Happy New Year of the Snake (again)

Although it is still December 31 here in the U.S., rather than making this post at around 5:30 a.m., as I normally do, I am posting it at 9:00 (CST). This later time is midnight, the beginning of 2025, in Japan where I lived for so long. So it is now the Year of the Snake there, the same as in 2013.*¹  

People who are born in the Year of the Snake have positive character traits according to the Japanese (Chinese) zodiac. They are “deep thinkers, speak very little, and possess tremendous wisdom. They are fortunate in money matters and will always be able to obtain it.”*²

June and I are delighted to be expecting our third great-grandchild in May. We hope she will have the characteristics associated with those noted in the previous paragraph. Of course, there are also a few negative characteristics associated with each zodiac sign, so she will have to work to overcome those.

Consider what has happened in the Year of the Snake previously. While the snake does not have the strong negative connotations in Japan/China as it does in the West, awful things happened in the world in the Year of the Snake four times in the first half of the twentieth century.

The first Year of the Snake in the 1900s was in 1905. The Russo-Japanese War, which began in 1904, ended in a victory for Japan in September 1905. That war, fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan, resulted in 130,000 (or more) deaths, about 2/3 of them Japanese. 

Twelve years later, in 1917, the United States declared war on Germany and became embroiled in what was called the Great War then and World War I later.  As many as 8,000,000 soldiers and 13 million civilians died as a result of that war, although U.S. deaths were fewer than 120,000.

The next Year of the Snake was 1929. On October 29^th of that year, the Wall Street Crash marked the beginning of the worldwide Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average did not return to its peak close of September 1929 until November 1954. 

And then in 1941, twelve years later, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7 occurred. The next day President Roosevelt called that a “date which will live in infamy,” and the U.S. declared war on Japan. There were at least 60 million deaths in that war, about 3/4 of them civilians.*³

Fortunately, the years 1953, 1965, 1977, and 1989 were years with no notably horrific world events. But the first Year of the Snake in this century, 2001, was certainly a traumatic one for the U.S.

2025 will be a different sort of “year of the snake” in the U.S. “Snake in the grass” is a common English expression. Since in Japan snakes do not have a “bad” reputation, though, there is no similar Japanese phrase. A Japanese website says the English idiom means “an enemy disguised as a friend,” or “someone you can’t trust.”

On January 20, the 47^th POTUS will be inaugurated. While I am generally careful not to use unkind, pejorative language, I am only one among many who think that he and several of his Cabinet nominees can be legitimately characterized as “snakes in the grass.”

Candace Osmond is a “grammarist writer,” and she says (here) that a “snake in the grass” personality type refers to “someone who appears friendly and likable on the surface but has hidden agendas and will do anything to get what they want. They usually manipulate and deceive others to achieve their goals.”

Ms. Osmond gives no examples, but sadly, it seems hard to deny that the incoming President clearly exhibits that sort of personality, and some if not many of his nominees seem to have that trait also.

So, I wish you all the very best in the Year of the Snake, but I also urge you who are U.S. citizens to be careful not to be deceived by the “snakes in the grass” who will constitute what may well be a kakistocracy, that is, “a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.”

Since snakes repeatedly shed their skins, they are often seen as a symbol of regeneration in Japan. May this Year of the Snake be the beginning of the regeneration of good government here in the U.S.!

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*¹ I have written this article with little overlap to what I said in the post with the same name I made that year. Some of you may want to read that post (here) since many of you were not on my Thinking Friends mailing list then. The only comments on that post were from Craig Dempsey and Anton Jacobs, who are two of the three or four TFs who have commented most often over the past twelve years, and I much appreciate their many meaningful, thought-provoking comments.

*² From “The Twelve Signs of the Japanese Zodiac,” posted by Ms. Namiko Abe in June 2024 at this link. That article gives an explanation of all twelve of the animals included in the zodiac cycle in Japan. The same zodiac is used in China where the traditional lunar calendar is used, so the Chinese New Year won’t begin until January 29.

*³ These statistics come from the website of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans (see here). According to that source, the number of U.S. WWII deaths was under 420,000.

