A Cure for the Sickness of Political Violence

You don’t need to have know all the specifics or have a PhD in all our cultural complexities to sense that our society is sick.

“I would stand on street corners waving a ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag while wearing a bulletproof vest. I was a radical, man.”

A new friend told me his story recently. Not so long ago, he was fore-head deep in radical right-wing political activism. He loved Trump. He joined a militia. He didn’t want to hurt anyone in the name of politics, but he knew people who did. It’s a longer story, but a couple of years ago, his view of the world started to blur. The radical politics that had captivated him started to seem emptier and emptier. So he ordered a Bible on Amazon, and he started reading it. He started believing what he was reading, and God turned his heart away from Trump the President toward Jesus the King.

Meanwhile, a couple of days ago, we heard about yet another act of political violence. A man on Friday morning broke into Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s home intending to assassinate her with a hammer. The intruder got to her husband instead, who will thankfully recover. This was days after a canvasser for Florida Senator Marco Rubio in Miami was assaulted and beaten within centimeters of his life.

Yes, the details around each incident are specific and unique on their own. More broadly, the circumstances surrounding politics, crime, violence, and mental illness are also layered together in complex ways. That said, you don’t need to have know all those specifics or have a PhD in all those complexities to sense that our society is sick. As plenty of others have diagnosed, politics have become an engine—even the engine—of highest meaning and motivation for increasingly more and more people. As religious commitment and thick communities of mutual dependence have receded, folks are beating politicians with hammers and planning to assassinate Supreme Court justices.

These are the most extreme examples of our broader social sickness. For these folks, it’s politics, but for many others it’s something else. At our church, we talk about the Killer Bs that keep folks out of church on Sunday morning—birthday parties, ball games, brunches, and boats. These are at times manifestations of ancient gods of paganism named Poseidon, Aphrodite, and Dionysius. Poseidon was the god of the sea. Aphrodite was the god of sex and procreation. Dionysius was the god of parties and pleasure. You can make a diverse list of “Killer [blanks]” with any letter of the alphabet and choose from the pantheon of any ancient or modern culture. Idols come in many shapes, including Republican elephants and Democratic donkeys. I realize I’m at risk of overly simplifying our cultural problems by saying “idolatry,” but I think I have good biblical grounds for this diagnosis, along with a biblical prognosis: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

My friend, for example, got rid of his “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. For him, the image of a snake refusing to be stepped on was directly at odds with the biblical image of Jesus crushing the head of Satan, the serpent (Gen. 3:15). We need spiritual renewal, and we need repentance. We need a good idol-burning party in the town square. We need to rediscover the true and living God.