Obsessing over Revelation

A person I knew in grad school had a little game she liked to play . . . connecting people's dissertation topics to their "issues." Her theory was, we often use our dissertations to work out emotional issues, rather than strictly academic issues and questions, even if it is not intentional. I had a dissertation topic that seemed to prove the point, for in the midst of writing my dissertation on Revelation's bridal and nuptial imagery I went through a painful divorce that involved my questioning of issues pertaining to gender and marriage in general. While at the time I nodded along and agreed with her assessment, today I look at the connection differently . . . I was attracted to my topic not because of the bridal or nuptial piece, but because of the Book of Revelation and how it relates to the way I think and look at the world. Scary, I know!

When I teach my apocalyptic literature class, I often show my students a picture of myself getting ready to drive off to college. I'm leaning against my car (which I would total a couple years later) and I look happy. I tell my students that what they can't see is the effect Revelation has had on me. At that time, August 1988, I was pretty consumed with anxiety. I had spent the summer working for my church denomination, leading children's camps. A group of people that I encountered that summer had become advocates of a booklet entitled "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988." While the title used the word "could," the text aimed to convince the reader that the Rapture would most definitely happen in the fall of 1988. It used biblical passages, especially drawn from Daniel and Revelation, to make its point. Of course it hedged on pinpointing a precise date, because as all good evangelical Christians know, "No one knows the day or the hour." The week, however, we can guesstimate.

Given my encounter with "88 Reasons," I started college especially anxious. I didn't completely buy into the Rapture-fever-excitement, but I had always lived with the fear of impending judgment. I had spent my days trying to live a perfect life and I spent the moments before I fell asleep praying for forgiveness even for "sins" that I may have unintentionally committed. Years later I would realize that this fear of unintentional sinning is part of obsessional thinking, something that many people with obsessive personalities do. (Unsurprisingly, there are many of us in academia!) The "88 Reasons" booklet fed into this, giving me something else to worry about. What if the authors were right? Then I was really screwed.

The week of the supposed Rapture came and went, obviously. But, I had other things to deal with as first year student, like dealing with a crazy roommate and picking a major. The roommate situation remained a little unsettled, but I happily settled into a philosophy major. And, while the philosophy major made me rethink religion, Revelation and the Rapture, I wasn't able to shake the obsessive thinking. At least the impending end of the world was no longer an issue. I no longer imagined myself under God's judgmental eye or under the eye of a Christ-coming-in-the-clouds; instead, I had internalized that eye in a different way.

It wasn't until graduate school that I had to reconsider Revelation. It wasn't my choice, but Revelation was the only option for a New Testament seminar one semester. I approached it with some trepidation, but to my surprise I was intrigued with the text. I was reminded of the text's rhetorical power and I was fascinated by the way it used imagery to further its rhetorical ends. I was also reminded of its power over me, through the guise of "88 Reasons." I was a relatively intelligent high-school and college student, why had the book gotten under my skin and made me so anxious? As I thought about my dissertation, I thought I would explore how the text's imagery, its metaphorical language, worked to persuade and to shape thought. The text, I thought, had some power to persuade reasonably intelligent individuals to think in apocalyptic ways.

While I still afford Revelation's metaphor a certain amount of rhetorical power, I am beginning to think more and more that my own thought patterns were part of what attracted me to Revelation. My tendency toward dualistic and somewhat extreme thinking means that Revelation made some sense to me. I resonated with the text. Of course, I bought into the idea of an impending judgment . . . I had been anticipating it for years in my tendency toward self-judgement and criticism. I guess I think it is a cultural cycle of sorts: Revelation and other apocalyptic texts and traditions create a culture that tends toward absolutes, dichotomies, notions of judgment. Those of us who are prone to these ways of thinking buy into and potentially perpetuate the text's apocalyptic thought patterns. On one hand my scholarship tries to disarm the text of this power. If we know how the text's metaphors work, maybe we can resist them and not be bowled over. On the other hand, I wonder if or how my scholarship perpetuates these patterns.