Posts Tagged evil
Behind the Veil: Avengers
Posted by annaldavis in Everything Else on May 29, 2012
Most of us know, or at least suspect, that we can’t see many of the things that really matter. We desperately want an unseen world to exist, and yet at the same time we fear its existence.
We speak of ghosts and haunted places, miracles and prayer, vampires and zombies. We toss these words around, maybe play a few video games, watch the Avengers, and then go back to our regular everyday lives based what we can see with our own two eyes. What we can quantify. If we can see it, measure it, size it up – then we can control it.
We feel safer that way. But it’s an illusion. Reality is behind the veil. Because behind the veil exists an unseen world far more beautiful and dangerous than anything we’ve ever seen with our own two eyes.
Behind the veil, I’m the hulk. So are you. Zombies walk among us, as do evil aliens from another planet. We’re locked in cages, held captive by our own minds and victimized by jailers who are themselves held captive against their will. It’s why we cheer for Captain America, why we tolerate Iron Man’s narcissism, why we feel a thrill when Thor holds his hammer up for the lightning. We like superheroes because we need them. Humanity is a mess down here. And we know it. Despite our many efforts to shirk our own humanity, we know we’re fallen and broken and desperately lost.
If you need proof of that, then you haven’t yet lived enough life. Or watched the news. Or thoughtfully examined the problem of suffering.
Behind the veil, our souls could starve to death. Loki and his Chitauri do their best, trying to turn us against each other. If all else fails, Loki will reach out and touch our vulnerable hearts with his scepter, making us like him.
But there is hope. Not everything behind the veil is lost.
Nick Fury: “And there came a day… a day unlike any other… when Earth’s mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat… to fight the foes no single superhero could withstand… on that day, The Avengers were born.”
Behind the veil, we’re the avengers. You and me. The angry hulk, egotistical Stark, conflicted Romanoff, lonely Captain America, Thor and his family struggles, human but skilled Hawkeye. There’s a little bit of each in all of us, I think. We could easily destroy each other. But if we work together…
Behind the veil, we can unite against evil and avenge what’s been lost. We can fall in line behind that one perfect superhero, and take up our weapons against all the forces of darkness. We can do this, because that’s what the Church was created to do. As Captain America said “There is only one God.” And if that God is for us, then who can be against us?
May we have courage to look behind the veil. And more courage still to LIVE behind it, to engage the battle that’s been raging among us. Unseen.
pluralism and the END of the WORLD
Posted by annaldavis in Everything Else on June 7, 2010
This is probably one of my more dramatic post titles, and if WordPress had a soundtrack widget I imagine there would be some intense thematic music in the background. Maybe if this were a speech instead of a blog, I would stand at the podium, wild-eyed, staring everyone down before spitting out the words “pluralism! and. the. END. OF. THE. WORLD!!!” I’m sure I would be convincing, all 4’10″ of me (because I can be convincing, you know).
So this is a weighty topic and while it deserves a heavy hand I certainly am not in the mood for that tonight. VBS with a bunch of screaming happy kids (some with waterguns) will do that to a person. But here we go…
Pluralism says that “all paths to truth are valid,” even opposing paths. This is the prevalent philosophy of American culture and much of the West, and it won’t be long before globalization spreads pluralism to all corners of the earth. While I believe that working together to achieve unity and world peace is ALWAYS good in the natural world, the spiritual message behind pluralism leads us down a dark lie-based alley. This is because to achieve unity through religious pluralism, we ignore our differences to such an extent that we think we are spiritually united with other faiths, when in fact two such faiths may believe opposite things. This is a false spiritual unity. (For the unabridged version of these thoughts click here, here, and here.)
I suspect that the false spiritual unity brought about through pluralism is related to the Spirit of Babylon (the great harlot) that we read about in Revelation. The Babylonian spirit is known for how it puffs up, flatters, and causes us to think that we are everything, that we can be like God, and that there is no other besides us. This is what took humanity out of God’s presence in the Garden of Eden, and I’m beginning to think that it will be the same spirit that ushers in the kingdom of the antichrist at the end of the world. It makes sense, doesn’t it? To come full circle, back to the original deceit.
