Leviathan’s Sibling

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TheGiantBehemoth Formulaic to the point of plagiarism at times, 1950s science fiction movies often follow the deeply worn ruts left by countless forgettable monsters. One such film that I managed not to see until recently was the biblically entitled The Giant Behemoth. In a more biblically literate society the poster’s catchphrase “The Biggest Thing Since Creation!” may not have been necessary, even though leviathan’s lesser known companion stole the title this time. Of course the movie begins with stock footage of nuclear explosions, and although I’ve seen such renditions hundreds of times, they remain troubling to the core. Those 1950s that many consider so carefree were days of insidious freewheeling with the environment, days before human infatuation with the power over nature revealed its horrifying consequences. The behemoth, a sign of Yahweh’s great creativity in Job, here becomes the human-wrought agent of destruction.

Poor Tom Trevethan is blasted by the beast’s radioactive breath in a scene more fitting to Revelation than to Job. In the funeral scene, the priest somewhat insensitively reads a description of behemoth before Tom’s sole surviving family, his daughter Jean. So like the 1950s the minister then declares that the Bible gives comfort to those left behind, when the Lord said to Job, “Gird up thy loins like a man.” Indeed. Loin girding was a masculine activity in the days before Fruit of the Loom had been grown. Comfort for the woman comes in acting like a man. Yes, the 1950s considered the man the default model of human being. It says so in sacred writ. Genesis 3, to be exact.

When the scientists can’t figure out what killed the old man, along with thousands of fish, they ask Jean if her father said anything before he died. She tells them about behemoth. Being scientists, they have no idea what a mythical, biblical creature might be. Jean informs them, “It’s some prophecy from the Bible; it means some sort of great, monstrous beast.” Well, Job is technically not prophecy. Actually it’s not even untechnically prophecy either. In the 1950s, however, if it was biblical, it could be interpreted as prophecy. The real foretelling, though, is clearly atomic. Such films can easily be forgiven their biblical infelicity for the sake of their good intentions of reigning in human self-destructive behavior. In the end science destroys the biblical beast, but I’m left wondering if it isn’t more of a parable than a prophecy. I guess it’s time to gird up my loins and go find out.

Facebook Apocalypse

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Facebook can be a fickle friend. Oh yes, there are rules that we know everyone doesn’t quite obey. You are not allowed to falsify evidence about yourself on the great FB, although characters like Jesus have their own pages. The Chronicle of Higher Education this week followed the efforts of a University of Nevada at Reno librarian who tried to use Facebook for educational purposes. Donnelyn Curtis had set up Facebook accounts for two students early in the twentieth century to give current students an idea of how times had changed. The pages were summarily removed by Facebook staff, leading to the unfortunate second deaths of Joe McDonald and Leola Lewis. Second deaths always get me thinking about the book of Revelation. After all, we are now into the fatal year of 2012.

My Mayan Calendar

Few events elicit religious fervor like the end of the world. In the most highly touted end-of-the-world scenario since 2000, 2012 has emerged as the great contender for wrapping up the show we call life on earth. When I spotted a calendar to prepare the user for the end of the world, well, how could I resist? Each month on this terminal calendar features facts pointing to the culmination of this strange experiment that evolution hath wrought. If we can’t pull off a good, old-fashioned Evangelical rapture (sorry Rev. Camping), maybe the Maya can get the job done. They certainly managed to pull off an impressive vanishing act a few centuries back. Or did they? Despite the overrunning of enthusiastically avaricious Christian invaders, the Maya accommodated themselves to less-than-ideal circumstances and survived. They are still among us. Their culture, however, didn’t fare so well at the hand of the church. Nobody’s asking them about any of this.

Apocalyses occur all the time. When religions meet, one inevitably tries to vanquish the other. No one walks out of that arena without a limp. And the winners look over their shoulders for ever after. To prepare for this apocalypse, the January on my new calendar narrates how the Mayans and Egyptians shared some cultural secrets—such as how to build pyramids. How did they know about one another? My calendar says they could have walked across Atlantis, or they might have been carried by giant, domesticated condors. Either alternative seems as likely as the other. Either alternative seems about as likely as the world ending this year. But then again, already in 2012 a couple of promising young people have already been kicked off of Facebook for being dead. I think I feel the apocalypse beginning already.

