Economics and Politics In Revelation

As I’ve wrestled with my own sin I’ve been thinking about a theme that runs throughout the Bible which seems woefully neglected in the Church today. While the Bible does certainly call individual to personally trust in God and leave their lives of sin, the Bible also and more repeatedly call the world to leave its political and economic structures and take up God’s kingdom ways of being. As I write this I’m increasingly unhappy with having to make such a distinction between personal sin and the political and economic structures of the world. This is because that I’m increasingly convinced that the ways we organize ourselves politically and economically, and I doubt the two are separable, help determine and shape how we go about our personal lives; that which we think and do.

With the interconnection between economics, politics, and the way we live out our social existence it becomes increasingly difficult to say what determines what. Does our personal rebellion against God determine our political and economic structures? Or do our economic and political structures determine our personal rebellion? I doubt that such a chicken or egg scenario can ever be untangled because the two work hand in hand. Personal rebellion shape and structures our economics and politics, and our politics and economics shapes, structure, and reinforces our persons and their rebellion in a never ending downward spiral. Thankfully a number of very gifted scholars are exploring the political and economic dimension of the Bible.

One of the finest and gifted commentators on the economic and political dimensions of the Bible in my opinon is Richard Bauckham. Time and time again his name comes up as the must read on Revelation. His book “How to Read the Bible Politically” strikes me as one that grasps some of the finer subtleties of the political and economic dimensions of the Bible very exceptionally.

In a talk Bauckham gave on Revelation at Criswell College http://www.criswell.edu/sermon/richard-bauckham/ he captures something of the connection between politics, economics, and the way we live in the world when he says:

Revelation liberates its readers from the dominate worldview, the Roman view of the world in the first century. It exposes the idolatry that from top to bottom infuses and inspires the political, economic, and social realities in which its readers live and it calls them to uncompromising Christian witness to the true God who despite earthly appearances is sovereign over the world. So by seeing the world differently, by being given this fresh imaginative appreciation of what the world is like from God’s perspective, readers are enabled to live and die differently as followers of Jesus’ way of faithful witness to God even in the face of death. They’re empowered to live their allegiance to a different way of being in the world, to the kingdom of God, and to live in hope of the coming of God’s kingdom as the ultimate truth of this world which must prevail over everything that presently opposes God’s rule. (emphasis mine)

Here I believe that Bauckham has hit upon a central theme not only in Revelation but also through out the entire Bible which invites its hearers to reorient themselves around God rather than the world. This different way of seeing the world, as the above quote indicates, involves the totality of existence: the political, economic, and social ways of being in the world that we the Church must attend to if we are to be in any true sense Biblical. The reorientation brings with it personal reformation precisely because how we see things and how we organize ourselves politically, economically and socially are intimately interconnected.

This is important for the Church to grasp. One of the biggest critiques raised against the church here in the U.S. is that the church doesn’t look any different than the world. Divorce rates are the same, and most every day of the week some fallen church leader graces the headlines of the news. Sexual immorality runs rampant throughout the church, and opulent wealth is regularly touted as God’s desire for your life. This I suggest is because the Church here in the U.S. has so capitulated with the political and economic worldview of western liberalism that few are able to adequately distinguish between God’s kingdom and western liberalism. The two or either talked about as if they were one and the same, or they’re routinely ignored. This failure to distinguish between God’s kingdom and western liberalism (or any other alternative socio-political-economic system) has in turn affected at every level how the Church and its members exist in the world. The Church as a body must find new eyes and ears to see and hear the political and economic dimensions of Jesus call to repentance and faithfully begin to embody them if we as individuals hope to personally lead markedly different lives. If we don’t we will continue to see Christians desperately trying to swim against the stream of culture only to be swallowed up by its currents and dashed against the rocks. Let those with ears hear.