from Blue Ash

This past week has gone by in a blur, a side effect of working so much that you lose count of the actual hours (by the time I leave Blue Ash tonight, I'll have worked eighteen hours today alone; so I guess I didn't lose count of that one). Part of me feels as if I've become bored with this blog, but I'm not sure if that's because (a) I'm actually bored with this blog or (b) I just don't have the time to sit and hammer out blog posts.

I almost added (c) I don't have anything new to write about. In a sense that's true. But just because something isn't "new" doesn't mean it's noteworthy. I could write about musings of colonial America, finally selling off my Celica and registering Jessie's old car under my name and with new license plates, and I could write about how I was able to hang out with Ams three times this week (and tomorrow, too!), how I got to hang out with Mandy H., and how I ran into Hot Sauce Waugh while taking one of my clients to Frisch's breakfast buffet (and incidentally taking myself there as well). I could write about my ever-increasing love for Amanda Lynn and how with each passing day I yearn more and more to be by her side in Wisconsin. I could write about the toothless old man roaming the parking lot outside The Anchor, how he barged into the diner clutching a mounted deer's head and screaming at customers to give him money, or I could write about the emaciated chicks shooting up heroin in the diner's bathrooms and how you should never walk barefoot anywhere on this side of the river. I could write about the numerous storms that have pounded down on the city every night, and how my windows don't shut and so the thunder's loud in my ears and how sometimes the Hobbit Hole shakes. I could write about my colonial nights with oil lanterns and wax candles and reading books on the American Revolution or the history of interpreting Revelation.

BAM. There's a fun one. Tangent time! I have been studying Revelation a lot lately (or, rather, the history of its interpretation and how the major interpretations deal with the text). A brief synopsis: We simply don't know precisely how early Christians interpreted St. John's apocalyptic work. Several ancient commentaries were written, but none of these have survived (I would love to get my hands on one of those). We do have evidence that at least some Christians saw Revelation as a prophecy regarding the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and the church's subsequent triumph over the pagan nation of Rome. The four major contemporary interpretations--called historicism, preterism, futurism, and spiritualistic--provide a fascinating tale of reactionary evolutionism. The historicist interpretation identifies the Antichrist as the Papacy and the Revelation a prophecy of church history up beyond the French Revolution to present day. The Reformers advocated this interpretation, and the social and political current of this interpretation's rise tend to make me somewhat skeptical. The Roman Catholic Church responded by heavily advocating a preterist approach, the idea that Revelation is primarily focused with events that have already happened, namely the destruction of Jerusalem and the church's victory over Rome; this meant that the Papacy was not the Antichrist, and advancing preterism made sense, since historically it's been an interpretation since the days of the early church. The Catholic Church also responded with the approach of futurism, an approach that makes the Antichrist a specific (future) individual (and thus not the Papacy). Interestingly enough, futurism is the predominant interpretation of Revelation held by protestants, and this interpretation undergirds much of evangelical protestantism's obsession with the End Times and the 7-Year-Tribulation and things of that nature. I still place myself in the preterist camp, and this "synopsis" isn't meant to advocate anything but to simply serve as "food for thought."