These have indeed an
appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made
religion and
asceticism and severity to the body,
but they are of no
value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
Colossians 2:23, ESV
Look at
nearly any moral challenge and surrounding it you can find a plethora of rules
we humans have made up to prevent that moral challenge from defeating us or our
culture. While it seems that the Bible does suggest that the role of government
has something to do with preventing culture from completely descending into chaotic
immorality – I’m yet to find anything in Scripture that would suggest that the
government is our solution.
The words at
the top of this page are from Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians. After a fairly
lengthy warning to them (beginning in 2:8) about not being taken captive by
“philosophy and empty deceit,” he finally brings the argument to its intended
challenge: your man made approaches to being what God made humans to be won’t
work. "Shadow" is not "substance."
He even
notes some of their “rules”: “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch.” Take
those words literally and out of context and no one can follow Jesus. Everyone
reading this little devotion has handled, tasted, and touched something today –
if you aren’t doing so the very moment. Three strikes and you’re out.
But you may
protest and declare, “No one thinks that’s what he meant.” May be not, but the
moment I begin to regulate the Christian faith with rules, I’m doing precisely
what Paul makes abundantly clear is ludicrous. It’s fine for government to make
up the necessary rules. No doubt, for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was
necessary. But do you really think it stopped racism? The racial tension in our
culture is a serious issue right now.
That doesn’t
mean the government failed in passing those “rules” about racism. But it does
mean that the answer to that problem – or any other moral problem we encounter
– is Jesus, not a rule. It means when we let “the rules” do what the gospel is
for, we fail. When Paul wrote to Philemon about the problem of the run-away
slave Onesimus, who by the way was from Colossae, he says, “I prefer to appeal
to you . . . so that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own
accord.”
The intent
of the gospel, you see, is not to regulate human behavior but to transform
human hearts. Rule makers can regulate behavior to the extent they can enforce
them. The Gospel can transform hearts in ways that change all of life.
Recently I
was in a session focused on helping employees provide more Christ-like service
to those around us. We were shown a series of pictures of empty spaces –
classrooms, dining halls, coffee shop, ball fields, etc. Then we were asked –
as the pictures kept rotating on the screen – how could serving with a
Christ-like spirit impact or change each of us – since in a few days those
empty spaces will be filled with students.
That is such
a great question – and one that every follower of Jesus ought to ask on a
regular basis. I wrote down two things: [a] "do this out of transformation, not
to meet a performance review;" and [b] "being built up flows out of building
others us.”
I think that
is actually the very question we should ask ourselves about our own lives, our
own communities, our own country, and our own church’s engagement with the
world as we know it. Electing a candidate who will enact all the right laws is
not our greatest need. Our greatest needs is Christ-like behavior on the part
of believers who in turn discover ways to transform culture, not seek to
regulate it.
Notice what
Paul said – these “rules” may “have the appearance” of power to change the
world, but ultimately are “of no value in stopping the indulgence of the
flesh.”
If early
Christians, with such limited resources, could “turn the world upside down”
(Acts 17:6) in their generation – just think what we could do if we decided to
really take the power of the gospel seriously!
