This article was published on the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary blog. The author Emad Botros is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at ABTS. You can read the original post here.
When a country goes through major crisis, the church and its members usually try to read and understand these political events in light of biblical texts. This approach also applies to people of other religions. The driving force for such an approach is the belief that “everything is foretold in the Bible.”
Followers of this approach usually turn first to apocalyptic texts to understand a political crisis surrounding them. This of course corresponds to some extent with the social, political and historical reality from which these texts emerged, where God inspired the imagination of an oppressed person to portray an end to the injustice being practiced against the community.
This attempt is not new, but it dates back to the second century BC, where we find many ancient apocalyptic writings in which people, like Daniel, tried to interpret the historical and political events that he and his people lived through in light of Jeremiah’s prophecy (Daniel 9:20-27; Jeremiah 25:1-11; 29:1-10).
Daniel is a young man who was taken captive by the great Babylon kingdom, abandoning his land, his people, his culture, and the place where he used to worship God. This young man was given by God the gift of interpreting dreams, and this led the young man to reach a prominent (or outstanding) position in the Babylonian kingdom.
The genre of the second half of the book of Daniel is apocalypse, which takes its name from the Greek word apokalyptikos, which has the sense of “disclose, reveal, uncover” in relation to the imminent end of the world. These apocalyptic writings have their own characteristics, such as being filled with symbols, involving heavenly and angelic beings, being dualistic (evil and good – Satan against God), and depicting bizarre creatures (mainly strange animals) involved in a universal war. These writings were each written in a specific time and place, reflecting the worldview of the people of that time with terminologies and images that were familiar to them, but obscure to us.
These characteristics could be misleading if we were to interpret apocalyptic texts literally. We need to remember that the purpose of apocalyptic texts is to foster hope in the midst of persecution. This fact by itself guards us from thinking primarily in terms of war and destruction. It forces us to think more in terms of a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21). In this sense, the form of the text could be distorting its message.
Though the message of these texts has its eschatological dimension, it also has its implications on us today. The texts’ futuristic dimension generates hope amidst the present turmoil we experience nowadays. They reveal a God who comes to aid and deliver his people from the hands of the oppressor, a God who is in control when earthly powers think they are the ones in charge of our world today.
In a recent course I taught, Reading Apocalyptic in the Context of the Middle East, students reflected on the impact of our interpretation of these writings in our world today. I would like to share four observations that were particularly linked to the topic at hand.
The first observation: When we hear the word apocalyptic, we first imagine a picture of the end times where a universal war takes place between the forces of evil and the forces of good, represented by bizarre creatures (mainly strange animals) fighting each other. One of the main challenges, as stated by one of the students, is that when we apply this image to our Middle Eastern context, we make a particular group of people and their religion as our enemies which must be defeated in a universal war. This “greatest devil,” as some in the Middle East describe it, is Islam and Muslims. The danger here is that such images generate division, fuel anger, and spread hatred to others in the name of God.
Another observation occurred when one of the Kurdish female students asked about the “Kurdish crisis”: Why is there all this biblical support for one specific group of people at the expense of others? Why does the “biblical text” not support my cause as a Kurd? As a Kurdish woman, I see that my land was stolen, my family was displaced, and I lost everything I owned. Frankly, she continues in a voice full of regret, “I feel guilty when I hope that there will be a ‘Kurdish Christian movement,’ supported by the Bible and the Western and Eastern churches, to return the Kurdish people to their land, especially when I see violations against our people, and we are unable to do anything.
The third observation is related to a question asked by one of our Sudanese students: “What about Sudan?” “Does anyone care about us?” he continued in a sad and frustrated voice. “If the West really care about humanity, as they claim, they would have cared about us too.” According to a United Nations report, Sudan has the largest number of displaced people in the world today.
The fourth and last observation relates to where the focus of apocalyptic texts lies, and this can be achieved by paying close attention to the surrounding literary context of a particular text. For example, if we turn to the so-called “Seventy-Seventh” prophecy in Daniel 9:20-27, we focus much on its literal futuristic fulfillment, and may completely neglect its literary context. This “prophecy” is set within the framework of prayer, where Daniel is confessing his sins and the sins of his people. In this literary context, repentance and confession come first, and then God answers Daniel’s prayer by interpreting Jeremiah 25:11 through a heavenly figure, Gabriel (Daniel 9:21).
In our Middle Eastern context, we focus much on the interpretation of this prophecy, and we forget that this prophecy is an answer to a prayer of confession and repentance. This is a key lesson as we approach the interpretation of the biblical text: We first must confess our misdeeds of injustice and repent, only then allowing God to interpret his Word to us. I think our interpretation will then align more closely with God’s heart.
From these thoughts and feelings, one then can summarize the challenges that arise with reading historical events from a religious point of view:
- First, we can be tempted to turn political conflicts into religious conflicts in which an individual is forced to take sides with one group against the other.
- Second, when we try to support our political views using religious texts, we are actually distorting the religious text and also the image of God, and this has a serious negative impact on the mission of the church in our region today.
- Third, we risk ignoring the practical implications of these apocalyptic texts for us today when we focus on their futuristic interpretation.
These thoughts and feelings can challenge us to re-examine ourselves.
- First, while we continue paying attention to the war between Israel and Palestine, we ought to give the same attention to other conflicts in the region as well: the war in Sudan is one of them.
- Second, we need to rethink the the use of religious texts to interpret political conflicts. This can dangerously impact how we live with our neighbors in a way that supports injustice practiced against our fellow humans. Employing religious texts to serve political agendas is one of the most dangerous practices in our Middle East and in the world today.
- Third, we need to re-examine our religious convictions and their effect on painting a distorted picture of God. As I told my students: Whatever your faith convictions are, ask yourself: What picture do these convictions paint about God? As it stands now, it is clear that the picture we tend to draw of God is that of a warlike and racist God, siding with one group of people against others, forgetting that we are all God’s creation.
The thoughts and feelings expressed by these students are by themselves a cry for justice.
In a world where the virtue of justice is absent, we need to go back to the biblical text and to the teachings of Christ, not to create enemies nor to stand with one group of people against another, but to witness to a just God. Since these biblical texts are the written revelation of God himself, I believe our interpretation of these texts will also reveal a just God. These texts, moreover, should lead the people of God to practice and support justice in our societies today, regardless of our ethnic and religious backgrounds. As a group of students studying the Word of God, we agreed that this should be our mandate, and we would like to invite you to pray for us so that we can be a living testimony of a just God in the midst of a volatile Middle East. Amen.
