We All Need Somebody... to Hay ay ate...

I posted a small philosophical rant on Facebook around the reality of mass shootings. Or perhaps the prevalence of mass shootings. In those short paragraphs, I suggested that it was once not a part of my reality at all - but the shootings in Montreal at the Polytechnique and in 'Merica at Columbine began a slippery slope in which mass shootings happen more often and in more places.

So what happened?

I should back up a moment and tell you that yes, I do realize this to be an oversimplification. I realize there was violence previous to this. The stonewall riots for example. Or the Northern Ireland conflicts. We have always been a species prone to violence.

But when I stop and examine what I am saying a little more closely - what has changed is the specificity of the violence.

"Back in my day," which I am getting old enough to actually say now, the targets of violence made sense. It was not correct. It was not moral. But... you could sit back in your armchair while watching the nightly news and say - oh... they are after the blacks again. Or the gays. It was domestic violence. It was... you see what I am saying - there was a rhyme and a reason.

But now, buddy in Nova Scotia kills 18 or more people whom he randomly pulls over. A guy drives a van through a crowd. In  Las Vegas a man takes random shots into a concert crowd - and we sit back trying to figure out what in tarnation caused them to decide to go on a shooting spree. Usually never finding an answer.

So there were replies to my post. There was a fairly good discussion. But I had another discussion with a colleague in the background that made me wonder about another possibility.

Something we do not say out loud.

Maybe we were happier when there was someone to look down on.

I am not advocating what I am about to say. I am examining it from a philosophical and sociological point of view. So bear with me just a second and reserve judgement in terms of writing this off.

You see, once upon a time - in my lifetime... black people, indigenous people, gay people, women, poor people, welfare recipients, mentally challenged people and even crippled people were inferior to me. It was shown to me in subtle and overt ways. Jokes and movie portrayals, right through to outright acts of belligerence. They were all sort of normal because, well, they were inferior.

Again - this is not how I feel now, nor do I believe it "should" have been how I felt then.

But back in the day, it was politically correct to find someone in another category of life, and determine that they were the enemy, or at least if not the enemy, then inferior to me.

Which in turn allowed me to feel good about myself.

There was an old prayer once in one of our religious traditions, I won't call them out, but it was a famous prayer that you said when you woke up in the morning and part of it said "Thank God I am not a woman, I am not a..." it was an actual, written prayer, counting blessings, by pointing out that if God had hated us, he would have made us.... (black, female, gay, poor...)

And by default - being a white male person of privilege was to be blessed.

I wonder, if by creating political correctness, we took away, not only the easy target, but also our own self-worth. Certainly, we have heard men, in particular, speak like this as feminism was taking root in the '80s and '90s. If we were not the superior species, then what were we? All of a sudden there was a crisis of identity. And it was necessary, and it was good, and the way men are now is way, way, way better. But...

Think of this on a global scale. Now, no matter who you are - woman, indigenous, gay, white, crazy... no matter who you are, we live in a society where everyone is equal and everyone has value.

On the surface that is a wonderful thing. But is it also forcing those people on the outer edges of sanity to not be able to make peace with their own inner demons?

Was the ability to express anger and outrage at another "group" one of the safety factors that vented hostility which would otherwise be focused on the self?

I keep feeling I have to go back and say, once more, I am not advocating a return to racism, sexism,  classism, ableism, heteronomous though or anything of the sort. I am merely trying to ask if we might see this as a possible turning point in society from whence came crazy unfocused violence.

Is it really rage at the self, at the parts of the self we do not like, outwardly manifested as a shooting spree?

And is this rage exacerbated by the fact that there is no one we can focus that negativity on? Did hating gays at least allow me to repress the violence I felt towards my own homoerotic ideas? for example.

Did hating women allow me to feel that at least as a man I had built in masculinity and power and so I did not feel weak and powerless?

I wonder...

I wonder if that is behind the rise of random violence?

And the solution, by the way, if I am even close to correct, would not be going back to a less egalitarian way of thinking. The solution would be to recognize that there is darkness in people that we are not addressing.

I think perhaps whenever we change systems or ways of thought we tend to gloss over some of the negative consequences and feel they will just go away. No one wanted to admit that there was actually a sociological reason why having a group be "lesser" helped soothe the ego of people in the group that was "greater." And because no one ever admitted that, no one worked at finding other, healthier ways, for us to cope with our inner demons.

