Author: JR. Forasteros

The Dragon’s Army vs. the Lamb’s

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire. I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand. This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 13 (and a little bit of 14). If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – Chapters 1-13.

The Dragon straddled the earth, from sea to shining sea. And I saw a Beast rising out of the shining sea. It had fifty dollar signs all around its thirteen heads, and each head was decorated with a presidential seal, covered in blasphemous names. As the Beast emerged, I got a better look at its uniform – it was wearing a redcoat covered in a swastika imposed over a rising sun, and the Beast was carrying a hammer and sickle. One of its heads looked dead, like it had been sacrificed, or like two fallen towers, but its mortal wound had been healed.

The whole earth saw this and was amazed, so they followed the Beast. They worshipped the Dragon, because he gave the Beast its authority, and they worshiped the Beast. They said,

“Who is like the Beast? Who can win a war against it?”

The Beast was given a mouth that spoke prideful and blasphemous slogans, and it was allowed to exercise its authority for 42 months. It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming God’s name and God’s Temple (which is those who live with God in Heaven). The Beast was also allowed to wage war on the saints, and to conquer them. It was given authority over every ethnicity and nation and language and people group. Everyone who lives on the earth will worship it, everyone who’s name has not been recorded in the Lamb’s book of life since the creation of the world.

Anyone who has ears should listen to this:

“If you’re taken captive, then you’re going into captivity.
If you kill with a sword, then you’re going to be killed with a sword.”

Saints, pay attention. That’s a reminder for you to stick it out and stay faithful!

Then I saw another Beast that came down out of the purple mountains majesty and across the fruited plains. This second Beast had two horns – just like a lamb – but it spoke like a dragon. It speaks for the first Beast, and does everything on its behalf. It leads the whole world to worship the first Beast, the one whose mortal wound was healed. It performs signs and miracles – it even calls fire down from the sky in full view of everyone. It’s all these signs that it performs on behalf of the first Beast that let the second Beast deceive the people of earth.

It tells them to buy televisions so they can view the image of the Beast it helped them to create, this beast that had fallen like twin towers and yet lived. The second Beast was allowed to breathe life into the image of the Beast on the televisions so that it could speak to the people of the earth, and it was allowed to cause anyone who did not follow the way of the Beast to be killed.

The second Beast causes everyone, important or unimportant, rich or poor, first world and third world, to receive a mark on their hearts and on their wallets and purses, so that no one can buy or sell who doesn’t have the mark. The mark is the name of the first Beast, the number of its name. You need to be clever to figure this out, but with a little effort, you can calculate the number of the Beast, because it’s the number of the title on its seal. The number itself is 392.

Then I looked and woah! The Lamb was standing on Capitol Hill!

And he had the 500 billion with him, those who have his name and his father’s name written on their hearts and wallets. I heard a voice from heaven that sounded like a tidal wave or a loud jet engine, and it was as musical as a majestic symphony.

They sang a new song for the one seated at the desk and for the four creatures and the fifty congresspersons. No one could learn the song except for the 500 billion who had been bought from the earth. They haven’t been sleeping around; they’ve stayed faithful. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They’ve been bought from among humanity; they’re the tithe of humanity, offered to God and to the Lamb. They’re completely blameless – not even a little white lie passes their lips!

26-30: The Most Dangerous Thing. And the Most Powerful.

26. Christians need the Gospel as much as anyone.

Since I was raised in the Church, I was raised to think that the Gospel was mainly about getting my sins forgiven. That the biggest problem in the world was that I was a bad guy and God could make me good. And all I had to do was say the magic prayer and BAM! Jesus saved me and set me on the straight-and-narrow. End of story. The Gospel had done its work in my life and now I’m one of the Good Guys, God’s Chosen Kid.

But I’ve learned that the Gospel is about so much more than forgiving sin. The forgiveness of sin is part of the Gospel, but any gospel that stops at the cross is incomplete. Good Friday is meaningless without Resurrection Sunday. The Empty Tomb is what gives the cross its power. Jesus raised from the dead so that we could follow him in that resurrection.

We are not just saved from sin. We are saved to an abundant, exciting life with God. The good news is that only the good creator of the world gets the final say in what’s real and what really matters. Money does not determine my worth. The cult of celebrity does not determine my worth. The brokenness in my life, whatever its source, does not determine my worth. Only God, in whose image I am created, has final authority over who I am and what I am worth. And that God died so that I might be rescued from the Death I invited into my life. So I am free to rejoin God and live the life I was created for and called to.

