“Cristos Victor”

It’s been several months since I’ve ventured back into writing. I’ve said it before, but I’ve been on a journey of sorts, especially over the past several months during this hiatus. There has been an engine for my blogging/journaling in the past that is no longer appropriate. I’d write mostly out of anger or frustration and I’m sure it probably showed, yet it was never questioned. No one has ever confronted me about the fundamental root of that frustration. To put it another way; there is a part of my socialization into this country and western religion, among other things, that has never been addressed.

Which leads me to the title of this post. (I must also mention that the majority of these thoughts are not entirely mine, but rather are built on a lifetime of work by Marcus J. Borg and Dominic Crossan, among many others.) Cristos Victor. A latin term, as you can well imagine, translated generally as “Christ the victor” or “victory of Christ.”

Here is my assertion today. I would argue that many in western religion do not, at the very core of their being, believe that Jesus was actually victorious. In short, I believe there has been a fundamental oversight in the life and teachings of Jesus. There is no amount of proof-texting that can convince me that Jesus Christ was anything other than a non-violent, peaceful revolutionary who fully intended those who claim to follow him to do the same. Further, I am willing to suggest that the myth of redemptive violence, or that Jesus lived a peaceful life but will come back with an army ready to slaughter all who oppose him is completely contrary to the character and will of God.

All of this leads me back to my original claim that the world in which most of us live has an extremely flawed view of the means to bring peace. Call it “Pax Romana,” call it “Rules of Engagement,” call it “the Constitution.” (which contrary to popular belief is not a christian document…I’ll save that for a later post) All of these at their core believe violence to be the answer to peace.

If Christ is victorious, it sure doesn’t seem like it. Our world is saturated in violence. It’s glamorized into blockbuster movies and video games where the good guys vanquish evil through brute force and killing all those who oppose them. Instead of one coliseum, we have thousands of them all over with 65,000 people cheering the most brutal tackles, a connecting right hook, the most gruesome arm-bar… See what I’m getting at here?

It’s time to start telling a different story. It’s time to start living a different story. Redemptive violence is a myth. When will we learn that peace is not actually achieved through military action? When will Christ be victor? When will his love saturate our psyches more deeply than violence, even the sugar coated kind of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings? I believe that compassion and justice are far stronger forces for good in this world. I will live and tell those stories because I believe they speak the language of a God of compassion, justice and equal distribution. As Gandhi so aptly said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” He, Martin Luther King Jr. and others have been killed, like Jesus, because they opposed the normalcy of civilization’s violence. That violent paradigm knows no other way to counter someone who stands in opposition to its “peaceful” rule, so it eliminates the thorn. Are you willing to die because you stand against the violent normalcy of civilization? Or is it simply easier to conform to the patterns of this violent world?