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GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 28 (an angry God?)

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  “The sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the magnates and the generals and the rich and the powerful and everyone, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” (Rev. 6.14-17)      Is the God of the book of Revelation fundamentally angry and vengeful?   Is “the One seated on the throne” ruthless in his judgments and perhaps just as violent as his enemies, i.e. the “kings of the earth”?   How to reconcile the One seated on the throne with the God revealed by Jesus Christ, who taught that we should love our enemies and turn the other cheek (cf. Mt. 5.39, 44)?   Does the God who teaches that “those who kill with the sword must be killed with the sword” (cf.
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GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 27 (unveiling the truth)

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       If a prescient Christian in Germany in the early 1930’s had wished to write a book to warn her countrymen of the horrors about to be unleashed on both her nation and the world through the actions of the new Chancellor (Hitler), what kind of book might she have written?   Perhaps this concerned citizen would have composed a story imbued with biblical imagery, with references to famous examples of past tyrants and the judgments that these perpetrators of injustice had experienced as a consequence of their pride?   Perhaps such a book – if it had any hope of avoiding being censored – might not name its subject directly, but may rather have described current events in a way both cryptic enough to fly under the radar of the regime and accessible enough to the astute reader to effectively communicate its subversive message.   Perhaps this anti-totalitarian tome would use vivid language which would oblige receptive readers to look at their daily reality in a new (and frightening) way?
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GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 26 (salvation & judgment)

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             The paradox of the kingdom of God.  The book of Revelation is clear – it is precisely by dying for their faith that the martyrs “overcome” the “beast”, the “world” and all the enemies of God.  Jesus showed us the way to true victory – by giving up his life on the cross, he defeated the “principalities and powers” (cf. Col. 2.14-15).  Despite the fact that everyone – including the disciples – believed that Jesus’ death was a defeat and proof that he was not the Messiah after all (cf. Lk. 24.19-24), the New Testament consistently insists that the opposite was in fact the case .  The cross was Jesus’ “enthronement” as Messiah, as King of Israel, and constituted his victory over the true enemies of the people of God – sin, death and all the forces of evil (cf. Eph. 6.12).  The New Testament tells us again and again, lest we miss it – the kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom.  That is to say, God’s powerful reign functions in the opposite way from human regimes.  For Go
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GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 25 (welcome to Asia II)

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       Unmasking the matrix.   The Jesus-followers of Ephesus lived in a world where Caesar was Lord, in which the (temples of the) gods were everywhere, a world where everyone knew their place, a world populated with countless nameless slaves, a world of empire – both efficient and ruthless, with a social order that demanded loyalty (and taxes!) and which promised peace, justice and prosperity (for the 1%).   Everything the Ephesians would have encountered on a daily basis served to reinforce the official, imperial interpretation of reality – the architecture, the many statues of the emperor, the temples of the many gods, the social protocols, the way money was spent (and collected), the dress codes – everything proclaimed “this is the way things are and the way they are meant to be”.   As John writes to the seven churches of Asia, he faced a significant challenge – how to get his readers to “see” the world for what it really was, to see themselves as who they really were – in a nutsh
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GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 24 (welcome to Asia)

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       Another day in Asia .   John of Patmos wrote to “the seven churches of Asia”, the first of which is the church in the city of Ephesus (cf. Rev. 1.4, 9-11).   The area of land we now know as Turkey was referred to as “Asia Minor” (or “Anatolia”) in the ancient world, and the Western end – once it was acquired by the Romans – became the “province of Asia”, where the seven churches of Revelation were located (the island of Patmos, where John had been exiled, was off the coast of “Asia”, in the Aegean Sea).   Asia Minor had been the western hinterland of the Persian empire, and was the first territory conquered by Alexander the Great during his campaigns which began in 334 B.C.; thus had Asia Minor been “Hellenised”.   The Romans acquired Asia Minor in the late 2 nd century B.C. [1] and lost no time in exploiting its vast wealth through overt theft and later, through taxation (i.e., legalized theft).   In 27 B.C., Caesar Augustus made Ephesus the capital of the province of Asia,
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A MODERN PROPHET3, sharing God's burden VIII

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             Prophets have always been critical of “religious” institutions – in ancient Israel, this meant the cultic life of the tabernacle/temple which was overseen by priests and which was intimately associated with the Israelite monarch from the time of King Solomon.   Of course, a formalized liturgical life could easily lead to hypocrisy and a “cultural/civic religion” which, as Marx would denounce many centuries later, [1] could simply lend itself to the maintenance of the status quo, as opposed to producing real justice in society (cf. Micah 6.8; Jer. 7.1-15, etc.).   As opposed to religious practice that was merely “ritualistic”, prophetic religion was always concerned with faithfulness to the covenant with Yahweh – i.e. living a life of justice vis-à-vis God and your fellow humans (cf. Dt. 6.5; 11.13; 13.3; Lev. 19.18, 34).   The prophets of Israel were ruthless in their critique of religious observance that was not accompanied by a passionate concern for the most vulnerable
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A MODERN PROPHET2, sharing God's burden VII

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       Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (in a paper entitled) “After Ten Years” in the Third Reich and a few months before his arrest by the Gestapo, said that in the face of radical evil, reason is useless (along with principles, conscience, freedom and virtue).  What matters at such a time is obedient and responsible action in exclusive allegiance to God.  The responsible man seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God. [1]      One may well wonder how it came to be that a culturally-rich country like Germany allowed itself to be seduced by a man such as Adolph Hitler.   In one sense, the answer is simple – Hitler was a man of action .   He demonstrated that a man willing to act in the world could outflank the intelligentsia of the crown of continental culture, enamored as they were with their ideas .   As those idealists who attempted to appease him in the ramp-up to WWII would discover, Hitler was not interested in anything but his plan of action, which he ruthl
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