Revelation 17

Mutually assured destruction of evil. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

This chapter features a distracting vision: the super luxurious and fancy Whore of Babylon riding on the back of the great satanic beast of corrupt political and military power. The vision comes after the woes of judgement – we just had 7 bowls of wrath poured out in the last chapter – and it precedes a final battle at Armageddon.

Wikipedia summarises how numerous people have gone crazy trying to figure out who or what the whore of Babylon is.  It’s a catchy phrase, it rolls off the tongue of religious maniacs in many a tv show and movie.

Believers particularly love to say it’s churches other than theirs. Protestant reformers tended to say it was the Catholic church. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventist etc. all seem to have claimed that it was the rest of the so-called Christians.

It’s scriptural! …W.O.B. wearing a papal tiara,
from Luther’s Bible

But why would John of Patmos fire off a letter to encourage Christians struggling with the first waves of Roman anti-Christian persecution that talked about “evil” churches that wouldn’t even exist until 100s of years into the future? It’s hardly a pressing issue for his beleaguered audience.

Makes sense that he’s talking about Rome, the latest (at time of writing) of various evil empires that shape the biblical narrative and prophesy. And sure, the message probably applies equally to numerous evil empires that will come after Rome…

Evil empires fall. Evil eats itself.

It’s so easy to get distracted by the setup and miss the denouement of this chapter. The evil powers of this age may seem to align with a general victorious movement of evil, but it’s only temporarily so. They fall victim to the destroyer. Satan would throw everyone under the bus eventually if he could.

It would be nice, as my Bible blog crawls to an end, to have a narrative arc of value-add I could point to from the process. So I could say something like “I read the whole Bible, and it did me a power of good, I was a mess, there were tough lessons along the way, and I’ve come out the other side in a better place”

I’m not going to get it. Everything seems as much if not more of a mess. Kelly’s had to quit her job because of bullying, I’ve lost my professional status and career and am surviving on shift work, I’ve just had a couple of weeks of difficult ructions in church, my daughter is not speaking to me. Inflation is rampant, pandemic, war, natural disasters. Evil seems to go from bad to worse and I feel a bit like Habukuk, who pointed out to God the evils all around him, only to be told “never fear I’m raising up the Babylonians to come and destroy it all for you”.

Revelation is a tough read for a tough life. Clinging to hope as all hell breaks loose. I don’t feel as wounded or miserable as the last paragraph sounds. I’m actually quite calm and satisfied this morning, as I dose up on flu pills to make it through 7 hours of shifts I can’t afford to cancel. But I was discussing with Kelly this sense that as you get older, there seem to be more bad people winning a lot more than you were aware of when you were young.

The fancy ruling power in this chapter, dripping with jewels, holding a golden cup filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries, surrounded by acolytes drunk on her wine. It’s the image of this loss of innocence. This perception that evil is everywhere.

I listened to a podcast to cheer me up, about one of the first abolitionists. Strategic error, because the guy responded to the most horrific sadism against slaves, some of the darkest evil that men do.

But he prayed for this world, he didn’t just accept it. He did what he could and he had influence. And the evil of slavery did largely eat itself. One person’s decency inspired another and another and another.

Don’t be on the side of evil, don’t be daunted by evil. Pray, trust and wait for it to pass, speak and act prophetically against it.

2 Corinthians 13

JRR Martin, the game of thrones author, might have called this book “a song of weakness and strength”. Paul weaves it though everything.

Last chapters of epistles are usually chatty greetings, catch-up on plans, and a blessing to end. This has the blessing, but it hammers home the theme of the book to the very end.

What would someone who isn’t a Christian get out of being a leader of a church, I wonder? It’s even clearer here that Paul believes some of the most dominant and eminent members of this church are actually fakes.

Paul wants not to have to resolve it himself. And I can see that’s really important. Future Churches, down the ages, will not be able to have an apostle, someone who has met Jesus, come and straighten them out. But they will always have this problem!

So he’s pressuring them to examine themselves and learn to fix themselves up. And the key is weakness. That why he refuses to use his apostolic strength.

