Faith Venture

I’m currently teaching from Revelation. It can be a difficult and contentious book–if you let it. One of the major themes of the book is the relationship to the power of this world (evil, the Roman Empire, that sort of thing) to the power of God. “The saints” are continually praying for God’s justice to overcome the power of evil in this book–and the climax reveals who has the power.

There are two themes I want to braid while still thinking about the people in the last post who seem to need to vilify others. First, I think it is impossible to understand much of the New Testament unless you understand the worldview of the Romans. It was all about power. We got it–you don’t. It was a power based on brute force and military might. The Romans perfected a way of fighting that was superior to all for hundreds of years. Jesus’ message, on the other hand, was a power of a different sort. He overturned the Roman view of the world with a God view of the world. His view was that individuals filled with the power of God act differently from others. And he showed many examples of how people live when filled with God’s power rather than seeking power as the Romans saw it–or lived in fear of that power.

Let me pick up on that last idea for the second strand of the braid. When people feel powerless, they tend to react overly strongly. Often this reaction is verbal, but sometimes it is expressed in futile physical violence. There exist a large number of people in our society who feel that powerlessness. It is unfortunate that many call themselves Christian. That’s unfortunate because somewhere along the line their Christian teachers did not teach them the power of God within that makes you strong in the face of the Roman type of power. You’re strong enough to stand up to challenge and recognize who your real enemies are–and deal with them without taking it out on innocent people.

To drop a hint–God’s power won in John’s vision. Just as it won in Jesus’ resurrection. What we need to do is redouble our efforts to instill the Spiritual Disciplines in people so that they can live life within God’s power.

This entry was posted on February 1, 2010 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Christianity, Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.