Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club was one of those books that got stuck in my head for a few years. Like all of Palahniuk’s earlier books (his later books seem to indicate his story-telling abilities have been dissolved by his nihilism), he seeks to exploit some aspect of Western Culture and expose us to its troubling underbelly. Here he attacks the kind of nice-guy, consumeristic careerism (its own kind of nihilism) that has eroded any form of purposeful masculinity in our culture. He (quite literally) aims a gun at its head and seeks to kill it. He doesn’t offer any constructive alternatives (Project Mayhem’s aim was simply the destruction of civilization), but he does awaken an army of men to the idea that being the quiet, conformist nice-guys was destroying them and sustaining a soul-crushing society. 

Christians have, for far too long, been trained (and happily complied) with a kind of quiet, respectable role. We’ve had our nice-guy and consumeristic career to play in this Postmodern American Project (PAP) and we’ve played it quite well. We’ve offered little resistance to the whims of political power or social corruption or sexual deviance. We keep showing up at Christmas with the typical protests about someone using ‘X’ instead of Christ. We help out at weddings and funerals (occasionally insisting, with much made of our great courage, that we be allowed to choose which weddings we officiate). We adopt secularism’s definitions (of justice and peace and virtue and love) and then pretend that Jesus blesses all these godless projects. But we play our role of cultural chaplain, largely blessing the direction of the culture at large, some of us troubled by the speed at which the whole thing speeds along, but mostly content to play our largely decorative and irrelevant role. We do it all in the name of some refashioned love, meanwhile, the vocation of salt and light has been largely abandoned.  

But the church is called, often, to be the “bad” guys. I don’t mean the objectively “bad” guys, but I do mean the ones causing all the right kinds of trouble. There is a kind of turmoil that follows the church everywhere it goes in Scripture. Example after example is given to us in the book of Acts of the gospel being preached and the whole city getting turned upside down. The gospel was not a message of peace and love and happiness, it was a message that divided entire cities and led to all sorts of economic turmoil, violence, and preachers needing to sneak out of town in baskets. Paul and Peter aren’t killed because they were doing their best to be a blessing to the Roman Culture and her Polis. They were killed because they heralded a message about the absolute and universal authority of King Jesus and they insisted that it be believed and obeyed by everyone.

While the book of Revelation is marvelously confusing - largely due to terrifically bad readings of it put to almost satire-level fiction in forms like The Left Behind series, it does provide a revelatory look at what the Church is commissioned to be and do in the world. It is a book that promises to reward study and I want to take just a quick bit of it (chapters 5-7, really focusing on a short section of chapter 6) to give us a better understanding of our vocation in the world, and why the church’s mission in the book of Acts (as well as in other times in history) rightly and predictably caused such a ruckus. I also hope we can learn to be the “bad” guys again. 

Revelation 5 opens with a scene that is reflected from a number of different angles throughout the bible. It is a scene packed with meaning and beauty and is worthy of much thought and probably some good songwriting. To see it from other angles read it alongside Acts 1:6-11 (where you can see how the scene starts), Daniel 7, or Psalm 24. But at the heart of the scene is a throne - with God, the one who made heaven and earth, seated on that throne and all creation worshipping this One. In the midst of this universe-wide worship a question, a problem really, arises. It is the question of who will fulfill this One’s purposes for the whole world - purposes of judgment, of glory, of redemption? Who is worthy to open the scroll (which represents all of those purposes executed in its opening)? The answer given in Revelation 5 is the Lion/Lamb of Judah, namely Jesus. As this is revealed a rather remarkable celebration breaks out and we’d be forgiven if we just sat here for a bit, but I want to press on to chapter 6 and the question of what Jesus does when he opens the scroll. In other words, how does Jesus execute his purposes for judgment and redemption in the whole world? 

As he opens the scroll he sends 4 horses of different colors into the world that, well, cause a ruckus. What happens in Acts as a reflection of these goings-on in the heavens is the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2) to empower and send the church into the world. Peter Leithart has argued compellingly in his commentary on Revelation that these horsemen represent the Spirit-empowered ministry of the church - or at least, the visible cultural-political effects of the Spirit-empowered mission of the church. In other words, these “4 horsemen of the Apocalypse” don’t represent some far off future evil, but instead, these “bad” guys are the church, or at the very least, the intended effects of the church’s faithful ministry. 

Let’s look at the horsemen:

1st is the White Horse who comes with a bow and a crown. He comes to conquer. Here is the gospel announcement of Jesus’ reign over all the earth. Here is the message of his death, resurrection and ascension to the throne. The Church is empowered by the Spirit and sent by God into all the cities and neighborhoods and industries and nations to declare the Good News of the Reign of Jesus and to call everyone and everything to believe in him and to bow to Him. This is the message we are sent to embody and to declare - un-compromised and unapologetic.

Next is the bright red horse. Here is what this message does as it is sent into the world. It takes away peace and creates division and strife. As Jesus said concerning his own ministry - he came to turn father against son, mother against daughter - he came to bring a division that would go all the way down. The church proclaims a message that does not leave the world as it is, it is not a message that can be simply ignored or relegated to the religious or self-help section of the book store. It is a message that redivides humanity and brings division and strife. In other words, the church brings strife. It doesn’t bring strife because it sets out to physically harm people. It brings strife because it proclaims a message that requires one of two responses: faith and obedience or rebellion and suppression. 

3rd comes the black horse. Its rider carries a scale and we see how the impact of the church’s mission is not merely in the realm of ideas and theology but transforms the economics and politics of the cities and the nations. The whole economies of places are transformed by the mission of the church. In the book of Acts a number of riots are started because the growth of the church meant the collapse of certain corrupt industries (Acts 19), others began explicitly because of the jealousy of the Jews - holding onto the old bread rather than receiving the wine of the New Covenant. But the point here is the church in her Spirit-empowered ministry is not the good guys, simply reinforcing and expanding the economic and social elements of the culture. Their ministry reorders everything around the person of Jesus and belief in him. 

Lastly comes the pale horse made famous by Wyatt Earp. This horse brings death. The church brings death too. One way or another the church’s message, the message of the gospel, is a message of death. As Lewis said in his masterpiece, ’Til We Have Faces - “Die before you die, there is no chance after.” We call all people to come to the waters of baptism and die - before they die. The gospel comes as a message of grace, one which bids people die in these waters, or it comes as a message of judgment - the stench of death to those who will know only judgment (2 Cor. 2:16). We do not bring any sort of neutral message but a command from our King, who bids all men come and die and then be raised in him. This is no feel-good message that can fit nicely into a chaplain’s role to secularism. It is a message of maximum disruption. 

The result of this 4-fold ministry of the church in the book of Revelation is laid out for us in chapter 7. It’s a confusing image - 144,000 all accounted for, who are truly a number that can’t be counted. Here is a set number of people (God won’t lose any) who cannot be counted from every nation on earth. The result of this “bad” ministry is a people redeemed from every nation on earth. A people who have died before they died. A people whose lives and vocations in the world are unsettled and transformed by the rule of the Lion/Lamb. A people divided from all the others, enemies for the sake of Jesus. A people sent into the world with the gospel of our Ruling King conquering and to conquer. 

May we joyfully learn to stop behaving as if our job were to comfort unbelief and to keep the peace. Stop conforming to unbelief’s expectations regarding who the “good” guys are. Stop trying to be respectable. It might start by insisting on going to church, insisting on breaking bread and drinking wine, and insisting on giving thanks and singing loudly the songs of the Lamb. 

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” Revelation 5:12