Because
of the way I was brought up, the Revelation to John has always been the
scariest text in the Bible. And confusing—how do you wash a garment white as
snow in blood? So it’s a good example for testing a new approach to all
scripture.
Growing
up, I read, or heard interpreted, Revelation with fear. And there’s much to be
afraid of, like a really bad nightmare, and neither God nor Jesus could comfort
me, because they, too, come across as frightening in this depiction. The
violence and torture in this book makes Zero
Dark Thirty, 24, and vicious
video games seem tame by comparison. Many of you might consider Revelation just
another example of toxic words that I wrote about in last week’s post. And it’s
texts like these in every religion that prompt the more literal among us to
forget that spiritual warfare is best treated as a metaphor for the spiritual
struggle.
As
I “evolved” as a Christian, I simply took flight from Revelation. After all,
even Martin Luther wished it were not in the biblical canon. It was easy for me
to ignore it with so much better “stuff” in the Bible, or use the few parts
that appealed to me. Its writer was clearly an over-the-top Goth-style drama
queen who needed a good editor, one who might have helped avoid the bored and
snarky critic in me, muttering, “The end of the world seems endless.”
Preferable are end-of-the-world sagas like The
Day After (nuclear holocaust) and The
Day After Tomorrow (instant ice age due to climate change) that move more
swiftly!
When
contemporary Christians began to read it as a description of our times, I
fought that notion with biblical scholarship, which teaches that its context
was the persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire, the Beast, and
specifically Nero, 666 or 616 depending on which early manuscript one relies
on. That explains why the writer seems fixated on retributive bloodshed, burning,
drowning, and disease. That’s also why Revelation (and I would say the whole of
the Bible) should not be read in a version without footnotes, or worse, a
paraphrased version (which means the paraphraser has interpreted the text from
their own bias). I’m presently using the New Jerusalem Bible, which has
footnotes.
So,
having used three approaches to Revelation—fear, flight, and fight—I find
myself now using fancy to understand what the mystic John was trying to reveal.
(Fancy can be used to understand other
scriptures too, which is where midrash comes in handy. Midrash, a rabbinical
tool of discernment, is a creative re-telling of old stories, sometimes with
humor.)
Think
of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, The
Narnia Chronicles, Harry Potter, Avatar, and other literary fantasies,
such as fables, legends, science fiction, comic book heroes and graphic novel
epics. They all require fancy to watch or read them as somehow “true.” And
their truth lies in what they are trying to impart.
Reading
Revelation, I could see George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Dreamworks,
Pixar, and like-minded creative fanciers producing it, using current technology
to make it seem real.
Meanwhile,
what truths am I gleaning from it? Here’s my list so far:
1. The good’s struggle with
its opposition is real, externally and internally, materially and spiritually.
2. The good includes those
of “every nation, race, language, and tribe,” a refrain appearing multiple
times throughout Revelation.
3. Empire—world domination—whether
as government, corporation, or religion, endangers our soul collectively and
individually, as well as all creation.
4. Idolatry, represented in
our time by consumerism, materialism, nationalism, militarism, and ideological
and dogmatic certainty, distracts us from what is spiritually vital and eternal.
5. In the words of the
praise song, “our God is an awesome God” who is best understood metaphorically,
even in Jesus.
6. Worship lifts us up, but
its central purpose is to honor the holy.
7. We are surrounded by
saints—past, present, and future.
8. God is on the side of
the good and of the future, inspiring, challenging, chastening, comforting, and
refreshing creation.
9. Joy and life, peace and
justice, will overcome what opposes them, thanks be to God, who ultimately
wins, as do the good.
10. In trial and triumph, in
truth and in time, God is with us.
Don’t
take my word for it, though. Read Revelation yourself, but not literally. Read
it with fancy.
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I've been leading a study through Revelation, now going on for 37 weeks, and a few more to go. We've been reading it as drama (or "fancy" as you describe it). There is a great deal of overlap in the truths that you listed and what we've discovered in our study.
ReplyDeleteOur group, too, comes from a background predominated by a fear and fury reading of Revelation, and find this different way of reading more consistent with the God that is described in the Gospels.
We are currently working with Revelation in our Lutheran Congregation's Study Group. We read "The Rapture Exposed" by Barbara Rossing. What I've come away with is that Revelation is a very complex and highly allegorical piece of prose. There are plenty of people that are more than willing to tell us that they have unscrambled the mystery and are willing to let us in on it. If we could just send a love gift along to support their efforts to "warn" the world. It is our fault, we set Revelation apart because it requires some time and it requires some prayer. In setting it apart though we forget the same rule we apply to the rest of Scripture and that is to view it through the lens of the Cross. If we can accomplish that then the image of the Lamb, slain for us reemerges as the center of the story. God is not taking back the business he completed on Calvary but is refocussing a still militant world using militant language. But look deeper, the Lamb always the Lamb, the sword is situated in the mouth, we are to use the story of God's triumph by our mouths not our arms. We are going to reclaim Revelation as a message of Hope which runs radically against the powers of this world.
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