The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

We are perpetually tilting at windmills, knocking over straw enemies. The problem, we suspect, is embodied in that other political party, or that group of people who aren’t like us. We demonize the other.

Scripture proclaims, contrary to popular view, that there is a spiritual enemy, an other-natural evil, malevolent force beneath all wrong. Eden’s snake, the Destroyer, Beelzebub, Apollyon, the satan. We do not wrestle with flesh and blood, said Paul, but with principalities, powers, spiritual wickedness in high places. 

We humans, misusing our free agency, too often align ourselves with these forces. We do terrible things to each other and to creation – pollution, environmental destruction, child abuse, human trafficking, genocide, betrayal, racism, xenophobia, exploitation, murder, war, theft, adultery, colonization, subjugation, slavery, all manner of injustice. We, like Pharaoh, embody the evil one. All of us are capable of doing so; to some degree, all of us have done so. We humans love violence, power, and wealth. We dance along Primrose Lane.

Many misunderstand, misinterpret, are misled into believing they are justified in using the satan’s tactics to achieve God’s purposes. Declare a “just” war, drop a few bombs, send in the Marines, gerrymander the districts, take over governments, ban books, museums, and history, defy the experts, ignore science, rape the environment, demonize those on the margins. Justify it all with out-of-context Bible verses. 

In apocalyptic symbolism, the principal evil, the satan, is depicted as a dragon. But not an omnipotent dragon. It needs help and calls forth a monster from the sea and another from the land. (See Revelation 12-13.) Empire rises out of the waters of chaos. Religious propaganda lumbers on the scene across the wilderness east of Eden. 

Leviathan and Behemoth – Empire and Civil religiosity. Religion weds Empire to give it divine justification. People will slaughter, invade, pillage, rape, and enslave anyone anywhere if they think they are ordered to do so by God or the gods. Every empire in history has claimed to be especially favored by the Divine. The voices of white “Christian” nationalists justify corruption, greed, exploitation, oppression, and violence. The way of the dragon rather than the Way of Lamb.

Such was never God’s intent. God is love. God desires for us to live in peace, harmony, mutuality, beyond tolerance to altruism. Yet, generation after generation, we go our own way. What’s a God to do?

We flip over to Revelation 19 and imagine we read of a warrior-god infused with testosterone slaughtering all the wicked (those “others” we blame), spattering their blood like smashed grapes. We see ourselves (because surely, we are the good guys) admiring the mayhem and cheering as their eternal souls are tortured forever in unending fire. It does not seem to dawn on us that this depiction is diametrically opposed to the nature of YHWH as revealed in Jesus. We think the Lamb of God has morphed into the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

If we would read scripture carefully, we would see that the author of Revelation regularly stands our interpretations on their heads. 

In chapter 5, John hears “The Lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed …” He turns and there is no lion, only a small, slaughtered lamb. We had it backwards. The Lion has morphed into the Lamb. 

In Revelation 7, John hears the number of those sealed – 144,000 – 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. But then he turns and sees a vast innumerable multitude from every tribe, people-group, nation and ethnicity. Those marked as belonging to God are not limited to Israel. God’s family is universal.

In chapter 19, Jesus rides into battle splattered in blood. But there is no battle. He has no weapon other than the worlds he speaks. Kings and emperors return from battle triumphantly splattered in the blood of their “enemies,” dragging captives in chains behind their chariots. Jesus rides into a battle that is already over, his garments splattered in his own blood. The battle was not against people. The war was against the forces of evil, the principalities, the powers, the satan. Jesus won that war on the cross. There, he crushed the serpent’s head.

Brutality, greed, injustice everywhere. What’s a God to do?

God entered history as a human being. Fully human, he faced every temptation. He responded to hatred with forgiveness and to violence with love. There is something mysteriously glorious about an innocent life willingly offered in complete sacrifice to God. We see it symbolized in the Passover. 

The life-blood of an innocent lamb marks the homes that the Destroyer could not touch. The lives in those houses, whether Jewish or Egyptian, were lives that did not belong to the Destroyer. It must pass over. When the Lamb of God, God incarnate, Jesus, willingly offered up his life in full surrender to God, absorbing all the cosmic evil within himself, his sacrifice covered all who trust him. The Destroyer cannot touch us. Jesus willingly laid his life down, then picked it up again. Death had no right to him. His life-blood, symbolically smeared over our lives, is ultimate assurance of divine grace and forgiveness.

One by one, hearts are changed. Infused with God’s Spirit, people live by the Sermon on the Mount – loving enemies, serving others, taking the lower place, forsaking wealth, embracing generosity, caring for the poor, the marginalized the disenfranchised, the sick, incarcerated, and weak, refusing violence, spreading shalom. Citizens of God’s kingdom, ambassadors of heaven; they wave no national flags and pledge allegiance only to King Jesus.

Yet, the world is still a mess. Genocide and slaughter in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan. Armed troops in city streets. Children starving by the thousands because aid has been cut off. Human-caused global warming, air and water pollution, protective immunizations denied, medical research cut off, schools, museums and libraries censored …

Will God change God’s very nature from loving parent to angry warrior to fix things? It is impossible for God to be anything less than who God is. No, God will keep moving behind the scenes, changing hard hearts into kind loving hearts. This upside-down Kingdom of Grace will continue to spread among the weak and foolish people (by society’s standards). And, someday, no one knows when, Messiah will appear, heaven will come to earth, and all of creation will be Eden.