That’s very good news, and I need to hear that now as much as I ever did.

27. We should all listen to the media less.

At the end of the day, the media’s job is to sell us stuff. Whether it’s music, a magazine, newspaper, TV show or movie, they’re trying to make a buck. And since no one will pay attention unless they stand out, media outlets spend billions of dollars creating mountains out of molehills so we’ll listen to their message (and end up buying their products). Sensationalism sells.

We consume so much media that their worldview has become ours. And it needs to stop. The media appeals to our baser instincts – they perpetuate our fear and desire to conform. It’s poison and we could all do with much less than we take in right now.

28. Technology is useful but dangerous.

A couple of generations ago, futurists were predicting that we’d all be working 20 hours per week these days, thanks to the miracle of technology. We could do so much so quickly that we’d have tons more leisure time. The mad rush of progress would soon deliver humanity into a new golden age.

Clearly, that hasn’t happened. In fact, the 9-5 has become the 8-6. Or 7. And the five-day work week is nearly a thing of the past, having now stretched to 6 days. We work now more than we ever have, and all this with technologies that keep us more connected than ever. We can’t focus on one project or person at a time – we’re constantly checking emails and texts, working on three projects at once (when we’re slow). And all thanks to technology.

Technology is enslaving us. Rather than letting it serve us, we serve it. This week, try turning your email notifications off. Close your facebook instead of leaving it open in your browser. Put your phone on silent (not just vibrate) when you’re hanging out with people (or turn it off completely!). Just for a week. See what happens.

That weird feeling you have? It’s called freedom…

29. Despair might be the most dangerous force in the world (but only second-most powerful).

There comes a point for every person striving for a goal when they have to decide if they’re going to finish. This is whether you’re running, competing in an athletic event, trying to finish a book or project, fighting a war, or anything. When something seems overwhelming, we are very tempted to call it quits. It becomes easy to believe that the battle is over, that we’ve already lost.

And that is called despair. It’s dangerous. And it’s always right around the corner. Despair is what tells us the marriage isn’t worth fighting for or the friend isn’t worth forgiving one more time. It’s the little voice that convinces us not to try any more because we’ll just fail again. Or that people never change, so we might as well give up on them.

It’s the voice that tells us redemption is impossible, that rescue will never come, that hope is a fool’s virtue. And the voice of Despair is ever-present, often overwhelming and seemingly all-powerful. But that’s a lie. Despair is not, in fact, the most powerful force in the universe.

30. Love wins. Every time.

The truth is that Love conquers despair every time. This Love is available to all of us, and when we are at our best, we embody it to each other. In our darkest moments, when all hope seems lost and Despair whispers in our ears that we are foolish to imagine that anything could save us or redeem our circumstances, Love rises and covers us. Love rescues and redeems us. Not with Cupid’s bow, but with Jesus’ cross and empty tomb.

I can’t say it any better than Paul of Tarsus, so I’ll quit trying. Brothers and sisters, this is Love:

Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way.
Love is not irritable or resentful.
Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
— 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Love wins. Every time.

Conformity Gospel LOVE Media Technology

Declaring War

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire. I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand. This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 12. If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – Chapters 1-12.

An incredible sign appeared in heaven: I saw a woman who wore the sun like a gown and used the moon as a footstool. She wore a gold medal made of twelve stars like a set of pearls. She was pregnant, and was clearly in labor.

Then another sign appeared: an enormous, blood-red dragon with thirteen heads and fifty dollar signs all around it. It had thirteen presidential seals on its heads. His tail swept across the sky, knocking a third of the stars out of the sky, throwing them down on the earth. Then the dragon positioned itself in front of the woman so it could devour her child as soon as it was born.Continue reading

Enculturation Eschatology Revelation Satan

21-25: Some Things Matter More than You Think

21. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

See the difference? The guy in the front has been using it. The other guy CLEARLY lost it. In number 20, I suggested that practice makes perfect. I’ve also learned that even after you’ve gotten pretty good at something, you have to keep practicing it, or it’s gone. By the time I went to college, I was nearly fluent in German (5 years of secondary schooling and a 3-week trip to Germany ensured that). Today? I could get by in Germany (meaning, I don’t think I’d die or starve to death), but I’ve forgotten most everything I knew.

