I think there is Holiness or wholeness in both of these circumstances, Rich. James is showing us that the Gospels are an anthropology and that we find God in the other, and that the text of the other is not always conflict-laden. But those that are, deserve our compassion. Girard describes the conversion process as ‘the redirection of desire towards God”. In other words we detach from the ‘Great Beast” or the world, the ‘social other’ with all that is ego driven and narcissistic. But we remain interdividual, not individual. We also find wholeness in the scene you describe in ‘the silent passion of the soil’. I think God is in both places and even with those who are conflict-laden. I think we must avoid the dualism of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
