In the judgment of Babylon prophesied in Revelation 18, we read that "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, and a prison of every foul spirit . . ." But for many years I never thought to wonder how that actually comes about.
Then I was reminded that Slobodan Milosevic was a colorless political hack in the Serbian League of Communists - until one day he went out on a balcony in Kosovo to speak to demonstrating Serbs and appealed to Serbian pride and their national myth. He discovered that he could be eloquent, that he could move people, and overnight he became a hero addressing huge adoring crowds. Instead of appealing explicitly to ethnic hatred as some suppose, he called for the Serbs to unite in their defense while remembering that Serbia had room for other nationalities (but they had to behave themselves).
In practice, this meant pushing the Kosovars around, a war with Croatia, and a proxy war in Bosnia. Being a neighbor of Slobodan Milosevic was not easy, but he and the Serbs were only victims, never aggressors.
I suddenly realized that Milosevic was prologue. Consider the transformation of George Bush from nonentity to conquering hero by evoking the American national myth, mobilizing a people who feel wronged, even though September 11 was in fact just blowback from years of American oppression and even genocide, a mere taste of what America routinely shells out to others.
This meant a "defensive" war of aggression against the American Empire's neighbors, calling it a "war on terror", but only terror directed against the American Empire and its interests. Terror employed by the American Empire and its clients is no target of this war, though such terror terrorizes many more people and much more unrelentingly, and causing many more casualties. For some time, being America's neighbor has been a challenge, if you're not on the payroll, but now it's a real job - and who's far off enough not to be a neighbor?
I realized that it was not about George Bush. If Al Gore had been President, exactly the same transformation would have happened. He would have jumped at the chance to be the tough resolute liberal, like the ones who brought us Vietnam, and he too would have been eloquent.
This event shows us why the Bible warns us that when we correct the wicked, we need to do it in humility, taking care that we be not tempted to do exactly the same thing (Galatians 6:1). In Romans 2 we read, "You the judge are doing the very same things." I realized that in self-righteously judging Milosevic without taking care not to be like him (in its vast self-righteousness knowing that that was not possible), America invited that spirit to jump over and find its place in the United States. And so now the American Empire's neighbors - and who isn't - are beginning to find out that they are all Bosnian Muslims. And aligned with its patron, Israel is walking in the same spirit, and so Slobodan Milosevic struts through the Holy Land in Israeli uniforms.
Babylon becomes the prison of every foul spirit because its unlimited self-righteousness and power cause it to be the "hammer of all the earth," trampling and taking captive those it deems evildoers all over the world. And as it takes captive its opponents, as the great city did in Bible times, it brings home whatever foul spirit lived among those evildoers. I wonder how long before the spirit of Al-Qaeda that came with the prisoners in Guantanamo shows up in some new way in the American homeland.
Arrogance never conquers evil; it just moves it around and intensifies it. God says to His people, "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins and receive of her plagues." This coming out is not in the first place geographical, any more than entering God's kingdom is essentially geographical. As we shelter behind Babylonian power, we partake in Babylonian sins, in particular the Babylonian sin of arrogantly hammering the whole earth in order to make a new Babylonian order free from (non-Babylonian) wickedness. God calls us to abandon Babylonian power in favor of the kingdom of God, proclaimed by Jesus in the gospels.
In particular, looking to the United States for "moral leadership" or to straighten out other people's problems is madness for any Christian. A nation that cruelly oppresses and engages in genocide, throwing justice and truth to the ground whenever they seem to conflict with its own peace and safety and wealth, is no more qualified to provide moral leadership than I am to play basketball in the NBA.
America the depraved doesn't need to provide moral leadership. America needs to humble itself, like its ancient predecessor Nineveh. Jonah didn't proclaim to Nineveh that it needed to solve anybody's problems or provide moral leadership, but that it needed to repent.
For Christians to come out of Babylon is first to repent ourselves before
we think of solving anybody else's problems or providing moral leadership.
When we see what the Babylonian spirit is, it becomes clear that through
organizations like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition American
Christians have expressed our proud wish to manage people for their own
good instead of abasing ourselves before God. We need to humble ourselves
and then call America to humble itself, not manage America in our pride
and use American power to manage the world. To continue as we have
is to ensure that we receive the plagues of Babylon, to be filled with
all the wickedness we fight against in others in our arrogance, until our
sins pile up to heaven and God says, "No more!"