What caught my eye in this text (well, what caught my mind, I guess or…my mind’s eye?) was Strozier’s notion of the elect, because, to me, this is one of the most crucial dimensions of the Book of Revelation that makes it so dangerous, especially in a fundamentalist context. If a fundamentalist group truly believe they are elect, then anything they do could potentially be justified. It reminded me of Calvinism and the notion of predestination, which stated that God had already decided who was elect and who was damned, and there was nothing that could be done to change to which group an individual belonged. This idea gives people who believe they are in the elect a blank check, essentially, which has tremendous destructive potential, especially when considering that rigid, dualistic-thinking fundamentalists may be likely to believe they are members of the elect.
Following this line of thought, I think I’ve picked up on yet another strange contradiction Revelation embodies: it’s an “ugly and dangerous text,” yet it has enacted some positive social change (Strozier 119). This got me thinking: to what degree is any text a rorschach, onto which people project their innermost thoughts, feelings, and desires? How much control does any author have over his or her work? I recall the George W. Bush quote that we were shown from Kurt Eichenwald’s 500 Days, where the president seemed convinced that Gog and Magog were convening in the Middle East; how much of how we interpret any text are we just like Bush, seeing things that may not be there at all?
Hi Eric, the analogy of any given text as a Rorschach test seems fitting enough but it’s worth considering also the extent to which our “innermost thoughts, feelings, and desires” are themselves largely shaped by social forces, including parental, religious, educational, economic and political forces. Would that suggest that there might be certain over-determined ways of reading?