This is brilliant, Mark. My childhood experience about the angry, punitive God is so similar to yours, though you articulate it so much better. Over time, you have given me a new understanding of the book of Revelations. I too was afraid of it, didn't want to read it. I'm so grateful that you share your experiences and theology with us. It's helped heal my divisions about the duality of Wrathful God vs Loving God.
I'm re-reading Lord of the Rings for the first time since high school. It's interesting to see through more traveled and adult eyes. And much easier to read than The Revelation.
This is a brave and necessary reflection I think. Not only of a troubling text, but of the subterranean theology that shaped your earliest fears. That image of God as Sauron’s eye, a gaze that wounds rather than heals, that surveils rather than sees, is, tragically, more common than we admit. It is the image many of us were handed as children: a God whose holiness is indistinguishable from hostility, whose justice blurs into vengeance. And yet, your reading of Revelation dares to unmake that image. Not by erasing wrath, but by revealing its wounded heart.
At Desert and Fire, I reflect on incarnational mysticism—the belief that God does not merely act upon the world from without, but enters it, bleeds within it, and sanctifies it from the inside out. Your reflection moves in that same current. The winepress, once a symbol of apocalyptic terror, becomes, through the Lamb, a site of divine solidarity. Blood is shed, yes, but it is not the blood of God’s victims. It is the blood of the God who becomes a victim. The harvest sickle is not a threat, it is a hand gathering the bruised, the trampled, the disappeared. The robe soaked in blood does not mark conquest, but crucifixion.
In this light, wrath itself becomes a kind of severe mercy. Not the cold fury of a divine despot, but the fierce, aching love of one who cannot look away from suffering. What John shows us is not a God of detached rage, but a God who bears wrath within himself, and breaks it open as grace.
You’re right to say we cannot avoid these texts. But neither must we remain bound by the distortions that first taught us to fear them. The eye of God is not Sauron’s—it is Christ’s. And it is not a beam that sears, but a gaze that weeps.
This is brilliant, Mark. My childhood experience about the angry, punitive God is so similar to yours, though you articulate it so much better. Over time, you have given me a new understanding of the book of Revelations. I too was afraid of it, didn't want to read it. I'm so grateful that you share your experiences and theology with us. It's helped heal my divisions about the duality of Wrathful God vs Loving God.
Thanks for reading, Priscilla, and glad this has been helpful!
I'm re-reading Lord of the Rings for the first time since high school. It's interesting to see through more traveled and adult eyes. And much easier to read than The Revelation.
Have fun! Have been re-watching all the movies with my kids…
This is a brave and necessary reflection I think. Not only of a troubling text, but of the subterranean theology that shaped your earliest fears. That image of God as Sauron’s eye, a gaze that wounds rather than heals, that surveils rather than sees, is, tragically, more common than we admit. It is the image many of us were handed as children: a God whose holiness is indistinguishable from hostility, whose justice blurs into vengeance. And yet, your reading of Revelation dares to unmake that image. Not by erasing wrath, but by revealing its wounded heart.
At Desert and Fire, I reflect on incarnational mysticism—the belief that God does not merely act upon the world from without, but enters it, bleeds within it, and sanctifies it from the inside out. Your reflection moves in that same current. The winepress, once a symbol of apocalyptic terror, becomes, through the Lamb, a site of divine solidarity. Blood is shed, yes, but it is not the blood of God’s victims. It is the blood of the God who becomes a victim. The harvest sickle is not a threat, it is a hand gathering the bruised, the trampled, the disappeared. The robe soaked in blood does not mark conquest, but crucifixion.
In this light, wrath itself becomes a kind of severe mercy. Not the cold fury of a divine despot, but the fierce, aching love of one who cannot look away from suffering. What John shows us is not a God of detached rage, but a God who bears wrath within himself, and breaks it open as grace.
You’re right to say we cannot avoid these texts. But neither must we remain bound by the distortions that first taught us to fear them. The eye of God is not Sauron’s—it is Christ’s. And it is not a beam that sears, but a gaze that weeps.
Wow, Steve, thanks for reading with such thoughtfulness - you have said it better than me! Wishing you well, Mark