When the World Falls Apart

When I was a teenager, I was sucked into the Left Behind series. I truly believed that the end of humanity was going to be like it was portrayed in the books and movies. I loved letting my imagination run wild and to imagine what the beasts in the book of Revelations could look like.

Ruins in Antigua Guatemala

The mythical creatures, angels, and dragons sparked my interest in the occult. Interestingly, this created a deep sense of anxiety in me. If the book of Revelations and other apocalyptic literature in the Bible were supposed to help me believe in God, why did they awake an interest in all things fantasy related and demonic? I was obsessed with the end of times.

Years later, I heard other interpretations of the end of times in seminary. Our professors taught a dispensational theology that focused on the fact that this world didn’t matter. That is why, evangelization and the salvation of the soul was more important than political engagement, walking with the poor, and the liberation of all people. As a result, I developed a deep sense of urgency for the salvation of souls that was disconnected from the oppressive realities of my context. This showed in my work with the most vulnerable. I wanted people to be saved, even if their life conditions didn’t change. I did not try to improve their lives nor try to ask questions about the system that gripped their souls and bodies. During that season of life, I also attributed theological significance to the violent events of my immediate context and the world. I didn’t know this back then, I had an apocalyptic imagination.

The apocalyptic imagination is a way of seeing the world in which violence is understood as a tool in the hands God to assert its power over humanity and judge the living and the dead. It is the process of attributing theological significance to local and global political, religious, and violent events. When people see the world through this lens, God is all knowing, controlling, and all powerful over humanity’s history.

In this type of theology and worldview, God’s sovereignty becomes the perfect excuse to cover up humanity’s violence. If God is sovereign, in control of history and people’s lives, humans do not need to bear the responsibility for what happens in their immediate community, country, the world, and to the most vulnerable.

However, Jesus invites his followers to a new way of understanding and interpreting the world. In Mark 13:1-8, Jesus gives the first one of his eschatological teachings. His words do not hold an apocalyptic meaning. His speech reveals the environment in which his disciples will have to follow his teachings. Jesus is not attributing theological meaning to world events. He uses the language of his time, but gives a new meaning to it. He redefines not only the words he uses, but also to the world around him. He says: “Do you see all these great buildings…Not one stone here will be left on another every one will be thrown down.” For Jesus, God is not destroying the buildings or controlling history. Humans experience the consequences of their decisions, actions, and beliefs. The disciples, however, struggle to understand and experience this new way of seeing the world.

Jesus speaks to his disciples in a way that frees them up from the apocalyptic imagination. He tells them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. When you hear of wars…do not be alarmed…There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.” In other words, the violence and suffering of this world is not God’s work. It is the environment humans create. Jesus tells his disciples that all of these things will happen because of what he came to do. Jesus came to reveal what humanity is capable of—violence—and that God is not in control of humanity’s history nor asking for humanity’s violence.

Jesus’ words have profound implications for everyday life, for both the disciples he is talking to—Peter, James, John, and Andrew—and for those who follow his teachings today. If those who follow Jesus are not to be deceived, the disciples ought to be careful to not identify themselves with the politics of the apocalyptical imagination. In other words, Jesus’ followers should not give theological significance to political ideologies and feuds, wars, natural disasters and so on and so forth. These things are the consequences of human interactions, violence, and the abuse of nature. They are not God’s will, and God is not in control of them. Humans experience the consequences of their decisions, actions, and violence.

In Mark 13, Jesus describes the environment in which the disciples will bear witness to the kingdom of God and its justice. It is in the middle of this dire context that “the disciple must give witness to his following of Jesus, of his belief in another kingdom, distinct from the kingdoms which seek to found themselves on reciprocal violence. In the midst of this process the disciple will always be an outsider, and always a potential victim, potential traitor, potential subversive, and so on. In the midst of all this conflictual reality, the good news about God…will be borne slowly and almost silently to all nations.”¹ In other words, the work of Jesus’ disciples is not to institute a theocracy on this earth. The job of Jesus’ followers is not to bless, crown, and support political messiahs. The work is to bear witness to a kingdom that belongs to the most vulnerable, the kingdom of a God who is in rivalry with nothing and nobody, not even death.

1. Alison, James. Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschathological Imagination. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996. p. 145.