible also. Many of the themes and story structures were the same as in other origin myths, but there were very significant differences. At each of the stages of myth in which the truth is hidden, moments that are ignored or skipped over quickly, the Scriptures pause and specifically draw attention to.

  Scripture, too, sees an act of violence as the foundation for civilization. It is Cain, the one who kills Abel, who becomes the founder of the first city. However, instead of justifying this act of violence as something Abel deserved, the story calls it out for what it is: murder. Cain is not innocent in this act. It is the twisting of desire into jealousy that motivates his violence. The theme of chaos is present too, but in Genesis 1 the chaos is not overcome by violence but by a new relationship between Elohim and chaos. It is through silent hovering developing into creative word, by speaking more and more distinction into existence, that a new order is created without resorting to violence.

  Humanity in their infancy misinterpreted many of the experiences and signifiers. As human consciousness develops in relationship with Elohim, these ideas and experiences need to be re-interpreted. Desire, chaos, violence, sacrifice, religion, our sense of the sacred, God, and humanity need to find new meaning.

  The Scriptural stories are by no means a complete and clear debunking of the myth of redemptive violence. Rather, it is “a text in travail, ” as Girard called it. Sacrifice, even human sacrifice, is still revered in many of the biblical stories. Chaos is often still portrayed as an enemy that needs to be slaughtered. As such many elements of the myth are still present, but a persistent unfolding of truth is setting a new trajectory for these stories. They are starting to undo the misconceptions of the divine, of violence, and of human nature.

  New Perspective

  Part of the reason for this subversion of myth is the perspective from which these stories are told. Remember, most origin myths were the official version of the birth of a new civilization. They preserved the perspective of the victors - of the established order. Imagine what origin myths would sound like if victims told the story! The Hebrew Scriptures do exactly that - introduce a radically new perspective. These biblical stories have their origin in a people who are outcasts, slaves, and victims. It is a people delivered from slavery whose tales survive and become literature only when they are a freed people in a kingdom of their own. Again, not every story is told from this perspective, but it is generally true and part of the reason why the Bible is unique in the message it conveys. The biblical narrative does not simply reproduce the symbols and meanings of myth but progressively subverts them. And subversion requires an entering in, an intimate familiarity with the subject, so that it can be transformed from the inside out.

  Gil Bailie wrote about an exchange between a group of theologians who met in his office to hear Girard for the first time. After Girard gave an initial introduction, one of the biblical scholars responded:

  “Professor Girard, what you’ve been saying is quite extraordinary. It almost appears, however, that you are suggesting that the revelatory power of biblical literature is categorically superior to that of all other literature. You are, after all, a Stanford professor; you’re not saying that, are you?” René’s one-word response was all the more striking for the momentary pause that preceded it: “Categorically,” he replied. The impression one had was that Girard was the only person in this room full of Biblical scholars who was willing to say such a thing. 7

  The mystery of human desire, the myth of redemptive violence, and the very fabric of civilization, are finally subverted in the drama of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Human history is repeated in the sequence of events in which conflict intensifies as the Jewish nation fights for its survival, and Rome relies on its trusted method of violence to rule. The tensions are eventually diffused as all rivalries meld together into a united voice of condemnation. Jesus becomes the chosen scapegoat. He enters into the heart of our myth by becoming the victim and from there he exposes the myth. The true God does not participate in our cycles of violence but calls us to transcend them. This God does not justify our violence but suffers it. This God does not demand violence but in the midst of suffering offers forgiveness. The principalities and powers are stripped bare - the principles by which we have governed and exercised power are shown to be founded upon a lie. Light finally shines on the practice of sacrifice in this event of the perfect sacrifice … and the truth it reveals brings an end to violent sacrifice.

  Girard and Irenaeus

  Irenaeus of Lyons recognized the narrative parallels betwe
en Adam and Jesus. He described the story of Jesus as a reversal of the story of Adam with such beauty - a kind of theological poetry. Both Adam and Jesus had to grow into maturity. But where Adam is hasty, Jesus is patient; where Adam disobeyed, Jesus obeys; where Adam wanted closure, Jesus remains open to the unfolding of God’s purposes.

  Girard enriches these insights in showing how Jesus subverts the myths of redemptive violence that were told in the actual events of repetitive cycles of violence throughout human history, even before the story of Adam was transcribed. The Adam story is an illuminating summary of the many myths from many cultures, revealing the processes that make us human and the misunderstanding that causes us to blame and scapegoat others for what we cannot bear in ourselves. Whereas Irenaeus could only draw parallels between Adam and Jesus, Girard demonstrates that this is much more than a poetic literary invention. This drama unfolds in the history of every civilization as the turmoil of unfulfilled desires escalates into communal crisis. Unable to recognize our part in this crisis, we project guilt onto our scapegoats to justify our violence. The myth of redemptive violence has been told over and over again through many generations and in many various cultures. Jesus achieves a narrative reversal by entering the drama and exposing its flaws from within, thereby subverting our myths.

  Girardian and Psychological Synergies