To be Christian in Babylon

The Book of Revelation is a handbook for bearing witness in troubling times

Photo by Jared Murray on Unsplash

The origin story of my fear of the book of “Revelations” began on my bus ride home from high school. I don’t remember the context, but I remember our bus driver quoting Revelation 21:8, telling me and a few other students, “All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” Remembering our bus driver as a lovely woman, I am sure this remark was preceded by some chicanery from my classmates and me.

Six months ago, I decided to read through the entire Bible, cover-to-cover (including the Apocrypha). I finished the last chapter of the Book of Revelation this morning, which brought to mind this interaction on the bus over 20 years ago. Back then, I was taught to fear the Book of Revelation. It is filled with cataclysm and chaos, dragons and beasts, violence and war, and centers a God all-too-eager to judge the world. Add the fact that my church was caught up in the evangelical Rapture craze of the early 2000s, and you can begin to understand the fear and paranoia that permeated my adolescent spirituality.

After reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation over the past few months, I came away with a different feeling. Yes, the Book of Revelation contains images of dragons and otherworldly beasts, but its message is confidence in Christ, not fear. John of Patmos writes his letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor in the context of imperial persecution of the Church. As a result of this context, the churches demonstrate different responses to their persecution, ranging from spiritual apathy to abandonment. John’s letter encourages the church to remain faithful even during hard times because the ultimate victory over the power of sin and evil has already been secured by Jesus, “the Lamb who was slain.” The faithful didn’t have to fight, but merely continue their faithful witness to the love of Jesus. This is what John means when he tells the community in Thyatira, “To everyone who conquers and continues to do my works to the end, I will give authority over the nations.” He gives similar messages to the other six churches. Conquering is not about fighting or defeating the enemies of the Church using conventional methods and weapons, but about bearing witness to Jesus in love and humility.

Lest we overspiritualize John’s letter, it is a not-so-subtle political critique. Standing in continuity with the Hebrew prophets like Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, John’s Revelation denounces the Roman Empire as his generation’s Babylon, the manifestation of the kingdoms of the world that exalt their security and wealth to the status of God. John’s message to Rome, and every kingdom and empire before and since, is simple: to exploit, oppress, and dehumanize while pursuing power, security, and wealth is to sow the seeds of your own destruction. “Alas, alas, the great city, Babylon, the mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come” (Revelation 18:10). It is worth contemplating where Babylon is in our own time and what God’s judgment might say to us.

John’s message to the churches in Asia Minor is to resist Babylon, not by violence, but by bearing witness to the Crucified and Risen One. The salvation of the nations—the ultimate vision of Revelation—follows the sacrificial, non-violent witness of the Church to the “Lamb who was slain.” The sorting and the reaping are up to God. What is up to us is to decide where and how we will bear witness to the love of God and invite people into a different, more humane way of being in an increasingly violent world.

I was struck by this theme of military and economic security being at the root of imperial power while reading through the Book of Revelation because of how much these themes show up in our world. At the root of every conflict—the inhumane immigration crackdown in the United States or the whole series of unfolding tragedies surrounding Israel’s devastating war against Hamas in Gaza—lie concerns about military and economic security. When sacred human lives become expendable in our quest for security, we have forgotten what it means to be human, and the world we inherit—one filled with violence, division, and scarcity—is the direct result of our collective actions. This might not be popular domestic or foreign policy, but it is the moral law of the universe to which the Church must hold. The Bible points toward this when it describes the destruction of the nations. It isn’t so much that God destroys the nations. It is more that the nations inherit the world they create through their violence, exploitation, and oppression. When the first humans were expelled from the Garden of Eden, it was because, by choosing evil, they demonstrated that they wanted to live apart from God. God, who refuses to intrude on human freedom by compelling human obedience, gives them what they want. That’s judgment. It is worth noting that even in their exile, God goes with them, caring for and protecting the humans in the hostile world they chose. That’s mercy.

What are Christians to do in Babylon? Remain faithful to “the Lamb who was slain” who alone is worthy “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (Revelation 5:12). Faithful witness to Jesus in our context means interrupting inhumane systems that actively cause harm to others, reaching out to our neighbors who are in fear, and joining with others to challenge our government to be more humane. Wherever human beings are forced to live and die beneath their God-given dignity because of poverty, violence, exploitation, or neglect, we must speak a better word. We must reject any political agenda that attempts to convince us that our security is based on the insecurity of others and offer the compelling reality: that we are secure when we are in community with others, that there is more than enough if only we would learn to share, and that we are only as great as our willingness to serve. In our pursuit of righteousness, we must remember the words of Dorothy Day: “All the way to Heaven is Heaven.” Through prayer, reflection, repentance, and repair, we must ensure that we remain on the path pioneered by our Savior, marked by love, sacrifice, and humility.

Dearest reader, the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires is a tale as old as time. Despite the victory of Christ over evil, the world still lives as if it is enslaved to the powers of sin and death. Too many are unaware that the door to our ultimate liberation is locked from the inside. The world, therefore, needs our witness. Christians have always lived in Babylon as living epistles. We live to demonstrate to the nations of the world that there is a more excellent way to live, one that will inevitably bring us to the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

May God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.