Reflections on God and Money: June 2013

Saturday 29 June 2013

Babylon and the Beast (10)

I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: ‘Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations’. And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I marvelled greatly.

Revelation 17:3-6

The second way that Babylon has influenced all of history is as the scarlet woman, the city that has dominated the nations, is by enticing people away from spiritual values by material extravagance.

As I have been preparing these Reflections on Babylon, the vicar at All Souls Clubhouse where I am based has been preaching through Revelation and yesterday reached chapter 17-18. He likened the way Babylon manifests itself in every age to Doctor Who. Doctor Who is the world’s longest running television science fiction programme (later this year will be its 50^th anniversary) and many actors have portrayed the Doctor. The vicar said that when he was young, the Doctor was played by Tom Baker; I’m older and remember most fondly Patrick Troughton. Although the actors have looked very different and played him in different ways, with different characteristics, he is always the Doctor – always the same person. (This is a link to the sermon: 'Babylon' by Rev'd Mark Prentice).

So with Babylon. It manifests itself in different ways at different times in history using materialism, avarice, covetousness, greed, pride, false witness, slander, idolatry, theft, adultery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, lust, orgies, extravagance and similar behaviour to attract and excite people and to draw them away from God and to compromise their future in his Kingdom (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 & Galatians 5:19-21). It displays different characteristics: it may ride on the back of capitalism or communism or some other political ideology but it is always Babylon, the mother of prostitutes, exercising dominion over peoples and nations.

Do I think we are living in the last days. Could we be alive to see Babylon’s fall, as illustrated in Revelation? We live in the last days because these, as far as the New Testament writers were concerned, stretch from Jesus Christ’s ascension until his return. James, in his epistles, criticises the Christian businessmen for hoarding treasure in the last days (chapter 5:3) and so if it was the last days then, it must be now. But as to whether we live in the very last days, I simply do not know – although I would not be surprised if we were.

The important point, however, is that Babylon manifest itself in every age and the challenge of every generation is to flee it. God calls from heaven, ‘Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.’

But just what does it mean to ‘come out’ of Babylon? Although this call was as relevant to the first people to read Revelation nearly 2,000 years ago as it is to us, how should we interpret it during these early years of the 21^st Century, however long remains before Christ’s return?

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Friday 28 June 2013

Babylon and the Beast (9)

You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Daniel 2: 31-35

I ended last weekend asking to what extent we live in the Babylon symbolised in Revelation: a prostitute dressed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of immorality; a woman who represents the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth?

Babylon has exercised its influence over world history in two ways: first, as the first great world empire influencing the thinking of all the empires that follow; second, as a lifestyle of immorality that manifests itself in different ways at different times.

Babel was the city where people began to build a great tower to reach even to heave in order to make a name for themselves. Although God halted that ambition, Babel flourished into Babylon and ever since it has epitomised the place where people meet their needs and fulfil their ambitions relying on themselves and using material wealth.

King Nebuchadnezzar was the most famous of Babylon’s rulers and is remembered as the one who did the most to expand and beautify the city and secure its reputation as a place of splendour and extravagance. He had a dream but demanded his magicians, enchanters and sorcerers to tell him both the dream and its interpretation, so he could be confident the interpretation was genuine. Only Daniel was able to do that and the above passage is his description of the dream.

Daniel’s interpretation was that Nebuchadnezzar and his empire was the golden head and that three kingdoms would arise later in history: these were, almost certainly, the Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, the last of which divided as represented by the feet made of iron and clay. The great rock that smashes into the feet of the statue is the Kingdom of God striking the Roman Empire, when Jesus of Nazareth announced that it had come. The rock grinds the entire statue to dust that is blown away.

I believe we can see two things in this. First, as the golden head, Babylon stimulated and inspired the materialism of all the succeeding empires; second, as the top of the statue, the golden head was the last to be ground to dust. I think it significant that the focus on Babylon, and its fall, in Revelation 17:1-19:10 comes not long before the return of Jesus Christ.

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Saturday 22 June 2013

Babylon and the Beast (8)

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

Matthew 6:19-23

Yesterday I described some of the more obvious ways that marketing creates desires in us to buy goods and services we neither need nor previously wanted.

Babylon trades in the bodies and souls of people, shaping who we are from a very early age. I have read that attitudes to money develop much earlier in life than any social values or personal codes of morality. As such, it can be very difficult to know who God created us to be and to see what is going on around us in true light.

This brings me to the words of Jesus at the start of today’s Reflection. If our eyes are healthy, our bodies can be full of light. But if they have been blinded by what our capitalist, consumer society offers, our bodies will be full of darkness. And if what passes as the ‘light’ inside us is darkness, how great is the darkness! And it is no wonder if we cannot see where we are or know what to do about it!

Does our blindness extend to the ways that we earn money? I am sometimes surprised when people assume that I must think it wrong for people to work for banks, credit companies and other financial organisations. I am not. I am not against people who own a lot of property, but I am against those who profit by letting their tenants live or work in squalid conditions that can destroy their health; I am not against chemists, but I am against those who create legal highs that can destroy people’s lives. Similarly, I am not against bankers or anyone who works in the financial markets or anyone in the advertising industry, but I am against those who pursue their careers by indiscriminately convincing people to buy credit and other financial products they neither need nor had previously wanted but that can tip them into the misery of debt.

Does our blindness extend to the motivations behind our decisions to spend money? How vulnerable are we to concerns about our credibility and status? How easily is our selfishness and love of luxury exploited? How important is it for us to lay up sufficient treasures on earth, so we can feel secure about our futures?

To what extent are we content living in Babylon?

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