After the scripture reading, part 3

I love my job, but there's a drawback to being a courts reporter. Several really ugly crimes are up for me to write about in the next week or two, which means lots of reading really ugly criminal complaints. Everything is not ok.

Anyway, a lighter diversion is my recurring series on the scriptures chosen each week for our church services, and the frequently funny, horrible or otherwise discordant passages that come immediately afterward. This week comes to us a passage from Revelation, chapter 5 verses 11-14:

11 Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice,

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.”

13 And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying,

“To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.”

14 And the four living creatures kept saying, “Amen.” And the elders fell down and worshiped.

Which is a very nice passage, although best taken with a grain of salt: the fact that a snippet of meaningful imagery should slip its way into the torrent of hallucinogenic froth that is Revelation is no more surprising - and no more meaningful - than that the face of the Virgin Mary should on rare occasion manifest itself on pieces of toast.

So, what comes next? Why, Revelation 6, of course! Which, if you're too lazy to click the link, is the classic bit where the four horsemen are introduced: Conquest, War, Famine and Death.




I have mixed feelings about this passage, which at least differs from my previous examples in that nearly everyone at least has heard of it. Revelation seems to be a favorite text of the more unhinged branches of Christianity, whose insane need to interpret every word of the Bible as unadulterated literal truth straight from the bewhiskered lips of the almighty has proven more than equal to the task of assimilating some dude's 2,000-year-old acid trip into their core mythology. Thus we get the hilariously tribal superstition about the number 666, as well as more harmful obsessions with the end times and the antichrist and determining which politician or UN mandate fulfills which prophecy.

On the other hand, I'm coming more and more to believe that certain people experience a particular blend of personality and acculturation that demands they become fundamentalist, and that fundamentalism is not an effect of Revelation, but a self-perpetuating cause. You could remove Revelation, or even the entire Bible, and people who are driven to fundamentalism probably would still find something to be fundamentalist about. So it's not fair to knock John's drug habits for the mess people make out of it 20 centuries later.

And I'm ok with that, because we would be much the poorer without it Revelation, and this passage in particular. The people inspired by it throughout the centuries might have been bonkers, but they also were visionaries and  artists who have contributed immeasurably to the fabric of our culture. Even today, apocalyptic imagery continues to be fruitfully re-imagined everywhere from video games to comic books to heavy metal. Darksiders 2 alone is probably worth the hassle of dealing with people convinced that Obama has the number of the Beast tattooed on the inside of his scrotum.

So that's last weekend's after the scripture. Might not have one next week due to possible out-of-town plans. Enjoy this one extra, then!