Revelation, Gas, and Hurricanes

John Walvoord wrote a book a while ago called Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East. This post is nothing like that book.

In Revelation John the Seer sees a scroll, but no one is able to open it. He weeps because of this until he is shown the Lamb who can open the scroll; the Lamb who can make sense of the scroll. I think the scroll represents history, or the creation, and how what happens in it doesn't make sense. No one is able to "read" history properly, except the conquering Lamb. Only he can make sense of history; only in light of him does it make sense. So, he starts to break the seals--the barriers that make history unintelligible; the things that keep it from making sense. The sixth seal has natural disasters--the sun darkens, the stars fall. This is apocalyptic language describing things that happen in nature (not what will happen, I don't think), and don't make sense. The people cower and run, knowing that God's judgment is coming. So, natural disasters are both "seals" preventing understanding and markers of God's authority.

We have obviously experienced some rather disastrous events lately. Really, it's unfair for me to say "we." I haven't experienced anything at all. Neither has most of the continent. But for some reason, we all fear what is happening. We fear because we are reminded that in spite of 200 years of thinking we master our fate and captain our souls, there are just some things we can't control. Not only that, but there is a deeper sense of this being wrong; of it not being right that we are subjected in this way. Since we cannot control this evil, we need help.

We also fear economic and energy repercussions--even when there are oil companies that could produce a tonne more oil either a) if they wanted to; or b) if they had buyers. So, we rush to fill up cars and other vehicles, even while we buy more expensive gas-guzzlers. We ourselves become the irony: we fear losing energy and yet insist on proving our own stubborness, our own "in controlness," by purchasing massive vehicles that "defy limits." So, the disasters induce fear that remind us we need help, but we act as though we are still in charge of everything. Technology has brought us to a place where if we ever did face a crisis of energy, we would be crippled, but we cozy on up to it all the same because it symbolizes our own dominance.

Going back to Revelation, I suppose we think we have the ability to break the seals--and in a way we do. The only problem is that the seals we break don't have a Lamb whose wounds still show, but a human race still under the thumb of the creation in which it finds itself. The story (and now stories--really post-modernism is still playing on its predecessor's field) we tell of history doesn't have a baby in a manger, and a resurrected Saviour, but a child in a petri-dish, and closed casket.