I like to believe that a truth isn’t a truth if it can’t be understood multiple ways and still be true. If you can’t do that with it; if you can’t twist it and shrink it and stretch it and look through it the other way, then you haven’t yet reached the truth; you still have some artifice to clear out.
So. Armageddon. Could it be true? Well, the end of days, one way or another, almost certainly. A holy war on a hill? …Dunno…maybe?
But I prefer to read religious texts as sort of codified metaphors, because, I mean, why wouldn’t you? So, I wouldn’t personally be inclined to take it at face value.
I am not, however, a religious scholar, so I’m going to veer off now, to avoid flamboyantly displaying my ignorance.
I am a fan of the apocalypse.
I’m a fan of the tower moment, when it all comes crashing down.
Let it all burn, I say.
But I’m only a fan because I have hope that they are not the end of the story. In fact, I have faith that they are not the end of the story. I know they are not. I know that they are, in fact, the beginning. That they are necessary stages of our true becoming. And you can’t fucking convince me otherwise.
Does there come a time when the righteous parts of us need to slay our sin? I’m not sure I’d say it that way. But does there come a time when we need to let our sin die? Undoubtedly. Whether that’s personal or collective; we can’t keep limping on with the mistakes of the past clamped fast to our ailing shoulders for eternity. Something’s got to give – if not our sin, then it will be us. Just natural consequence.
Either way, when it all falls, our world must be reshaped in a new image. Unrecognisable. Irrevocably transformed. If we look at it from this side, it might look like death. Or, worse; annihilation. But, maybe, if we squint just right, it could look like transcendence.