Revelation: The Most Misunderstood Book in the Bible

Just over 50 years ago, Vernard Eller, the eminent Anabaptist scholar, published a book titled The Most Revealing Book in the Bible. It was, of course, about the Book of Revelation. While that is doubtlessly true, I am calling Revelation the most misunderstood book in the Bible.*¹  

The Book of Revelation was the discussion topic of Great Books KC at its monthly meeting on December 6. That discussion group started in 2004, and I introduced it in a blog post for the first time in October 2014 (see here).

Although I attended regularly for many years, last month I attended Great Books KC again for the first time since last December. They have a “rule” that each year some book of the Bible will be discussed, and last year that book was the Old Testament book of Job.

Especially since this year’s selected book of the Bible was Revelation, I made the effort to drive down to the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library to attend and take an active part in the discussion of that last book of the Bible, which is so often misunderstood and misused.

While some of the 13 attendees (most of whom participated via Zoom) had a fairly good understanding of Revelation, several were clearly perplexed by it and some seemed to have a serious misunderstanding, which is seemingly true of the general public.

Misunderstanding of Revelation was augmented by Hal Lindsey, who died last month, two days after his 95^th birthday. Most of you recognize his name and remember him as the author of The Late Great Planet Earth (1970).

Lindsey’s book sold more than 10 million copies before the end of the 1970s, becoming the best-selling nonfiction book of the decade. By this and his later books, Lindsey “brought the once-obscure theology of dispensationalist premillennialism into the mainstream.”

Moreover, “Lindsey’s books demonstrated an incredible appetite for apocalyptic speculation … and paved the way for many other prophecy writers, including Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, and Joel Rosenberg …. introducing wide audiences to the concepts of the Rapture, the Antichrist, and the mark of the beast.”*² 

In March 2015, nearly ten years ago, I made a blog post titled “Do You Believe in the Rapture.” Although I did not mention Revelation, the widespread belief in what dispensationalist Christians call the Rapture is based on a literal interpretation of Revelation and, to a lesser degree, on a few other parts of the Bible.*³  

Belief in the Rapture is one of the major misinterpretations of Revelation that has been held by many Christians since the early part of the 20^th century, and especially since Lindsey’s 1970 book.

In my remarks at the Great Books KC December meeting, I emphasized the following points, which I am now sharing briefly.

** Revelation was written primarily for the Jesus-followers who were living “then and there” rather than for people “here and now.”

** Revelation was written in apocalyptic language that should be taken seriously, but not literally. As N.T. Wright writes, Revelation “is full of strange, lurid and sometimes bizarre and violent imagery.” That eminent New Testament scholar goes on to say,

This book in fact offers one of the clearest and sharpest visions of God’s ultimate purpose for the whole creation, and of the way in which the powerful forces of evil, at work in a thousand ways but not least in idolatrous and tyrannous political systems, can be and are being overthrown through the victory of Jesus the Messiah and the consequent costly victory of his followers.

   (These quotes are from the Introduction of Wright’s 2011 book Revelation for Everyone.)

** Despite all the violence depicted in Revelation, the focus is clearly on the non-violent Lamb, the historical Jesus who was crucified and resurrected.

Revelation, properly understood, has a direct link to Christmas. By far, the best-known part of Messiah, Händel’s superlative oratorio, is Hallelujah Chorus, which is often performed in celebration of Christmas.

The words of Hallelujah Chorus come from Revelation 19:6, 11:15, and 19:16. During this busy week before Christmas, perhaps you can take four minutes to listen to those words being impressively sung (here) by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

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*¹ The title of a blog post I made in October 2017 is “Revelation: The Most Misused Book in the Bible.” I encourage you to click on this link and read it (again). There are 30 comments (including my responses) posted below that article, and according to Blogger.com, there have been about 550 pageviews of that post.

*² These quotes are from a lengthy and informative 11/27/24 article in Christianity Today magazine (see here).

*³ According to the stats provided by Blogger.com, that post has, inexplicably, had nearly 3,700 pageviews. 

