Revelation: Chapter 5
Introducing the Lion-Lamb. Venerating him for his achievement and giving him what he deserves. Who gives the praise? Who thirsts for the Lion-Lamb's blood?
John builds the picture of God’s throne room and introduces Jesus. One elder calls him “the Lion of Judah,” yet he appears as a slaughtered lamb with seven eyes and seven horns. Ferocious predator and easy prey. Roaring and mewling. Prowling and vulnerable. The seven churches, as part of his body, both able to see and to defend.
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.
N.T. Wright’s study guide mostly asks questions designed to test the reader’s knowledge. But I have two questions that Wright doesn’t address. He divided chapter five into two sections: verses one to seven, and eight to 14.
After studying the Bible for decades, for my first question, I am now wondering about the concept of “purchase.” My second question is about verse 13.
Purchase
When we purchase something, we pay a person money (or time or a thing) and receive something in exchange. The person doesn’t both take the money and give themself the something, leaving us with neither money nor the purchased item.
“The lamb has set us free to stop being spectators and to start being actors.”
Freedom was the purchased gift. That and to walk hand in hand with God as God works out their plan in Heaven and Earth.
“…a sacrifice through which God ‘purchased a people…to be a kingdom and priests’ is the ultimate Passover sacrifice, the final fulfilment of what God had done…when he set his people free from their slavery in Egypt, ‘purchasing’ them like slaves from a slave market…”
In the way Wright describes it, setting us free would be like opening a gate to let the sheep out without having to provide the sheep pen owner any money. Simply walk up to the gate, unlock it, open it, and let all the sheep out, becoming their shepherd.
But a sacrifice, a purchase, a slave market includes an exchange with another, not with yourself. Not theft.
Blood Payment
The Romans, egged on by Jesus’s people, hoisted Jesus on a cross, and Jesus shed blood. In doing so, Jesus opened the gate for us, his people, to leave the slave market and act in the world according to his words. So who took Jesus’s blood as payment?
Just because God required Jesus to pay through his tortured blood and crucifixion death doesn’t mean God took the payment. After all, one person can instruct another what to pay and how to pay it — like a parent would tell a child to go buy eggs and give them cash to do so — and like how God instructed Jesus, confirming it in the Garden of Gethsemane.
It’s easy to think Satan took Jesus’s blood, but we know from the Book of Job that Satan can act only when God allows it. Humans, on the other hand, have free will. We can do whatever the eff we want. We may experience lousy consequences, but God will not stop us — remember the prodigal son.
What about you? Do you think God puts a stop on our thoughts, words, and deeds, like God does with Satan?
I don’t think so.
And so I think the one who received Jesus’s sacrifice and Jesus’s death and Jesus’s blood were those who called for it: the Pharisees and the fickle mob. You know, the people who’d both hated Jesus and followed and lauded him. Both his enemies and his sheep. They thirsted for the violent spectacle to “right a wrong” — for his death — his literal blood.
Swaying the Sheep
How easily those with selfish, power-desiring intent can sway people to their point of view and stand safe from the fray, safe from accountability, while they charm people to carry out their murderous, thieving, self-aggrandizing intent.
People with psychopathy adroitly mimic normal, attractive behaviour and beguile people in to thinking, speaking, and acting against their own principles. And against their own family members, God, and Jesus.
Crucifixion Satiated Temporarily the Call for “Justice”
Once satiated, Jesus’s friends and enemies left.
God was free to raise Jesus from the dead and, upon his resurrection, release Jesus’s followers from the priests’ psychological hold. Jesus’s resurrection freed the ones who still loved him from being enslaved to their blood thirst, empowered them to act in accordance with Jesus’s teachings, and provided them a path back home.
Blood Thirst
How could the priests have turned people from celebrating Jesus to thirsting for his cruel death by cross? In only a week?
The short time reflects how our social biology makes us susceptible to persuasion against who we like and what we believe and how it plays on human blood thirst. I know, I know, no one likes to admit — despite how some fictional characters maintain we are all capable of killing — that violence attracts us.
As does revenge.
Isn’t that why the priests wanted Jesus dead? They felt aggrieved, their moral advocacy of eye for an eye, aka revenge, challenged. What better revenge than manipulating Rome and his followers into killing him? And Rome torturing him first?
Revenge Theme
I recently watched two Chinese dramas (C-dramas) with revenge themes. Love Between Fairy and Devil. And The Double. In the former, a fantasy set in historical times, a young innocent fairy is pulled in to a jail to kiss awake a devil who’d been imprisoned and releases him. For her unwitting gift of her spirit and freedom, he tries to choke her to death. In the latter, set centuries ago, a husband tries to bury his wife alive after his princess rapist-abuser forces him to choose between killing his family or his wife.
