Whereas Micah promises the restoration of Zion, Revelation proclaims the fall of Babylon. Whereas one was written during exile (promised by God), the other was written during a time of persecution. In one breath, restoration; in the next, destruction.
Destruction is not becoming. What strikes me, though, is the description of the kings' behavior in Revelation:
"The kings of the earth have committed evil (we are not sure exactly to what behaviors the Greek word translated as "fornication" referrs, though it is often assumed to be sexual this is not the only - nor necessarily the most accurate - translation) with her, and the merchants of hte earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury," (Revelation 18:3b).
Seeing the destruction of Babylon, and the smoke of her fires from a distance, they weep and mourn but keep their distance all the same.
I may be reading more into this than what is there, but I think this is a chilling image of the propensity humanity has to be attracted to power. Groups who are not in power swear they will not be have as the powerful when it is their chance to shine. Again and again, we see groups become powerful and exhibit similar behaviors to those who were once their oppressors. Underdogs, once they have won, seem to quickly forget what it was to be disadvantaged, what it was to be bullied, and what inspired their desires to reverse the roles of power. The common denominator does not seem to be culture, the place from which a particular group of people came, or any other factor: power undergirds the behaviors and the responses to its reception.
We participate in unjust systems, both knowingly and unknowingly; we are not exonerated simply because we can point to the fallenness of creation. We are not called to power, we are called to serve. We are not called to participate in systems of power, we are called to subvert them, as Christ whose "power is made perfect in weakness," (2 Corinthians 12:9). This does not lift up weakness as yet another quality we are able to exploit for the purposes of salvation (this is not from where salvation comes!), but lifts up weakness as the subversion of power. We do not gain power by grasping at it as something to be achieved or attained; we gain our power through a refusal to forget from which we came, through our refusal to be defined by the power we have or the power we desire. If we define ourselves by our relationships: to the neighbor and to God, then our thirst for power becomes not a thirst to take power from another, but a thirst to empower another for the sake of Christ.
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