“Christianity is a founding murder in reverse, which illuminates what has to remain hidden to produce ritual, sacrificial religions.”
― Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoit Chantre
“The commandment that prohibits desiring the goods of one’s neighbor attempts to resolve the number one problem of every human community: internal violence.”
― I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
“If we ceased to desire the goods of our neighbor, we would never commit murder or adultery or theft or false witness. If we respected the tenth commandment, the four commandments that precede it would be superfluous.”
― I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
“Christ is the only man to overcome the barrier erected by Satan. He dies in order to avoid participating in the system of scapegoats, which is to say the satanic principle. After his resurrection, a bridge that did not exist before is established between God and the world; Christ gets a foothold in the world through his own death, and destroys Satan’s ramparts. His death therefore converts satanic disorder into order and opens up a new path on which human beings may now travel. In other words, God resumes his place in the world, not because he has violated the autonomy of man and of Satan, but because Christ has resisted, triumphed over Satan’s obstacle.”
― The One by Whom Scandal Comes
“Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out on the thing that has caused it, they unconsciously search for substitutes, and more often than not they find them.”
― The One by Whom Scandal Comes
“There is nothing in the Gospels to suggest that God causes the mob to come together against Jesus. Violent contagion is enough. Those responsible for the Passion are the human participants them-selves, incapable of resisting the violent contagion that affects them all when a mimetic snowballing comes within their range, or rather when they come within the range of this snowballing and are swept along by it. We don’t have to invoke the supernatural to explicate this. The war of all against all that transforms communities into a war of all against one that gathers and unifies them is not limited solely to the case of Jesus.”
― I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
“What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.”
― I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
In My Father's House 
Wow, Mel. After reading the third quote, I didn’t have to go any further. (I did, but I really didn’t need to.) So much of our internal violence which begets external violence is grounded in that word, “covet.” Never being content in our circumstances, with what we have or who we are with. It is why Paul wrote our oft quoted verse, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” It wasn’t about performance, but about learning to be content in all circumstances (v.11).
Amen, Susan. Coveting is revealed for what it is in Girard’s mimetic theory. The reason I bring up René Girard on this blog is because most Christians have never even heard of him, yet his brilliant discoveries in anthropology, ethnology, and religion have totally changed (exposed) what it means to be human, and it’s upgrading our understanding of theology. He has shown us what the cross has really come to undo in us. The same thing we’ve been doing to each other since Cain and Abel! It’s revolutionary and totally changes how we view human history and the cross. He uncovers what Jesus was deconstructing with His teachings, what the cross exposed about us, yet the church seems to have been blind to it. It really is transformational, bringing more clarity to what Jesus was actually up to!
Thanks, Mel. I’ll look for his writing on Amazon. You’re always a wealth of information. 😀
His writing is very academic and takes time to take in what he’s saying, but definitely worth the effort.