I am super busy and low on time today, so it is time for a re-post. Tomorrow, I will have something original, for sure:
One of the great spiritual 'advances' I've made in my own life in recent
years was to become comfortable, really comfortable, with apocalyptic
imagery and to come to a real understanding of it's value. When I talk
of 'apocalypticism', I'm speaking of the kinds of images one finds in
Zechariah, Daniel, and especially the Book of Revelation. When people
talk about these books and the imagery contained therein, they usually
focus on the prophetic aspect of the writing. But it is particularly the
Combat Motif that has both bothered me, and intrigued me, for some time
now.
The Combat Motif is the theme of there being some evil
counter-force in the universe working against God. In contemporary
Christianity this is imaged as something like a fallen angel. The idea
of a devil is bothersome to most mainline protestants. We emphasize a
juridical model of atonement, and so success or failure to receive
salvation is based on the fulfillment of some moral demand: either in
action or more commonly in terms of our beliefs. We are expected to do
or believe something specific and our success and failure in life, at
least spiritually, is based on us living up to this expectation. We
believe in free will, and we want to take responsibility for our own
actions. I am also inclined towards belief in free will and I'm big on
personal responsibility. I don't like the possibility of giving someone
the excuse 'the devil made me do it'. Plus generally speaking modern
people don't like to sound silly or childish, like we believe in the
boogeyman or something.
But as I've come to respect Eastern
Orthodox visions of atonement, whereby Jesus Christ breaks the power of
satan through his sacrifice, a healthier respect for the Combat Motif,
and for apocalyptic language in general, has developed within me. I
think that while we've recognized the danger of fleeing from
responsibility, forgoing apocalyptic language altogether has robbed us
of part of what we need to talk in a fulfilling way about the
meaningfulness of life, the reality of evil, and even the glory of
salvation. I wonder if part of the reason for the success of the more
evangelical faiths, over the more mainline protestant and catholic
movements, is because they are able to speak much more naturally about
the cosmic battle between good and evil. By placing our own internal and
social moral struggles within the context of truly cosmic forces within
the universe, they speak to life as it is actually experienced by us.
They have a phenomenological reach, if you will, that the more common
denominations seem to lack. The reality is that the Combat Motif reaches
back to antiquity, and it plays an important role both explicit and
implicit throughout the Bible. This issue is big in my current
unpublished book BREATH OF GOD. And many churches just don't do a very
good job of really wrestling with its place in our lives.
William James once said that life 'feels like a fight'. I'd tend to agree with him.
Apocalyptic
language continues to be relevant because it speaks powerfully to that
fact. It can distort the nature of the fight, and it is a danger that we
will spend so much time fighting monsters under our bed that we will
fail to fight the ones in our own hearts. But without it, I'm convinced
that the full measure of life as it is lived, and the actual meaning of
life in the world, can be concealed. There is a reason it is called
"revelation".
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