Reading Revelation
Part 2, Those Who Do Not Know Oppression and Suffering React Strangely to the Language of the Bible
In the last post I described how the extreme imagery of Revelation is rhetorical in nature. Still, people have concerns. As Brian K. Blount's observes in his introduction to his commentary on Revelation:
Revelation...is a violent book. Some interpreters argue that because of its violence, it does not belong in a New Testament canon that takes its direction and energy from a Jesus who extended forgiveness to sinners and counseled love even of one's enemies.
How to respond to these concerns? Blount starts off with this observation:
John's presentation in the form of (divine) passive verbs demonstrates his understanding that the agent behind the violence is God. It is a violence meant to frighten those who are persecuting God's people so that they will cease their hostilities. It is a violence done on behalf of a people who are being persecuted so as to ensure them that God has heard their cries and is responding swiftly and convincingly. It is a violence meant to scare those who are evil straight back to the ways of a good God, and to warn those who already stand with God to maintain their place lest they find themselves in the same crosshairs as their intractable enemies. The violence is, then, like the furious fire of a kiln, which burns away all impurities until what is pulled from the furnace emerges unblemished and pristine.
...The divinely orchestrated destruction is God's way of shepherding human traffic in the direction of eschatological salvation. Those who refuse to follow are pushed. Those who are following are often caught up in the maelstrom. Because there is no rapture in the book of Revelation, believers also find their way to God through the terror that those opposed to God inflict on the earth and the terror that God wields in what John sees as a just response. The conflict in heaven, having spilled onto earth, catches up everyone and everything in creation.
John justifies God's violence by staging it as a just response to the cries of God's people...
Blount continues by comparing Revelation to the Ten Plagues inflicted upon Egypt, cataclysms also intended to free God's people from violence and oppression. But such visions unsettle many modern readers of the Bible. Blount continues:
Can such a God be justified in a twenty-first century context? It is a difficult question, to be sure. It is the book's binary (either/or) dualism that almost ensures a need for God's violence. At every turn, good is threatened by great and powerful evil. If there is to be justice, such evil must be eradicated by the good at whatever cost. God therefore meets fire with apocalyptic fire.
It raises a question: Are modern readers of the Bible too sensitive and fragile when reading Revelation? Blount quotes Allan Boesak, who observes in his book Comfort and Protest, "People who do not know what oppression and suffering is react strangely to the language of the Bible." In a related vein, Miroslav Volf observes that in these strange reactions of the comfortable "one can smell a bit too much of the sweet aroma of suburban ideology." More, we see in progressive reactions to Revelation the "pleasant captivity of the liberal mind."
This is true! I've observed it myself. In my Bible teaching I toggle between very different audiences back to back. On Sundays at church I teach a Bible class for a theologically progressive, politically liberal, highly educated, and comfortably middle class audience. And then, the very next day, on Mondays, I teach a Bible study for men incarcerated in a maximum-security prison. Here's what I've observed about these two Bible classes. The very comfortable and liberal church group blanches at Revelation. They are very triggered. The men in the prison? They don't blink an eye at Revelation.
The strangest thing is how the very liberal group at church considers themselves to be social justice warriors. The very people who rage about injustice and oppression react very strangely when the Bible speaks up for victims and rains verbal fire down upon oppressors.
There is something about how folk who live closer to the land, to the "violence" of the earth, to the dog-eat-dog world, don't bristle as much as the "violence" of God, and the academic, suburban intelligentsia do find the idea of a God of "violence" as an offense to their own ethical framework. But what about those, whether rural or urban, uneducated or educated, who have experienced violence upon their own bodies and feel that any use of violence - even again their own enemies - represents a violation of love and felt safety in the world. Is Revelation good news for them? Are we just too far removed in 21st century, trauma-aware America? Can only those who are living with backs against the wall in the oppressed majority world - as Boesak suggests - possibly find comfort and solace in Revelation?
Have you considered that western (especially American progressive or liberal) Christians aren't reading Revelation in a vaccuum, can grok the power dynamics of the book, but understand the book is being weaponized *by* empire instead of *against* empire?
The instinctive reaction to the book is of course contextual, how could it not be? It may feel liberative to the oppressed Christian, but imagine what it feels like to those oppressed *by* the Christian.