Science of Religion

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People do strange things when they are together. Phil Zuckerman’s Invitation to the Sociology of Religion (Routledge, 2003) is an informative whistle-stop tour of how social scientists view religion. Back in college sociology classes involved so many stats that it felt like a math class, so I was pleasantly surprised when I could read this treatment without a calculator or graph paper at hand. Sociology, of course, is all about how people behave in groups. Religion, as commonly defined, is a group phenomenon—people are religious together. Nevertheless, the study of religion from a sociological point of view does raise some uncomfortable issues for many people. Chief among them are the facts that religion is generally determined by where and when you were born and by the social forces surrounding you—it is learned, not revealed. Even religions that teach revelation of their divine origins generally don’t expect individuals to receive the religion by revelation, they receive it by social instruction.

Naturally sociology does not attempt to answer the question of where religion ultimately comes from. Religion, however, is something people do, and, unless one happens to have the correct religion (don’t we all?) then everyone else’s religion is made up. Sociologists would tend to see all religions as being human constructs. Zuckerman’s treatment is pithy and punchy and fun to read. As a college student at a confessionally-affiliated institution, our classes were entitled “Christian Sociology.” That is shorthand for sociology with a pre-decided bias. It was not sociology of religion, but sociology by religion. In many respects, reading Zuckerman’s treatment was affirming much that I had already observed, but having it placed in a scientific framework made a world of sense.

In many universities there a basic misunderstanding still reigns; many administrators do not realize that the study of religion is the study of a social or psychological phenomenon. Zuckerman demonstrates once again just how important this study is. It is no understatement to say that the entire “social contract” of the United States was constructed under heavy Christian influence. Zuckerman’s discussion of sexual mores alone should prove that point. We have the outlook we do because of the incredible force Christianity exerted on the developing religion of the western hemisphere beginning with the Roman Empire. Once those viewpoints have been deeply embedded, many, many generations deep, the chances of getting out for an objective evaluation are slim. That’s why we need our sociologists of religion. If more people were aware of what we know about socially defined religious parameters, the more they’d realize we need to pay much more attention to religion than learned doyens of human behavior often do.

The Body Apocalyptic

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We are all products of our upbringing. Our early assumptions, although sometimes challenged and overcome, are generally with us for life. So it was that my progression of education led me to a small, conservative college to major in religion. Compared to what I learned at Grove City, the historical criticism firmly in place at Boston University sounded downright sinful. Nevertheless, it made sense, so I followed reason. At Edinburgh we were way beyond historical criticism in that wonderful, European way. Somehow in the midst of all the excitement, I missed Post-Modernism. “Po-Mo” has, like most recent movements, been quickly added to the pile of the passé, but I find it refreshing. I just finished reading Tina Pippin’s Apocalyptic Bodies (Routledge, 1999). This may have been one of the first truly Post-Modern biblical critiques I have read, and it was fascinating. Pippin is taking on especially the book of Revelation. If more people had read her book there would have been less panic back around May 21.

I find feminine readings of the Bible enlightening. As a member of the gender largely responsible for a book filled with sex and violence, it is often difficult to see how the other half of the human race might read that same text. Having grown up with a literal understanding of Revelation, I never questioned whether it was a good or a bad thing. The end of the world must be God’s will, therefore, by definition, good. One of the beauties of a Post-Modern interpretation is that everything is thrown open to question. Pippin does just that. Noting the ennui associated with eternity, she asks a question that always lurked in my mind—isn’t too much of anything eventually a problem? Eternity itself becomes problematic. Where do we go from here?

Perhaps the most striking comment Pippin makes is in the context of her chapter on the monsters of the apocalypse, “Apocalyptic Horror.” She compares Revelation to horror movies and demonstrates how all the elements are there in the Bible. She notes, “There are many monsters in the Apocalypse, but the real bad ass monster sits on the heavenly throne.” Pippin explains that God, in Revelation, joys in killing off humankind. As many of us have come to learn, people are generally good; at least most people have done nothing to deserve the heinous punishments gleefully doled out in Revelation. That, of course, raises the sticky question of ethics as applied to the divine. Here the book of Job comes to mind where our hapless hero declares that even though he is innocent, God still can count him guilty. It is the human situation. And Job was a good guy. Pippin’s little book challenged many of the assumptions with which I’d grown. Anyone who can read such a book and not worry about being a good parent is more Po-Mo than me.

