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

In the 20th century it was the communists who took propaganda to the level of art. The statues of the workers, the hammer and the sickle, the huge posters of the leaders, the pervasive symbols and slogans. In China and North Korea they still use that playbook. In a few other countries where dictators seek to reinforce their own cult of personality there will be similar efforts but really it was the Communists who sought not simply to capture the imagination but dominate it.

From the perspective of a democracy this onslaught of visual propaganda seems pathetic somehow. It’s over-compensating in the worst of ways. The Romans of Paul’s day were like the communists with images of the Emperor everywhere – on the coins, in the temples, in the markets, and throughout the cities. The colosseum, the gladiatorial arenas, which we wander around in awe of, all served to reinforce the might of the emperor.

But just as art was used as tool of the oppressors, so art has always been used to subvert. It’s no surprise that a piece of hastily scrawled graffiti can be seen as a threat to the ruling powers. Or consider this image.

This famous kiss between a Soviet leader and his East German counterpart actually happened but was then used to subvert. It became something of a symbol of new found freedoms after the Berlin wall fell. Art subverts and apparently so does poetry. The poem of Colossians 1:15-20 is declared to be treasonous.

In the space of a short, well-crafted, three-stanza poem, Paul subverts every major claim of the empire, turning them on their heads, and proclaims Christ to be the Creator, Redeemer and Lord of all creation, including the empire.

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The Bible has always been threatening to leaders who would dominate, which is why the Chinese Communist Party have their own version of it ‘with Chinese characteristics’ but I imagine there are many western Christians who would baulk at the idea that the Bible is treasonous against their governments. And that is Walsh & Keesmaat’s point. The imagination of Christians in the West have been wholly captured by another spiritual power – the empire of global consumerism. In fact so complete is the victory of consumerism that many churches cannot even recognise it nor ‘imagine what a life that is alternative to the dominant culture would look like.’

And they’re right, I don’t think there can be any argument about it really. The primary shapers of our collective imaginations are Netflix, Apple, Facebook and the other big-tech, global corporations that span the globe. Capitalism as an economic system may bring all sorts of benefits but it has also come at a price and that is to essentially surrender our imaginations to market forces.

Now here is the question. What is the Christian community to do? How do we speak and live the gospel in this kind of cultural context? How do we shape our collective imagination as followers of Jesus in such a way that we are set free from the constricted imagination of the empire?

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It is a great question. I also wonder what it means for the industrial designer who designs appliances, or for the product manager of a tech start-up? What are the implications for them, for example? I really have no idea.

The answer though is to follow Paul and ‘so immerse ourselves in the Scriptures, so indwell their narrative, be so permeated by their images, that our imagination is transformed according to the image of Christ.’

The combative nature of Paul’s letter becomes apparent when we meditate on who precisely was Paul thinking of when he talks about ‘thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities.’ Having spent a good amount of time around charismatics there is a definite tendency to lift all those things into the spiritual realm. But Paul doesn’t really give us that option because he is talking about the visible as well as the invisible. I think Keesmaat and Walsh have it right when they argue:

Rather than entering the debate regarding whether Paul is talking about angels or about economic structures, we suggest that there is a spiritual dimension to all socioeconomic and political structures. That spiritual dimension has to do with whether these structures of our life are directed by an idolatrous spirit of empire or the Spirit of God in Christ, who created all of these structures of life and before whom they are subject.

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It’s a question that local churches struggle to find time to address but it’s a vital one: ‘what is it that seeks to captivate our imagination?’ And the authors are emphatic that the imagination of the church in the West is held captive to spiritual forces not of God and they quote approvingly this fiery critique from Wendell Berry.

[The church] has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that “economic forces” automatically work for good and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. It has assumed with almost everybody that “progress” is good, that it is good to be modern and up with the times. It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and defaults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation.

Berry, Christianity and the Survival, p.115

What Paul offers in his letter to a small ragtag band of followers is an audacious vision that not just competes at a cosmic level with all these powers and sets out a vision of Christ that is bigger, grander and greater. Which is quite something.