Jesus, The Non-Disney Version

This Sunday, Jeff reminded us of the book at the end of the Bible that so many people want to forget: Revelation. This book has caused division within churches and between denominations as people fight over things like if Jesus will come before the millennium or afterward, who the Antichrist is, and whether or not there will be a literal dragon.

Whatever our take on it, Revelation does not present us with an image of Jesus-meek-and-mild. It's an R-rated gore fest filled with rivers of blood and a lot of killing. There's a final battle and everlasting torment. There's even childbirth and prostitution.

Even though we can take comfort in knowing how it ends -- God wins -- Revelation still challenges us and makes us uneasy. It isn't a picture of Jesus that we want to see. It isn't an end we really want to envision. It isn't the kind of all-forgiving, sweet God that we want to believe in. Seen through our modern eyes, it brings on a crisis of Christian belief because it means Jesus has not usurped the place of YHWH in the Hebrew Scriptures and set up a monarchy of absolute pacifism. Jesus comes in power with a sword in his mouth that will be used for slaughter.

This is not the way we imagine God's grace, and it isn't what we understand as every tear being wiped away. So what is it?

As Jeff pointed out, it's a picture of God's justice. Heaven is a perfect place, and so all sin must be eliminated. There's simply no question about it: in a place without death, sorrow, or crying anymore, all that does not fit with God's perfection must be purged. Only in such a place could we dwell with God.

I don't know whether or not the end of times will really be like this. I think the outpouring of God's unmerited grace manifests in the world both as mercy and justice, and that the two cannot be separated.

In this world, it makes sense that the image of God's justice would be one of destructive warfare. After all, we've seen that while love and peace can stand firm against iniquity, and sometimes even overcome it, it can't destroy it. But while this may be a picture of justice we can understand, I don't think it's literally true. In the same way, the image of the Good Shepherd coming to lead us all to green pastures makes sense of God's mercy. But I don't really think it will be like that. These pictures help us grasp what is fundamentally incomprehensible about God, which is that He's both perfectly just and perfectly merciful.

When the end comes, we won't need any of these images anymore. All the images, like all things, will be made new. Until then, Revelation helps us remember that, whatever we think God is like, He isn't that, because He's so much more. Even though He gives Himself to us in the person of Jesus, we cannot enclose or comprehend him in our own flawed humanity.

While building a church on a missionary assignment, Homer Simpson says, "Well, I may not know much about God, but I have to say we built a pretty nice cage for Him." In what ways do we try to limit God to being only what we want Him to be?