Jesus Reveals the Lie of Scapegoating

In Leviticus 16 we see the brilliant ritualization of what we now call scapegoating, and we should indeed feel sorry for the demonized goat. On the Day of Atonement, a priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal. Then the goat was beaten with reeds and thorns, and driven out into the desert. And the people went home rejoicing, just as European Christians did after burning a supposed heretic at the stake or American whites did after the lynching of black men. Whenever the “sinner” is excluded, our ego is delighted and feels relieved and safe. It sort of works, but only for a while. Usually the illusion only deepens and becomes catatonic, blind, and repetitive—because of course, scapegoating did not really work to eliminate the evil in the first place.

Jesus came to radically undo this illusory scapegoat mechanism, which is found in every culture in some form. He became the scapegoat to reveal the universal lie of scapegoating. Note that John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin [singular] of the world” (John 1:29). It seems “the sin of the world” is ignorant killing, hatred, and fear. As Blaise Pascal so insightfully wrote, “People never do evil so completely and so cheerfully as when they do it with a religious conviction.”

Five or Six Things I Didn’t Know About Brad Pitt, by Marlon James

Musings from the Man Booker-winning author after his first
meeting with one of the biggest — and nicest — stars on the planet.

“I’ve gone into areas of third-world countries where people have suffered the most, but those people always seem to have the biggest laugh,” he says. As a Jamaican native who has witnessed quite a few third-world missions, I tell him that sometimes our biggest laugh is directed at foreign do-gooders who really have no idea how to fix our problems. “I’ve been one of those at times,” he admits. “But you’ve got to start somewhere. You start with your best intentions, understanding the world as you do. And then you get in and you see that it’s much more complicated than you could possibly imagine. Our failings in foreign policy have always been to think that we can place our ideas on another culture, while not really understanding the other culture.”

.. Someone once famously said that he is a character actor trapped in a leading man’s body

.. We have this great line in ‘The Big Short,’ ” he says, referring to the Oscar-winning film about the global financial crisis of 2008, which he produced. “When things are going wrong and we can’t find the reason for it, we just start creating enemies.” I mention that when creating those enemies, we often look no further than what’s right in front of us. Gays, for example. “Or illegal immigrants,” he says.

.. “You gotta understand,” he says, “that it’s also in our DNA. Most Americans don’t have time to watch CNN and Fox and Al Jazeera. They’re trying to make the rent, get the kids fed, they’re tired when they get home and they want to forget about everything. And so suddenly when this voice comes in — and it doesn’t have to be a voice of substance — saying he’s fed up with all of this, that’s the part that hooks into the DNA.”

.. “What does he even mean, take our country back? Would someone please explain that to me?”

.. Gibson movies typically do one thing really well: violence. “Oh, extremely well,” Pitt says. “ ‘Apocalypto’ is a great film.”

.. The bad thing about playing an interview slow and loose is that you’re never sure how to end it.

 

The Trump we saw: Populist, frustrating, naive, wise, forever on the make

Even after all those hours of interviews, Trump seemed not quite real, a character he had built to enhance his business empire, a construct designed to be at once an everyman and an impossibly high-flying king of Manhattan, an avatar of American riches.

.. Throughout the past century, Americans were periodically drawn to voices arguing that foreigners or The Other were responsible for the nation’s troubles: Father Charles Coughlin, a priest who used his nationwide radio show in the 1930s to deliver an America First message laced with assaults on Jews; and George Wallace, a segregationist governor of Alabama who ran for president in the 1960s and ’70s as a populist preaching that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between the Republicans and the Democrats; and Patrick Buchanan, a Washington insider and presidential candidate who encouraged voters in the 1990s to rise up as “peasants with pitchforks” to take their country back from politicians who had failed to stop illegal immigration and the ravages of free trade.

.. The last three presidents had struggled fairly publicly with their fathers. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama wrote and talked about their feelings of abandonment. Their resolve to prove themselves helped propel their meteoric ascents, tempered by a charisma perhaps born of their lifelong need to win attention and love that were missing from their upbringing.

.. Yet in an office dedicated almost entirely to celebrating Trump’s success and performance, nothing spoke to the man’s private passions or predilections, nothing to indicate a hobby, an artistic interest, a literary bent, a statement about his credo, his crises, or his dreams.

.. In one of his books, “Trump: Think Like a Billionaire,” he had asserted that visionary business leaders succeed “because they are narcissists who devote their talent with unrelenting focus to achieving their dreams, even if it’s sometimes at the expense of those around them.” He approvingly quoted a writer who said, “Successful alpha personalities display a single-minded determination to impose their vision on the world.”

.. He expected his day-to-day work style to be similar to what he’d done for decades. At Trump Tower, he kept no computer on his desk, and he avoided reading extensive reports or briefings. He went with his gut. He tweeted what he felt, confident that his heart was right where the people were.