America Is Possessed: Guns, War, and the Gospel’s Answers to Violence

Another mass shooting on U.S. soil and we’re all looking for answers.

Actually, there were two mass shootings on Wednesday. One in San Bernardino, California, and the other in Savannah, Georgia. We also know that “there have been 355 mass shooting in 336 days.” We are averaging more than one mass shooting a day.

America clearly has a problem.

In response, politicians are quick to spread a popular myth about mass shootings: that mental illness is to blame. I’m all for having better healthcare for the mentally ill, but mental illness has very little to do with mass shootings.

Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, states that mental illness accounts for a very small percentage of violent crimes in America. The website mentalhealth.gov backs up his claim, “Most people with mental illness are not violent and only 3%-5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious mental illness. In fact, people with severe mental illness are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population.”

Unfortunately, when politicians quickly point to mental illness as the cause of mass shootings they scapegoat the mentally ill. Scapegoating does two interrelated things. First, it blames someone else for the problem. Second, in blaming someone else, it allows us to think that we are innocent of the problem.

But the truth is that the United States is not innocent. We are a violent nation. And politicians generally pride themselves on just how violent the United States is. Of course, they will say that the goal of our violence is a more secure and peaceful America, but we can’t afford to fool ourselves any longer. Our addiction to violence won’t bring peace. It will only bring more violence.

The Gospels, Demon Possession and Roman Military Violence

There’s an important story in the Gospels that relates to Americas problem with violence. According to Mark, Jesus was traveling through to the country of the Gerasenes, where he encountered a man possessed by demons living on the outskirts of town. The man was naked, isolated, and living in a graveyard.

Demon possession just sounds weird to my Western mind, but if we stick with the story we will find a key insight into being human.

Jesus asked the man, “What is your name?” The man replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.”

The term “legion” was a Roman military term that referred to a company of 6,000 soldiers. The Roman legions had conquered the area, crushing anyone who got in their way.

How did the man become possessed by a legion of demons? It happened in two ways, both explained by mimetic theory. Because humans are mimetic, we absorb the culture around us. The man became possessed because he absorbed the demonic violence of the Roman military. He managed his inner demons by shouting day and night and inflicting himself with wounds.

But the other Garasenes were also possessed by Roman military violence. They were the crowd that united violently against the man possessed by the legions. He was their scapegoat, the one excluded from their community. The Garasenes knew that they were good because they defined themselves over and against this violent man possessed by demons. The balance of good and evil within their community depended upon viewing their scapegoated victim as evil.

The Gospel, Demon Possession, and American Military Violence

The political critique of military violence in the Gospels is obvious. The Kingdom of God is the alternative to the Kingdom of Rome, but not just the Kingdom of Rome. It’s the alternative to any political ideology that condones their use of violence. In the story of the man possessed by demons, we find that violence cannot be contained; it spreads like a contagious disease until we are all possessed by its demons.

And that’s what is happening throughout the United States. Like the Roman legions who sought to spread the Pax Romana (Roman Peace) with the sword, the United States seeks to spread peace and security through drone attacks, sniper rifles, and smart bombs.

We are possessed by that same spirit of violence and hostility. The more we attempt to wage peace through violence, the more we reinforce the spirit of violence that possesses us all.

For example, the United States spends $610 billion on “defensive spending” – in other words, on the ability kill our enemies. That’s more than the next seven countries (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the United Kingdom, India, and Germany) combined! Those seven countries *only* spend a combined $601 billion on defense.

Despite that astronomical spending on the American War Machine, we continue to fight the never ending War on Terror. All the while presidential candidates say, with a straight face, that our military isn’t strong enough!

It’s time to acknowledge the truth. The United States, from our government to our citizenry, believes that violence is the way to solve our problems. Many US citizens think the solution to our gun problem is to have more guns.

The Gospels claim that there is only one solution to ending the spirit of violence. It begins with refusing to participate in the cycle of violence. But it’s more than that. It’s also to identify with the victims of violence. Whereas human culture is founded on the scapegoat mechanism that violently defines “us” against “them,” the Gospels invert the scapegoat mechanism so that a new human culture is born – one that finds community not by uniting against a scapegoat, but by identifying with scapegoats in the inclusive spirit of love and compassion.

NT Wright brilliantly makes this point in his commentary on this story. Within this story we detect shades of the cross, where Jesus identifies with all victims of violence,

At the climax of Mark’s story Jesus himself will end up naked, isolated, outside the town among the tombs, shouting incomprehensible things as he is torn apart on the cross by the standard Roman torture, his flesh torn to ribbons by the small stones in the Roman lash. And that, Mark is saying, will be how the demons are dealt with. That is how healing takes place. Jesus is coming to share the plight of the people, to let the enemy do its worst to him, to take the full force of evil on himself and let the others go free.

Jesus sets us free by revealing that violence is a force of evil, not by violently fighting back. That would only reinforce the demonic forces of evil. No, Jesus sets us free by taking violence upon himself and offering forgiveness in return.

If we are to finally end these mass murders in the United States, we do need gun legislation. But even that’s not radical enough. We need to end our dependence on military violence because it’s infecting our nation with the demonic spirit of violence. Instead, we need to foster peace by identifying with our scapegoats, rather than by killing them.

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