Y’all are wrong about Revelations. All of you are totally wrong. These words from the Word are plain truth, exactly as written so don’t get it twisted:
John 1:1—”In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Words from the Word.
Revelation 1:1-3—”The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants[a] the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. 3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.”
Are we wrong though? Not everything fits in a nice, Euclidian box. Can you explain a rose by a name that reasons into a nice syllogism? The world God made is much more than distinct angles and half-tones made of black ink. Our world is technicolor. It boogles us.
Literally
And here he comes, the dutiful congregant from Victory Life Faith Center, “You gotta fix that post! Boogle ain’t even a word! Sounds inappropriate—the syllables too close to… well, you KNOW. Can’t be usin’ that kinda language!”
I can use that kinda word, and I have.
I lit a fire in DC so he ain’t finished yet, “Y’all NEEEED CHEEEEZUS! We all sinners! We all done fell short of the GLORAYYYY OF GAWED!”
Then the PAREECHER slides in where two or three are gathered: ‘If you ain’t keepin’ that money flowin’ to the church, you ain’t got enough faith! No redemption, no breakthrough for you!’
And the Bishop? Oh, his crotch fire is fully lit, “THU BAIBLE—especially REVELAYSHUN… PURAISE CHEEEEZUS!—is the sanctified, holy WARDUH OF GAWD! PURAYSE DA LAWD! Anybody readin’ any other meanin’ ’cept the plain literal text is BLASPHEMIN!”
Then there is John 15:4-6, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
My dad would ask: “Are you a tree?” Psalm 1:3 says the righteous person is “like a tree planted by streams of water.” If we policed Scripture with the same rigid literalism we just heard, we’d be out here barking at actual bark instead of seeing rooted, fruitful life in God.
It’s the same mistake some people make with Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”—
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe…
Demand strict dictionary literalism on the nonsense words and you murder the heroic joy, the rhythm, the vorpal sword slicing through the Jabberwock. The poem still works through sound, imagery, and power.
Revelation does the same. John calls it “the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1:1) — apocalyptic poetry that skewers Rome (“Babylon the Great” on seven hills, drunk on the blood of the saints) and warns the early churches with beasts, harlots, marks, and falling stars.
It’s Not Just a THUH BAIBULL Thing
There are three cadres of zealotry worth naming — the Kinship Coordination Collective (KCC), the Khomeinists, and the Righteousness Anxiety Guild (RAG). Each represents a different flavor of straight‑line thinking that tries to force a fractal world into a Bauhaus box. All three are trapped in postures that make ambiguity feel like a threat.
The KCC specializes in passive‑aggressive lectures about your supposed heresies while wearing the facial expression of someone who just opened a refrigerator and found something expired. Their worldview is a two‑column spreadsheet: Oppressors and the Oppressed. To belong, you must demonstrate your place in the latter column, preferably with trembling sincerity.
Copilot said this about Khomeinism—it is the political‑religious doctrine developed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which fused Twelver Shia theology with a revolutionary theory of clerical rule known as velayat‑e faqih (guardianship of the Islamic jurist). It broke sharply with a thousand‑year Shia tradition of political quietism by asserting that Islamic jurists hold supreme religious and political authority, even above ordinary religious obligations. Khomeinism reframed Shiism into an activist, populist, anti‑imperialist ideology that justified replacing Iran’s monarchy with a theocratic republic led by a Supreme Leader. Since Khomeini’s death, loyalty to his doctrine has remained the litmus test for political legitimacy in the Islamic Republic, shaping both domestic governance and Iran’s influence among Shia movements abroad.
Khomeinism fuses religious certainty and political absolutism to elevate a single interpretive authority above all others. It treats dissent as deviation and complexity as contamination.
RAG leaves you feeling dirty. Nothing you do or say is enough. Even if you tithe well and are a frequent respondent to the altar call, confessing your sins with fervor, the stink of sin never quite leaves the room. They leave you feeling spiritually unwashed no matter how many times you’ve confessed, tithed, volunteered, or wept at the altar. Their liturgy is a weekly inventory of imagined and actual transgressions, and the atmosphere they create is one of perpetual moral draftiness — as if righteousness were a leaky roof you can never quite repair.
陰 is the Only Truth
There are three cadres of zealotry worth naming—the Kinship Coordination Collective (KCC), the Khomeinists, and the Righteousness Anxiety Guild (RAG). Each represents a different flavor of straight-line thinking that tries to force a fractal world into a Bauhaus box. All three are trapped in postures that make ambiguity feel like a threat.
