An Examination of Conscience with René Girard

Christian life is continual repentance, confession, and conversion. To be a Chris-tian is to let God continually turn us away from sin toward greater likeness to Christ. But repentance is not just done individually, because our sin is not merely individual, nor is the glory to which we are called individual. Recent popes, like St. John Paul II, have shown how sin has a social dimension, which they call “structures of sin.” Sins committed by individual people become embedded in social systems, in which we all participate, and which lead to greater injustices. Consider, for example, how we are all involved, to some extent, in unjust wars, exploitive and consumeristic economic practices, a dis-criminatory justice system, and so on.

Recent popes have also seen how these social sins require that we together repent, confess, and covert. For this reason, they have publicly apologized for social sins committed by Catholics, including members of the hierarchy, like participation in the slave trade or in religious persecution. But it can be hard to see when one is caught up in one of these structures of sin, and, so, it is hard to know when and how to repent and change as a community. Frequently, these systems seem like normal, unquestionable features of life.

For this reason, it’s important to read good writers who can help us step back from our ordinary lives and examine them dispassionately, so that we can see how we are caught up in social sin, and how we might begin to change. I’ve written in these pages about Byung-Chul Han, a contemp-orary philosopher who has helped me see ways in which being caught up in the structures of current society make me and those around me less like Christ. Here, I want to call your attention to a thinker whom I have found of immense value in examining my conscience in these areas, the French literary theorist, historian, and anthropologist, René Girard.

Girard converted to Catholicism relatively early in his career. He thereafter pursued a single line of thought in all his writings. He sought to help us see how we human beings are universally, and mostly unconsciously, caught up in social structures that are founded upon violence and promote violence—and how Jesus Christ came to set us free from those structures and bring us into a new, communal, peaceful way of life.

Girard’s basic story about human beings translates quite readily into a helpful examination of conscience. Human beings, he notes, are driven by desire. Often, we think our desires are our own, original to each one of us. But that’s just not so—not only do we desire, but we imitate others’ desires. When someone else wants something, we all tend to want the same thing, or want a similar thing, or want things in a similar way. We all imitate each other in desiring the same clothes, or the newest smartphone, or the same sexy physique. Indeed, even the desire to be authentic, unique, and original is some-thing most of us have taken on in imitation of others desiring this same thing.

These imitative desires lead to rivalries, envy, and then violence. This violence then grows—since we also imitate others’ desires for revenge—until it threatens to destroy a society. This has been going on since the first human community; we see this cycle of violence in the earliest myths, in the Bible, as in the story of Cain and Abel, and in the daily news today in every story of warfare or political or corporate rivalry. The solution every human society has arrived at to stop the cycle of violence is scapegoating. An innocent victim is chosen, often arbitrarily, and all members of society wreak their violence upon that scapegoat. In doing so, we transfer our desire to hurt one another onto this innocent victim, who we pretend deserved to be harmed or killed. The community is then reunited and, for a little while at least, peace is restored—but it is a peace built upon unjust violence. Out of that false peace come many of the elements of human culture: our political, legal, economic, and juridical systems are all built upon a foundation of unjustly scapegoating innocent victims.

When I first read Girard’s descriptions, it was an arresting and convicting exper-ience. How often do I think I am pursuing my own original ideas and desires, when I am really just unthinkingly caught up in the desires, thoughts, and rivalries of others? How often do I justify the way in which I pursue my own desires for things and security and comfort by reasoning that the ones harmed are distant strangers—the poor, foreigners, members of other races than my own—who probably deserve what they get anyway? How often am I caught up in cycles of violence, and lie to myself and call it peace? I recommend reading Girard, who puts all this much more eloquently than I can, so that you can examine your own conscience around these matters.

The real solution, Girard tells us, is found in the life and death of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to expose the lies at the heart of human societies and desires, and enable us to desire and live together in a new, and truly peaceful, way. By his parables and preaching, he exposed this scapegoat mechanism, but he above all did this by letting himself be killed as a scapegoat without doing violence back. This unlocked for us a new community, the peaceable Kingdom of God. Here, we no longer seek peace through doing violence to others, but live in such a way that all we have is received as a divine gift, and is passed on to others as such a gift. Here, we can see our desires for what they are, and not act on falsely imitative desires. Here, for the first time, we can truly act as the unique, loving, peaceful, communal persons God calls us to be.+