The Three Ways Mimetic Theory Helps Me

explaining rené girard's revolutionary framework, why it helps me, and what it might mean for all of of us

‣ Check Out This Week’s Conversation, the Shift Happens Podcast, and My Substack Introduction

‣ The Three Ways Mimetic Theory Helps Me (Oh, & What Is It)?

‣ Check Out This Week’s Conversation, the Shift Happens Podcast, and My Substack Introduction

1. This Friday, 1PM

   Tori E. Owens
   and I will be hanging out with the one and only
   Thomas Jay Oord
   talking about open and relational theology, how helpful (but also how challenging) it is to consider the divine as uncontrolling.

2. It was great to be on the Shift Happens podcast with my friend

   Joe Smith
   recently talking about resistance, mimetic theory, scapegoating, and all things Theology of Consent.

3. If you want to learn more about this publication you should probably read My Substack Introduction. It’s probably the greatest ever.

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‣ The Three Ways Mimetic Theory Helps Me (Oh, & What Is It)?

Why Helpful?

This question could be answered in different ways by different people, but as my origin story (i.e., physical, psychological, familial, theological, etc) was wound together with the Jesus story, it was vital for me to try and understand the Jesus story, particularly the events surrounding his death, as a way to wrestle with who I was. Haha, I'd love to tell you my interest in mimesis was for profound theological or intellectual reasons, and of course, those things were at play, but the deeper play was likely me trying to figure out the voices in my tiny little brain!

First, a key 🔑 :

So, I start there … what Rene Girard gives is a way to walk through certain doors involving the passion story. From one direction, it’s a way that helps me see the role played by humanity's controlling tendencies (i.e., impatience, limited grace, and closed-mindedness). From another direction, it helps me reorient my thinking around a God of love (i.e., non-coercive, patience, grace, and open-ended possibilities.) 

Ultimately, it leads me to see the difference between Jesus dying as a requirement of love and a revelation of love. I am committed to the latter. I've probably always been committed to the latter; it's just that previous to Girard, I neither had the framework nor the language. Mimetic theory was the key that unlocked the door to a whole new approach to at-one-ment, which itself became a key to unlock two more doors.

Behind this door🚪:

The door to reading the bible in a healthier way. Once I saw the subversive movement of uncontrolling love in the passion story—the way it named unjust patterns and sided with the victim— I began to see it in lots of other biblical stories as well. And then I thought, hey, in addition to the stories in here that seem to be promoting a violent, controlling God, other stories are doing the opposite. Interesting. As Girard said, "It's a text in travail.”

Long story short, mimetic theory, particularly as it lines up with open and relational theology, brings new life to Scripture. (One caveat here … honestly? I don't read Scripture as often as I used to. I mean, I used to read it every single day, so it wouldn't take much to read it less, but my point is that I'm not trying to be Jonny Bible-Guy. All I'm saying is that when I do read the text, because of Girard's help, it’s a way more interesting read!)

And behind this🚪:

The door to considering what I’ll call a relational-psychology. Girard helped me realize that my identity, intellect, and rationality are interpersonal more than strictly cerebral. Again, this all finds resonance with the science and faith of open and relational thinking, and what it does, at every turn in my life, is to remind me that yes, ideas are interesting, but …

Number One: An idea that doesn't work itself out in real, live, flesh and blood ways to help another human being is worthless (resounding gong and clanging cymbal, anyone?).

Number Two: No idea comes out of thin air. In other words, to the degree that I have any intelligence at all, I owe it to relationships (i.e., parents, family, community, profs, teachers, coaches, friends, Girardian thinkers, open and relational thinkers, those who came before me and invented language, etc.)

Number Three: I don’t spontaneously create these ideas. The very desires that form my ideas are shaped by my interpersonal interactions. Revealing how intensely others influence my desires encourages me to take inventory of the guest list inside the party of my own head. 

So, yes, I’ve benefitted from trying to understand Girard. However (Haha), I’ve also suffered because, well, it’s the oldest 3-sentence story in the world: Person grows up in system. Person changes mind. System kicks person out.

All of it is a type of scapegoating mechanism itself. In other words, as I was learning about it, I was experiencing it, which is not an uncommon occurrence for Girardian types.

What is Mimetic Theory? Why Should Someone Care?

