Opus 2026-079: Uncharted Revelation: Going Full Dystopian

I don’t know when I first started seeing this word “dystopian” used in print.  For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about.  I think I finally looked it up.  I think it’s a good word to describe the change that takes place between chapters 3 and 4 of Revelation.  The first three chapters are visions, it says “in the spirit”, but there is at least some element of connection with reality.

All that is put aside when we enter into chapter 4.  Once again, John is “in the spirit”, but the whole feel of the Revelation changes.  The word dystopian comes to mind.  I was trying to put myself into some of the scenes, to get a feel for what the individuals involve my be going through.  It was almost impossible.  And it was definitely impossible to do it without that feel of dystopia.

How do I describe my vision of dystopia?  I think the best is the feel I got from the brief exposure to one of the Conan the Barbarian movies.  I think I tried to watch one of them and got partway through but nowhere near the finish.  There was a mood in the photography that put me off.  I think of the main character, Conan.  It struck me at a certain point that this giant of a man never did any physical workouts.  You don’t get that kind of muscle mass, just walking across the country and swinging a sword occasionally.  I noticed that massive square jaw was never shaved.  I noticed that that flowing hair was never washed.  I know he never took a shower at least in the parts I saw, yet here we have this tall, stately, giant, striding across the set.  It goes without saying that we never saw him hunting or farming.  We never find him digging up root vegetables to eat.  I never saw him mending a broken strap or anything else that would bring reality to the picture.  In addition to that there seem to be a filter over the camera that made everything dark and depressing.

That is the picture that I get as I continue reading in Revelation.  I think the most important words for understanding Revelation are found in that phrase “in the spirit”.  That tells me that this is similar to a dream, or with possibly the greater accuracy of a vision.  I just had a dream last night.  It was a nightmare.  I was back teaching middle school.  It went downhill from there.  There was nothing terrifying that took place except the general sense of frustration that nothing made sense.  I’m sure that if I had a psychologist sitting across from me, he could analyze the parts that I told him, but for me, they are a total mystery.  Why did that student appear?  What happened to my grade book?  Why did this classroom have so many doors?  None of it made sense, but all of that had a basis.

So as I began chapter 4, I began a new journey with a different attitude.  My sense of interpreting things literally has been put on a back shelf where I can reach it if I needed it.  For the most part, I’m going to try to also put my skepticism on the back shelf and see if there’s anything I can find in here that could possibly be of any use before the rapture.

Onward into the uncharted depths of Revelation.  By that I mean, uncharted by me, not uncharted by the multitude of interpreters of the book.

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