Apocalypse

We are in the midst of an apocalypse - άποκάλυψις or apokalypsis. Whoa, you say, there he goes.  It's the well-worn doom-and-gloom, "the world is ending" sort of folderol that has been the staple for both religious wack-jobs and cartoon spoofers for a long while now.  Even though we've got a global financial crisis, G7 leaders in an emergency meeting in Washington DC to try to agree to historically unprecedented joint measures to keep the entire global financial system from self-incinerating, and serious talk in the West about a draconian imposition of a new political and economic order, it's no big deal.  We're always talking about "apocalypses" - nuclear armageddon, eco-catastrophe, a war to end all wars in the Middle East.  All we've missed in recent years is the announcement of a Pleistocene-style, dinosaur-terminating asteroid hurtling toward North America.   

Well, yes it is, and I'll tell you why.  But first, let me explain why I am non-theatrically, deliberately, and strategically using the word.  We'll start with root meanings.  While in the modern era the word "apocalypse" has come to mean some event of dramatic and perhaps world-wide destruction, that's not its original connotation  (though, of course, even in that sense we are in an "apocalypse", because some global leaders are actually talking about a world-wide collapse of the system).  In its ancient usage the word referred to a "lifting of the veil", laying bare what in the past had been undisclosed and hidden.  It was often employed in the context of the rites of the mystery religions, when the blindfold was pulled off the initiate and some profound, unspeakable vision or knowledge was imparted.  As in all initiation rituals, confusion and disorientation in a dark place preceded a sudden and enduring revelation of absolute truth of some kind.   In Jewish and early Christian "apocalypses" - most notably the Apocalypse of John, or what is commonly known as the Book of Revelation - the veil that lifted was ordinary or apparent history with the consequent laying bear of God's heavenly and covert purposes, especially the destiny of the elect.

In GloboChrist I do not write so much about apocalypse as "eschatology."  In discussing eschatology - theologically and domatically considered -  I make the case that what we fashionably today characterize as "incarnational" and "missional" ministry can be regarded on a global (or a "GloboChristian") scale points us toward the depth of the Christian revelation itself.  That revelation is the Johannine (albeit seemingly "counterintuitive")realization of the Word made flesh.    It is the revelation that directs us in faith and anticipation toward the parousia or "final" disclosure - in effect, our "apocalypse" - that we refer to as our own "end of the age."  Thus eschatology, or apocalypsis, is not really so much about violent destruction and the wiping away of everything perceptible to us as it is about fulfillment of anticipation.

I have been reading 1John very carefully these days. 1 John is not so much the "love"epistle as it is about what distinguishes the Christian revelation from all other revelations, and Christian truth from all "false teachers," which abounded in the first century as much as today.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our^[joy complete. (John 1:1-4)

As Christians our "fellowship" - our genuine communio sanctorum - is not grounded in socio-organizational theory, our generational demographics, our lifestyles, our postmodern sensibilities, our theological self-definitions, our concern for the marginalized, etc.  Our fellowship is the embodiment of what Hugh Halter calls the "tangible kingdom."  The kingdom is tangible, because Christ was tangible.  "From the beginning" (en archai) Christ is what we have seen, heard, touched.  And in fellowship with one another, as Christs to one another, we are seeing, hearing, touching Christ as did the disciples themselves, and as Christ saw, heard, and touched them. 

But 1 John is not some archaic instance of "touchy feely" theologizing. It is about "incarnating" Christ at every moment.  Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.(1 John 2:6).  At the same time, the author of 1 John warns about false teachers.  He identifies false teaching with "anti-Christ," not a singular individual of world history but as a lying spirit that finds itself instantiated in world history, that teaching which makes Christ more than this very incarnational, transformational, relational reality that the very word itself signifies.   It is not about "saving the world" or "making the world better."  Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15). 

In GloboChrist I wrote that we could give a name to "anti-Christ"; it was global consumerism.  Right now in the death throes of the global consumer economy there is a longing for a global worldly solution, perhaps even a messianic solution, perhaps even a messianic leader to right the world's wrongs.  The contemporary passion of so many pomo Christians, youthful pomo Christians, for global "justice" in a rage against the collapsing architecture of a system driven by Deleuze's "desiring machines" is but one version of the madness that the author of 1 John warns against.  It is the rage for a new, comprehensive, and transcendent worldliness that harbors even more capacity for evil than what was raged against. 

As economist Stan Liebowitz brilliantly analyzes in his article "Anatomy of a Train Wreck," it was not "greed" so much as the "good intentions" with which the road to hell is always paved with - murmurs going back almost three decades for righting wrongs - that triggered this year's spectacular collapse.  As Reinhold Niebuhr used to remind us, there are many forms of greed and the destructive will to power.  The greed for wealth is no less odious than the greed for political control that plays upon collective spite toward the "greedy" and what Nietzsche termed ressentiment.  "Justice" in this sense is the most insidious of greedy and "worldly" cries, and for Christians to cry it, or to echo the same cries, is to attest that this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. (1 John 2:18-19)

There is no "political" solution to the current crisis.  It is a world crisis and it requires as much as a stepping back from the temptations of worldly messianisms, which are the messianisms of anti-Christ.  They are of anti-Christ because they prove to be tangibilities that are far from the "tangible kingdom" of Christ in our midst.  They substitute the "word" of political messiahs for the "word of life." 

That word we have seen, heard, and touched, and we are called to reach out into the space of those who are immediate to us - to reach across all generational, educational, socio-economic, cultural, and gender barricades - and incarnate what we have ourselves seen, heard, and touched.

Many younger Christian leaders in recent days have spoken out about how the crisis itself may be a worldwide wake-up call to presumed "Christ followers" to examine their lives and the existential commitments that underlie what they regard as their "faith."  It is time to go beyond cheap politics and even cheaper political posturing, as so many of our contempories seem accustomed to doing.  Vince Lombardi's famous line about "when the going gets tough the tough get going" should surely apply to those who claim they are following the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  Guys, it's more than getting the latest cool and progressive-conscience-massaging podcast about "engaged" Christianity.

When the "veil" is lifted, what do we see?  We see our own self-delusions and lazy as well as willful substitution of the random sputterings of our own "desiring machines" for obeying God's will.  We see both ourselves, and our own complicity in the making of that world, which doesn't call for us to "speak out against the system," or whatever other cultural-Marxist-marinated stupidities frequently roll off our tongues, but for metanoia, repentanace.   I once heard repentance defined as "seeing things from God's point of view."  That works.  If we say how we are all involved in the making of this mess, we might finally see some real "change."  Now that's apocalypse!  Among other things apocalypse is a meltdown of all the idols.

Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.  (1 John 5:21).