Tuesday, September 10, 2013

10 September 2013 - wise beyond our age

10 September 2013 - wise beyond our age

See to it that no one captivate you with an empty, seductive philosophy
according to the tradition of men,
according to the elemental powers of the world
and not according to Christ.

What is captivating about empty philosophy?  How can something as dry as that be seductive?  There can be a certain smugness and secureness to having everything figured out.  When we reason our way to something apart from faith we feel like we can take credit for it.  We can have pride in it.  We can look down on other people that haven't figured it out.

This is why Paul tells us, "the world did not know God through wisdom".  In fact, he goes so far as to call his message "folly" to those looking for wisdom.  When a teaching of Christianity seems like folly to us we must be on our guard.  It may be our pride talking.  To surrender our right to be the ultimate arbiter of truth does seem like folly from one point of view.  It is a dying to self.  Dying always seems to be folly.  But the proclamation is of "Christ crucified".  And though it seems like folly to the world, to those who are called Christ himself is "the power of God and the wisdom of God" because:

in him dwells the whole fullness of the deity bodily,
and you share in this fullness in him,
who is the head of every principality and power.

We lay down our claims to understand on our own.  Yet this doesn't ultimately leave us as fools because Jesus himself becomes our wisdom, the only true wisdom. Again, it is about proper ordering of ideas.  With him at the top, all other ideas find their place.  Yet he cannot be statically at the top.  We must be in a living relationship with him wherein we subject everything else we know and believe to his lordship.  We would be wrong to imagine that Jesus is at the top of our hierarchy if we decide how everything else fits without reference to him.

Jesus himself gives us an example of how this works.  Being omnipotent and omniscient you would think he could appoint apostles without hesitation.  And yet, first we hear:

Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.

Only after does he call the twelve.

We need to acknowledge that we have all been infected by the spirit of the age to one degree or another.

according to the tradition of men,
according to the elemental powers of the world
and not according to Christ.

If we don't want to be ensnared by these kinds of ideas we need the power of the resurrection.

You were buried with him in baptism,
in which you were also raised with him
through faith in the power of God,
who raised him from the dead.

Let us reach out to Jesus, the living Jesus, the Jesus who wants to reign in us.

Everyone in the crowd sought to touch him
because power came forth from him and healed them all.

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