Most things in life, unfortunately, are not ‘just like riding a bike’. If I work hard to be come a loving, kind person, if I cultivate the fruits of the Spirit in my life, I will never reach a point where I’ve ‘made it’, and I can just stop practicing those virtues. I will be slowly dragged back towards my base, default tendencies. So use it! Practice kindness, joy, peacemaking. Practice giving honor and respect to everyone around you. Practice seeking the good in other people. Not only will you get better and better at it, but you’ll be formed as a person for whom these attitudes and behaviors become second nature.

22. Tattoos are really awesome.

I got my first tattoo almost exactly 10 years ago today. As of last Friday, I now have nine separate pieces that cover a lot of my upper body. Given that I worked first for a Southern Baptist church and now for a Nazarene church, I’ve encountered plenty of people who think tattoos are evil. For a long time I couldn’t articulate clearly why I like tattoos, and why I kept covering more and more of my body with them.

But a few years ago, I realized the explanation was much simpler than I was trying to make it. My tattoos are simply an expression of my faith. The pieces I get are shaped by foundational convictions I have about the nature of Christianity and a life lived following Jesus and participating in his gospel.

I’m not an evangelist for tattoos – I don’t recommend other people get tattoos unless they want to, and unless they’re confident in what they want. But that said, tattoos really are awesome.

23. Unity is as important as Truth.

For most of my life, I’ve been a Truth Crusader. Take a look at that picture: that was me. Ready to slay the infidel if you didn’t agree with my point of view. My arsenal was fierce – I had marshaled an army of words so that I could cut you down with the sword that came out of my mouth, and I was very good at it. Few foes could stand against me (and clearly I hadn’t learned lesson 16 yet: God is not on my side).

But I realized that – while God certainly cares about Truth, God also commands unity among us followers of Jesus. In fact, according to Jesus, the singular mark of his disciples is not our commitment to Truth. It’s how we love each other – how unified we are.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
– John 13:35

As I pointed out in #17, Love isn’t always mushy, but it is our highest virtue, the most foundational aspect of who God is. We ought to pursue the one who is the Truth, confessing that none of us has a perfect picture of Jesus. That’s why we need each other.

I dare you to include some people who rub you the wrong way in your inner circle. Learn to love them and watch what happens to your soul.

24. The words “liberal” and “conservative” have become pretty much worthless.

When I graduated from high school, I considered myself very conservative politically, theologically – really in most any way I thought mattered. I attended a private Christian school that would also be considered very conservative on nearly any scale you choose to use to measure such things. And yet as I studied there, I developed a reputation as a ‘liberal’.

I wasn’t sure why – I held the same foundational beliefs as my schoolmates, but because I pushed the envelope, questioned (and yes, wrote a few intentionally controversial papers), I was tarred with the most feared of all epitaphs.

Then I went to grad school at the University of Missouri, to study Religious Studies. My schoolmates and professors at Mizzou seemed to be a little bit shocked by my beliefs at first – I believed the Bible was inspired by God and that Jesus literally came back from the dead. In the four month gap between undergrad and grad school, I went from being known as the crazy liberal to a crazy conservative.

What this taught me was that these words are empty. They’ve become weapons that we hurl at our opponents to label them, to mark their ideas as dangerous (or stupid or unworthy of our attention). We use these words to block other people and their ideas out of our lives. To protect ourselves from Others who are not like us. If you tell me someone’s a ‘liberal’, all that tells me (given the larger context of your statement), is whether that person agrees with you or not. As words that help move a discussion forward, they’ve lost all utility. I move that we abandon them starting yesterday!

25. The Earth really is important.

I was always taught that we don’t have to care about the physical world because eventually God is going to come back and destroy it. For me, this translated into an apathy towards the Earth. I didn’t recycle, littered freely and didn’t try to conserve anything. I didn’t take care of my body – after all, it’s just a prison of flesh that we’ll eventually escape from!

But as I learned more and more of who God is, I learned that the physical world is not a pile of resources we can consume at our leisure. Everything physical, all matter, is a gift from God to us, and we are called to be good stewards of it. Our bodies matter to God, and how we treat our bodies (and the Earth!) says something about the state of our souls.