Note: Some of you may be interested in the 11/12/24 post by Religious Dispatches, “The Trump Administration’s Approach to Immigration is Inspired by the Bible — The Book of Revelation.” Here is a link to that provocative article about the grave dangers embedded in the widespread misunderstanding of Revelation. 

“O Little Town of Bethlehem”: Grieving the Ongoing Slaughter of Palestinians

Christmas Eve is just two weeks from today, and the popular Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” will be sung in many Christian churches that evening. So, this is a fitting time to think about the ongoing plight of the Palestinians in Bethlehem—as well as in Gaza and the entire West Bank. 

“O Little Town of Bethlehem” was written by Phillips Brooks. In the decades following his ordination as an Episcopal priest in 1860, Brooks (1835~1893) became whom many considered the greatest preacher of his day. While still a young man, he delivered a eulogy for slain President Lincoln in April 1865.

Later that year, Brooks traveled across the Atlantic to Europe and then made a pilgrimage to Bethlehem. On Christmas Eve, he assisted at a service in the Church of the Nativity, built over the traditional site of Jesus’ birth. Three years later he wrote "O Little Town of Bethlehem" for the children of his church.*¹ 

In 2015, 150 years after Brooks visited Bethlehem, I visited there for the first (and only) time. I took the short taxi ride from the south side of Jerusalem to the West Bank wall (or “separation barrier”). That structure, often called the “Wall of Apartheid" by Palestinians, was completed in 2006.

With my U.S. passport, I was able to pass through the wall with no problem. After observing what I could there, I then took another taxi to the main tourist sites in old Bethlehem. I was rather unimpressed, though, by the Church of the Nativity and the commercialism of the surrounding environment.*²

 I soon decided to go to the central shopping area of the city where I walked up and down the streets, observing ordinary Palestinians going about their daily activities. I quickly noticed the considerable difference between them and the Israelis I had seen in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Despite their close geographical proximity, they seemed to be living in a different, much earlier, time period. And most of them were not free to exit Bethlehem and travel to Jerusalem. They were mostly prisoners confined to their own “little town” of fewer than 30,000 people.

That and my experiences the next day traveling in East Jerusalem and the West Bank territories sparked the drafting of “The Plight of the Palestinians,” my 6/30/15 blog post, which I encourage you to read (again) by clicking here.

The plight of the Palestinians is far, far worse today than it was in 2015. That is true for the West Bank, but extremely, and increasingly, worse for Gaza now, 430 days after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

It is also bad again this year in Bethlehem. A recent article posted by Reuters is headlined, “Another bleak Christmas in Bethlehem….” The article includes an image (similar to the one above) of the creche created last year by the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem to depict the sickening rubble in Gaza.

And now, the situation there is so much worse. Just last week, Amnesty International concluded that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. Sadly, in the coming year, things may get even worse for both Gaza and the West Bank.

President-elect Trump has named Mike Huckabee as his choice for the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Last month, a Religious Dispatches post (see here), stated that Huckabee is a stalwart Christian Zionist who has made over 100 trips to Israel.

According to that article, “Huckabee has aligned consistently with the hawkish Israeli Right and its agenda of permanent occupation, expansion, and Jewish supremacy in Palestine.” 

The first verse of Brooks’s carol ends, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in you tonight.” In Bethlehem now, the fears of most people are undoubtedly stronger than their hopes—and around the world, many of us grieve the ongoing slaughter of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Then, the last verse concludes with the words “peace to all on earth,” which the angels sang on that first Christmas.*³ May God help us all to strive more diligently to make peace to all a reality in Bethlehem, Gaza, and everywhere across the globe!

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*¹ Click here if you would like to hear the carol being nicely sung. Also, here is a link to an informative piece, including several images, about Brooks written by the New England Historical Society.

*² A short time after his mother Helena visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem in 325–326 A.D., Constantine commissioned the construction of a church on the site traditionally considered the birthplace of Jesus.

*³ The wording of the original carol was updated in The New Century Hymnal (1995), cited above.

Note: “To Bethlehem” is a powerful new poem that begins “O little Town of Bethlehem / forgive us for the lie / our churches tell - that all is well / as Christmas Eve draws nigh.”  I encourage you to read the entire poem by clicking here.