Lenten Meditation: February 15, 2024
Daily Scripture Passage: Psalm 37:1-18
Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; do not be jealous of those who do wrong. — Psalm 37:1
The French literary theorist and philosopher René Girard developed the theory of “mimetic desire.”
Journalist Cynthia Haven describes the theory this way.
“We want what others want. We want it because they want it. These desires are shaped by our restless imitation of others. When the coveted goods are scarce, these desires pit us against one another—on an individual level, on a community level, and on a global scale as well. It causes divorces and it causes international wars. It causes children to fight over a five-buck toy in the sandbox.”
In order to reduce the conflict caused by mimetic desire, societies create scapegoats. A scapegoat functions as a “release valve,” by allowing a single innocent victim to bear the burden of a society’s violent urges.
Girard noted that this dynamic occurs in most myths across cultures—except in the Bible.
The Bible is the one religious text that exposes the scapegoating mechanism, especially in the story of Jesus. As another journalist put it, Jesus is the “ultimate scapegoat,” but the Cross “exposes scapegoating as a lie and thereby, if it is heeded, empties it of its power.”
As we witness the prevalence of scapegoating today in our politics and culture, so often exacerbated by social media, Girard’s insights reveal that Jesus shows us the way out of our own society’s violent urges and toward a path of true peace.