A Harmful Delusion
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Palm Sunday
Father Richard Rohr identifies the human impulse to solve problems by blaming others:
The human delusion seems to be this: We think someone else is always the problem, not ourselves. We tend to export our hate and evil elsewhere. In fact, this problem is so central to human nature and human history that its overcoming is at the heart of all spiritual teachings. Mature spirituality tries to keep our own feet to the fire—saying, just as the prophet Nathan did in convicting King David, “You are the one!” (2 Samuel 12:7).
Human nature always wants either to play the victim or to create victims—and both for the purposes of control. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse, or attack—and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and it takes away any immediate shame, guilt, or anxiety. In other words, it works—at least for a while. So, for untransformed people, there is no reason to stop creating victims or playing the victim.
If we read today’s news, we see the pattern has not changed. Hating, fearing, or diminishing someone else holds us together, for some reason. The creating of necessary victims is in our hardwiring. Philosopher René Girard called this “scapegoat mechanism” the central pattern for the creation and maintenance of cultures worldwide since the beginning. [1]
It’s hard for us religious people to hear, but the most persistent violence in human history has been sacred violence, or more accurately, sacralized violence. Human beings have found a most effective way to legitimate their instinct toward fear and hatred. We imagine we are fearing and hating on behalf of something holy and noble like God, religion, truth, morality, our children, or love of country. It takes away our guilt. As a result, we can even think of ourselves as representing the moral high ground or as being responsible and prudent. It never occurs to most people that they can become what they fear and hate. It’s a well-kept secret. Without wisdom, we justify violent and even immoral actions for the sake of something honorable like “protecting the children.” [2]
Unless scapegoating can be consciously seen and named through concrete rituals, owned mistakes, shadow work, or repentance, the pattern will usually remain unconscious and unchallenged. The Scriptures rightly call such ignorant hatred and killing “sin.” Jesus came precisely to “take away” (John 1:29) our capacity to commit it—by exposing the lie for all to see. Jesus stood as the fully innocent one who was condemned by the highest authorities of both church and state (Jerusalem and Rome), an act that should create healthy suspicion about how wrong even the highest powers can be. “He will show the world how wrong it was about sin, about who was really in the right, and about true judgment” (John 16:8). [3]
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A Communal Ritual
Monday, March 30, 2026
Father Richard describes the scapegoat ritual that took place on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day of atonement:
The word “scapegoating” originated from an ingenious ritual described in Leviticus 16. According to Jewish law, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal. Then the goat was beaten with reeds and thorns, driven out into the desert, and the people went home rejoicing. Violence towards the innocent victim was apparently quite effective at temporarily relieving the group’s guilt and shame. The same scapegoating dynamic was at play when European Christians burned supposed heretics at the stake, and when white Americans lynched Black Americans, and continues to this day. In fact, the pattern is identical and totally non-rational.
Whenever the “sinner” is excluded, our collective ego is delighted and feels relieved and safe. It works, but only for a while, because it is merely an illusion. Repeatedly believing the lie, that this time we have identified the true culprit, we become more catatonic, habitually ignorant, and culpable—because, of course, scapegoating never really eliminates evil in the first place. As long as the evil is “over there,” we think we can change or expel someone else as the contaminating element. We then feel purified and at peace. But it is not true peace, the peace of Christ which “the world cannot give” (see John 14:27).
Jesus became the scapegoat to reveal the universal lie of scapegoating. He became the sinned-against one to reveal the hidden nature of scapegoating, so that we would see how wrong even well-meaning people can be. Pilate, a representative of the state, and Caiaphas, the head of the temple, represent this pattern: Both find artificial reasons to condemn him (see John 16:8–11 and Romans 8:3).
In worshiping Jesus as the scapegoat, Christians should have learned to stop scapegoating, but we didn’t. We are still utterly wrong whenever we create arbitrary victims to avoid our own complicity in evil. It seems to be the most effective diversionary tactic. History has shown us that authority itself is not a good guide. Yet for many people, authority figures soothe their anxiety and relieve their own responsibility to form a mature conscience. We love to follow someone else and let them take the responsibility. It is a universal story line in history and culture.
With the mistaken view of God as a Punisher-in-Chief that most Christians seem to hold, we think our own violence is necessary and even good. But there is no such thing as redemptive violence. Violence doesn’t save; it only destroys all parties in both the short and long term. Jesus replaced the myth of redemptive violence with the truth of redemptive suffering. He showed us on the cross how to hold the pain and let it transform us.
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Individual Reflection
Where in your life right now is it most tempting to locate the problem entirely in someone else — and what might it cost you to look the other direction?
Group Discussion — choose one:
Where have you participated in — or quietly benefited from — a group’s need to find someone to blame?
What is the difference between the false peace that comes from expelling someone and the peace that holds the pain instead?
What does it do to your image of God to hear that there is no such thing as redemptive violence?
