Jasun Horsley held a meeting Saturday Nov. 23 for his paid Substack subscribers. About it, he writes: “I have two subjects in mind. One is the trauma-based mind as a foreign-entity infestation: how to live with it, how to live without it. The other subject is related, and it is the problem of how to be a natural (Christ-ian) human who can love one’s neighbors, without trying to disown or deny that we have also an animalistic survival instinct that includes a natural, and even necessary, propensity to be violent when circumstances require it.”
According to René Girard‘s Christian perspective, violence is always evil because it is invariably based on scapegoating, and claims that the scapegoat is guilty are inherently mendacious. Islam, in contrast, views some violent acts as legitimate attempts to make truth and justice prevail. And while the goal is always peace, the antithesis of violence, the way to attain that goal is to put the means of coercion in the hands of the just, truthful, and virtuous, and remove them from the hands of unjust, vicious liars. The latter group, according to the Islamic view, may sometimes be justly targeted by force and violence. When that happens, the “victims” are not innocent scapegoats, but criminals fully deserving of their fate.
So who is right? Muslims and Christians agree that Jesus is the one true Messiah and that his return ought to decide the issue. Meanwhile tonight’s discussion between a Christian Girardian and a Muslim Girardian may shed light on some of the issues that we are praying for Jesus to come back and resolve.
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