The Bloodline and the Breaking Point: A Sermon on the Choice to End Violence

I have always found it interesting that in the most dominant myths of Western society, one of the chronologically first events to shape the character of a species not yet formed is a war. Lucifer, the brightest angel in the host worshipped by Islam, Jews, and Christians, desires to have power equal to that of the Creator, resulting in a cataclysmic rebellion that saw half the angelic host expelled. Before humans even had a chance to think their first thought, violence was already part of their cosmic history, a kind of original sin of existence itself, a foundational principle of the universe.

This mythological bedrock gives birth to a brutal theology. Back in the 1970s, the influential Southern Baptist preacher R.G. Lee wrote a book based on his famous sermon, “The Bloodline Through The Bible.” In it, he had meticulously chronicled all the times that violence resulting in bloodshed was mentioned in the scriptures. His purpose, as he saw it, was to demonstrate the theological necessity of this violence, to prove that “without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.” It was a powerful and popular sermon because it gave Christians a theological permission slip. It allowed them to feel good, even righteous, about the fact that their religion is so tightly entwined with bloodshed. It reframed suffering not as a tragic consequence of human failing, but as a necessary, even noble, part of a divine plan. This, more than anything, is what shapes the deep grammar of Western civilization. It is a frightening and brutally effective equation: God (g) + violence (v) = power (p). “Because my god told me to” becomes the most irrefutable war cry, the ultimate trump card in any argument, because who dares stand in the way of anything declared to be done “for the glory of God!”

When we think of “Western” thought, what we are actually referencing is this specific, invasive ideology that conflates divinity with domination. Those who came to civilize the Americas brought this operating system with them. It was alien to many of the people already here. In much of what is now North America, indigenous societies were largely decentralized. Their religions were not primarily tools of conquest, but ways of understanding. “Power” was seen not as the ability to control others, but as a personal agency to keep life for oneself, one’s family, and one’s tribe as peaceful as possible. Deities were found in the wisdom of trees and the life-giving force of water. Violence was a tool of last resort, used only for the immediate need of sustenance or defense. There was no over-hunting, no over-farming. The central organizing principle was not conquest, but balance. Not until the invasion of power-driven Europeans, carrying their g + v = p equation like a holy text, were these peoples systematically portrayed as “savages” and “killers”—a classic case of the oppressor projecting their own violent worldview onto the oppressed in order to justify their destruction.

If we can accept that this violent, power-driven model is not an inherent human default, but a specific and dominant ideology, then it follows that there must have been lines of thought throughout history that have sought to rebel against it. They may not have been successful in completely overwriting that dominant code, but they have succeeded in creating a crucial line of doubt. This is the story of that intellectual and moral rebellion.

The rebellion begins with a brutally honest look at the thing we are rebelling against. We must move beyond the simple political or religious justifications for violence and stare into its dark, psychological heart. The writer Mary Gaitskill, in her essay on the topic, forces us to do just that. She acknowledges the pragmatic violence—”for getting your way”—but then pushes us to confront the “sadistic pleasure,” the cruelty done for its own sake, the kind of motiveless, compulsive brutality that defies rational explanation. She writes of her own “scalding, ugly, poisonous” feelings of hate and jealousy, feelings so overwhelming they “seemed to be coming from outside of me.” She forces us to admit that the problem may be even deeper than our politics or our gods; that there is a dark, primal impulse within us, what she calls an “inhuman mechanism that expresses itself through humanity,” which our violent systems then exploit and legitimize.

This internal darkness is mirrored by an external failure: our collective, often willful, amnesia. The writer Drew Johnson, in his quest to understand a forgotten piece of American history, tells the ghost story of James M. Hinds. Hinds was a Republican congressman from Arkansas, an “eloquent vindicator of the rights of men” who championed a true multiracial democracy during Reconstruction. For his efforts, he was assassinated by a Klansman in 1868. He was not just murdered; he was subsequently erased from history, a casualty not just of a shotgun, but of a century of historical malpractice from both the North and the South. His story represents a path not taken, a moment of possibility that was violently sealed shut and then deliberately forgotten. “The failure of Reconstruction,” Johnson writes, “feels like the origin story for much of American life as we know it now.” Our inability to remember the James M. Hindses of our past is a memory and learning issue that leaves us perpetually floundering, telling ourselves, as Johnson memorably puts it, the same “recursive stories to run out the clock” on our own decay.

