The Book of Revelations is separated into different visions. The first vision is revealed as specific prophecies about specific locations in a specific time. Each of the messages follows a similar pattern. Chapter two contains four such messages. The first message is to the church in Ephesus. Quickly skimming through that message one word stands out. In verse six Jesus says that he hates the actions of the Nicolaitans. Now one of the key themes that I include in my model is that God expresses love. Thus, the use of the word “hate” would be difficult to reconcile against my model if it was used towards a person. A remark that says that Jesus hates causes concern that my model may crumble.

The second message in chapter two is addressed to the church in Smyrna. Glancing through this message I notice that the word conquer appears. It was also in the earlier message but it had not yet caught my attention. Now that I see it a second time I note that it must be important. What strikes me as odd is that I generally associate conquering with war, which is conflict. Again, I am concerned that my model may well crash against the rocks in the Book of Revelations. I will need to resolve this point later.

The third message is addressed to the church in Pergamum. It begins by identifying Jesus as the one with the sharp two-edged sword. As you can see, Revelations has many references to war. War is on the opposite end of the spectrum from where I plot God on my tiny little graph. It also seems out of context with the message that Jesus preached in the gospels. For example, when he was being taken captive one of his followers used a sword to harm one of the crowd that had come to arrest Jesus. Jesus then healed the wounded person and said to put the sword away. The allusion there seems to be that the sword is not a tool that Jesus required. Thus this reference in Revelations to Jesus as the one with the sword is going to need to be resolved.

The fourth message is addressed to the church in Thyatira. Most of this message focuses on a woman named Jezebel. Jesus begins by saying that he is disappointed that the church in Thyatira tolerates Jezebel. He says that he has tried to get her to repent. He then goes on to say that he is going to cause Jezebel to suffer, her children will die and those who commit sexual sins with her will become ill. There are several points to deal with here.

The most obvious is the relationship between Jesus and Jezebel. Relational transitions are exactly the type of dialogue that my model is supposed to clarify. So, before going any further, I am going to delve deeper into the relationship between Jesus and Jezebel.

The concept I have encapsulated in my model is that humans have habitual behaviors that fall into certain identified patterns. In earlier articles I linked the identified styles of conflict resolution to a four dimensional grid. The two dimensions that we can represent on a simple graph are love and dissonance. The graph shown above identifies the horizontal and vertical axii and shows the seven styles of conflict resolution.

Lacking any other information the place that I think represents Jezebel’s starting location is in the tranquil state. That is the condition that people generally prefer. It takes less effort than does transforming or aligned. And it has less antagonism than do either conflict or chaos.

Next we hear that Jezebel had been a Christian. It is my hypothesis that Jesus acts with love and dissonance. Note that if we subsequently find that Jesus is acting with hate my model will break. At this point all of this is still conjecture. But if you will indulge me as we walk through this exercise, you will see that I still have Jezebel plotted in a tranquil state and I now show two vectors labeled love and dissonance to represent the influence that Jesus is endeavoring to exert on Jezebel. The equilibrium has been disturbed and something is going to happen.

The problem with dissonance is that we humans enjoy the habit of reacting to dissonance with anger. Jezebel had previously been happy with her life and Jesus is asking her to change. She resists that change and enters into conflict with Jesus. Her own reaction of anger to the dissonance pushed her to the right. Her practice of sexual gratification is an effective distracter that counters the effect of the dissonance. Jezebel is back in equilibrium. Her anger counters Jesus love. Her distracters block out the dissonance. She is in conflict, but her life is in balance and she probably thinks that little can disturb her.

The next move in this dance is for Jesus to call Jezebel to repent. We know that people are good at filtering dissonance. We learn how to tune out the background noise so that we can concentrate on conversation. Sometimes we also block out the information that would be useful. Filtering noise is a useful behavior that we need to learn to regulate. Similarly, we learn to filter and block love. Jesus attempts to pull Jezebel back from conflict by exerting love. Jezebel resists the call to repent and stays in conflict.

In an earlier article I describe the brother of the prodigal son as being in conflict because he obeyed. Here I am saying that Jezebel is in conflict because she disobeys. When we set our own direction we are not aligned. When we set our own direction we are in conflict. What we have here is a battle of wills between Jezebel and Jesus. It is implicit in Christian theology that Jesus has the stronger will and has the ability to alter this situation. The reason I am here in Revelations, however, is to test whether or not I can explain Jesus actions using the vectors of love and dissonance.

I believe that what happens next is that Jezebel is thrown into chaos. After all of the other forces have cancelled each other, Jesus sends a wave of dissonance to Jezebel. When we are in conflict and we perceive dissonance, we move to chaos. The number of calamities sent to Jezebel cannot be ignored. She cannot filter that number of misfortunes. The reason that Jezebel is in chaos is because Jesus is exerting love and dissonance. I realize that there are implications to this, but let us first focus on the original quest and then tidy up the other issues in a bit.

I suggest we limit the discussion at this point solely to the question of whether or not we can account for why Jezebel is in chaos by using this model and assuming that Jesus only acts with love and dissonance. Please pause and ponder this.

