Beware the Dark Side
The Bible and the Plot to Destroy American Democracy, Part 4
“Human rulers become beasts when they assign divinity to their power and economic security and demand allegiance to it.” (The Bible Project)
I am not a fan of the book of Revelation. It’s weird and I had enough “spiritual warfare" teaching in my youth to make me afraid of overtly spiritual language, but I’ve come to make peace with it as a timeless warning to not give in to the Dark Side of the Force.
Revelation is a letter, written to seven churches in the Roman Empire, likely in the late 90s AD. The writer used graphic language to describe a cosmic battle going on in the spiritual realm between good and evil that spills out into our world.
The spiritual warfare language that is based on a literal interpretation of the imagery of Revelation, but I think it’s much simpler. I think the biblical writers understood that some emotions are contagious.
Remember, they didn’t know about bacteria or viruses; they didn’t know how illnesses spread, but they knew they did. They also knew that fear could spread through a crowd or a community, as does greed, and the lust for power, etc.
From their perspective, fear surely spreads in the same way that the flu does - demons.
The spiritual forces of wickedness aren’t demons lurking in the shadows, but it might help us to think of them like viruses, because they are contagious.
Christianity offered an antidote - love.
Revelation presents Empire as the dominant force in the world, because it was, but the writer of this letter sought to encourage the Christians to not give in, because Christ would prevail.
In the meantime, Christians were supposed to continue resisting the temptations of power and Empire by developing their networks of people committed to the way of Jesus.
In the second and third centuries after the time of Jesus, horrible epidemics swept through the Roman Empire. While the elite fled to the countryside, the Christians stayed behind to care for the sick and bury the dead, even though they were strangers and worshiped “pagan” gods, despite the risks to themselves.
This radical love inspired many to convert to Christianity, including the emperor. Maybe, scholars debate Constantine’s motives, but whatever they were, in 313 AD, he and the emperor Licinius signed the Edict of Milan, decriminalizing Christianity.
One could say that it was the “woke mind” virus that spread throughout the Empire.
It’s easy to look back and see that they made a deal with the devil, but let’s extend grace. For nearly 300 years, they endured incredible persecution, but they kept loving their neighbors anyway. They probably thought that Christ had prevailed.
They couldn’t have known that this laid the foundation for the Church to become one of the most oppressive Empires in Western civilization.
Next week - Part 5: All Authority on Heaven and on Earth Has Been Given to Me
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