Contriving the Rapture

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In the light of last month’s failed rapture attempt, I decided to read a book that I picked up some years ago that had been written in the wake of the millennial scare. Having grown up with nightmares of the rapture, I learned during my first college class on the book of Revelation that it was relatively modern meme, invented in the nineteenth century. Barbara Rossing’s The Rapture Exposed seemed a good way to refresh my memory without having to go through all those boxes of books in the attic to find my original textbooks. Rossing, a Lutheran minister and New Testament professor, brings to light some very important facts beyond the historical roots of this theological fabrication—facts that should concern religious and secular alike. The rapture was invented by John Nelson Darby, a founder of the Plymouth Brethren and convoluted biblical scholar. Basing his roadmap of the future singularly on Daniel 9, he concocted the rapture to make sense of his apocalyptic epiphany. Drawing diverse sections of Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, the Gospel of Matthew, and the book of Revelation together, he mixed thoroughly, half-baked it, and pulled the rapture out of the oven.

The idea caught like wildfire. Today young people who’ve never read the Bible and who’ve seldom attended religious services know what the rapture is. What they do not realize is that nearly all of the Christian tradition rejects it, seeing it for what it is—a Johnny-come-lately of amateur theology that sees the Bible through the lenses of dilettante-sensibilities like those of Michael Drosnin (The Bible Code man). Instead of seriously reading the Bible and trying to understand it, society prefers to see it as a little bit of magic in the midst of our scientific and technical world view. It is a safe place where bits of the supernatural are preserved and that defies rational explanation. Rossing’s book does a good job of exposing the wrong-headedness of LaHaye’s Left Behind conclave, but she overlooks an important feature of this coterie: they have an unconfessed agenda.

The unspoken agenda is best summed up by Lt. Frank Drebin of Police Squad when he says, “blowing away a fleeing suspect with my 44 magnum used to mean everything to me. I enjoyed it, well who wouldn’t?” Rossing misunderstands Fundamentalism when she expresses surprise at the bloodlust present in the Left Behind novels. What she doesn’t take into account is that, as a collective, Fundamentalists thrive on self-righteousness. Feeling the same violent urges that others do—all humans experience violent emotions—they sublimate that aggression and save it for the unrighteous—God’s enemies. When the gloves come off in the apocalypse, that hatred bursts out in good, old-fashioned bloodletting—albeit with combat helicopters and high-tech weaponry. Of the Christians I know who own guns, the Fundamentalists are most avid in their rights to do so. In college I met my first Christian survivalists and I learned that the rapture was a ruse. It is a deadly mix, especially when this warped theology makes it into politics. Although Rossing’s vision of a new earth in the second half of her book may not appeal to everyone, Americans should read at least the first few chapters to learn why the rapture will never occur.

Of the Zombies, By the Zombies, For the Zombies

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In what is sure to be a controversial move, the Center for Disease Control has posted an official government blog post entitled “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.” (Be warned, if you click on this link it may be considerable time before the page loads—it has been receiving a tremendous number of hits.) Written by Ali S. Khan, the Assistant Surgeon General and head of the CDC, the article is actually about hurricane preparedness, but with zombie furor being what it is, many on the Internet are taking the warning seriously. Literally even. Citing the tsunami in Japan and the concerns for leaking radiation, the article begins with a lighthearted fear-fest that then reveals the actual concern. Humor in the government? This is something we should all encourage!

The analogue with the current rapture fever was immediately obvious. I grew up in terror of the rapture, but when I began to take courses on the Bible from scholars who knew about apocalyptic literature, its context, and what it was intended to do, I realized that the rapture was invented in the nineteenth century by evangelists with no critical training, misreading the book of Revelation. As much as we like to break history into discrete units, time simply keeps flowing and the current of fear generated in the nineteenth gushed into the twentieth century culminating in the birth of the Christian fundamentalist movement. For many people in the twenty-first century, fundamentalism and Roman Catholicism are the two ancient strands of Christianity that legitimately lay claim to the title. At least half of this history is backward.