So what about you? Got any tattoos? Are you liberal or conservative? And do you take care of your body or the Earth?

Birthday Creation Earth Tattoos Truth Unity

The Revelation to JR. – Two Witnesses

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire. I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand. This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 11. If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – Chapters 1-11.

Then I was given a tool belt and a steel beams and I was told:

Come and reinforce God’s sanctuary – include the pulpit and everyone worshiping in there. But don’t bother with the foyer or classroom space. All that’s being handed over to the rest of the world. They’re going to run rampant all over the holy city for 42 months.

I’m going to give my two eye-witnesses authority to prophesy for 1,260 days while they’re dressed for a funeral.

Enculturation Eschatology Prophecy Revelation Story Worship

The Executive Order

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire. I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand. This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 10. If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – Chapters 1-10.

I saw another enormous angel coming down from heaven. He was wrapped in a cloud and I saw a rainbow appear over his head. I could barely look at him because his face was as bright as the sun and even his legs and feet burned like fire. He had an Executive Order in his right hand (it looked so small in his huge hand!). He planted one foot on the land and one in the ocean and then yelled at the top of his lungs.

When he yelled, I heard a giant roar, like seven jet engines. I was about to write down what I heard in the engines’ roar, but someone up in heaven said

“Seal up what the seven jet engines have said – don’t write it down!”

Enculturation Eschatology Prophecy Revelation Worship

16-20: Stand Up for Yourself, Nicely

16. God isn’t on my side.

Maybe it’s because I was raised in a pretty conservative family and church, but I always had the impression that God was on my side. That I was (basically) a good guy and had life (mostly) figured out. That while I was occasionally arrogant and a bit of a jerk, I was all around pretty righteous, so God clearly must love me. God probably hates the same people I hate. And wants for me what I want for me. I’m not sure when I learned it, but somewhere along the way that God isn’t actually on my side.

God is on God’s side (I heard a great talk from Andy Stanley on Joshua 5:13-15). At bare minimum, this ought to engender humility and compassion as we interact with the world.

17. Love isn’t always mushy.

The Scriptures are clear that God’s central attribute is love (1 John 4:7-12). Because our culture has reduced the idea of love to emotional fluff, that statement about God’s character comes under frequent attack. Calling God ‘love’ conjures up images of a meek-and-mild Jesus who doesn’t challenge us, who has a loosey-goosey approach to dealing with sin.

But the Scriptures don’t define love that way. Love is self-sacrifice, self-giving. Love always seeks the good for others. Love in the Scriptures is primarily a covenantal term. To say that God is Love is to say that God is always faithful to the promises He has made – even when we are not. That God always seeks our good, even when we try to self-destruct. That God is the giver of all good gifts, that everything that sustains us is the overflow of God’s fundamental character.

18. How to say “No”

Does anyone else have a problem saying ‘No’? I always have. I want people to like me and I want to be dependable. So I say ‘Yes’ to everything. I learned that if I can’t draw healthy boundaries, I end up doing many things poorly, which means instead of coming through for everyone, I tend to let everyone down.

At my previous church, I was often tapped to do dramas. I liked it, and I did a pretty good job (I assume, since they kept asking me), but I simply didn’t have the time and energy to devote to them. Every time I agreed to do a drama, the rest of my work suffered.

In those situations, I have to say ‘No’. I have to know what I am capable of and where my limits are, and I have to practice making wise investments of my time and energies. My decision to quit participating in dramas was actually a good thing – it forced the drama team to find some new blood. Saying ‘No’ actually makes it possible for more people to get involved, creates more opportunities for other people to step up. And that’s a win for everyone.

19. How to say “No” nicely

Learning to draw boundaries is an important step, but it’s only the first step. I also had to learn how to communicate my decision in a healthy way. When I started saying ‘No’ to stuff, people really thought I was saying No to them. They often took my rejection of their project or idea as a rejection of them personally.

And it’s not. In fact, a healthy decision to say No is a pursuit of health, not only for myself but for the persons and projects to whom I’m saying No. So communicating it that way does wonders to keep hurt feelings from becoming grudges.

20. Practice makes perfect.

It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you’re probably not going to be very good at it at first. A lot of people choose just to give up, but if you really want to excel at something, you’re going to have to put in some legwork. Malcolm Gladwell suggests it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something.

