The French philosopher René Girard, a distinctive Catholic intellectual of the twentieth century, was a theorist of violence. Girard observed that violence becomes most turbulent when parties are locked in competition. Girard also observed that the more fiercely people or groups compete against each other, the more they become mirror images of each other, desiring the same exact things, competing for supremacy on every front, and behaving, valuing, and thinking increasingly alike. In Girard’s theory of violence, desires for things like power, money, or superiority function as a twisted social fabric that stitches people together into common ambition, even as the lust for preeminence produces an ever-simmering and sometimes eruptive hostility between people, groups, or nations.
Jesus seems to believe his mission was to unstitch this fabric of competition and conquest. Favoring instead a fabric of generosity, he uses black-and-white language to criticize the world’s definition of “success”: “What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” and “Those who save their lives will lose it.” When he says these things, I take him to mean: Those who seek security inside the maelstrom of worldly ambition act against the generous abundance of the Kingdom of God.
It is Jesus’ cross that reveals the distinction between this dismal world of rivalry and his own humble way, in which greatness manifests in smallness, and power takes the form of vulnerability and service.

Justin Bartkus

Justin Bartkus is a human-centered designer living in Chicago, Illinois.