So just imagine with me another 30 years or so of pluralism, where I don’t talk about Jesus and you don’t talk about Muhammad (or we ignore some of the more crazy parts, like the whole “I am the way, the truth and the life” bit) and we all begin to feel a type of synergy with each other. The nations and governments get really cozy. Sure there will continue to be wars, but the overall flow of things will tend to bring us closer together. The nations will NEED each other like never before, we will be interdependent. Enmeshed. Anything that threatens this blissful “we are one-ness” will be seen as extremism. Old-fashioned. Mythic. Less evolved. Primitive.
And it’s all a costume, based on a philosophy that promotes false unity. So what happens when you build a modern-day Tower of Babel on a lie?
The same thing that happened to the first Tower of Babel, only this time a beast will be waiting in the wings. Check out Revelation 17 and 18 to see how this will play out in the spiritual realm, that beautiful and dangerous place we cannot yet see.
Of course I don’t know what will happen over the next 30 years. Sometimes I think God laughs at us, down here, trying to figure these things out with our limited intelligence. I don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. Do you? I mean, do you REALLY know?
oh, Babylon
Posted by annaldavis in Everything Else on May 24, 2010
Last week CNN ran a travel story titled “The Call of Babylon.” Here’s what it had to say:
This ancient city on the banks of the Euphrates River is more than four thousand years old and was once the home of Nebuchadnezzar, who built the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
“Babylon is definitely impressive,” Dauge told CNN. “It’s known throughout the world. Even the casual tourist has some collective memory of a place like Babylon, when you talk about people like Nebuchadnezzar.”
Located 88 kilometers (55 miles) south of Baghdad, Babylon was extensively reconstructed by Saddam Hussein, meaning little of the original city is visible.
Let’s hang for a minute on that last phrase: “little of the original city is visible.” What about INVISIBLE?
You know how some places are so powerful they seem to have a life of their own? Like New York, for example. Or Vegas. Or Paris. Babylon was like that — it was so great, and so impressive a city that although the ancient Babylonian empire fell in 539 BC, its spirit continues to affect us today and will do so for some time.
We know this because Revelation 17 and 18 call it “Babylon the Great,” saying that Babylon is like a harlot that seduces all the nations, as well as the kings of the earth, merchants of the earth, and the peoples and multitudes. Before we get stuck on this point — whether Revelation is literal or figurative, whether any of this even applies to us today — let’s just for the sake of argument say that the actual physical city of Babylon, covered in dust and (apparently) by Saddam Hussein’s reconstruction site, is not our problem.
It’s the Spirit of Babylon that we need to be worried about.
So what, exactly, makes the Babylonian spirit so incredibly powerful so as to survive the ages and win a spot in the great war described in Revelation?
Allow me to speculate for a minute before I get to my point. Keep in mind that Babylon was originally established by Noah’s great-grandson Nimrod (Genesis 10) between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. Coincidentally, this is also the suspected site of the Garden of Eden although no one has seen it since God kicked out Adam and Eve. But because people lived hundreds of years in those days, Noah’s family may have heard rumors of its possible location. Could this be why one of the earliest records use the word “Babilli” which means: gateway to the gods? Maybe Nimrod had heard the stories, and when he set up his territories he said “yep, over there. That’s where we think it might be. I will call it Babilli, because that is the gateway.”
So stick with me here…
What did the serpent say to Eve in the garden, about eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:4-5)?
1. You surely shall not die!
2. You will be like God.
What does the spirit of Babylon say, according to Isaiah 47?
1. I shall be a queen forever.
2. I am, and there is no one besides me. (God identifies Himself with this exact phrase, calling Himself the “I AM” and in Isaiah 45:5 we read “I am the LORD, and there is no other. There is no other God besides me.”)
Could it be that the Babylonian spirit is SO POWERFUL because it was the original worldview that brought down humanity, in the Garden?
What a diabolically amazing feat, to separate the crowning glory of creation from the Creator. It would likely become one of Satan’s prized ideas. One of his favorite spirits.
“Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city!”
