Revelation: Chapter 3, Verses 14 to 22
Peer pressure and complacent wealth kneecap a nascent church.
The letter to Laodicea is the last one. Jesus has nothing good to say about this church, located in a city so wealthy it could afford to repair major earthquake damage from its own coffers. The letter uses local features to create metaphors for how much Jesus despises the lukewarm complacency of the Laodicean church. He’d rather they’d be cold — aka atheist — than lukewarm and complacent like the surrounding culture.
Note: I’m following N.T. Wright’s Revelation: 22 Studies for Individuals and Groups and his newest book 20th Anniversary Edition with Study Guide, Revelation for Everyone. See my post Prepare for Revelation for suggested materials.
Question 11
“In what ways are we overly influenced by the attitudes and opinions of those around us?”
I’ve written previously about how we’re social animals; our thoughts, opinions, desires, decisions are not as independent as we like to think. Our brains actually measure how close we are to every human being we know! Fellow human beings and society influence us subliminally and outright, whether we like it or not.
We gather in groups — physically or politically or culturally, among many reasons — and we set ourselves up as the arbiters of truth and those other groups as a pox on our lives. C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters brilliantly sketched the herding power of groups to make their members, like the proverbial frog in hot water, come to believe the indefensible. His sketch highlighted how group-loyalty lead people away from God.
In previous decades, one group tarnished another group with the term “political correctness,” declaring that all that is wrong with our world is PC thinking. Today, it’s “wokeness” and “conservatism.” Give me a break! It isn’t wokeness or conservatism that’s the problem; it’s rigid thinking arising from the need to belong to a group, a need so powerful that people gradually erase any dissenting or challenging voices from their hearing and sight, allowing their views to morph from rational to rationalized extremism. And ultimately, to become blind to the pre-WWII world of blame and shame and genocidal solution replicating itself today…except this time, we have the power to annihilate the planet in an effort to annihilate our “enemy.”
Social media isn’t the reason for people dividing themselves. After all, countries before WWII accomplished that splendidly, so splendidly that they killed millions and rejected asylum seekers, sending them back to the deaths they were fleeing.
Groupthink harms. It doesn’t matter if groupthink is left or right, woke or conservative. If it leads to dividing and refusing to listen and empathize and refusing to help fellow humans through good government, daily life, chance encounters, or social circles, it harms.
Jesus talked about being salt and light, about going after the one lost sheep. You can’t do either if you’re more concerned about belonging to your group and having their approval than you are about your own personal wealth and fellow suffering human beings who happen to belong to the opposing camp.
The problem with personal wealth isn’t the wealth; it’s the complacent attitude that only poverty happens to bad people (ergo shame them instead of providing universal liveable basic income, for example) and that one’s own hard work accumulated the wealth — not God raining blessings down on one. Acknowledging the latter erases the shaming and blaming attitude towards the disabled and poor.
Love your neighbours, isn’t just a nice aphorism.
Being salt and light, waiting or searching for the lost sheep, means listening, learning, helping.
And yeah, oftentimes, it’s tougher than chewing nails doing that for a member of an opposing group you hate. But at the very least, not tarring and feathering members of the group you don’t like — woke or conservative, politically correct or reform — is a good start.
Question 12
“What does it mean to you that Jesus would come and sit down and have a meal with those who hear his voice?”
I think we’d be like Mary clinging to the gardener when she recognized Jesus.
But I think the real question is: How would you feel if Jesus sat down with your opposing camp to have a meal with them because they heard his voice?
I’m not talking about the American evangelicals who’ve mistaken guns for security and money for the Resurrection. I’m talking about those whose political views are extreme but who strive to follow the Sermon on the Mount in their everyday lives.
I bet that seeming oxymoron just blew your mind. How can a person with extreme views hear Jesus and be someone Jesus would want to share a meal with?
That’s a question I’ll be exploring in novel 2 of my trilogy.
To the Conquerors
For those who manage to climb out of the groupthink prison — where the only “good” people are those who think exactly like you do — and who persist in following Jesus, Jesus promises them a seat next to his throne.
“This will be my gift to the one who conquers: I will sit them beside me on my throne, just as I conquered and sat with my father on his throne.”
Jesus conquered by listening to God, by praying but also submitting to God’s will, and by healing the sick, socializing with the outcasts, welcoming those outside of his group, teaching the powerful while not bending to their will and influence. The Resurrection revealed that (not the cross, which was the way to the Resurrection but not the ultimate destination).
You can’t be lukewarm and fit in with your peer group if you want to understand the Resurrection and learn from it.