The Bible itself, when read in context, shows the errors of the rapture-hungry. The idea is a blend of obscure bits of Paul’s letters, mixed into Revelation and stirred vigorously. Then half-baked. The Bible does not give us a rapture. The CDC does not give us a zombie apocalypse. We know where the myth of zombies originates (I have posted on the topic before) and we know zombies are as fictional as griffons and centaurs. Nevertheless, faith springs eternal. Those dissatisfied with all that life has to offer turn to zombies for an equalizingly grim future for all humankind. It’s all gonna rot, baby. Except, of course, for those who’ve been raptured before it happens. When the zombies fail to show up after Saturday’s non-event, all of us will feel pretty silly just looking at each other as Ali S. Khan comes up with his next zinger.

The author, upon reading the CDC blog.

P*ss Says Elijah

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As celebrations of the four-hundredth year of the King James Version continue this month, it is time to reflect on how its language has influenced modern-day English. I recently finished my course on the Prophets, and as I was reading the wonderful stories of Elijah, I remembered the shock I first experienced when reading 1 Kings 21.21 as a child. In the words of Elijah: “Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel.” I had been raised with the certain knowledge that the “p-word” was cussing, if not downright swearing. What was it doing in the mouth of a righteous prophet? Then I realized even Saint Peter, according to Mark 14.71, “began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye speak” just before the cock crowed.

The Bible defies expectations. Today it has become a highly politicized document. The “Family Values” camp loves to cite select passages of the Bible but tends to ignore those juicy bits that contradict their 1950’s outlook. The Bible is a book of surprises. It suffers at the hands of its own apotheosis. I know biblical scholars who argue that the Bible should no longer be singled out as a special book, but we do owe it a debt of gratitude. If modern-day people want to revere the Bible, they should do so with an awareness of its context.

Recently a friend posted a comment on Revelation online, wondering why people found it so scary. In the many replies, several worried commenters noted how signs for the apocalypse are beyond ripe and the fruit is ready to fall from the tree. When I interjected that Revelation was a response to first-century Christian persecution couched in the language of apocalyptic literature, I was quickly corrected by others who noted that since Revelation is coming true right now, it must, ipso facto, be a future prediction. We revere the Bible without hearing it. Until we learn to actually read and appreciate the Bible in its context, I’ll have to take my side with the prophets of old. After all, p*ss says Elijah.

Be careful little mouth what you say...

Corny Children

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Once upon a time, if you wanted to see a movie you had to go to a theater or wait until it ran on television. This is stretching my memory back a long way, so indulge me if I only remember that four channels existed in those days, and you had to wait years for movies to appear at a time when you could actually be home to see them. Fast forward a few years and the VCR was invented. I remember being impressed that you could actually rent movies you’d always wanted to see, within reason. If you watched them too often they wore out. Then the electronic revolution came. This is all by way of excuse for why I’ve only just started to watch movies that came out in my younger years. Children of the Corn, although critically panned, was a financial success in my college days when I started watching horror movies. When I finally watched it yesterday, I realized it was a natural candidate for this blog’s running commentary on horror and religion.

What I had not fully appreciated is that the movie is a cautionary tale centering around a sacrificial cult. While the movie does have its problems, the concept of children taking the religion they hear from adults seriously runs throughout the film. Understanding gods as bloodthirsty demanders of sacrifice is a gruesome staple of all monotheistic religions. Someone’s got to die for the rest to be saved. While Fundamentalists take comfort in the substitutionary atonement of the “once for all” nature of sacrifice, in the film, the children erect crosses and sacrifice adults to “he who walks behind the rows” – a typical Stephen King kind of monster. Monster or not, the children believe he is a god.

Belief is the guy-wire for religion. The reality behind that belief is open to question, otherwise multiple religions would not exist. Children of the Corn confuses the issue by presenting “he who walks behind the rows” as a legitimate supernatural entity, one who is vanquished by a passage from Revelation. The truly disturbing aspect, however, is the complete, unquestioning devotion of the children. When children are raised in intolerant religions today, we are also planting corn that will lead to some unholy reaping in the future. Perhaps the message of the film was more trenchant than most critics were willing to admit back then. Today it is certainly more believable, given many religions’ demonstrations of their destructive powers.