Christians are all sinners. The only difference between fake and real Christians is an awareness of their weakness, of their broken sinful selves, which the real Christians gratefully throw onto Jesus, weeping with gratitude and joy. (Not actual tears of course, if you are Anglican, but an awareness that, if you were someone who cried, now would be the moment) (joking of course, you should see the tears flow in our church sometimes!)

So Paul says he’s coming, and he will act in the power of Christ to “not spare” the toxic leaders. Which could mean calling them out and using his influence to discipline them. He hasn’t actually named them here, has he?

He plays it for grim irony. They say they want to see me display god’s power, do they? They certainly will when I get there….

But he hopes they will sort it out themselves by examining themselves and thinking about all he has said about Christ being made strong in our weakness.

I left two churches in a row because I didn’t respect the leadership. The first, I’ve no doubt he was a sincere Christian, but he was in a bad place. His marriage eventually fell apart and he went a different direction. The job was not for him. I regret, in a way, that I was not more supportive. But I think the outcome for him would have been the same even if I hadn’t left.

The second church, if the guy is a Christian, there is so much influence of dysfunctional personality traits, particularly narcissism, that others absolutely need to prevent him from being in a leadership position. The church haven’t done that. But I think he could well not be a Christian at all (only God actually knows of course).

Either way, shouldn’t be in leadership, which is a “Judgement” call we can and must make sometimes!

The limitations of the Anglican system became very apparent in both instances. I left, and many others did. Not Paul’s solution. But the accountability structure of my denomination didn’t easily support the kind of self examination and fixing Paul recommends here. The church rule-makers need to think carefully about this book!

What do fake Christians get from being in a church?

For leaders it can be a career: financial security, somewhere to live. I work with a guy who is a Mormon “bishop”, leader of his church. Unpaid. No one is paid, and neither was Paul! Changes the dynamic quite a bit!

If you’ve been bought up in a church, it can be your comfort zone, your culture. It turns up regularly in interviews of pop stars from the US who were bought up in the church. They often throw out Christianity with the rest of it when they form their own identity in adolescence. I feel a little pang of empathetic prayer for them. Imagine having Christianity enmeshed with that suffocatingly dull conformist middle American culture? What chance would it have?

If you are a narcisist, I suppose your psychology depends on constant affirmation and being able to remove any reality checks, which actually is something Christian leadership can be pretty good at delivering. I did the second minister a favour by leaving rather than hanging round and being a thorn in his flesh. Indeed he virtually told most of us to leave, confident that the hierarchy would support him. And they did.

If course it is all a tragedy for the church and Christ’s presence in communities. In our weakness is he made strong.

A functional church, full of obvious failure and weakness, of flawed people motivated by gratitude to God, sincerely working to be more loving, more forgiving, more humble and focused on others…. a church like that is incredibly powerful and appealing. A place of spiritual solace in a harsh world. A place to get your act together. A place from which God’s grace pours out.

It’s worth working at, even if the organisational structures pull you in the opposite direction. Of course, the dynamic of sinful people putting aside their selfishness and strengthening each other from their shared excitement about god’s love and grace plays out in less dramatic ways in most church interactions we have. And absolutely everyone you meet has some light, some common ground of vulnerability and spiritual need.

In our weakness the love of God shines powerfully, as it did in Christ.

A day for the mundane end of my to-do list. Praying for discipline. First up: updating the bleedin’ thing.

Romans 15

A final plea for acceptance between Jews and gentiles. He’s kind, he tells them he knows they know this, but he wants to tell them again anyway because it’s so important.

It’s was Jesus’ last message too. Unity. Acceptance.

He talks about the weak and the strong again, but he doesn’t seem to tie one or other side of the two dominant cultural backgrounds with the descriptions as far as I can tell, he just talks about his – and God’s – special affinities with both.

Our lack of unity can run deep. Sometimes you are aware of the culture the moment you approach a church. The moment someone says hello it can be obvious whether you are one of them in numerous subtle ways, and there are tiny cues that it does or doesn’t matter. Cues that they are open to you or wary.