It is into this mire of psychological darkness and historical amnesia that the great philosophers of rebellion speak, offering us a way out.

The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, forged in the prisons of a military dictatorship, gives us the intellectual toolkit. He fundamentally redefines violence, arguing that its first act is dehumanization, the failure to “recognise others as persons.” He calls out the “banking model” of power, where the powerful “deposit” their will into passive subjects—a perfect description of a modern military ordering civilians to evacuate a city. His antidote is dialogue and conscientização—critical consciousness. He argues that the most powerful weapon against oppression is a clear, critical understanding of the system itself. To “name the violence,” as he urges, is the first step toward dismantling it.

The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin then gives us the X-ray to deconstruct the legal and philosophical architecture that makes that violence seem legitimate. He exposes the circular logic of state power, where law-making violence (conquest, revolution) creates a system that is then upheld by law-preserving violence (police, prisons), a cycle that endlessly legitimizes itself. He offers a radical alternative: divine violence, not the holy violence of the zealot, but the revolutionary act of mass refusal, like a General Strike, that shatters the entire system by withdrawing consent. He forces us to see that “there is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism,” demanding a “politics of mourning” that resists the very forgetting that erased James M. Hinds.

And finally, James Baldwin, writing from the crucible of American racial injustice, gives us the moral and existential core of this rebellion. He teaches that violence is not just an act, but a narrative told by the powerful to maintain their power. The “surgical strikes” and “collateral damage” are the modern-day equivalent of the 19th-century newspaper reporting that James Hinds was “shot from the brush”—a story designed to obscure responsibility. He calls out the “innocence which constitutes the crime”—the willful ignorance of those who benefit from violent systems while claiming to have clean hands. His ethical command is the duty of witnessing, of telling “as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more,” an act of exposure that is itself politically disruptive.

This powerful trinity of thinkers gives us the tools for a profound re-evaluation. The final piece of this intellectual puzzle comes from the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who shatters the g + v = p equation entirely. She argues that power and violence are not related; they are opposites. Power, for Arendt, is the uniquely human ability to act in concert. It arises from people speaking, persuading, and creating something new. Violence, on the other hand, is an instrument, a tool used only when power has failed. The tyrant pulls a gun not because he is powerful, but because his ability to persuade has vanished. Therefore, “political violence” is an oxymoron. The moment violence begins, politics—the act of people speaking and creating together—ends. When we look at the world through this lens, we see that it is not run by the powerful, but by the violent—by those whose power has so utterly failed that they must resort to the crude instrument of force.

This is where we are. We are stuck in a religiously-based, anti-philosophical mire of misinformation, a recursive story of violence that is running out the clock on our civilization. But we have also been given a path out.

Earlier this week, we looked at an article about a new, “better” life form, a bacterium with a more efficient 57-bit genetic framework instead of our current 64-bit one. This suggests a profound possibility. If we can improve the code of life, we can certainly improve our own social and ethical code. And the first command to be deleted must be our entire concept of violence to power. With or without the deity at the beginning, the ending is always the same: tragedy and loss of life.

Where that leaves us is with the conclusion that centralized power, with everyone forced to march to a specific beat, following a single leader, enforced through violent requirements of capitulation, is anti-human, anti-life, anti-family, anti-culture, anti-art, and anti-community. We lose everything that is good about humanity when we follow the violence-to-power ideal. We put religion above brotherhood. We put nationalism above commonality. We put selfishness above sharing.

There is a movement within the world of classical music that rejects the use of a conductor. Through musicians working together, away from the demands of a centralized power, the music becomes not the interpretation of one, but of many. Each performance is different, freer, more liberating.

And there is the example of where our lives must head if we are to survive. No conductor. Only the notes, the dynamics, and the tempo as indicated by creation itself. Then we are free to interpret, to create, to extol, to embrace, to find pleasure, and to push humanity toward a new, more joyful, wiser, and less violent being.

So no, it is NOT okay to consider violence a natural part of our existence. It is NOT okay to accept the opinion of those who would extinguish the voice of reason. It is NOT okay to allow one person to demonstrably and violently impose their will on others. The time has come to not only toss away the mythologies, but all the garbage lessons we learned from them. The end goal is not the power of the one, but the unity and brightness of us all.