Can A Christian Wish Trump to be Damned?

In my Old Testament class, I begin my lectures on Genesis comparing various Ancient Near East cosmogonies that seem to have had some influence on the first chapter of Genesis. We read portions of the Enuma Elish, the story of Marduk’s conquest over Tiamat. I try to get across to my students how origin stories influence a people’s worldview. I do this by comparing the underlying view of the Babylonians who seem to view a world in which the fundamental structure of creation is formed in violence, with the biblical account that describes creation by means of nonviolence. Tiamat, the personification of chaos, is defeated by Marduk, the champion of order. Following his defeat of Tiamat, Marduk proceeds to form creation out the violently torn body of Tiamat, giving the universe – and the world in which humans, created out of the blood of a slain deity associated with Tiamat – an ontology of sacred violence. The world is ever on the edge of chaos that threatens both a people and individual. Chaos tends, in this perspective, to derive from the threat of other/s. The threat of the other gives legitimacy to the use of violence, wielded by legitimate authorities, in this case a King who personifies the tribal, national deity. The King acts as the imago Dei, the voice and coercive power of divine authority in human embodiment.

In contrast, Genesis 1 portrays a deity who creates nonviolently. While there is the presence of chaos, order is brought to be through a persuasive word. There is no battle, no conflict. There is no sacred violence at the heart the material and human world. Genesis 1 acts as a sign, a summoning by a nonviolent God to an existence of nonviolent harmony.

Unfortunately, as J. Richard Middleton has demonstrated, there are indeed some cases in which the biblical narrative in which there is a [mimetic] draw to seemingly ubiquitous Chaoskampf, a violent struggle between the forces of order and chaos. The use of the cosmic struggle ideology easily facilitates a justification to portray the other/s as a threat to one’s national/tribal autonomy and wellbeing. This ideology is so prevalent in our contemporary reality that it feels both inevitable and normative.

          Middleton makes an important statement concerning the original nature of creation in Genesis 1 when he states

 

by its alternative depiction of God’s nonviolent creative power at the start of the biblical canon, the text signals the creator’s original intent for shalom and blessing at the outset of human history, prior to the rise of human (or divine) violence. As the opening canonical disclosure of God for readers of Scripture, Genesis 1 constitutes a normative framework by which we may judge all the violence that pervades the rest of the Bible (including, but not limited to, texts of cosmogonic conflict). It also provides a framework for judging human violence perpetuated n the name of religion) since such violence stands in direct contradiction to the disclosure of God’s power in Genesis 1. (The Liberating Image, kindle edition).

 

          Chaoskampf, the chaos-cosmos ideology that sees struggle against a perceived enemy, has become nearly a default for many professed Christians. It appears to be legitimated in various biblical passages, made operative against perceived enemies, due to uncritical hermeneutics. As Girardian mimetic theory has taught us, we are drawn to imitation of social norms, values, and ethics, believing these to be normative due to the mimetic power of group think. Our politicians swim in a mimetic stew of tit-for-tat. The other must be rhetorically, or worse, defeated and portrayed as a manifestation of evil. The other is dehumanized. This occurs among the populous whose mimetic attachment forms similar attitudes of dehumanization, shaping one’s ideologically informed hatred of the ‘other’, convinced of the righteousness of one’s position. I confess, I have too many times allowed myself to fall into attitudes and actions of such othering and disparagement.

          For those, like myself, who hold to a belief in the absolute nonviolent nature of God, whose love transcends any and all levels of sinful deformation of character and behavior, it is incumbent for one to reflect deeply on how the ideology of Chaoskampf  defeats such a conviction in its formation of attitudes and behavior of dehumanization and violent acts of rhetoric, or worse.

          This brings me to my title, Can A Christian Wish Trump to be Damned? To wish such a fate for any human being betrays a faith, or lack there of, that cannot fathom the depths of love that is the very being and nature of God. When we desire the damnation of any individual or group, we both deny the desire of God for the utter and absolute wellbeing of God’s creatures, and place ourselves in the role of divine judge – an astonishing act of pure idolatry. We also doubt the possibility and power of divine grace that can, in this life or the next, lead to a transformation of one’s being.

          I am all for the protestation and advocacy against the policies and acts of injustice by any and all structures and hierarchies of power. But once such protestations elide into acts of dehumanization – the acquisition and implementation of a Chaoskampf ideology – then I am convinced we have lost the plot Christ came to remind us of. We are to imitate, and become the manifestation of the nonviolent God, becoming through grace the imago Dei we were designed to be. The reformation/restitution of the imago Dei manifests in ambassadorial acts of justice for the oppressed, marginalized, and afflicted, all the while being the presence of divine nonviolence.