The common thread among them is the conviction that we are fundamentally broken, and only their particular diagnostic tool can reveal the full extent of the damage. The KCC doubts your sincerity. The Khomeinist doubts your loyalty. The RAG doubts your purity. And in each case, the doubt lingers long after the sermon, meeting, or struggle session ends.
One more, Jim Palmer—a former evangelical megachurch pastor turned deconstruction guide—recently dropped another of his signature “Ten Things” lists on Facebook. He frames religion as a persuasive system that first convinces you you’re separated from God and defective, then sells itself as the only cure. The list names real manipulative patterns: manufactured brokenness, distrust of your own mind, truth locked in a book, tribal “us vs. them,” and so on.
Behind the insights simmers unresolved resentment. We in the faith community are still “spose to” do something—abandon the old structures on his terms, adopt his new orthodoxy of non-orthodoxy, and properly repent for ever having believed. Swap one set of rigid expectations for another.
To which I reply: good luck with that. Humans slip their leash on the regular. God can’t be leashed, as much as we (or Palmer) wish that were possible. The RAG crowd and deconstruction voices like his are long on “supposed-to’s” for both God and the rest of us.
Die to Live
DC is back. He’s worried about me: “Hey now, let’s not joke about that. People get the wrong idea. We need to be careful with our words. The enemy prowls, and confusion is his playground.”
Relax, DC. The heading quotes a marriage video series from Horizon Community. Nobody’s summoning darkness. Nobody’s playing with fire. It’s just a phrase — and a good one.
What the phrase means to me is simple: we should be willing to let die the attachments that pull us away from Christ. The inherited “sposed to’s.” The scripts that keep us small, afraid, or obedient to the wrong things.
One of the great secrets of my faith isn’t a secret at all. C.S. Lewis published it in The Great Divorce: the thing you cling to that isn’t God will eventually devour you, and the thing you surrender becomes the doorway to life. That’s “die to live.” Not the RAG frame’s purity panic. Just the quiet courage to let the false things die so the true things can breathe.
道路、真理、永生
All of us have a fixed lifespan. On average it’s about four-score years. The first third or so is preparation. The middle third is doing what we prepared to do. The final third is a slow release of who we were and what we became. It ends in a lovely cruise on Charon’s ship.
I’m in that final third. My penultimate boss fight days are behind me. And . . . without rehashing my story, battling for “‘spose to” or “coulda, woulda, shoulda” isn’t healthy for me. So, these disciplines I practice keep me centered and as strong as I can be
五重之道
- Give grace first and keep giving grace first until doing so becomes unwise.
- Serve as service becomes possible.
- Treat others the way you want to be treated.
- Find your people and stay in fellowship
- Choose a spiritual path and walk it steadily.
Last, DC, pray about “die to live”. Because all of us will stand on a mountain top looking toward the Valley of the Shadow of Death and know with certainty that our reservation with Charon is confirmed. What we can control is the legacy we leave behind.
📖✨ 🙅♂️🙅♀️❌📚➡️😵💫 🗣️➡️🧠💡✨ 🌑✨💡🌑✨
😇📜 👀➡️⏳⚡ 👼📨✍️ 👂📣📖🙏
🌹❓➡️🤨📐❌ 🌈🎨🌀🤯
🙋♂️⛪😬 “🫢🫢🫢❗” 😑🔥🧨DC
🎤🙌🔥⛪💸💸 🧔♂️🔥🗣️“THU BAIBULLLL”📣🔥
🌿🍇➡️🔥 🌳❓🤔 🌊🌳🍃✨ 🐶🐕🦺🌳❌
🗡️🐉⚔️ 🎭📜🔥🌆7️⃣⛰️ 👹💃⭐🐾
🏛️📦❌🌀🌐 3️⃣👥⚔️ KCC 😒📊 ☪️🔥📿⚔️ RAG 😰🧼🧽😞
🧽🧽🧽➡️😩 📚🔒🧠❌ 👥🆚👥 😤🔥😤🔥
🤷♂️🔄🧍♂️🐕🦺 🧑🏫➡️😡📜 “Ten Things” ✍️😤 ♻️📏➡️📏♻️
DC 🚨😟 “🕳️👿❗” 😌✋😎 🔥❌😈❌
⚰️➡️🌱✨ 🪞🧠🧹 🕊️💨🌱✨
⛩️🛤️🧘♂️ 4️⃣⏳ 👶➡️🛠️➡️🏃♂️➡️🛶🕯️ ⛵💀🖤
🧘♂️📿 🙏💛 🤝✨ 👥❤️🔥 🛤️🚶♂️🌄
DC 🙏 “Die to live” ⛰️➡️🌑➡️⛵ 🪦➡️🌱✨
🔥🌍❌ 🧠🧩🌪️✔️