Speaking more generally we can affirm, as numerous historians of philosophy are arguing, that to be concerned about history, to assume that history is meaningful, is itself a Judeo-Christian idea. The concern to know where history is going is not an idle philosophical curiosity. It is a necessary expression of the conviction that God has worked in* past history and has promised to continue thus to be active among us. If God is the kind of God-active-in-history of whom the Bible speaks, then concern for the course of history is itself not an illegitimate or an irrelevant concern. No mystical or existentialistic or spiritualistic depreciation of preoccupation with the course of events is justified for the Christian.

But the answer given to the question by the series of visions and their hymns is not the standard answer. “The lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power!” John is here saying, not as an inscrutable paradox but as a meaningful affirmation, that the cross and -not the sword, suffering and not brute power determines the meaning of history. The key to the obedience of God’s people is not their effectiveness but their patience (13:10). The triumph of the right is assured not by the might that comes to the aid of the right, which is of course the Justification of the use of violence and other kinds of power in every human conflict. The triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of the resurrection and not because of any calculation of causes and effects, nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys. The relationship between the obedience of God’s people and the triumph of God’s cause is not a relationship of cause and effect but one of cross and resurrection.

The Politics of Jesus, p.232

Here is a theological look at the proper type of narrative for the church. The sin of pride in humanity expresses itself in our propensity to exert control on history (a nod to Hauerwas; a nod of indebtedness). That sense of control is , it seems, deeply entwined in the “war on terror”. It has elements of “we’ll take care of that for you” that the Bush administration has apparently successfully imbibed, and also the ultimate hubris in the fantasy that if we just unleash enough destruction and “shock and awe”, the enenmy will have no choice but to surrender. The spiritual forefathers of this attempt to be lords of history is seen in the 90% extermination of the existing native populations of the North American continent by European empires, in the institution of slavery, and in the global conquests of “foreign” entities on the basis of American interests dressed up as “freedoms” and “resistance to communism” and now “terrororism”. Of course, none of this is to deny the existence of terrorism or its dangers, or the reality of repressive communist states. But the most hideous examples are invoked and used as fear fodder, to “manufacture consent” and get us to assent to the “nationalistic narrative”. And the narrative is strongly defended, and has many “students of history” compalining about those who question the purity of the motives, and call into question the veracity of certain hsitories. They (like Al Mohler) seem to want to hold on to an “objective history” (which , of course, is the narrative they have chosen that reaches back to employ visions of manifest destiny and “God’s will for the nations” and to enthrone America as the chosen representative. And this is nationalistic idolatry in th eface of the cross; the message of the gospel.