1. Can you see that Jezebel was in conflict with Jesus?
2. Do you agree that with all that is about to happen to her, Jezebel’s life will become chaotic?
3. Do you agree that it is possible to express the transitions that Jezebel has gone through using this simple model?
4. Do you agree that we can get this result if the only two forces that Jesus applies to this relationship are love and dissonance?

I hope you are still aligned with my vision that this model can help us understand human relationships. I expect, however, that you have reservations. I believe that this simple model does demonstrate that we can plot the dance of the relationships as two individuals influence each other. The problem is that one of the individuals in that last illustration is not acting as a human being. Thus we leave a simple illustration of human behavior and enter into the bigger question regarding the existence of God. While I might have persuaded you that this simple relational model has value it may well be that you doubt the existence of the divine presence in that prior relational encounter. Stating this as a dialectic, the polarities of this question are whether God is omnipotent or whether there is no God. Do you agree that I have captured the core of that question in this evaporating cloud?

I suggest we examine the bottom side of this dialectic first. Would you agree that we have great difficulty controlling our lives? Do you agree that we act in wise intelligent ways and find totally unexpected results? We end one relationship to start another only to find that the new relationship is a poor bargain. We choose one vacation destination over another only to find that we are totally miserable. We leave one job for another and regret the decision. Over and over again we think and plan and calculate and fail. We live in a non-linear system. Our efforts to cause one effect fail and come back around unexpectedly.

Consider Jezebel. She has delved into sexual promiscuity and now she and her companions are ill. Is this something that we can explain totally and fully without any resort to divine beings? Typically we are content to explain this non-linear system by saying that there are germs and viruses and that if you act in an unsafe way you run the risk of contracting a disease. We can explain Jezebel’s descent into chaos without in any way resorting to theology.

Now, for a moment, contemplate the mystical view of the world that was held by the ancients. From their perspective, every illness came directly from some god or goddess. If we adopt that perspective and use it to define the top side of this dialectic we end up with the following.

The problem is that today the top side of this dialectic is just not satisfactory. We know too much about the universe and about this system we live in to be content with that explanation. Would you agree with me, however, that in the time that the Book of Revelations was written that this explanation would have been widely held as true? If you can accept that explanation, then let us set this point aside for a moment, wrap up a few other loose ends, and accept that chapters two and three of the Book of Revelations were written in an ancient time and addressed to an ancient people who had a different understanding of science than we do today. Now, personally I am not content with that explanation, but I ask you to indulge me and set this dialectic aside until we deal with a few other issues.
 
 

There are three loose ends that I highlighted earlier in this exploration of chapter two in the Book of Revelations. Those loose ends revolve around the words hate, conquest and sword. The best way to understand what the author of the Book of Revelations means by those words is to find other usages of those words within that same work.

The word sword is associated with Jesus in the following verses:
1:16 Jesus holds a two-edged sword in his mouth.
2:12 Jesus has a two-edged sword.
2:16 Jesus threatens to make war with the sword that is held in his mouth.
13:10 Jesus warns that anyone who kills with a sword will be killed by a sword.
19:15 Jesus has a sword in his mouth to smite the nations.
19:21 Again says that the sword is held in his mouth.

I ask you to contemplate this. Do you know of any mythical warrior who held a sword in his mouth when he went into battle? I hope that you can see this as a poetic image that the word spoken by Jesus is the tool that he uses when he conquers. The word is the tool that comes from the mouth.

As for the word conquer, we are given significant hints about what it means at the end of each of the four messages in chapter two. For example, we are told in verse 2:11 that those who conquer will not be harmed by the second death. Conquerors are the people that win the battle. Thus, the word conquer applied here to people who are going to be put to death implies that this term is not tied to warfare. Other translations shed light on this by translating that word as overcome. I can overcome my grief. We shall overcome prejudice. In those two sentences I expressed a transformational process. I suggest, then, that when we see the word conquer we consider the alternative translation of transformation. Thus we could read verse 2:7 as “To everyone who is transformed, I will give permission to eat from the tree of life…”

By analogy I suggest we consider the transformation of Peter. Peter was the one who wielded a sword when Jesus was about to be captured. Later Peter transformed people through his preaching. The sword was shifted from Peter’s hand to Peter’s mouth. Peter was transformed and Peter transformed others.

And that gets us to the word hate. In verses 2:6 Jesus says that he hates the behaviors of the Nicolaitans. In contrast, in verse 2:2 he says that the Ephesusians are right in not tolerating certain behavior. I suggest that the usage of the word hate is here a parallel to the concept of intolerance. The person is loved. The actions are not to be tolerated. You do not stop loving your child when they write their name on your freshly painted wall. But you use dissonance to help them understand that their behavior must change. Consider the words in verse 3:19: “I reprove and discipline those whom I love.”

Please ponder these points and see if my logic holds.

When you are ready we need to expand from the tribulations of Jezebel to the tribulation of the world. It is there that we should find a better resolution to the dialectic I left suspended earlier.