This time of year, the church’s lectionary doesn’t just guide us toward apocalyptic thinking, it throws us right into it.
The church calendar draws to a close with some pretty dramatic gospel readings. And then, with the first week of Advent, we’ll be knocked around by them some more. To end the year and then begin the next in frightening, confusing stories about a less-than hope-filled future is a tough way to ring in the new year.
And yet, I find the diving into the troubling side of faith at the time I am most prone to discern makes a lot of sense.
If you aren’t hip-deep in the church world, you might not be familiar with any of this. And that’s OK. This is probably a little too inside-baseball. But if you do want to learn more about apocalyptic thinking, check out this short introduction:
Episode 6 of the Make Saints podcast.
There are three distinct visions of what an apocalypse is.
One is the popular understanding of apocalypse, which is best understood today by watching disaster movies. We can see that, to Hollywood, apocalypse is about all the things that blow up and how our time on this world will end.
A second vision of apocalypse comes to us from a certain corner of Christianity that preaches extensively about what they call “the end times”. They are most interested in getting very particular about how the world will end and who will be saved from imminent death by the grace of God.
The third vision of apocalypse is much older than Hollywood and rapture theology. And in this vision, we don’t focus on the destruction of a particular moment of the world ending. Because there isn’t one apocalypse.
Revealing
This crazy word that evokes such strong images in our heads is a most profoundly misunderstood word.
Apocalypse is a revelation of great knowledge. It is an epiphany on a grand scale.
We can see how, in a Christian context, we can easily get caught up in how God interacts with the world. And before long we find ourselves discussing concepts like the second coming and eschatology.
But apocalyptic thinking predates Christianity. Judaism was far more fluent in the language of apocalyptic literature, and recognized God’s participation in the world as not being exclusive to a single event.
There is something profound, if we think about it, to say, perhaps, that an apocalypse, a great revealing to one community at one time is not the universal declaration for all people at all times. It would help unshackle our view of the divine if we could say that the great mystery in the cosmos reveals truth at different times to different people.
Distracted by destruction
The thing about the common vision of apocalypse is that we get pretty distracted by the destruction, the byproducts of revelation. Which totally makes sense because that is the part we can actually see and feel ownership over.
This is also why a big Hollywood movie like Armageddon should not be described as apocalyptic because there is no revelation which leads to cataclysm. But a movie like Atonement, based on the book by Ian McEwan is entirely apocalyptic because a great truth causes a wave of consequence.
Anyone who has studied family systems theory understands that we are daily living an apocalyptic life. We live with the secrets of our interior lives and regularly decide what needs to be shared with loved ones; knowing that some things can’t be said because of the destruction they would cause.
For instance, an intervention is apocalyptic. For we are revealing to the world a truth. Even poorly-kept secrets remain in hiding until we all publicly acknowledge them.
Something else family systems theory gives us (besides a great analogy) is why an apocalypse is good. And therefore needs to shed its destructive image.
It’s because truth leads to healing.
Families avoid the truth when they believe some members are going to get hurt by it. But this is often a pretty one-sided equation. In attempting to prevent honest conversation, we often silence the one actually experiencing pain so as to avoid others from feeling responsible for that pain. But in that moment, the effect of maintaining silence puts the former in a state of ongoing pain.
To break this cycle of causing pain to one in an avoidance of causing pain to others, the one must change their behavior to stir change in the system. One must, in a sense, walk a different way. They refer to this as self-differentiation.
This doesn’t prevent pain, of course. But pain was always part of the equation.
For instance, we rarely fault someone who is abused from getting out of an abusive situation. And yet we often expect the process to be clean and without seeming to add more moral injury.
The reason family systems are so difficult to deal with is because we are using two conflicting tools to describe them at the same time.
- We recognize there is a big, complicated, systemic problem that we feel trapped in.
- We think there must be a particular response that will provide a solution.
When we are aware of the big picture problem—that pain is present and that pain will be present in extracting us from the painful situation, but (and this is key) pain will only be present in the system forever when we do nothing—and we will be freed from pain in the future if we are honest today—then only honesty today leads to lasting change and a healthy future.
Apocalyptic thinking is liberating.
When we live on the side of angst, anger, and anxiety, all we have is fear and frustration. It is messy, confusing, and the whole world looks scary. So we start looking for solutions which alleviate that fear. This is how we see the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow as a response to reconstruction and evangelicalism’s rise as a response to efforts to desegregate. And today we see guns at certain protests to intimidate and silence the majority by threat of lethal violence as a response to reform efforts.
What these all have in common (aside from the obvious problem with race, diversity, and loss of power) is fear that honest and equal conversation will change the future of our society.
Of course their fears are justified! Bringing honesty into a place in which it is absent will change the dynamic.
It will require discernment and work. Like a parent needing to realize that her children have grown up which also means they are not who they were any more. So she doesn’t know them as intimately as she once did. We all might know that is OK and normal, but that doesn’t mean we feel it that way in the moment.
Apocalyptic thinking offers us freedom from the shackles of fear by helping us see the world as it is. It takes the rose-colored glasses and smashes them into the pavement so that we can see and feel and respond to the world around us as it actually is.
It also frees us from the moral injury of unwittingly colluding with the forces of destruction. Because we don’t have to simply play along. We can certainly change ourselves. But we also become an instrument of change in our community. An instrument whose voice carries beyond our neighborhood and collects with others who just needed someone to get the song started.
Apocalypse is about the revealed truth. It is up to us to make good from it.