As an aside, the more I thought about this the more other factors of modern society have clicked into place for me. Again, no science behind any of this, just observational data and it could be false - but I am an op/ed writer, not a scientist.

For example, the rise in populism within politics and the way Donald Trump, and now others, gathered large swathes of supporters simply by putting other people down.

Does this back up what I am saying? We are actually hungry for someone to hate so that we can feel better about ourselves. And in a world that tells us, it is so terribly morally wrong to hate anyone - we feel lost. But along comes Trump and essentially ignores the last 40 years. Women, gays, blacks, Mexicans, Islamic folks, they are all the enemy now...

And it makes the listener feel like, finally, I am the winner! Without having to do anything to earn that praise. By being a white, racist, male, I am perfect! And so there is a rise of self-worth, a rise of pride, and we jump on the bandwagon.

It is not America First that Trump actually sold. It is a white male first.

Seeing how effective this rhetoric was for him, and others only solidify my assumption that there is something dark and unaddressed in the modern human psyche that has to do with my need to feel better than others.

How do we fix this?

In the Beginning... Was the WAY

Before the church councils, before the church fathers, before the Gospel writers, there was a creed that was the central tenet of belief for the fledgling group of followers mourning the loss of Jesus.

"Jesus is Lord!"

That is it. That's all. No Trinitarian formulations, no doctrine of salvation... just a claim that at the centre of all we are and all we think is Jesus. 

Now, scholars and folks will tell you that this had serious overtones and repercussions. "Lord" (Kurios in Greek and Adonai in Hebrew) was a term of social understanding given to one who is your better. But at its core it simply means ruler. 

One of the main problems was that the Roman Emperor at the time, Octavian, carried the title Augustus, a fancy religious term for Lord. In other words - the Emperor was Lord, not Jesus - or vice versa depending on where you stand. 

Most agree however, that whether you said this for political or religious reasons, the point of Jesus is Lord is that you give yourself completely over to the teachings and examples of this guru and become someone who owes everything and does everything for Jesus. 

I occasionally find myself pausing to wonder if 2,000 years of interpretation and development within the church did not lead us astray from everything Jesus stood for. But to say it less dramatically, I wonder if we are too often putting our thought and emphasis on the wrong thing.

The "Church" is an institution. The Creeds are interpretation. The priests are intermediaries. And we are a hundred steps away from being actual followers of Jesus. 

Even - and I mean this in the best possible way - even if we could determine what Jesus actually meant without it going through the filter of Paul, and the church, and all of those writings and sermons.... Even then - would most of us who attend or work for a denomination of this global network of institutions be able to say we are following Jesus? 

I had a professor once, and I cannot remember who or where or when, sorry, who told us that the original title for the movement that came about after Jesus was "The Way" The people of the Way were the people who followed the example of Jesus.

And in the early church they took this stuff seriously. They gave away their possessions, they decided not to get married or buy property, they lived together and shared everything in a good socialist way - knowing that this brought them closer to being able to live like Jesus... who was, by all accounts, a wandering, poor, itinerant preacher and teacher. 

Now, none of this is new thought - I want to make that clear. Some of the best minds of recent years within the Christian Thought Factory have written and dissected the idea of Empire and how Jesus lived in opposition to it.

But as a progressive who is trying to make their way in the dying days of ecclesial empire, I think about this at a much more practical level.

How far away am I from living and thinking like Jesus. How would I reclaim the original intent of the faith which was much more of a social reform movement than anything else? How do I lead a congregation in a way that actually honours what Jesus was trying to get across and does not just build on the last millennium or two of Christian Empire building.

First off - I no longer like to use the word Christian. I think we should go back to People of the Way.

Secondly - I think the focus of worship and work within existing church structures should change to be about social justice as the main path to spiritual enlightenment. Or, to be more direct, love and loving everyone should be the main path to spiritual enlightenment.

But mostly I think we need to let go of all the division and fighting that happens in the modern church as we struggle to take our last gasp before going under. We need to understand that almost everything we fight about is made up, an interpretation, or at best, our opinion.

Whether you are left, right, up or down in your own thinking, we can all agree that Jesus basic answer to every question was "love everybody"

how about we focus on that for a while?