Of Love and War

The Apocalypse of John's canonical status gives it a special religious and cultural power. This story of the end of the world describes the suffering of both good and evil people, along with an escalating violence brought by the opening of seven seals. God prevails in the end, and the true faithful dwell for a thousand years in the city of God. What is revealed is the formula for eternal success and life. God defeats the powers of evil and reigns forever, and only the believers are part of this glorious future.

In my earlier works (1992 and 1999) I examined my own uneasiness with this formula for eternity. There is so much destruction—of lives and of the earth—that I find the sounds and scenes overwhelming. And I find this Christian version of how the world ends very disturbing. This book troubles me in different ways than it troubled the Eastern churches in the fourth century CE or Martin Luther in the Protestant Reformation. The problems of holy war, ecocide (destruction of the natural world), gynocide (destruction of women), and the portrayal of the deities as wrathful powers just will not go away. I continue to see the Apocalypse as a misogynist (woman-hating) male fantasy of the end of time (1992: 105).