The Beast

I honestly believe that the standard bureaucratic hive-mind is the single best manifestation of the Beast in John’s Apocalypse.

It works best if you envision the bureaucratic hive-mind as a beast, not a person. There are people involved, but no single person can steer this thing. Like the Borg, the Beast absorbs individuals. Very few people are completely lost to it, but The Beast is willing to accept some portion so that the individual is forced to compartmentalize his/her conscious self. It’s the difference between a mark on the hand or a mark on the forehead whether anyone becomes a fully committed servant of the Beast.

So this Beast wallows in fear of accountability. You might think that petty in-fighting would tear it apart, but the Beast thrives on that sort of inefficiency. When every element within a bureaucracy strives to avoid blame for something, it effectively dissipates all blame. Fear is the fire that keeps it alive.

Meanwhile, it remains utterly inhumane, and heartless in every meaning of the word. And there is a certain momentum, like a perverse entropy, so that any security measure implemented once is likely permanent in one way or another, while more are added later. Security measures become sacred. This is the worship of the Beast — fear and security.

And this is the government of the US.

Barring any unexpected events in the near future, we shall have Trump as our next president. He’s not so much a fighter as the ultimate deal maker, so it remains to be seen how he will confront the Beast. I have no doubt he is aware of the Beast on some level, and may well understand what makes it tick. Whether his peculiar brand of genius will carry him through any efforts to work around the Beast remains to be seen. At the very least, the Beast will be bruised and some heads will roll, so to speak.

But Trump won’t be fighting for you and me. He’ll be fighting for himself. Like everything else in our world, sometimes we can discern a benefit from the battles between those who have no awareness of God’s moral character. That is, we can find ways to exploit things for the glory of God. Never let go of the understanding that God steers human politics much like herding cattle; He’s in charge and they have no clue. They exclude His revelation from their minds, so He excludes them from His counsel. He’s also not likely to tell us much about His plans specifically because He has already made it clear it’s none of our business (“It is not for you to know…” Acts 1:6-8). What He has done is show us enough of His character to help us discern opportunities when they arrive.

Don’t read Revelations as a plot-line of events to come, but as a parable of character and tendency. That is, read the narrative as an exploration of how the Beast operates. There have been many manifestations of the Beast throughout history and more will come. The Harlot Church keeps popping up, too. Particular instances come and go, but the character of these things never change. Nor does God’s character change, which is also revealed in the Apocalypse. Don’t get lost in the details as if you are reading a script of future events.

Our hearts know these things. It is our minds that need the training so it can read the imperatives of conviction written on the heart by God’s finger. Did you think the stone tablets God gave Moses were so almighty important in themselves? I’ll challenge you to search for New Testament passages that reference God writing His divine Laws into our hearts. That’s how God does things, and we read them back into our awareness as convictions. Obey those convictions and your awareness of your heart will fully awaken to guide you to a strong grasp on what God expects of you.

We need a new psychology that accounts for the heart-mind. That’s the only way we can be ready for the warnings written into John’s Revelation. It’s the only way to understand the Beast.