Both C-dramas revolve around violence, whether overt like in fighting scenes with swords and arrows, or implicit or psychological. In the former C-drama, violence appears as bullying, physical, and control towards the fairy from her classmates, other characters, and the devil; in the latter, psychological violence towards the husband and wife while the noble male lead uses torture and instructs caning of his younger assistant when his assistant says something he doesn’t like. The viewer doesn’t see the caning; it’s almost like an inside joke. The torture is shown less and less as the series progresses, but the male lead defends it to the end.
Violence Solves Intractable Problems?
Both dramas elicit blood thirst. You know, that thirst that seeks violent solutions to intractable problems, the kind that North American television portrays as good when the “good guy” tortures or kills to avenge as the only way to defeat the “bad guy.” But it’s more than seeking; blood thirst revels in violence, equates it to justice, affirms only violence solves. Humans ignore that what violence really does is satiate blood thirst. Temporarily.
Revenge Themes Diverge
The two dramas diverge in this idea. Love Between Fairy and Devil takes the revenge theme, shows how it perpetuates a cycle of hatred, anger, and fear. Near the series’ beginning, the devil (who has no emotions) feels fear from the fairy and chews on it like one would taste an intriguing piece of food. It’s about the only time we see him smile in the first several episodes — he smiles because he realizes it’s fear and he likes it. Why? Because fear begets hatred and blood thirst, putting humans in his power.
Humans justify so much othering, keeping people down, denying their existence, rationalizing that “they” are not like them when they feel (irrational) fear. That makes them susceptible to those who condone that fear. Instead of acknowledging their fear is irrational, the person who fears and the person who likes that fear find ways to justify it — justify their thirst for the blood of those who elicited fear in them.
The C-drama’s devil feeds on this fear, which begets hatred of the fairy “good guys” tribe, while the leader of the “good guys” stokes hatred of the devil’s tribe as a way to protect himself. But it’s obvious as the series progresses that both prefer torture and violence to revenge wrongs.
Meanwhile, in The Double, the wife uses guile and words to avoid traps and turn them back on those she’s revenging herself on, including her husband, while the husband manipulates his rapist-abuser to keep her happy or tries to escape her and avenge his wife through his own death and the male lead uses torture and intelligence to keep his king in power.
And then the two C-dramas diverge.
Revenge versus Revenge Transformed into Resurrection
When faced with her husband’s story behind his attempt to kill her, the wife refuses to accept the abuse as real, refuses to understand his state of mind, and judges him for not being like her and not obeying her. The fairy also unearth’s the devil’s origin story, but while she compassionately understands the devil and doesn’t judge him (unlike all the other characters), she refuses to condone violence as a solution, doesn’t deride him for not obeying her unwavering peace-forward approach, and infuses him with her spirit, slowly changing him.
Spoiler Alert
The Double ends with revenge succeeding to the wife and male lead’s satisfaction with the husband dead (you knew that was coming and how), yet it’s interesting that the husband and wife had more of a bond and emotional intimacy than the wife and male lead ever did. I don’t know if that’s because the husband character was far more nuanced and interesting than the male lead who had no character arc (bad writer’s call — all main characters must have arcs and show change in dramas especially when the villain/husband does), or if the husband actor was hands down better than the male lead, or it was intentional to make the viewer see the theme’s bleakness — humble people will always fall prey to the noble who judge the vulnerable and alone as weak and cowardly — there is no path to a good life but through being born a noble. It is interesting that the minor-noble wife with family and noble support didn’t waver from her blood thirst while the innocent orphan alone fairy never wavered from her anti-blood thirst. Love Between Fairy and Devil ends with…I don’t know how to put it…it showed that compassion born of suffering snuffs out evil in a way that’s more effective and saves lives than violence by the good guys ever does.
End Spoiler Alert
Revenge’s Taste; Resurrection’s Strength
The Double left me feeling polluted; Love Between Fairy and Devil left me wanting more.
The Double reflects humans’ natural blood thirst — what traditional Christianity calls “sin.” Love Between Fairy and Devil reflects Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection and the latter’s transformational power on even the devil. (I accurately predicted his final “weapon” but not his choices.)
