Imbibing Madness

The problem of bloodthirsty delight

In his magisterial work, The Confessions, St. Augustine explores the structure and scaffolding of desire as he tells the story of his life and his awakening to God. If for many Christians, the heart of the faith has been about belief, arguably for Augustine, the heart of the faith is about desire. The whole work is framed as an outpouring of praise, prayer, and confession to God. The famous line from the first paragraph: "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Or, from book ten: "Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made." Augustine is constantly examining his desires, how he desired fame and wealth, and famously women. But none of these delights satisfied, none brought him purpose or meaning. These violent delights, Augustine would eventually conclude, have violent ends.

As he tells his story, Augustine highlights a few other key characters . Monica, his mother, looms throughout, but around the edges are also his son, Adeodatus, and Adeodatus's unnamed mother, and a small selection of Augustine's friends. In fact, when Augustine is finally baptized at the age of 33, he is baptized alongside his teenage son and his erstwhile student and friend, Alypius. Eventually Alypius would go on to become the bishop of their hometown, Thagaste, while Augstine would become the bishop of Hippo Regius. But on their way to the episcopacy and sainthood, both found themselves caught up in violent delights. For Alypius, the delights were literally violent. In book six, while they are in Rome, Alypius is dragged to the gladiatorial games by a group of friends. Alypius is determined not to watch; he thinks these games are barbarous. Even so, once the crowd begins to cheer, Alypius dares to peek and see what is happening. "As soon as he saw the blood," Augustine says, "he at once drank in savagery and did not turn away. His eyes were riveted. He imbibed madness." Augustine continues: "Without any awareness of what was happening to him, he found delight in the murderous contest and was inebriated by bloodthirsty pleasure" (6.8.13). Of course, Augustine assures his readers, God would deliver Alypius from those delights, though much later.

Augustine was well aware that the human heart can harbor fascination with violence, bloodthirstiness, attraction to cruelty and inflicting pain. We see this in the popularity of violent films and television shows. Sometimes the violence is simply a mirror reflecting reality, and sometimes it is there to stoke our love of violence. Quentin Tarantino's films are stuffed full of violence, even absurdly so. Whatever we make of that absurdity, the violence is palpable, deliberate, and if we're honest, scratches an itch for some. One reviewer, writing for the Guardian last month penned a striking retrospective: "It may not be your classic cosy watch, but Kill Bill provides me with that warm, fuzzy feeling only cathartic violence can bring." Some psychologists do indeed affirm that certain forms of controlled violence (film, video games, etc.) can be cathartic--it can allow us to purge our pent up feelings of violence and aggression. But, as with Augustine's friend Alypius, it can also feed our violent delights.

Pulp Fiction might be Tarantino's most famous film. As a black comedy, it also contains a fair amount of violence. In that malaise of violent delights, one scene stands out, and it has also made the news this week. One of the plot lines of the film follows Vincent and Jules, two hitmen, who track down an unsavory business associate, Brett, and kill him. In the death scene, Jules (played by Samuel L. Jackson) recites "Ezekiel 25:17": "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you." Then Jules and Vincent unload their guns on Brett.

If you've seen the news this week, you know that the Secretary of Defense, who styles himself the Secretary of War, quoted this passage as a prayer in a speech he gave regarding the downed airman in Iran earlier this month: “They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17, so the prayer is CSAR 25:17, and it reads, and pray with me, please, ‘The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know My call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Amen.”

The Secretary of Defense asked the room to pray this prayer with him, lifted from a violent film, where the violence really serves no purpose beyond itself. Moreover, as many have now noted, that's not even what Ezekiel 25:17 says. The Pentagon apparently defended the Secretary by saying he was reciting a customary prayer among the search and rescue team, and was not misquoting Ezekiel. But it does follow a pattern with the Secretary and the Department of Defense under his "leadership"--a pattern of bloodthirstiness and violence-mongering in the name of God. If you've ever wondered what taking the name of the Lord in vain is--it's that. This pattern reflects violent delights, or rather delight in violence, bathed in veneer of holiness. Unchecked this rhetoric stirs up delight not in justice, not in just war, but in "holy war," violence for the sake of violence. It's drinking in savagery; it's imbibing madness.

There is a dangerous adolescence (in the worst possible sense) at work in this sort of prayer. It could just be laughed off as an innocent blunder, but the prayer resonates with a violent culture that wants violence to be righteous. I remember when Pulp Fiction came out. Not because I saw it, but because I had (male) friends who had and were enticed by just that scene. I have a playwright friend who used to audition students for plays at the university he was studying at. A large proportion of the male students chose that scene as their monologue. There is a delight in this violence. Perhaps with teenage boys we don't worry (though we should): they'll grow out of it (will they?). But when the adolescent who takes delight in spouting such a prayer commands the U.S. military, that's dangerous in the extreme. Because we see where it leads--to impetuous acts of aggression, to cavalier taking of human life, to violence without end, to conflict forever: these violent delights have violent ends.

Pope Leo has condemned the bellicose posture and actions that have issued from our Department of Defense. The President of the United States can't seem to stand an American Pope who doesn't abide fools. The Vice President (a Roman Catholic convert, no less) had the audacity to suggest the Pope doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to theology. I think the Pope knows his theology quite a bit better than the Vice President. I suspect the Pope has actually read Augustine's thought on just war, and he knows, for instance, that St. Augustine never thought a just war was a good war. Augustine himself wrote: "What is the evil in war? ...The real evils in war are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power, and such like" (c. Faust. 22.74). Had the Secretary of Defense actually read Ezekiel 25:17 he might have noticed the warning latent in the passage: "Thus says the Lord GOD: Because with unending hostilities the Philistines acted in vengeance and with malice of heart too revenge in destruction, therefore thus says the Lord GOD: I will stretch out my hand against the Philistines, cut off the Cherethites, and destroy the rest of the coast. I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful punishments. Then they shall know that I am the LORD, when I lay my vengeance on them" (Ezekiel 25:15-17). Or, as Augustine would put it, having spoken of love of violence, revengeful cruelty, etc., he says, "and it is generally to punish these things, when force is required to inflict the punishment, that, in obedience to God or some lawful authority, good men undertake wars, when they find themselves in such a position as regards the conduct of human affairs, that right conduct requires them to act, or to make others act in this way." Augustine made room for war, but only to check such blind and naked aggression.

When we delight in violence, we stand in for these Philistines. God does not love violence. God does not love war. Neither should we. We should take no pride in our power to dominate, but in our power to heal. We should take no delight in destruction, but in our capacity to create. We should delight not in the taking of life, but in love, compassion, mercy. For these resemble most the heart of God. God is love, and love is of God (1 John 4:7-8). We should set all our affection on God, and beg to be healed of our violent delights. Maybe we will learn to pray, not in the words of Quentin Tarantino, but in the words of Harry Emerson Fosdick's hymn, "God of grace and God of glory" (Hymnal #594): "Cure thy children's warring madness, bend our pride to thy control; shame our wanton, selfish gladness, rich in things and poor in soul. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, lest we miss thy kingdom's goal, lest we miss thy kingdom's goal."