Scapegoating: Man’s Foundational Sin

scapegoating“Until we allow the cross of Jesus to save us from our foundational sin of scapegoating, we remain capable of the worst crimes imaginable.”
– Brian Zahnd

Scapegoating.

We all do it.

After all, we were born here, and no other way of behaving really makes much sense. Our world is constructed around two violent systems: religion and politics. Both are based on power enforced by violence. Both rely on scapegoating.

Why We Don’t See Our Error of Scapegoating

It’s almost impossible to see these systems as evil because they do so many good things for us. They bring us stability, order, and security to our world. We only see the honor and courage that are necessary to maintain our family, our nation, our culture. Thus our violence is made sacred through myths, anthems, monuments, holidays, and history books. These things conceal the bodies we have bloodied and victimized in our righteous and just cause and hide the truth about us as an executioner.

“It’s hard to sing the anthems of Cain once you’ve seen the buried corpse of Abel. So the Cain conquerers hide Abel. They bury him. And Abel is forgotten…” – Brian Zahnd

No wonder this foundational sin—this primal lie—has been “hidden from the foundation of the world (Matthew 13:35).” No man could see the truth about our violent ways without the revelation of Calvary, without the Holy Spirit’s illumination of the scapegoating of Jesus.

Yet It Gets Much More Personal Than This

It’s not only nations and religions that are guilty of scapegoating. It runs much closer to home than that. We do it at home, at work, at play, and at church. Here it is more commonly known as blaming, and this game can’t be played without scapegoating. Brian Zahnd nails this human flaw when he says, “Humanity went wrong when Adam and Eve listened to Satan and began to blame. So I eat the fruit and suddenly I’m able to tell who is good and who is bad, and it mostly goes like this, ‘I’m good and you’re bad!’ So I blame the ‘bad’ people—the people that are different than me or are a threat to me and/or my group.”

“Our fundamental sin is that we place ourselves in the position of God and divide the world between what we judge to be good and what we judge to be evil. And this judgment is the primary thing that keeps us from doing the central thing God created us to do, namely, love like He loves.” – Greg Boyd

The Cross Ends the Blame Game

The cross overturned the lies we believed about scapegoating, and the truth exposed the powers of earth and hell. The shame that was heaped on Jesus boomeranged, like divine aikido. It revealed the evil and horror of our crime and put men and angels to shame. The world was reestablished—reorganized—at the cross. Jesus is the last scapegoat because at the cross we can finally see scapegoating for what it really is. Consequently, the cross emphatically forbids finger-pointing religion and violent political power.

“Jesus was killed in the name of God and country, so that now the cross stands as an eternal prohibition of killing in the name of God and country.” – Brian Zahnd

“God’s justice is to make things right by stopping the violence, not by executing violence on others.” – Brad Cole

Sure, Satan still tries to rule the world with religion and politics—reward and punishment—but his systems of power enforced by violence crumble before love expressed as forgiveness. As Zahnd says, “Where blame, accusation, and revenge are replaced with forgiveness, Satan has no place. He is simply driven out. Where ‘Father forgive them’ replaces ‘God avenge me,’ Satan is out of business.” If we continue to blame, then we know that Satan still has power in our lives.

Jesus Takes the Blame

God doesn’t scapegoat. He has always taken full responsibility for His creation. This is proved conclusively in the death of Jesus. Jesus takes away all of the blame so that we can stop blaming. True faith in Jesus will bring our habit of blaming others to a halt. We will no longer play that way. We will come to Jesus to achieve our unity or deal with our fear, pain, and anxiety. Then scapegoating—power enforced by violence—will finally come to an end.

A special thanks to Brian Zahnd  for many of these thoughts and his lucid teaching on The Crucified Christ


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