Marks
Resist Totalizing Systems that Reject God
No Christian wants to take Revelation’s mark of the beast. Those who do, Revelation tells us, end up in perdition. Yet what is the mark of the beast, and how will we know to avoid it? Is it a tattoo on the forehead or a microchip in the right hand? Speculation abounds, leaving the follower of Christ leery if not superstitious. The mark’s particular form, not clear from Revelation’s passage, may be less important than its nature and effect, both of which Revelation makes clearer. The scriptures give us what we need to know. And they do so once again in this case.
The full passage makes the mark’s nature clearer. The passage says that the beast’s number, this signifier that the condemned accept, is the notorious 666. The passage further says that 666 is man’s number. God made man, after all, on the sixth day. But more to the point, man’s number six is one short of God’s perfect number seven. In scriptural thinking, the one-short six is an imperfection. And 666 being so imperfect is an insult. Humans, under the beast’s rule set against God, are worse than nothing. But that small insight is only a part of the full story. Revelation’s passage makes the effect of taking the mark even clearer. Taking the mark permits one to buy and sell within the beast’s rule, while not taking the mark excludes one from the beast’s transactional system.
Now we begin to see the full picture. Humans have always created their own totalizing cultures, communities, nations, and systems that ignore, offend, and exclude God, while bowing to beastly images. The scriptures describe many of those systems, and we see many more down through the ages. Indeed, humankind seems increasingly good at creating totalizing systems that exclude God. Take as examples the 20th century’s enormously deadly totalitarian governments that, seeking to rule the world under various ungodly principles and principalities, left tens of millions dead in their wake, mostly their own citizens. Or take as even nearer examples the multinational entities, networks, and platforms that create their own irreligious cultures and anti-scripture rules, while deplatforming and vilifying the godly. We need not wait for frightening horned beasts to emerge from the sea or earth, demanding a mark on the forehead or hand, to confront a Revelation-like deadly totalizing system.
Revelation’s author John may have understood the passage to refer to rulers of Babylon, Rome, a coming system like the European Union or digital economy, or all of the above. Or John may not have understood much at all this peculiar part of the vision he recorded. Who really knows? The important takeaway may instead be that we resist any totalizing system that rejects God, all of which may be the equivalent of taking the beast’s mark. Those systems may have existed in every age, and they may currently be rising and falling all around us. Again, who really knows? Just recognize and avoid all systems that demand obeisance to their arbitrary and deadly proclamations set against God. Avoid the beast’s mark. Hold fast to God, declaring and standing for his rule while rejecting all contrary totalizing systems.
