I
am witnessing a lot of anxiety at the moment. And in response, I want to say:
[1]
The world is not going to hell in a handcart. The world is being drawn into the
reconciliation of all things to God in Jesus. All movement that enlarges the
distance between people, or between people and the rest of creation, is an
aberration, a temporary state of affairs, where we have yet to respond to
grace. Keep choosing to move with the grain of history, not against it, by the
grace of God.
[2]
47 is not God’s man appointed to bring about God’s purposes. The man God has
appointed, who has brought about, is bringing about, and will bring about God's
purposes, is Jesus. No one else. Not 47, not you, not me. Christian Nationalism
is idolatrous.
[3]
On the other hand, nothing that 47 or anyone else can do can derail the
trajectory to reconciliation in and with and through Jesus. Nothing that falls
short of Love has the power to defeat Love.
[4]
You are not reading about Putin and 47 in the Book of Revelation. Revelation is
an apocalypse, a genre of work that lifts the veil on present events to reveal
what is going on in a deeper reality. The present events in question being the
end of what we now refer to as the first century of the Common Era. Revelation
was written to encourage Christians living under the seemingly all-powerful
Roman empire to remain faithful to Jesus, even to death, for through their
faithful witness Rome would fall. Everything we see in Revelation concerns
events that took place long before our time. Because Jesus is the same
yesterday, today and forever, we can extrapolate truth about the nature and
action of God, and our vocation to remain faithful to Jesus in the face of
empire, just as we can do with the texts that make up the Old Testament. But to
claim that we are living in the events depicted in Revelation is an
aggrandisement of our time, a foolish self-importance.
[5]
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin
and remain faithful to Christ to the end of your days.
As
you were.
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