THE TEMPTATION TO TRUST in the wrong things is strong. “In God We Trust” may be inscribed on the coins in our pockets, but too rarely is that phrase etched on the walls of our hearts. We trust in everything but God—the wrong things.
The wrong things include material prosperity, friends’ opinions, corporate cultures, human philosophies, even gourmet food, diet programs, and exercise regimens. We trust in these things because we are insecure and are looking for the security that everyone claims their ideas and products have.
The book of Colossians is about trusting in the right things. Or to be more exact, about trusting in the right person, Jesus Christ. David Garland brings us back time after time to this central truth: The Colossians were trusting in the wrong things, and the way to be Christian was to trust in Jesus Christ.
This isn’t an easy lesson for us to hear, any more than it was for the Colossians. They were blocked by the fact that Christianity was a minority religion, new and unestablished in their culture. When times got tough, it was hard to hang on to the hope offered in Jesus Christ. It was easier to hedge bets and go back to some of the tried and true stuff, whether long-established mystery religions, Greek philosophies, or even the rites and rituals of traditional Judaism.
We too are blocked from an elemental trust in Christ Jesus, but for different reasons. For us Christianity is not new and strange, it is old and familiar. We live in a culture that has plenty to offer, a culture so rich in material goods that it is tempting to buy the advertising pitch with which these bounties are sold—secure your health with our medicine, secure your finances with our insurance, secure your future with our financial plan. Even religious marketers get into the act—secure your eternal destiny by following our religion’s rules.
By themselves none of these “securities” is bad. Medicine, insurance, financial planning, and religion are all good things. But they become bad when they are elevated from penultimate status to ultimate status. Ultimately they are not adequate. Medicines can’t cure all disease, insurance doesn’t cover all disasters, financial plans don’t help heartaches brought by disaster, and religion without submission to Jesus Christ turns into self-help psychology.
The suffering Paul refers to in Colossians is different from his other sections. It is the low-grade, chronic suffering of insecurity, a slight lack of confidence, a lessening of hope that sends us chasing after every semblance of certainty the world has to offer. But this suffering is no less real, and it is all the more painful because of its chronic, ongoing nature. It is particularly painful in a world where the ideal is an all-too-attainable happiness brewed of one part wealth, one part love, one part fame, and one part security. Preaching the gospel should produce those four parts, but it doesn’t—unless we reinterpret wealth, love, fame, and security through the only valid hermeneutical principle we have, Jesus Christ.
The way our culture is constructed, these penultimate “securities” that masquerade as the final answer are the real elemental powers of the universe (ta stoicheia tou kosmou). We have made simple creaturely comforts into gods that control our lives. We try to appease the insecurities brought on by our excessive individualism, and we appeal to these self-created elemental powers for security. They don’t deliver, of course. Only Jesus Christ can do that. That is the message of Colossians.
When we are faced with a specific problem, such as Paul was with the situation Philemon brought him, Paul teaches us what to do: Orient all social problems within the context of our basic humility before Jesus, and fulfill our social responsibilities in light of the eternal security offered in Jesus. Suddenly what seemed like an insolvable problem becomes clear in light of God’s reconciling work in the world—with Jesus Christ as center.
Terry C. Muck