Dating Daniel

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Last semester one of my students had an encounter with a literalist. This is not uncommon, but the issue raised ran counter to what we were covering in class, namely, the book of Daniel. Apocalyptically minded literalists use Daniel and Revelation as a two-tiered roadmap to the future, supposing that these books are predictions of the end of time. Scholars who’ve studied apocalyptic literature, however, know that such interpretations misrepresent a fascinating genre of ancient writing that says more about its own time than some unforeseen future (our time). Nevertheless, the myth of Daniel’s foresight persists.

Long ago biblical scholars noted that although set in the period of the Babylonian Empire, the book of Daniel makes several basic errors about that time period. On the other hand, Daniel knows the period of the Seleucid Empire (when it was actually written) in relatively precise detail. We think nothing of it when an author today sets a story in the past, but somehow this is dirty pool in the composition of an evangelical Bible. Apocalyptic was intended to provide encouragement to those under persecution, not to give them a Google-mapped future. It is in the nature of apocalyptic to present the author as a seer, but the future age is a Zoroastrian contribution that gives books like Daniel and Revelation their edge.

Misunderstanding genre is a large concern among literary scholars. A document like the Bible, which contains several distinct genres, must be handled carefully if it isn’t to be misrepresented. I used to point out that if the passages intended to be read ironically were understood literally many Bible-quoters would be in trouble. After all, doesn’t Amos declare, “Go to Bethel and sin; go to Gilgal and sin yet more” (4.4)? Learning to place biblical genres within their proper context makes a world of difference. Instead of Daniel telling us to hold tight because the end is near, he is found to be encouraging those who were suffering in his own day. We have no biblical roadmaps for the end times because the end of the story has not yet been written.

Daniel tells the lions a story about the future

Black Monks and Grim Reapers

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Last night I assisted my daughter with a stint of volunteering at the local community “haunted house” for charity. This is one of the high points of October, so I was glad to be asked. I reprised my role that I developed for Nashotah House: in that context the character was called “the Black Monk,” based on a local ghost story. While I was on the faculty of Nashotah there were plenty of students who swore the Black Monk story was true, the actual event involved an early student who drowned while trying to walk across water (something many students think they are capable of) – this was actually during the winter, however, and Upper Nashotah Lake is not always as thickly frozen as people assume. The poor student broke through and is buried in the cemetery on campus. Halloween was a major event at that Gothic location until a new, evangelical administration came along. During a haunted hayride, the kids of the community lumbered along on a hay-wagon while costumed students jumped out to scare them. I played along in a costume my wife made where my face was invisible and the flowing black robes eerily blended into the night.

In my current secular context, of course, I was simply The Grim Reaper. This character has a very ancient pedigree. Religions from the earliest times have personified Death as a character that all people inevitably meet. The Mesopotamians had Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, the Ugaritians had Mot, the god whose name is “Death,” and the Hebrew Bible has “the Angel of Death.” We are often not given a physical description of this baleful but sometimes beneficent supernatural entity. When Revelation was finally penned, Death is one of the four horsemen, and he rides a pale horse, but we do not find many physical details. In the fifteenth century Death was pictured as a skeleton, often with a scythe. His role is that of the classical psychopomp, or guide to the next world. He is not evil, but when the doorbell rings you’d rather hope it had been Avon calling rather than the G.R.

Carlos Schwabe, Death of the Undertaker

Appealing to the fear of the unknown, I lurked last night in the shadows, face completely obscured, not speaking, stepping out to reminded holiday revelers that what is really scary is that which we can not define. When playing the silent ghoul, sudden movements are not necessary to frighten, shouts and screams are unimportant. The simple reminder of mortality and the unspoken question “is he here for me?” are sufficiently frightening on their own. Whether the Black Monk or the Grim Reaper, this character has a natural place on the chilly nights of October. And sometimes it seems there is just not enough October to keep all of us in line.

