wfn.org | Book of Revelation is vision of God's world

[ENS@ecunet.org]

2001-95

Book of Revelation is vision of God's world, bishop of London tells Bowen 
Conference 

 by Paul Ashdown

     (ENS) The Book of Revelation has befuddled Christians for centuries 
because its vivid language and symbolic richness is intentionally 
disorienting, the 132nd bishop of London told some 140 participants at the 
annual Bowen Conference at Kanuga Conference Center in North Carolina.

      "The difficulty of this book is part of the point," said the Rt. Rev. 
Richard J. C. Chartres, the keynote speaker at the March 19-22 conference. 
"Getting irritable because it is not possible to understand it absolutely and 
tie it up is exactly missing the point."

      Revelation, he argued, is nothing less than a vision of the structure 
underlying the universe.

      "There are constant doors opening in Revelation, doors to heaven, doors 
into the future. These symbols are presented in a way that is meant to 
reverberate, to lead us on, to take us to a different way of being aware, of 
thinking and perceiving in the world," he said.

      We can, Chartres said, therefore be re-inspired by St. John's method, 
using the imagery of Revelation "to unlock the Deep Structure of enduring 
patterns of life."

Imagining the book

      The theme of the conference was Christ in a New Millennium: Imagine the 
Book of Revelation with a Master Teacher. Kanuga has sponsored the Bowen 
Conference since 1989. Buford Bowen of Tryon, North Carolina, and Ponte Vedra 
Beach, Florida, endowed the series of conferences to explore areas of 
Christian commitment.

      Chartres' lectures were complemented by talks on the history and 
interpretation of the Book of Revelation by the Rev. Dr. A. Richard Smith, a 
Lutheran who teaches at the School of Theology of the University of the 
South, and meditations by the Rev. Canon John L. Peterson, secretary general 
of the Anglican Communion. 

     Those attending the conference participated in creative studios in 
writing, music, dance, and art during which they "imagined" the Book of 
Revelation. Their work was presented during a concluding Eucharist at the 
conference.

No manual of predictions

      Chartres said interest in Revelation increases whenever people feel 
"time is running out." Such a time is again upon us, he suggested, both 
superficially in the aftermath of the Y2K fervor, and more significantly in 
the growing awareness of global problems that seem to be racing out of 
control.

      Accordingly, Revelation is sometimes viewed as series of specific 
predictions about current events.

      "Revelation is not a manual of precise predictions written hundreds of 
years removed from the events. It's not the prophecies of Nostradamus," the 
16th-century French astrologer famous for his predictions of the future. "We 
have a way of getting mesmerized by the details and missing the big picture," 
Chartres said.

      Chartres said the West was in the throes of a "great malady" in which 
"aspects of the culture frustrate us in communicating with God."

      People in the West are often more in touch with their ideas about God 
than they are with God--and this is an error, he said, because "it's God who 
is the transformer, not our notions about God or our notions about the 
world." Rather, it is when we are in communication with God through Jesus 
Christ that transformation actually occurs.

      Reading Revelation, then, can be rewarding to the extent that we 
actually engage scripture as a pathway to direct experience.

      "There is positive value in approaching a text like this that is 
defamiliarizing, disorienting, as Jesus Christ in his teaching method was 
continually disorienting. It stirs you up," he said.

      "My conviction is that there is the possibility of an openness of 
profound belief, an openness of profound conviction and communication when 
you do the work with your creative imagination working with the biblical 
story. I believe it illuminates the way Jesus Christ taught. The word of God 
did not dwell among us and become texts," he insisted, but the word was 
embodied in Jesus Christ.

A suspect book

     Bishop Chartres explained that Revelation has always been a 
controversial book to the Church, especially in the East.

     "Revelation has been a suspect book for good and bad reasons," the 
bishop said. "For good reasons because it has been the happy hunting ground 
of fanatics. And it's been a suspect book for bad reasons because the Church 
very early on gave up looking for a denouement, for transformation, in 
history and the Church became easy in the world and not willing to be 
disturbed."

      The consequence, according to Chartres, was the "migration of hope" to 
politics and the acceptance of the Enlightenment project as a way of living 
in the world without God.

      He discussed forms of structural sin and evil that are part of the 
human condition, pointing out that turning information into a commodity is a 
pressing problem.

      "We're in a difficult situation because of how we communicate with one 
another," he said. News of the world reaches us through the distortions of 
media engaged in a fierce ratings war. This leads to the sale of information 
as a commodity at the extremes of actual experience, bringing about "a 
systematic distortion in the way we communicate over long distances, and this 
is very dangerous."

      Inequitable distribution of resources throughout the world, and 
inadequate reporting about global problems, exacerbates problems and leads to 
a kind of structural sinfulness, the sense of which is at the heart of what 
John of Patmos is writing about.

      The Book of Revelation reminds us that "this is God's world. There are 
consequences if you live in immoral ways," Bishop Chartres said.

Envisioning God's world

      Quoting the Bishop of Rome, Bishop Chartres said we are called upon "to 
transform history," and not merely to accept patterns of human experience. 
Revelation stimulates and encourages us to be able to envision the world that 
God intends, and not merely to envision the world in terms of political 
solutions.

      "Here in the present, we have a present of potentiality," he said. 
"What the faith community can do is enlarge the room for political maneuver. 
Our truth is for the public realm. We must live attentively to the needs of 
our neighbor. If we don't then consequences will follow."

      Part of our current dilemma is that we are caught in "the acceleration 
trap," a speeding up of life in such a way that we are "not able to live with 
the givens of life."

      In the acceleration trap, he said, "we have a vision of a civilization 
that has lost its Sabbath principle." Properly understood, the Sabbath is a 
sign of "enoughness," of sufficiency. By losing the Sabbath principle, we 
hasten "growth without limits, with no end to it."

Valuable signs

      The present generation, however, has been granted two valuable

     signs that should alert us to alternative futures, he said. The image of 
the mushroom cloud, which has been with us since the end of the Second World 
War, is now juxtaposed with "the sapphire globe" seen from the reaches of 
outer space.

      "The bomb is a vision of terror. One truth we've had to live with is 
that we can destroy all of human life on this planet in a way no previous 
generation has. The sapphire globe shows us we will live as one world or not 
at all. That's why the world needs Jesus Christ in the public realm," he 
said.

      As John of Patmos addressed his present, we can address our own 
Present, Chartres said. While Revelation is not a book of timetables, the 
Second Coming of Christ is a vital element in scripture. "God wants 
transformation in the world until He gets here," he said.

      There is "a future that is coming to meet us, the future God intends," 
he concluded. "The urgent message of Revelation is that our business is in 
solidarity with Christ to transform history. The vision is that the whole world 
is to be the dwelling place of God's glory."

--Paul Ashdown is professor of journalism at the University of Tennessee, 
where he received the National Alumni Association's Outstanding Teacher 
Award. He is a former wire service and newspaper journalist who has also 
taught at universities in Germany and the Netherlands. He was convenor of 
the creative workshop studio at the Bowen Conference.