I’m working on my writing and speaking. And I’ve got a long way to go before I hit 10,000 hours. What about you? What are you working on? And how far along are you?

The Three Curses

This series of posts is my attempt to demonstrate that the language of the Revelation was actually symbolic code that was very intelligible to a first-century Jewish Christian living in the Roman Empire. I’m re-writing the Revelation to communicate the same message, but to a twenty-first century American Christian audience, using symbols we understand. This particular section parallels Revelation chapter 9. If you want to catch up, here’s a PDF of the entire series so far: The Revelation to JR – 1-9.

The fifth angel turned on his camera and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key the bowels of the earth. He opened it and smoke came billowing out of the hole like from a blown radiator. The smoke covered the sky and plunged the whole planet into darkness.

Then I saw locusts emerge from the smoke, and they were given authority like soldiers. They were specifically told not to harm the crops or food supply, but instead to hurt anyone who hadn’t been notarized by God on their heads and wallets. They were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them. And it was bad – worse than anything that went down in Guantanamo Bay. During those five months, people will try to kill themselves – they’ll chase after death – but they won’t be able to die.Continue reading

Enculturation Eschatology Revelation Worship

I Must Be Crazy

This is the final installment of The Beard Goes Home, a chronicle of my trip to Israel, Cairo and Rome from November 3-18. If you want more information on a picture, hover your mouse over it for a pop-up caption. If you want to see a bigger version of the picture, click on it.

Over the course of this trip, I have traveled to three continents, engaged three major world religions and more interacted in at least a half-dozen cultures. I’ve been further outside my comfort zone than ever before in my life, and all in the name of following Jesus. Of walking where he walked and seeing the things he saw, as much as possible.

I was certainly without most of the comforts of home – I was much less connected to the Internet than I’m accustomed to, and between that and the 6-7 hour time difference, I felt very disconnected from my wife and community in the US. I met new persons every day, and all of them were in some way the Other. I learned that two weeks is more than long enough to spend adrift and apart, with no place to put down roots. I understand now why we create colonies, little islands of our own culture, when we go to a new place.

I learned that I’m a lot more xenophobic than I thought I was. I spent the whole trip as the consummate outsider. Even Thomas was at home among his Dominican brothers; each of our rest stops offered something familiar for him, a place he understood and knew how to function in. Initially I only felt a sense of shame at my suspicion towards the Arabs or my indignation at the disgust I felt from the Jews. My fear of being alone in Rome.

But the longer I’ve been gone, the more I’m trying to cherish these uncomfortable moments. I am learning in a way I never have before what it means to be a Stranger, an Alien. Amanda and I chose ‘Forasteros’ as our last name because it is the Spanish word for this very idea. Because we both want to be that and to learn the art of hospitality, of welcoming strangers and aliens.

In Middle Eastern cultures (Jewish, Muslim OR Christian), there are two categories of person (as I was just discussing with one of my new Dominican friends): Family and Enemy. The Arabic phrase for ‘Welcome’ roughly translates as ‘I make smooth the path for you to come into my family’. If you’re not a part of my family, then you’re my enemy, and I have full freedom (and possibly even an obligation) to cheat you. I certainly don’t have to welcome you.

This makes the Biblical mandate to welcome the stranger even more powerful. As the Israelites were preparing to enter into the Promised Land, Moses reminded them:

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. – Deuteronomy 10:17-19

This would be a radical teaching in the Holy Land today. It was at least as radical then. If we’re honest with ourselves, it’s radical in the good ole’ U.S. of A. too. We’re not much better at making strangers feel welcomed in our country, let alone our homes. Especially if they don’t speak our language or look like us.

But welcoming the stranger is fundamentally what it means to follow Jesus. His Incarnation is the ultimate sojourn. God became human. He took on flesh and moved into our neighborhood. And we killed him for it. Which only goes to show that God’s commands to God’s people didn’t take hold very well.

And we who follow Jesus today aren’t any better. We still play favorites. We still stick close to our families (whatever we decide those look like) and we do little to step outside our comfort zones. We usually actively avoid it. Intentionally becoming a stranger is difficult. It’s not a vacation (which is why we build resorts that have all the comforts of home but still let us feel exotic).

And yet again and again the New Testament appropriates the metaphor of stranger/alien/sojourner to describe the Christian life. We are on a journey in a foreign land.