That’s just people. Slaves unto sin, as Paul said earlier. The message is simple, but the challenge is deep.

I was interested that Paul wanted to get to Rome as a staging post for going to Spain. So prescient. He didn’t make it, and Spain would become a notable conquest for Islam as Christianity spread over the next century.

Working now with Muslims, and devout people who encourage us openly to pray for things, regardless of our faith, I’m interested in the history of our faiths that have so much and so little in common.

Pastor Ray, who views Christianity from an indigenous perspective has researched quite a bit into the doctrine of discovery, the impulse of Europeans to sail around the globe and claim countries for themselves. The film “the mission” gave a beautifully tortured emotional perspective on the pros and cons. Jesus’ Commission and Paul’s gospel zeal are part of its foundation. So is greed, exploitation and arrogance.

“Accept one another” Paul says. Who are the weak, who are the strong?”

I read a story this week about a church torn apart when their organist married a man… A gay wedding between 60 year olds attending a local Anglican church, which led to them being asked to quit their church positions. The congregation mutinied against the minister.

I also read about the children, hundreds of them, whose bodies were recovered from unmarked graves in church orphanages and schools in Canada. A cruel assimilation program that tried to wipe out indigenous culture in Canada. At one point is estimated those children died at 5 times the rate of other children.

Are the weak those forced to assimilate to the culture of their church or those who have a small vision of the church that doesn’t transcend the cultural traditions they know? Are the weak those who blink at evil it those who suffer it at the churches’ hands?

The gentiles in the Roman church had no respect or patience for the Jewish traditions. The Jews couldn’t imagine religion without their customs.

Jesus spent so much time rejecting all the fussy rules that kept being thrown at him to trap him. In John, it’s in virtually every chapter.

The churches’ spectacular failures rarely stem from too much unity and acceptance. Let God judge!

This isn’t hanging together logically, I’m just recording some impressions without trying to join the dots. I’ve been reading this chapter for a week, and it won’t resolve easily.

We’re in a rotten lockdown for COVID. I blame that. Things are feeling meaningless.

Ezekiel 31

We’ve had a tired Christmas, not much energy as a family. Our only decoration a sheet printed with a picture of a tree. One church service, to which my children came. I was grateful. Forget turkey: yum cha for lunch. Very low key, but some warmth, happiness and respect. I’m just so tired. Afternoon sleeps and pointless TV.

Today a simple but poignant message to Egypt, not burning with rage at its wickedness and corruption, but steeped in regret at beauty to be lost, achievement wasted. In comparing a culture to a tree, God takes delight in human magnificence, diversity and splendour. He loves his creation’s creativity.

But we are locked into time, it symbolises God’s judgement on the rebellion in our hearts. Our shining moment must pass, and we can’t cling to it or protract it. Hopefully we use that realisation to contemplate eternity, and throw ourselves onto God for mercy and love.

My lack of energy prepares me to receive this message. I increasingly won’t have the wherewithall to push back chaos and carve out my own imprint on the world. I’m just one tree in the forest which will continue on after I’m gone. Lose the pride, enjoy the sun and rain while it’s there.

…but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
    whatever they do prospers.

Ezekiel 8

Ezekiel sees visions of idolatry in the temple. It’s a condemnation of fake religion, hypocrisy. It’s when your symbols and structures of faith have no actual faith happening in them.

You expect the idolatry to be outside the church, oppositional to it, not in the centre, where God should be.

I came to it off reading an article which linked the current generational distaste for churches with trumpian evangelical politics, drawing parallels to the Protestant revolution and the French revolution.

Why People Hate Religion https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/opinion/trump-religion.html.

It’s way easy, of course, to blend into the mix of everything wrong with Christians everything that you don’t personally like God saying to you.

And politics is an overly simple lens – Christians are more nuanced than progressive-always-good, conservative-always-bad.

I get tired of the attitude from non Christian friends of being able to barely tolerate us feeding some poor people, as long as we never ever say anything gody. It’s about Jesus,ok?

