This is the sixth in a series in a collaborative reading of Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh & Sylvia Keesmaat. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.

It’s been two months since I last wrote a post in this series. A long summer break and then mental inertia prolonged that break even further. Not only that but I’m a starter and not a finisher and I found myself thinking, ‘But who would even notice, less alone care, if I just never finished this?’ But worthwhile things do require effort and perseverance, they require coming back to the same spot, picking up your tools and getting back to work. Not only that but this particular chapter was the most dense and philosophical so far.

It does however open with a banger of a question:

How do you go about confessing Christ as Lord when everything all around you – all the power structures, the images that dominate your daily life and even the very temporal rhythms of that life – declare the sovereignty, lordship, honour and glory of the empire and it’s emperor?

Keesmaat & Walsh p.96

But looking for answers to that question will have to wait because that’s not where the chapter went. Instead it went to an in-depth discussion on the nature of truth. Paul is clearly convinced that he knows the truth and that truth can be known. Not only that but to Paul the truth he now proclaims is a universal truth. It is relevant to all people in all places at all times. Which is a punch on the nose to postmoderns and a reason they discard its claims.

Colossians, they rightly argue, is a worldview text.

It tells us who rules the world, where the world has come from and where it is going, where wisdom is ultimately to be found, and even which community of people holds the promise and destiny of the world in its hearts and lives

ibid. p.97

But this comprehensive claim is problematic, “But singular views of the world come at a price. To maintain their own singular superiority, they must negate all other visions, all other narratives.” This is seen as totalitarian, violent even. Colossians is a worldview text, but ‘worldviews do not fare well in a postmodern climate.’

So, inevitably, we are drawn into dialogue with Foucault. Truth is not found it is made. Truth claims are power grabs. But postmodernism sides with ‘the marginal, the repressed and the borderline’ and since no truth claim has done better at crushing the voices of the marginal and the borderline than Christianity, Christianity’s claims should be rejected. Or so the argument goes.

But Walsh & Keesmaat argue that using the Bible in ‘totalizing and oppressive’ ways is not the only way to encounter the text.

Is there anything in the Bible itself that, if taken seriously, would prevent or inhibit us from using the Bible as an absolute with which to punch people in the face? Our answer is yes!

p.107

They give two main reasons for thinking that. Firstly the Biblical story when considered as a whole is incredibly sensitive to suffering – from the exodus to the exile to the cross. Secondly, creational intent.

How does this play out in Colossians? The language is cosmic, there is a power struggle in the universe and the outcome matters. But and here’s the crucial distinction, victory is not won by destroying your enemies but through being crushed by them. The powers of evil were defeated not through Christ using their tactics and methods but through being subject to them. Christ’s death on a cross looked like a defeat but instead it undid and defeated evil. And yes this mattered in a world where the emperor could have you crucified too. It is was this kind of weakness that Nietzsche despised so much. It is hard to paint a worldview that says when evil has done its worst love simply smiles back and says ‘I forgive you’ as oppressive, although that doesn’t stop people trying.

And if as Colossians says, all things were made by him and through him and for him, (him being Jesus Christ) then the reconciling love that outlasts and ultimately triumphs over evil is the same thing by which all things reconciled and should live.

But a worldview is ‘only as good as the praxis or way of life that it engenders’ and that is where Christendom and Christianity has faced so much criticism. Far too often, Christians have betrayed their core principles in ‘defending the gospel’. So the chapter concludes with the claim that:

Only the non-ideological, embracing, forgiving and shalom-filled life of a dynamic Christian community formed by the story of Jesus will prove the gospel to be true and render the idolatrous alternatives fundamentally implausible.

p.114