Emphasis Preaching Journal

Walter Wink believes that for many, many people, violence is the real religion of our time. "This Myth of Redemptive Violence," Wink writes, "is the real myth of the modern world. It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today" (The Powers That Be: Theology For a New Millennium [New York: Doubleday, 199], p. 42).

If children, or even adults, nourish their spirits on a steady diet of so-called "action films," they will become brainwashed into believing this destructive myth. They will learn to see the world in stark, black-and-white, good-vs-evil terms. They will learn to locate evil outside themselves and to scapegoat anyone who's different. In time they will come to accept as common knowledge the unthinking assumption that "might makes right" -- both on the individual level and on the international stage. They will come to see strength as embodied in the almost mythological figure of a man who slides down a rope out of a helicopter, firing an automatic weapon into a crowd of enemies.

Is this the sort of strength the prophet is talking about as he writes, "those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength"? Hardly.