The point is, I don’t think it possible (perhaps not even desirable) to remove violence from human affairs. Ritualized violence like football or WWF helps to gratify the lust for bust, but by the same token legitimates conquest and supremacy. In fact, it appears that the urge toward violence is primary and elemental, and has formed nation-state in Empire, based on what else? The rule of might.
If there is a way to transform violence into respect and regard, it is through the alchemy of the heart: Jesus taught us “to love thy neighbor as thyself.” Resist not evil, turn the other cheek etc. When Jesus claimed he brought not peace but the sword he meant to excise the martial temper that enforced the Pax Romana. And a transcendence of material culture that divided men: the worship of Mammon. But these so-called Christian churches have not taken Jesus seriously: they have fallen into the accommodation that he warned of. They have enshrined the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory as the Lord’s Prayer- burying the battle-dead at sea.
If Jesus represents anything at all, it is transcendence of the secular. Why? Because the secular is sourced in one thing: reactivity. The wisdom of the heart acknowledges first of all one humanity that runs through each of us that we know because it readily shines as one emotion: love.
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