Millions of people will hear this Sunday’s readings in which violence will be presented to us as normal, even as Godly. We are to “offer due sacrifice to the Lord,” meaning to kill a living being, because it is presented as “pleasing to the Lord.” Sacrifice is presented as Godly “to expiate the sins of the people.” So it is that the “law of Moses” demands a woman spilling blood in childbirth present herself to the priests for cleansing via spilling blood in animal sacrifice.
We are groomed in violence. Grooming describes a violator presenting themselves as a savior to gain the trust of their targets. We are groomed to comply with being violated. The grooming by a sexual abuser frames their abuse as love – the rape is how I love you. The grooming by a militant abuser frames their abuse as salvific – the violence is how I save you. Violators groom us in three phases. We are first groomed in the violence of supremacy. God ordains superior beings and we are to obey superior beings, for example presidents and soldiers. These men represent the ultimate Superior Being in the world, God. They coerce us to praise them as our heroes, our saviors (“Nobody knows more about __ than me.” “I am a very stable genius.” “I am Chosen by God.”). They coerce us to dehumanize subordinates as truly demonic and to be blamed (Covid, RINOs, Liberal judges, trans persons, Fake News, Special Prosecutors, immigrants, DEI DC helicopter-plane crash, anyone disloyal,…). Supremacists are pathologically incapable of relating in communion or building community. Inequality is Godly, equality is unGodly. It is the first violence done to us. The second violence can thus be more easily done to us. We are coerced to believe subordinated people deserve to be devalued. We poor can be denied wages, we Blacks can be enslaved, we disabled can be defunded, we women can be raped. We are worth-less than wealthy, white, able bodied, men who are worth-while. We are labeled as it suits the supremacist; we are “unfit,” having “bad genes” to a Nazi president, we are “lazy” and “mediocre” to his Nazi DOGE accomplice, we are sinners to his Nazi evangelical pastors. We imagine our own supremacy and join in blaming others for their suffering. Rarely do we realize we have been groomed in accepting the suffering done to us. Our wages are stolen and our taxes are taken by a Supremacist 2-party class for their capital gain. Requests of our money returned to us whether as federal grants or Medicaid or SNAP is used as evidence of our inferior, lazy status, for which we should be ashamed. Like the sexual abuser grooms their isolated victim, ‘No one else will love you,’ so the militant abuser grooms their dehumanized victim, “I alone can save you.” But it is they alone who damn us; to unlimited borrowing which we are forced to pay off, to the right to fire us which keeps us expendable, to raiding the Treasury which we are forced to replenish. We are thus well groomed for the third violence. We will sacrifice our lives for the supremacist class. Now comes the physical, blood spilling violence that would have sickened us if it came first. We needed to be groomed. And so we have been, for millennia. We read books called holy in which thousands are murdered by a War Lord. We are entertained with war stories, fact and fiction, that groom us to glorify saviors who dehumanize, abuse, and kill. Sickening violence is the content of the news, in which people are being killed in mass shootings and in war all the time. This is how we accept horrific violence done to human beings as normal, more so, as Godly. We are groomed in the sanctity of dehumanization, abuse, and violent human sacrifice – horrific blood spilling sacrificial violence – presented to us by rulers as Godly. It is why Fox News loves Kyle Rittenhouse for killing protesting liberal nobodies and hates Luigi Mangione for killing a ruling health insurance CEO. Thus, a president with his soldiers and ICE and sheriffs and police and militia across the nation will keep dehumanizing us, devaluing us, and killing us and we will not be horrified. We will be groomed.
We will be wise as we humanize all the marginalized, love all the abused, and heal all the violated. It is how Jesus lived. Is it how we will live?
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, We are devoted to Communion amidst supremacy, Love amidst capitalism, and Healing amidst violence.
Question: What are my opportunities for Communion, Love, and Healing?
February 02, 2025 Gospel Luke 2:22-40 Presentation of Jesus