But too many people, for too many reasons, look at the church and see a vision like Ezekiel saw in this chapter. Worshipping lies, money, sex and power.

2 Chronicles 25

Love God you win disobey God you lose. It’s a story like that. This king is Amaziah.

He wins a victory trusting in the Lord. On a prophets advice he sends home a mercenary force he’s already paid for… Pale shades of Gideon who reduced his army dramatically in size to show how strong God was.

But Amaziah made lots of other mistakes and defied God in almost every other decision. He was not a good king and left Judah weakened militarily and spiritually.

The key word was ‘wholeheartedly’. This king loved God in one part of his heart but, it says, not all of it. So it’s a lesson about ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart’

I enter a time of trusting God because I have only 2 months and a week left in my contract at work. There will be some jobs I can apply for, but not sure if they’ll be filled before then or if I’ll get them. Do I look for other options? I feel god wants me to be at Salvos. I also, just personally, want to be at Salvos.

I test it out and see.

2 Chronicles 21

Jehoram a truly terrible king. The oldest son, he kills 7 other brothers. Makes no attempt to follow Jehovah, marries into the northern kingdom.

He only reigns 8 years, suffering military and health setbacks which are attributed to God’s punishment.

His death of a sort of prolapsed bowel disease is horrible sounding, and they note his unceremonious burial which no one regretted.

In a history designed to highlight leadership examples from Judah’s glory days, there’s nothing more than a warning here.

The offence to God is rejecting him. Jehoram commits various evil acts, but at the core is what Jesus called the unforgivable sin of rejecting the holy spirit.

Jeremiah 9

Starts with a lament of the staggering falsehood of the people. He says their tongues are like arrows they shoot at each other. No one can trust each other.

God asks rhetorical questions about whether he has any choice but to judge them. He says he’ll soon be lamenting empty mountains and fields, because the people will be gone.

But the extreme message is not about rubbing in how bad it will be, there is still the hope of repentance. He calls upon professional mourner women to reflect on earth the tears in heaven.

He calls on the people to love justice as God does.to boast of knowing God, not earthly riches wisdom etc. To love with their heart, not though external shows. Their hearts are just as uncircumcised as any of the surrounding nations, the denial of their special chosen status.

The lifetime patterns of working with a degree of cynicism, of playing the game, are hard to break. I mean, my Christian work place is still full of sinful people, tis the nature of mankind.

But I’ve been taking a somewhat uncircumcised heart to work, I pray that I will boast in understanding the god of steadfast righteousness, love and justice.

Isaiah 1

I’ve come to this after the terse prose of Kings, which compresses decades long reigns into a few short sentences with no commentary.

Comparatively this is over sharing. We’re entering the world of poetry, visions and prophetic diatribes.

This is a poetic declaration of Judah’s unfaithfulness and evil. The land is corrupt, the city of Jerusalem is a whore. He sees it burning and being punished. He sees repentance, if they will have it.

I’m feeling somewhat ashamed of myself this morning as it happens, but it seems to mean I connect less with the text, not more. Am I smug in my grace? What is the point of reading this from the perspective of grace? Is it merely a footnote of historical interest?

I don’t intend answering any of these questions, they are just here to add impetus.

Time will tell if I connect! See you again tomorrow!

2 Kings 24

Judah is the last tribe standing in the promised land, clinging to Jerusalem. 

Now the Babylonians, king Nebuchadnezzar, take over everything. All the able Israelite people are taken away to Babylon, A puppet king is installed who none the less runs a pathetic rebellion, and the last vestiges of self rule is overrun.

The point is the sin, its all clearly tied to judgement. Manassehs name is mentioned, he was a king particularly keen on occult and bloodshed. 

It’s been a simple loop really. In judges, God said the people shouldn’t have a king. But they were completly corrupt without one. And with one, it turns out. 

I live in a state of grace. Our new rector at church said he learned that sin is not like breaking the law. Its wrong if I speed in the car, but it’s not a personal attack on anyone.

Sin an affront to God. A personal affront. . That is how it is treated here. We are not forgiven lightly.