Let’s start with what it’s not. First, it’s not an atonement theory. Not really. However, considering what it has to say will influence what you think of atonement.

Second, it’s not a theology. Not really. It’s an anthropology; however, considering what it has to say about anthropology will influence your theology.

So, what does mimesis reveal about anthropology? Many things, but today I’ll start with a big idea and work backward: Mimetic theory is a way to see that our culture is informed by violence, which is informed by religion, which is informed by sacrifice, which is informed by our imitative, envious, and rivalrous desires, which are informed by our inability to sit with our own anxiety, which is informed by our misinterpretation of this anxiety … namely, in thinking we are separate from God.

Why should someone care?

It goes beyond the scope of this post to answer that question fully, but here are two reasons to care:

First, we care because of the power of imitative and rivalrous desire. It can hold our best intentions hostage. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that we’re seeing this play out in real time across our world right now. We live in a time of hyper-imitation, competition, and comparison. We are obsessed with what is trending, going viral, online popularity, and power vs. being content with some gool old fashion offline kindness, grace, and hospitality.

Additionally, we care because it helps us begin to understand our addiction to political polarization. It stems partly from mimetic behavior that obsessively “famishes the craving it promises to feed.” (T.S. Eliot) The more we fight the other, the more nuance is destroyed, and the more we resemble the other. One of the goals of dysfunctional mimetic desire is to blind us to seeing ourselves in any other way except in light of the other. “When a person’s identity becomes completely tied to a mimetic model,” as

Luke Burgis

says, “they can never truly escape that model because doing so would mean destroying their own reason for being.”

Second, we care because we want life to be healthier! To that end, I’d like to pick back up at the “separate from God/misinterpretation of anxiety” place … which is the place where the whole mimetic sequence is so often jumpstarted. Sequence isn’t the best word as none of this is linear, but it is helpful to speak in terms of sequence sometimes to think through how we might re-sequence some things.

My encouragement is to go to that “separate from God/misinterpretation of anxiety” place … yes, go there and pause, breathe, and be at one with everything. Even your existential fears. Especially your existential fears. It is a part of you. It is you. It’s not something you really defeat. In fact, the more you try and defeat it, the more the fighting serves to invigorate its power.

While I believe it’s a worthy goal to be at peace with your internal anxiety, I don’t think it happens by beating something down. I encourage a different approach, something more like a cautious acceptance and careful embrace of internal antagonism that might allow peace to emerge. Remember, love is with you and has always been with you. You are not separate from love or anything else; therefore, love doesn’t need you to destroy internal angst; no, love is helping you absorb internal angst and recycle it into something generative.

Love isn’t trying to get you to offload your problems onto the back of another so you can scapegoat them and feel better about yourself. No, love is trying to get you to love the other, which in a real sense means loving yourself. Jesus’s admonition to love your neighbor is not only the hope for humanity, it’s the hope for your psychology, for to love your neighbor in a relational cosmos, in a real sense, is to love yourself.

The way forward is to embrace the un-ease that so easily puts us at dis-ease. That’s right, give ourselves a hug and know that God is with us. (The previous sentence is way more powerful and dangerous than it reads, for it presupposes that we hold the hug long enough to absorb the agitation, get in rhythm with it, and listen to it so that it will dissipate within us. This is no small task!)

So, allow love to help you re-sequence your life. Allow love to help you re-sequence the scapegoating mechanism that has done untold damage to our world. It’s a mechanism that has marked our anthropology.

However, something else has marked our anthropology as well … the teachings, healings, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; someone who didn’t operate by unhealthy mimesis. On the contrary, he was someone who, in doing what his father revealed to him (John 8:28) and in asking us to imitate him (Luke 5:27), shows a kind of generative mimesis. (My Girardian friend, Rebecca Adams, calls it loving mimesis.) We care about all of this because we see now, how imitating the non-rivalrous life of Christ is an indispensable part of our hope. 

Peace everyone✌🏼

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PS - If it’s helpful, check out this link: Mimetic theory in 7 non-linear bites

Also, if it’s helpful, pick up a copy of Theology of Consent, which is now, thanks to AI, on audio as well as ebook and paperback. Haha, we’ll see how well the AI narration does on some of the process and mimetic terms!