Fighting Back Against Monsters

Revelation and Authoritarianism

The enjoyable thrill for me of watching the TV show “Stranger Things” is how the middle school band of boys take on the terrible monster. I love the Stephen King-type genre movies of school age kids taking on evil and discovering their courage and capacity for heroism in the process. Known as the Demogorgon, inspired by the fantastical demon figure in the Dungeon’s and Dragons role playing game, the show’s season one beast generally lingers creepily in an alternate reality known as the “Upside Down.” It’s a sort of mirror dimension on the underside of the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana. But every so often, this Demogorgon traverses realms and wreaks terror upon people like Will Byers, one of the youth characters kidnapped and held hostage by the beast in “Stranger Things.”

The book of Revelation is the equivalent of ancient genre TV or movies. In this slow commentary (three years and running!), we’re in the middle of the book, which contains several memorable monsters. I wrote about Revelation’s dragon a little while ago. Right after that passage, we read that the dragon “takes his stand on the sand of the seashore” (13:1) while another beast rises out of the sea. The sea is a watery symbol for the unpredictable forces of chaos, giving birth to a leopard-bear-lion amalgamation (13:2). The dragon bestows the beast with power, authority, and throne, and “the whole earth follows” and worships (13:4). Amazed and terrified at the monster’s might, everyone asks, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” (13:4).

To watch Will Byer’s close friends Mike, Lucas, and Dustin in “Stranger Things” is to know that friends will indeed fight back—in their case, with the help of a slingshot and some snacks. To read the book of Revelation is to name the powers of evil, empire and injustice and not to give up. It is a “call for the nonviolent resistance and faith of the saints” (paraphrase 13:10).

Like a dictatorship about to topple, the beast’s power in Revelation 13 is a fragile but tormenting rule. The beast John of Patmos sees in his vision puts on a good show, rising dramatically from the waters with ten horns and seven heads, no less. He certainly looks the part of abomination (13:2). But careful readers of this nightmarish text will notice that the beast’s power comes from permission that is granted: the beast is “allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer” and “was given authority over every tribe and people” (13:7). The beast, seemingly all-powerful, needs permission—and who has given the beast permission to take power? In the text, the dragon has passed on their authority—but really, we all give permission for systems of domination to rule when our fear causes us to mute dissent and surrender our agency.

Photo by Conrad Ziebland on Unsplash

The beast is that elusive feeling of powerlessness and futility that causes us to withdraw into our TV binging and busyness instead of engaging in our communities. Who can fight against it, after all—whether Donald Trump’s continued dominance of Republican ranks or the seemingly unstoppable rise of global temperatures? But to give up and “allow” the beast is to give in to an authoritarian centralizing force that will only take and take more power.

In Brian McLaren’s e-book The Second Pandemic, he diagnoses the disease: the combination of fear, division, distortion or distraction of truth, and suppression of dissent are markers of authoritarian rule. Our political electorate, he says, no longer maps along a right-left, conservative-progressive trajectory. Instead, these days it is more accurate to view the electorate along a trajectory of authoritarian and democratic sympathies. Collectively, we are afraid, divided, caught in conspiracies or distracted from facing truth—all of which diminishes our will to dissent.

In the Bible, beasts are a stand-in for unjust, power-hungry empires. The book of Daniel says as much (7:17) and contains an unforgettable scene that inspires John’s Revelation. Daniel has a vision of four beasts rising from the sea, sharing traits with a bear, leopard, and lion. Then the beasts are either put to death or have their power stripped from them while “one like a human being”—which Christians interpret as a Christ-figure—is given “an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away” (Daniel 7:13, 14). John of Patmos—the seer of Revelation—operates in the same visionary tradition. He melds the three animal references into one beast, likewise rising from the sea to wield power. Whereas Daniel’s apocalypse takes aim at the Greek Seleucid Empire, John has Rome in his sights. The beast’s war on the saints (13:7) looks sneakily like a reference to Emperor Nero’s killing of Christians and blaming Rome’s fire on them.

But there’s more to this beast than the empire itself, just as there’s more to authoritarianism than the institutional levers of power. The beast also characterizes the effect that the empire has on us. The people worshipping, following, and allowing tyranny ask, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” Theologian Walter Wink wrote that the beast is idolatrous, usurping the place of God, dependent on a deceived-yet-willing public: “It is not enough that people be misinformed about the nature of the System, for powerful disconfirming truths could easily slip in to shatter such illusions. But if you can cause people to worship the Beast, you have created a public immune to truth” (Engaging the Powers). A public immune to truth, divided and afraid, is a public vulnerable to centralizing power that always takes more.

Revelation, when read rightly, gives us tools to unveil monsters and fight back against them with nonviolence, truth, and love.

The Revelations series takes place once a month or so; the holy ordinary will continue next week. As always, I love hearing from you. Have a great week.