GruntGod v.2.2.3: Why Azazel Matters

Yom Kippur and the Scapegoat Problem

Most Christians know Passover, which has become Easter. Fewer know Yom Kippur, known as the Day of Atonement, which centers on two goats—one slaughtered, one exiled. This ritual reveals something Americans need to understand about how we treat veterans: we're still performing ancient scapegoat ceremonies without admitting it.

I'm revising the Moses chapter of God Is a Grunt (2nd edition), and the Yom Kippur material keeps demanding more space. Here's the extracted argument: the scapegoat isn't ancient history. It's alive in how civilian America handles guilt about war.

Two Goats, Two Fates

Yom Kippur requires two goats, chosen by lot. One is "for the LORD" and one is "for ʿăzā'zēl" (Lev. 16:8). The Hebrew likely means "the goat who makes [sin] disappear." William Tyndale called the second goat "the scapegoat" in his 1526 translation.

The ritual: The high priest slaughters the LORD's goat first and paints its blood on the ark, like how households painted blood on their doorposts back in Egypt (Ex. 12:7). Then the priest returns for the second goat. Outside, where everyone can see, he places his bloodied hands on the scapegoat's head and "confess over it all the iniquities of the people" (Lev. 16:21). The guilt transfers from people to animal. The scapegoat is banished from the camp, carrying away the community's sin into the wilderness.

Two goats: One dies for God. One lives but gets exiled with everyone's guilt.

The Altar or the Wilderness

Later Jewish tradition held the scapegoat would be led away to be pushed off a cliff. The ritual required both goats gone—one consumed by fire, one by wilderness. Neither gets to come home.

As a soldier, you either die on the altar of war or live to be pushed off the cliff. For many grunts, service feels like this: tight-knit community, then suddenly you're at the roadside with a DD214. You have all your needs taken care of, then you go to war, and the community expects you to keep quiet about what you've experienced or rubber stamp the civilian version of events.

The American ritual is genius: it removes guilt without the community changing. The scapegoat carries sin away. It's what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace" because no collective repentance is required.

Civilian Catharsis, Veteran Exile

Diana Tsai, defending TYFYS in Forbes, writes that veterans "never asked, and never will ask, anything of me." Civilians hear gratitude. Veterans familiar with the stigma of asking for help hear: "Shut up and stay gone."

TYFYS functions as American Yom Kippur. It's not about honoring veterans—it's about civilians experiencing cathartic release from guilt about the cost of their privilege. The ritual lets them 'confess' their complicity (Iraq for oil, Afghanistan for decades, WMD lies) onto the veteran's head, then watch the veteran carry that guilt into the wilderness. As long as the scapegoat stays out of sight, the community lives in peace. How can you live in peace if you're reminded of the suffering you pushed onto others?

That tradition of having someone take the scapegoat by the reins out to a cliff? It's not Biblical, it must have been added because scapegrunts kept finding their way back to the community. The authors of Leviticus, like the civilians of America, didn't anticipate the goats having a say in the matter. That's how you know veterans aren't full members of the assembly; they're just ritual objects.

The Suicide Epidemic as Failed Religion

Here's why ʿăzā'zēl matters: if 91% of the military identifies as with the Church, then 16 of the 17 daily veteran suicides are Christians. Military suicide isn't a military problem—it's a Church problem.

The Church has absorbed American civil religion's scapegoat ritual. We thank veterans on patriotic Sundays, pray for troops overseas, post "support our troops" online. Then we wonder why they're killing themselves in the wilderness to which "We the People" have consigned them.

The Biblical Yom Kippur ritual at least acknowledged what was happening. The high priest placed bloodied hands on the scapegoat's head and explicitly confessed the community's sins, while everyone watched. There was some transparency about the transaction, everyone saw the blood IRL.

Modern America skips the honesty. We dress scapegrunts in patriotic language and claim the ritual is about "honoring service." We thank veterans without confessing what is happening: using military families to carry away civilian guilt about violence, empire, oil wars, torture, civilian casualties. We need them to take our guilt into the wilderness so we feel clean while ignoring their suicides.

The scapegoat doesn't remove sin. It relocates it. And when 17 veterans a day kill themselves, 16 of them Christians, maybe it's time to admit the ritual isn't working.

What If We Stopped?

The Moses chapter explores how God subverts this system by becoming both goats—slaughtered and exiled. But that's the next post. For now: What if we stopped treating veterans as scapegoats? What if we acknowledged our guilt about war without requiring them to carry it? What if we let them come home—actually home, not into wilderness exile?

That would require civilians to sit with their own complicity instead of confessing it onto someone else's head. It would require the Church to confront its alliance with American empire instead of outsourcing that guilt to military families.

Scapegoating matters because we're still doing it. We just lie about what we're doing.

This post draws from material cut during revision of "God Is a Grunt" (2nd edition). Next up: why the New Testament's "lamb of God" language gets Yom Kippur wrong, and what it means that God is actually the GOAT.