Noah’s Newest Neighbor

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This week paleontologists announced the newest dinosaur discovery: Kosmoceratops, a plant-eating, three-ton beast with an improbable arrangement of fifteen horns on its head. Any beast arising from the sea would be jealous. As Kosmoceratops jostles its way onto the ark, scientists debate the utility of all those horns – placed incorrectly for defensive purposes, they seem to have functioned to attract mates. Isolated on a fairly compact land mass, these Cretaceous ceratopsids bloomed into a distinctive species as showy as any other so far discovered. As evolution continues to stir debate in this country, its evidence keeps marching along.

Every semester, four terms per year, I have students work on a project that includes (in part) evolution and the Hebrew Bible. Every semester as I overhear discussion, I realize just how deeply the anti-evolutionary front has its claws in the American psyche. Otherwise intelligent undergraduates studying a variety of subjects: science, business, engineering, psychology, express their doubts about evolution. The reason: the Bible doesn’t affirm it. Nor does the Bible affirm atomic theory, free market economics, or microchips. Evolution hits, perhaps, a little too close to home.

The dinosaurs stomp in the face of Creationism. As much as the fundies try to embrace them, dinosaurs are just too outlandish to fit in any world other than evolution. The God of the Bible doesn’t seem to have a surfeit of humor to have wasted so much creativity on dinosaurs that no human ever got to see. We reconstruct, with amazement, species after flamboyant species, and yet the foes of science keep a finger firmly tucked in Genesis. Serious Bible scholars seldom have difficulties with letting science do its job, including evolution. The agitation arises from another quarter. And with all those horns in front of us, that quarter might be the apocalyptic sea after all.

Misappropriated Prophets

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There seems to be a can of worms lying open on my desk, released by the comments yesterday’s post engendered. I thank all my readers and commentators. The issue most pointedly thrust among the worms appears to be that of prophecy. Teaching about prophecy constitutes a large part of my meager income. And since prophecy plays a large role in many Evangelical associations not only with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but also Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 and just about any other major catastrophe, it is worth exposing. In the Bible prophecy is not about predicting the future.

Prophecy was a widespread phenomenon long before Israel appeared on the scene. One of the roles prophets shared in ancient times was the declaration of outcomes to momentous events. Unfortunately that aspect of their duty easily became equated with predicting the future. Its actual milieu, however, was that ancient people believed prophets to be “effective speakers.” When a prediction came true it was not because a prophet could “see the future,” but because the spoken word of the prophet participated in the reality of the world. The belief was that the effective word came from God/a god, and therefore would be true by definition.

Apocalyptic, the familiar literary form of Daniel and Revelation, is not prophecy. Zoroastrianism, the religion of ancient Persia, had influenced many ancient religions, including Judaism. Apocalyptic, like prophecy, has a predictive element. Like prophecy, however, apocalyptic has a different purpose. The books most heavily farmed for future predictions by Evangelicals, Daniel and Revelation, are both thinly veiled accounts of contemporary events of the authors’ own days. Daniel consoles Jews persecuted by Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Revelation consoles Christians persecuted by one of the early Roman emperors (the jury is still out on precisely which one). Neither book predicts the end of the world. Both, however, declare the comeuppance of the arrogant oppressor. It is here, perhaps, that the true relevance of the Bible speaks to the scars human beings inflict on their own planet and on each other.

sic semper tyrannis

Great Balls of Fire

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Gnu from WikiCommons

“I looked, and there came a great earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth…” (Revelation 6.12-13a). With all the apocalyptic events of the past few days, some religious pundits are eagerly awaiting a rider on an extraterrestrial white horse with a light-saber jutting from his mouth. As the smoke from Eyjafjallajokull rises like a funeral pyre, a great green bolide streaks across Midwestern skies (landing, no doubt, near Nashotah House, among Wisconsin’s most paranormal locations), and this all follows an earthquake in China. More impressive than the snowpocalypse of this past winter, but less worrisome than the abrupt ending of the Mayan calendar.

