Rejecting Elemental Deception

Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy or empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elemental forces of this world, and not on Christ. Colossians 2:8

I know I have spent (probably way too) much time arguing about empty deceits. That is a good description of most of what passes for human knowledge. It keeps the grant money rolling in but it is of little value otherwise. People who desperately want to be materialists are never content in their desperation. Say what they will, they want to pull us down in the darkness with them. You sometimes wonder if misery loves company or if they are just afraid of being alone in the dark.

It is rather like talking to a man who has fallen into a sinkhole. You offer to throw him a line but he insists that the only proper course of action is for you to jump down into the hole with him.

Sorry. I’ve been there and I didn’t care for the view.

I am reminded of a G. K. Chesterton quote, “I am quite ready to respect another man's faith; but it is too much to ask that I should respect his doubt, his worldly hesitations and fictions, his political bargain and make-believe.”

For in Him the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily, and you have been filled by Him, who is the head over every ruler and authority Colossian 2:9,10

I can learn a lot by studying the “elemental forces of the world” about how things work, but I cannot learn why things work. The materialist thinks that the only question is how, or rather he only asks how because to ask why is too disturbing.

If I want to understand the material world, I need to know something about the Creator. All of the nature of God was poured into Christ -- and I understand that well enough. What is harder to grasp is that I have been filled by Him.

This is the very purpose of the Gospel – Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection – that we should be restored and partake of the Divine nature. I heard someone protesting the other day about the statement that “God wants to replicate Himself on the earth”. I don’t know what the particular speaker being criticized meant by that. It certainly has the new-agey faux-christian sound to it. Yet I use that phrase, or a similar one, as a convenience.

The Father replicates His nature in His children. What a surprise. That does not mean we are God (though Jesus did quote the Psalm as saying “you are gods”). It does mean that we are carriers of the Holy Ghost bringing the wisdom and power of God into contact with the people we meet and the situations we encounter.

Consider this: our old human nature was subservient to the rule and authority, one might say, of the physical world. The old man is bound and controlled by the gods of forces. When we put on Christ, when we are filled with His nature, the rule and authority of elemental forces are thrown off. Now, instead of being subject to the world’s control, we are submitted to Christ to whom the rulers and authorities of the world are subject. While that is a revelation of a present reality, it is also the promise of a greater manifestation that awaits us.