All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them. – Hebrews 11:13-16

Here’s the end of my story: I took a trip and it turned my world upside down. You should try it sometime. If you want a tour guide, let me know. It helps to travel with friends.

Church Israel Jerusalem Other Rome

Rome Alone

The Beard Goes Home is an ongoing chronicle of my trip to Israel, Cairo and Rome from November 3-18. If you want more information on a picture, hover your mouse over it for a pop-up caption. If you want to see a bigger version of the picture, click on it.

Thomas and I landed in Rome on Monday, November 15. We made it to the Angelicum, a Dominican school where we’d be staying, and settled in for the night. Just after I’d gone to bed, Thomas came to my room to tell me that a family emergency had come up and he would have to fly home ASAP. The earliest he could arrange was Wednesday morning, so on Tuesday we met up with a group from his parish in Columbia as originally planned and took a whirlwind tour of the city.

I confess that I was very nervous about Thomas leaving. I’d never been to Rome and didn’t know my way around; I was also feeling very ready to get back to Dayton. All of these emotions were strange to me – I’m usually much more adventurous, so I spent some time in prayer and reflection and determined to make the most of my time.

Rome turned out to be a city where it’s easy to get lost in the trees, but the forest is (relatively) easy to navigate. Once I’d gotten a good sense of how the famous Seven Hills are laid out, I could figure out how to get back to the general area of the Angelicum.

We managed to see a good many sites for as little time as we had, though since the rest of my group was Catholic, it mostly revolved around art and the 17 billion or so churches in Rome. We took in St. John’s of Lateran (the Pope’s actual church), St. Peter’s (including the Vatican Museum, St. Peter’s bones and the Sistine Chapel) and several Caravaggio’s.

One of the highlights of the trip was our Wednesday audience with Pope Benedict XVI, with about 20,000 people from all over the world. He addressed us in a half-dozen languages – the same five-minute homily to each group. After being in Israel, I was shocked at how lax the security surrounding the whole Vatican was (unless those goofy Swiss guard uniforms grant secret superpowers).

For me, though, the Roman ruins were definitely what I was most excited to see – especially anything pre-Constantinian (315-330 CE). This was a lot tougher than I thought it would be because Rome has been Christian for so long. It turns out that we’ve done a great job of Christian-izing pretty much everything in Rome. Even the red-granite Egyptian obelisks that are all over the city all have crosses or statues of Peter and Paul on top of them. All those marble columns that surround Vatican square? Their marble used to cover the Coliseum. The grand Circus Maxims, that made Herod’s circus in Caesarea Maritima look like a little league stadium? It’s basically a big strip of grass with some stairs cut into it. The Pantheon, a temple built to all the Roman gods is now a church dedicated to all the Christian martyrs.

As a person of faith, I get it. Rome was the capitol of the Roman Empire (I’m sure this is not a news flash). The monuments to the pagan gods were just as widespread in the city as Christian churches and monuments are now. But the history nerd in me weeps over the artifacts and monuments that have been lost (or destroyed). The church (and the Empire) found it expedient to recycle – to tear down old monuments to men and gods long dead in order to build new monuments to the new kings and new God of Rome. It was cheaper and it erased from history the records of the Other cultures.

This is something I’ve seen over and over in this trip – the new cultures and religions cannot abide the old, so they destroy and replace. Caesarea Maritima was a great example of this – it changed rulers five times before it was abandoned, and each army destroyed what was there and built their own monuments. Mt. Megiddo was the same. Not to mention the city of Jerusalem (::cough:: Temple Mount ::cough::).

And, of course, Rome.

But I wonder if we could try something different. What if, instead of looking at these structures and monuments as Other, we instead celebrated the good in them.

The ancient Temples are beautiful in their way, and they’re certainly marvels of architecture. I can confess that without praising Roman gods (or Muslim or Canaanite or whatever). I can wonder at the ingenuity and power of the human spirit that is, after all, created in God’s image without worrying or feeling threatened. That creative drive that led to the construction of Cairo’s ubiquitous mosques and Rome’s obelisks, columns, arches and temples is the same creative drive that spawned the enormity of St. Peter’s and the beautiful churches that mark all the sacred sites in the Holy Land. It’s the creative drive that we have been given by our Creator, and I believe that we can celebrate it in a way that honors the Gospel without compromising it.

Church Israel Other Rome