All of this fuss reminded me of the way 1987 began. Having grown up in humble circumstances, one of my favorite pastimes was jigsaw puzzles. As my brother and I sat piecing one together on New Year’s Day while home on break, suddenly a loud boom shook our ramshackle house. Now I grew up in a small town built around a large refinery, and stories of the cataclysmic explosion that was sure to come raced through my head as my brother and I went outside to see the great pall of greasy black smoke that was certain to accompany such a disaster. We were met by clear skies and neighbors standing in a confused huddle in the streets. The news that evening reported that a fireball had been seen racing across the daytime skies of Ohio and Pennsylvania before it exploded some distance north of us. I’d just experienced my first bolide. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was an event I’ve never forgotten.

The message I take from these many natural occurrences is that humanity is small. We imagine ourselves to be gods of our domain, controlling our environment and making it more to our liking. But we are not in control. Revelation was not predicting the end of the world, but was attempting to reassert a sense of control for people suffering from a perceived godless enemy. Today we still think of such events as a sign of God’s anger. I’m not sure what God is supposed to be angry about, unless he has happened to drop in on a Tea Party and heard how his name is being taken in vain.

Alaska’s Temblors

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There are rumblings under Alaska. Some people are just a bit nervous after last week’s earthquakes in Mexico – could it be our turn next? Mount Redoubt, remote from human population zones, has been sputtering and steaming and making itself look large. It is preparing for something big.

In apocalyptic literature we see a similar image: the small horn that boasts and makes itself out to be the greatest of the ten that speckle the head of the great beast from the sea. The little horn called Antiochus, so enamored of his own abilities that he surnamed himself Epiphanes, “the manifestation.” And uncritical people, taken in by his bravado, followed him until he started torturing and killing those who didn’t agree with his religion. Those who would not bow to his own personal Zeus would be martyred in nasty ways.

Now an active volcano is sputtering in Alaska. Could it be the sign of the end times? I doubt it. The end does not come ushered in by mere movements in the earth’s crust. According to Revelation there has to be a harlot on the back of a hideous beast. And that’s only if you believe Revelation is predicting something that hasn’t already happened. No, I believe Mount Redoubt is just doing what volcanoes always do – threatening, making noise, and occasionally erupting. They may blanket their surroundings with ash and magma, but these are often only temporary postures on the part of nature. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

More than just a redoubtable mountain?

The Call of the Apocalypse

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In discussing various polemics against religion, such as those by Christopher Hitchens and Bill Maher, I have frequently stated that they have a point, but they have ignored the good that religion hath wrought. It is like an Anti-Julius Caesar – the good is oft interred with the bones. Then the news goes and validates their polemic. The arrests yesterday of the leadership of the Christian militia calling themselves the Hutaree (I’m sorry, but it sounds like a happy Boy Scout gathering) highlights once more the danger that religion poses to an already unstable society. I’d not heard of the Hutaree before, and chances are I would never have heard of them had they not plotted an apocalyptic war against the United States’ government that landed them on the front page.

Few people are willing to admit just how dangerous apocalyptic thought is, or how deeply rooted it is in American politics. Tracing the roots of this form of belief is not difficult – apocalyptic first appears in the Bible when revelation through prophecy met and mated with Zoroastrianism’s dualism. The offspring of this union was the belief that a new, and better (!), age was about to dawn. God would usher in an era of peace, but it had to be precipitated by an era of war. Presidents drawn from the Religious Right have held this belief. Some have even eagerly begun wars in hopes that this ancient Afghanistanian religion would lead to the Christian apocalypse. At least the Hutaree were up-front about it: they believed that armed conflict with the government would flush out the Antichrist and usher in the end.

Last night in my Prophets class student questions indicated just how much interest there is in apocalyptic. We live in an era when information is all-too-easy to find, and yet many otherwise intelligent people believe that a hidden knowledge about the future is available in the Bible. It is not. For those who have ears to hear, Daniel was written about Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Revelation was written about a Roman emperor (perhaps Nero or Domitian) who threatened nascent Christianity. The apocalyptic battle was already underway. The future they longed for was peace. Modern apocalypticists see all of this as future prediction and believe that they must start the war. All of this makes me feel strangely vindicated. The FBI and other government officials are starting to demonstrate an awareness that to prevent religious extremism you must understand it. Now if only universities would catch on and realize that the study of religion is vital to national security I might end up with a full-time teaching post after all.

The original Antichrist