Jeremy L. Berg

I’m sharing another timely excerpt from Revelation for the Rest of Us, by Cody Matchett and Scot McKnight. This sober undressing of some of the hidden realities behind our nation may offend, and if it rattles our bones to see this earthly nation critiqued by the Bible, that might indicate we have made it an idol. Revelation is an ‘apocalypse,‘ and that word means to pull back the curtain on the uglier realities that prefer to stay hidden behind the shiny surface. Revelation is an invitation to political resistance, not End Times speculation. It’s a call to follow the Way of the Lamb, and resist the Way of Babylon. And, according to McKnight and Matchett, Babylon is all around us. -JB

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The ways of reading Revelation that spend time speculating about When all this will happen? and Who is the antichrist? fail the church in discipleship. Instead of a discipleship that teaches us to discern Babylon among us and shows us how-to live-in Babylon as dissidents instead of conformists, these speculative questions teach Christians how to wait for the escape from Babylon. They encourage questions like “Will I be left behind or raptured?” and “Am I ‘in’ or ‘out’?” or “Am I saved or not?”

By making future-focused judgments central to reading Revelation and treating Babylon as a world-class city of the future or giving the USA and Israel a central role in the divine plan, this speculative method teaches adherents to trust in the wrong things—especially the false safety of the all-powerful American military.

However, as we have seen, Babylon was and is a timeless trope for empires and nations and powers that systematize injustices, oppress the people of God, and suppress the truths of liberation. Babylon is no more a city of the future than it is a city of the here and now. If we want to live out the message of Revelation today, we need to develop eyes that discern Babylon’s power, violence, and injustice in our midst today.

We must recognize the Babylon all around us. New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat, once described his search for a home in a more rural setting, noting that he sometimes pictures himself “flying around to various Babylons for important meetings and interviews.” Here, Douthat clearly conceives of Babylon as a trope. And in this chapter, we will do the same by clarifying four characteristics of Babylon Today, the Babylon all around us here and now. And – fair warning – we will explain how America is its own kind of Babylon.

Arrogance

The heart of Babylon will always be arrogant self-sufficiency that has no need for God, no care for the people of God, and no commitment to the ways of God. The haunting words of Babylon, perhaps only muttered in the privacy of one’s mind and heart, are “there is none besides me” (from Isaiah 47:8). John’s Babylon says, “I will never mourn” (Rev 18:7). This gives us insight into how Babylon thinks: it thinks of itself, for itself, about itself, and everything revolves around itself. This is an Empire called “Narcissism.” It thinks of itself in comparative terms and is always on the scout for potential competitors. It either draws others into its circle and under its power, or it works to silence, exploit, and kill all rivals. Opposition prompts rage. Discerning eyes detect Babylon by its arrogance.

This arrogance is found – and no doubt you’ve been thinking along these lines already – in Babylon’s political leaders. Over the past years, many Americans noted the arrogant desire expressed in the motto “make America great again.” The rest of the world was gobsmacked by a mentality reeking of colonialism and global dominance. America can flourish as a nation without having to denigrate other countries, and it should rejoice in the economic growth of other nations. America can aid poorer nations without acts of paternalism and condescension. Only arrogant people refer to others as “sh-thole countries.” That president’s comments, in particular, were hideous and the commentary and denunciations that followed were justified. We can confidently say that American arrogance comes not from New Jerusalem, but from Babylon, and any claim that we’re on the road to New Jerusalem while living like Babylon unmasks our hypocrisy.

Arrogance is not exclusively a mark of politicians—past, present, or even presidential:

one finds it among business owners, small or great;

in fathers in families;

in bullies in neighborhoods;

in pastors and church boards;

in megachurches and rural churches;

in institutions, Christian or not.

Arrogance is the Way of the Dragon and the Way of the Wild Things.

So, what are the marks of national arrogance that Revelation teaches dissident disciples to discern? First, there is a sense of grandiosity, thinking you live in the world’s greatest nation. Second, there is competition with other nations in a vain quest to dominate. Third, there is the exercise of power by cutting off relationships with other nations who desire their own autonomy and sovereignty. What America wants for itself, in other words, is too often not what it wants for other nations, a denial of the principle of the Golden Rule. Fourth, there is an irredeemable inability to empathize, sympathize and show compassion for “less fortunate” nations. And finally, there is rage and retaliation when criticized.

There’s too much Babylonian arrogance in the United States of America.

Babylon is closer to home than many of us realize.

Economic exploitation

Arrogant Babylon also economically exploits others for its own prosperity. Money and status are power and the love-language of Babylon, what we might call a “meritocracy.” In America’s meritocracy the wealthy are considered wealthy by virtue of their work ethic while those in poverty are poor because of their lack of a work ethic. The “virtuous wealthy” look down on the “unvirtuous poor.” The wealthy lack gratitude for their achievements and grow proud and arrogant, while the poor are shamed as “deplorables” and resent the “elites.” Money means power, status, and virtue in the Babylons of this world.