I think Westerners find Asian dramas addictive because they’re romantic in the traditional sense, have true romance (not sex masquerading as romance), and, most of all, depict Jesus and Christian themes invisibly (except Queen of Tears, which is such an obvious portrayal of Paul’s description of what a husband should be and would probably give evangelists and traditionalists apoplexy if they picked up on it, which they probably wouldn’t since too many believe Paul was saying husbands dominate and lead through hierarchical patriarchy with the running joke that wives are really in charge, which our patriarchal society so explicitly and in so many ways negates, but I digress).
Violence Temporarily Stimulates; Compassion Infinitely Fuels
Violence connects humans, like a bloody chain threading through each person’s amygdala, turning them into group think, fuelled by single-note emotions of hatred, anger, and fear. These emotions’ power stimulates us; maybe that’s why leaders who can elicit them attract people then turn them into unthinking acolytes. But their stimulus wanes unless regularly stoked, which both C-dramas demonstrated.
Compassion and love unite humans across all boundaries while maintaining uniqueness. Unity requires work — you cannot hand your thinking over to another like followers do to charismatic authoritarians who call out human blood thirst — yet unity infuses your soul with joy that isn’t a stimulus jolt like violence nor a rush like groupthink, but more like a steady energy source that never dies.
Those who seek absolute power call to our strongest emotions of hatred, anger, and fear, stimulating latent blood thirst and attracting people to their ideas like frogs in slowly heating up water — and like the husband and devil did viewers when we find ourselves sympathizing with their words and actions in contrast to The Double’s calm calculating male lead, whose violence I found unattractive. Blood thirst requires emotion not cold calculation. I think that (partly) explains why Jesus’s followers turned into a mob thirsting for his death. The priests riled them up instead of giving logical arguments.
But death in the end didn’t satisfy, not Jesus’s mob and not in these C-dramas. Loss became the key to transforming blood thirst into compassion thirst in Love Between Fairy and Devil.
The Lion-Lamb’s Two Payments
Communion re-enacts Jesus paying humanity his blood to quench their blood thirst. But it wasn’t the only payment Jesus gave. He provided two payments:
Blood to quench humans’ blood thirst.
His Holy Spirit to replace blood thirst with compassion thirst.
Although everyone who attended Jesus’s crucifixion — and I can argue those who take communion — received and accepted Jesus’s blood, implicitly acknowledging their blood thirst aka sin — not all received and accepted his Spirit.
I’ve noticed that churches have moved from morning prayer three Sundays out of four to communion every Sunday. It’s like those who attend church prefer the easy ritual of thanking the Lion-Lamb for atoning for their sin — for satiating their blood thirst — over the decades-long work of learning to talk with God and Jesus, which is the only way to replace blood thirst with compassion thirst. After all, it’s easier to use words of violence (crucifixion) to describe Jesus’s payment than to talk of compassion thirst and do unity work (resurrection) as his transforming payment.
It’s easier to hate and not reject irrational fear than to unearth origin stories and learn compassion while not condoning (the fairy never, ever condoned the devil’s approach even though she showed him compassion — it was a wise tension that effectively transformed him).
I’m not sure how I’ll incorporate these thoughts into my trilogy. But I’ll be mulling it over.
Chapter Five, Verse Thirteen
“Then I heard every creature in heaven, on the earth, under the earth, and in the sea, and everything that is in them, saying
To the One on the throne and the lamb
be blessing and honour and glory
and power for ever and ever!”
Let that soak in: “heard every creature.”
Wright doesn’t address this at all, perhaps unsurprising given his earlier remarks on pets and animals. What’s even more remarkable, I noticed on umpteenth reading, the narrator includes “everything that is in them.” In them?? You mean live prey-food? Their cells? Or is this simply a way to repeat the entire phrase before it? Since I’m not sure about that, I’ll leave it for the moment. It’s interesting, though, to think about just swallowed krill singing this song inside a whale!
Every creature cannot praise God and Jesus unless they have consciousness and sentience or sufficient to recognize God created them and their environs. This verse turns our understanding of who has consciousness upside down. As I wrote previously, the more we learn about mammals, the more we realize they’re not “dumb beasts” but sentient beings who feel, grieve, and think, who have rituals and relationships reminiscent of our own.
But it’s one thing to think these things about mammals; it’s another about insects, worms, and strange sea creatures called “Velella” that I just read about on Bluesky. Of course, we enter Disney’s realm when we portray insects that talk. And it raises cool possibilities in the third novel (or even the second one) of my trilogy. But can this idea be true?
Only scientific exploration will ultimately provide an answer. In the meantime, philosophy, reason, and imagination guide us over many moons of pondering.