And You Thought They Were Crazy

Have you even met this guy?

Last week, we finally arrived at the historical circumstances that Revelation speaks out against. We might say that we finally saw why a recent sermon was titled “How We Know Why This Is Here and the End of Fake News.”

If you missed it, or if you just need a refresher, it would really be worth revisiting. Many readers (and commentators) have made the mistake of treating Revelation as a general set of predictions hidden behind difficult symbols. In reality, it originally served as a forceful counter-narrative to the propaganda of the Roman Empire. While Rome claimed that its own glory would last forever, Revelation tells a story of the downfall of all worldly powers. And it tells a story of the only kind of world that is built to last.

Up to this point, we've already noted that Revelation uses God’s control over the future to speak powerfully to our present needs. It uses dramatic images to show just how dramatically God will change the fortunes of people who rely on him. Its purpose is to make one idea clear as day: despite all of the evidence that points to the contrary, you are right where you are supposed to be because Jesus is still Lord.

After last week, we now know why Revelation was so eager to pick a fight with Rome. It wasn’t that Rome purposefully made life difficult for Christians—that wouldn’t happen for another few decades. The bigger issue was that Rome represented a kind of life that was totally opposite of what Christians knew to be true. To make matters worse, by placing itself at the center of everything, Rome also set the standard of how individuals ought to live; it defined the good life as one ruled by self-promotion.

But if you think all this talk of Rome’s everlasting greatness sounds crazy, Revelation asks its readers to respond even more radically.

You may have noticed that chapters 2-3 of Revelation are full of letters to different churches. Seven letters to be exact (we will see why “seven” is so important here in a future post). And something very strange is written in one of them. You can find it in verse 14 of chapter 2: “I have a few things against you: there are some among you who…ate food sacrificed to idols.”

This is strange because Paul writes about the exact same issue in 1 Corinthians 8. There, Paul very clearly has no problem with food sacrificed to idols. He recognizes that there really are other spiritual forces in the world, but that an idol is just a silly image (often a statue made of wood or stone). In other words, food sacrificed to a mere image is food sacrificed to nothing at all. As long as it doesn’t cause problems for someone else, Paul gives the Corinthians complete permission.

So why does Revelation have such a problem with it? Because these two authors are approaching the same issue from different angles.

This is where it becomes very important to pay attention to the historical circumstances Revelation is up against. While Paul is addressing this issue from a spiritual perspective, Revelation explores it as a social practice. Eating food sacrificed to idols was common for Roman citizens. From this perspective, avoiding food sacrificed to idols is really about a much bigger point:

Don’t even associate with the Roman way of life.

Now to some of us, this still sounds ridiculous. Maybe even silly. We simply cannot imagine living in a nation that claimed to last forever, and that its way of life was the way things were meant to be…right?

Actually, we believe things like this all the time. I think it’s important that we don’t get too hung up on the words. What Rome was really claiming was that they had found the keys to the good of life, that purpose was to be found through achievement.

We all have many ideas of what the good life is, and many things try to convince us that we can’t have the good life without them.

For some, that thing or idea might really be a love for our country, the “American Dream,” or even simply American values. It might be the promising agenda of a political figure. It might be a certain level of financial security. Perhaps it’s the recognition we deserve, or the affirmation we never received. Revelation warns us not to be gentle with the things that direct our attention away from what really matters, but to be ruthless with them.

Now there’s a challenge.

I recognize that challenges are not always a comfort, but a worthy challenge should always inspire us. They inspire us because they call us up to something greater, and to truly do this, the person giving the challenge has to believe we really are capable of more. God really believes—in fact, He is certain—that we are able because we are His people and no one else’s.

It’s about to get really personal.

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