Economic exploitation, as we find in the mind-boggling disparity of income in the USA, is a sign of Babylon. The prophet Isaiah directly connects silver and gold to idols, saying: “For in that day every one of you will reject the idols of silver and gold your sinful hands have made” (Isaiah 31:7). We especially like Robert Alter’s translation, finding (as he often does) a clever twist with the “ungods of silver and his ungods of gold” (Isa 31:7).

There is no reason a nation with as many Christians as the USA has (or claims to have) should have such disparity in income, in housing, in wages, in healthcare, and in community social capital. We may not embrace a radical solution like equal incomes, but as Christians we ought to be firmly committed to influence our policies in the direction of greater economic justice. Dissident disciples ask questions about free market capitalism. Benjamin Friedman, in a brilliant study of the religious nature of the rise of America’s capitalism, asks a question we believe more Christians need to ask:

Is capitalism as a free market system, coherent with the Christian faith?

And the question behind that one is,

Do we even think morally about our economic system?

Friedman’s argument is that Adam Smith and those who formed capitalism were swimming in religious waters even though they were turning away from a robust Christian faith. In rejecting Calvinism’s determinism, the capitalists built a system on the following three ideas:

(1) self-interested freedom,

(2) a self-interested freedom that was to be disciplined or constrained by competition in the markets,

and (3) a belief that these self-interest and competition would lead to the common good with economic benefits for the most.

But what is driven by self-interest and competition and then measured by the economy is not a Christian system of economics. A Christian version of common-good competition requires a people of character. That is, the citizens need to be just and generous, and they need to aim for an equitable society.

Capitalism alone has no character.

Without a virtuous character, everything is measured by markets and fueled by ambition, competition, self-determination, and self-interest. Absent character, capitalism naturally produces a culture of greed. And it gets religious icing on its cake far too often. As Wayland-Smith once put it, “Americans have always genuflected before the inscrutable power of the free market to distribute favors both earthly and heavenly. That the market is righteous,” she sardonically remarks, “is a national article of faith.”

But the free market does not produce disciples on the way to the New Jerusalem. It produces Babylon.

The sin that underlies economic exploitation flows from malformed character. Generations of greed do not create or guarantee a generous economy. Perhaps a new generation filled with character, with the moral tendons and ligaments of justice, equity, and generosity, might lead America away from its Dragon-based Babylonian economics toward the economics of New Jerusalem. We need a moral revolution in the economic sector. Babylon has made its home in the American economy. The church can lead the way out of this by forming a culture of economic justice for the common good.

Militarism

Nothing is more overtly akin to Babylon than an addiction to militarism. 108 million humans were killed in wars in the 20^th Century. Between 650 thousand and one million were killed in the American Civil War, fought between a “Christian” south and a “Christian” north. Between 500 thousand and two million were killed in the Mexican Revolution, between 500 thousand and one million in the Spanish Civil War, between 16 million and 40 million in World War I, between five and nine million in the Russian Civil War, and between eight and twelve million in the Chinese Civil War. World War II: between 56 and 85 million! We’ll stop there but the death totals mount as we add more and more wars between nations and within nations.

The numbers are atrocious.

Mind-numbing.

Beggaring beliefs.

And the USA has the largest military the world has ever known. According to one site, each year the United States spends more than 700 billion dollars on its military while China spends 261 billion. We spend more than twice as much as India, Russia, Saudia Arabia, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, and South Korea combined.

This is a sign of Babylon. The Dragon loves war because wars produce death.

I (Scot) came of age during the Viet Nam “Conflict” where between 2.4 and 4.3 million died, and then began my career as a professor during Ronald Reagan’s slogan of “peace through strength,” now recognized as code language for military build-up, multiplication of nuclear strength, development of satellite technology and spying. We had the hubris to remind the world of “our” victory in World War II. Peace-through-strength intimidates others with power and evokes the myths of Babylon’s ungods. It is reminiscent of Rome of the 1^st Century, and if you doubt this, read Julius Caesar’s The Gallic Waror Josephus’s The Jewish War.

As I was editing this chapter, I came across an article by a military man who claimed: “America is the most powerful country in the history of the world, yet it has not won any of the three major wars it has fought over the past half century…. [Our military leaders requesting the Taliban to stop attacking is] not a sign of success; the victor does not make such requests.”

Babylon!

The words of Revelation 18:2 eternally refute the militaristic claims of Babylon, whether it is ancient Babylon, ancient Rome, or modern Russia or the USA: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!” The might that made Rome an empire will bow to the might that makes God God and the Lamb the Lamb. Brian Blount sums it up best: Babylons will be “sLambed.”

The power of military might is a Babylonian reality, not a New Jerusalem one. The Lamb was slaughtered because he refused to use Babylon’s weapons, and the Way of the Lamb is to conquer by the “sword from his mouth,” not a sword drawn from a scabbard. The Word of God is the weapon of choice for those walking in the Way of the Lamb. The Way of the Lamb is the Way of Peace, through peace-making and reconciliation. It means dropping the sword and beating that sword into a garden tool.

Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus said, and he meant it.

Christian (so-called) “realists” counter the biblical vision of peace by claiming that if we really live that way we will lose and emphasize that each country has a responsibility to defend itself. They argue that in a sinful fallen world a military is both a necessity and a last resort. Their contention is that the Way of the Lamb is for another world, not the real world in which we live. In this world militarism will always be needed.

Jesus was no realist, and neither was John.

The weapon of choice for Jesus was the cross. The Lamb of Revelation slays with the sword that proceeds from his mouth. Christian realism compromises the Way of the Lamb because true realism is a deep reality that sees God on the Throne and the Lamb in its center.

Peace-through-strength hollows out the Lamb’s gospel into a shell of fraudulent piety.

Christians in America today live under the umbrella of Babylon’s arrogance, economic exploitation, and militarism.

Oppression

John writes from Patmos because he spoke up and spoke out. He was a witness. And Babylon still oppresses today. Take China. Reports are that there are around a million Muslims in prison. In North Korea, a country that tolerates less freedom than any nation in the world, some 70,000 Christians are in prison. Six million Jews were exterminated under Hitler. Looking even further back, medieval Europe was Catholic and intolerant of reformers. The Lutheran Reformation along with the Swiss Reformed became intolerant of the more radical Anabaptist reformers. The plot to move from England to North America led to various regions tolerating only one dominant denomination – Anglicans in Virginia, Catholics in Maryland – and a country established in part for freedom of religion at times became intolerant of other Christian expressions of faith. Our First Amendment – that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” – promised toleration rooted in freedom.

I confess that I never intended to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 18

Intolerance draws battle lines for Babylon. And even though American freedom combines that freedom with tolerance for others, Babylon responds with various forms of intolerance and oppression: silencing, obstructing, boundary-marking, exploiting, manipulating, harming, causing suffering, persecuting, killing, and narrating a ungod story of everything. One of Babylon’s major forms of intolerance and oppression is racism, what a recent professor called the “American blindspot” and what others have called America’s “original sin.” In a bold move by an even bolder writer, Isabel Wilkerson proposed that the fundamental term we use in the USA should not be racism but caste. America’s treatment of non-white persons is nothing less, she contends, than a race-based system that has now become a caste system. And this American version of caste is the fruit of Babylon. It is uniquely American, propped up and created by “Christians,” and it has now become systemic.

Isabel Wilkerson’s Eight Pillars of the Caste System in America’s Racism

1. Caste expresses God’s will and the laws of nature

2. Caste is inherited from birth

3. Caste is controlled by restricting marriage to one’s caste

4. Caste guards the pure caste from the polluted castes

5. Caste creates a hierarchy of occupations with lowest castes at the bottom

6. Caste intentionally dehumanizes and stigmatizes

7. Caste is enforced by terror and controlled by cruelty

8. Caste segregates superior persons from inferior persons

Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (New York: Random House, 2020), 97-164.

Here are three of the statements she makes in her proposal to recognize racism in the USA as a caste system:

Caste is the infrastructure of our divisions. It is the architecture of human hierarchy, the subconscious code of instructions for maintaining, in our case, a four-hundred-year-old social order.

A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits, traits that would be neutral in the abstract but are ascribed life-and-death meaning in a hierarchy favoring the dominant caste whose forebears designed it. A caste system uses rigid, often arbitrary boundaries to keep the ranked groupings apart, distinct from one another and in their as-signed places.

Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin. Race is what we can see, the physical traits that have been given arbitrary meaning and become shorthand for who a person is. Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place.

Many will want to know how she defines caste in comparison with race. Here is a concise summary of her answer to that question:

What is the difference between racism and casteism? Because caste and race are interwoven in America, it can be hard to separate the two. Any action or institution that mocks, harms, assumes, or attaches inferiority or stereotype on the basis of the social construct of race can be considered racism. Any action or structure that seeks to limit, hold back, or put someone in a defined ranking, seeks to keep someone in their place by elevating or denigrating that person on the basis of their perceived category, can be seen as casteism.

We would say that both racism and casteism are Babylon.

The Apocalypse teaches us that the Dragon loves racism because it brings death, the Wild Things enforce racism because it coerces into conformity, and Babylon embodies racism. In both South Africa and the United States, Christianity was welded from toe to head with racism until it became systemic in these so-called “Christian countries.” There’s much more to say about this, as we have only begun to recognize the systemic nature of racism and its impact on our country. A conversion of imagination can bring a revolution in character formation, but until characters are transformed racism will remain a cultural habit. Laws may restrain systemic racism and policies may prompt some conversion of the imagination. And that is what is required, a conversion of the imagination similar to what John experienced, for us to see that all nations, all tongues, all races, all tribes will bow before God. Only on our knees before God and the Lamb will we as Christians be transformed into equals.

Converts on their knees become dissidents.

How do we act as dissidents?

How do we live in our Babylon Today?