What is Love? Don’t Read the Book of Revelation

What is love? Any Christian will tell you without hesitation that it is defined in the 13th chapter of the first letter of Paul to the church at Corinth. This is, indeed, a beautiful passage. By the way, Biblical scholars pretty much agree that I Corinthians (unlike some other New Testament epistles) was genuinely written by the Apostle Paul. And Jesus demonstrated love all the time—he was sensitive to the touch of a suffering woman, and he saved the life of another woman who was about to be stoned to death for something that a man did to her. The Apostle John said, God is love.

But if you read the book of Revelation, you will get a completely different picture. This is yet another reason that I consider Revelation, and the conservative Christians who swear devotion to it, to be so dangerous. As I explained in a previous entry, most of the book of Revelation is just one long series of plagues and woes, bringing destruction upon the Earth and unspeakable suffering on human beings.

I noticed an interesting thing about those plagues and sufferings. On at least two occasions, the writer said that, despite the sufferings, the people of the Earth did not repent and love God. So God sends another plague. In the end, it does not work, and God establishes his Heavenly City by force, populated apparently only by the 144,000 people who have never had sex.

Imagine, if you will, a man who beats his wife and children, insisting that they love him. When they do not, he beats them some more. Finally they are dead. I think we would all agree that this man (who sounds like some of the rednecks who live around me in Oklahoma, except that they seldom go as far as murder) has no clue about what love is, and is probably crazy. Well, this is exactly what God does to the human race in Revelation. Revelation makes God sound like a crazy maniac. Most religious people do not believe that this is what God is like, but it is the image that Revelation presents. It presents the image of a God who keeps kicking the shit out of the human race until we love him. And this is why Revelation is a dangerous book, and the conservative Christians who adhere to it are dangerous people. I have no problem with Christians who adhere to Jesus rather than to Revelation.

I will be exploring this idea in a new book, Last Tree Standing, which I will write when current publishing and other obligations allow me some time. Please share with me some of your insights.