This is where I was hung up for years (and, as an animal lover, I really had to sort of ignore this part of Christian theology). Sacrifices
When I heard the theology of St Francis of Assisi (more completely.....I grew up attending Catholic school, so I was basically aware of St Francis)....it all sort of came together for me.
This is what I believe (and, to be honest, this theology tore down the wall between me and God....where I was perceiving Him to be a blood-thirsty animal killer...but ignoring it and burying those thoughts). This makes so much more sense to me!
----------->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.” [2] We see this in much of the United States in our own time, with churches on every corner.
The Gospel is a highly subversive document. It painstakingly illustrates how the systems of both church and state (Caiaphas and Pilate) conspired to condemn Jesus. Throughout most of history, church and state have sought plausible scapegoats to carry their own shame and guilt. So
Jesus became the sinned-against one to reveal the hidden nature of scapegoating, and we would forever see how wrong power can be—even religious power! (See John 16:8-11 and Romans 8:3.) Finally Jesus says from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34). The scapegoat mechanism largely operates in the unconscious; people do not know what they are doing. Scapegoaters do not know they are scapegoating, but they think they are doing a “holy duty for God” (John 16:2). You see why inner work, shadow work, and honest self-knowledge are all essential to any healthy religion.
https://cac.org/jesus-reveals-lie-scapegoating-2016-10-13/[end]
Now verses like this make so much more of a positive impact:
