This Good Word, Episode 64: Scapegoat (ShowNotes)

On this week's podcast, I talked about an ancient idea that is thousands of years old. It started as a merciful idea, and like many merciful ideas, it got co-opted and has become the opposite of merciful.I talked about scapegoating.When the idea began, a whole community of people gathered to repent over their communal sins, their personal sins, and to start a new year forgiving each other and being forgiven. They would symbolically pour all of their wickedness onto a goat, which was then led into the wilderness, out of their camp forever. It was a beautiful picture that new beginnings were possible. That forgiveness was possible. It was a radical idea for its time.Today, to scapegoat is to pile all of the pain, anger, anguish, and confusion that you feel onto one person or group of people, and decide that they need to "be sent away." It carries with it no sense of communal repentance, or even personal repentance. It's reverting to a simple way of thinking that if we just got rid of him/her/them, our problems would be solved.But there is a time and a place to say out loud what is broken.So I talked about the difference between protest and scapegoating. I talked about the difference between discernment and judgment. And I talked about the difference between peacemaking and peacekeeping.And then I ended the whole shebang with a call for confession.So there you have it. Take a listen (click here if you don't see the media player below).

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