Col 3: Seeking the Things that Are Above

"So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. 5Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. 8 But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11 In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!"

Paul's ethical exhortations are very difficult to preach/teach. The reason for their difficulty is twofold. On the one hand, one has the difficulty of what the concepts meant in the world of antiquity. It isn't clear what he means, for example, by "putting to death" things like "passion" or "greed (which is idolatry)." How do you "put things to death" things that are seemingly so much a part of our human nature? What does it mean to put "passion" to death? Is he referring to a feeling of lust? Is he referring to something else? So, we have a problem in understanding Paul. On the other hand, there is the problem of how useful it is in 2007 just to preach on things that we say are wrong with the world or with ourselves. Most psychologists would probably say that simply telling someone what is wrong with their conduct is not going to get them to change.

Change is a complex process that results from a combination of command, the inner desires of a person, and the general awareness that dawns on us as we grow that some activities are harmful to us and ought to be put aside. For example, anger is something that often fills our hearts and our words. But, when you think about anger for awhile, you discover that it often does more damage to the angry person than to the target of the anger. It can also be a pretty strong motivating force to change things that are perceived to be unjust in our society. Thus, anger is a multi-faceted emotion which cannot simply be dealt with by a quick command to "get rid" of it, as Paul does in v. 8.

But the passage deserves to be taken seriously, not simply because it is part of Scripture but because, for Paul, ethics flows from our relationship to God in Christ. He says, in v. 1, "If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above.." Thus, there is a connection between the new life in Christ and the way we conduct our ethical lives in the world today.

For the remainder of this essay I will give you a highly personal look into one (ethical) area of my life I have been trying to get under control in the last few years. I think I am making progress, but it is slow. This, in the final analysis, is what I think that Paul is "getting at"--i.e., the way that being raised with Christ helps change us.

Learning to Love/to Honor People

After I was divorced in 2001, I didn't immediately want to strike up relationshps with women. The divorce was painful; I was continuing a job in a law firm; I had a lot of things on my plate with respect to my kids. It was a sad and difficult time for me, and I spent many days in near-despair because of the multi-form binds that I perceived I was in. As time went on, however, I ventured back into the dating world. But I still brought my "pre-divorce" self to relationships. This wasn't necessarily bad, in many ways, but I soon discovered that I began to undermine the possibility of future relationships because of certain things I would do.

One thing would be to focus excessively on the past. I would narrate incessantly the way that my life had unfolded, the way that certain victories and losses characterized it, the way that my marriage had fallen apart, etc. I would draw on a deep past in order to give an explanation for why I could (or usually couldn't) do things in the present. But as time went on, I realized that this drawing on the past was more of an excuse for maintaining a certain image of myself than of help in furthering a relationship. So, gradually, I have had to "give up" my focus on the past as the means to help justify myself. If, as Paul says, we must "get rid of" certain things, I think I needed to get rid of my past as burden, even though I would have articulated it at that time as a gift.

But then, I also had to change in another way. I was a person who was a product of the feminist revolution of the 1970s. I interpreted that revolution in a way that kept getting me into difficulties especially in relationships from about 2003-2006. Why? Because I would assume that the ancient (i.e., ca. 1975) ideology of radical feminism was exactly what women in 2005 wanted. They didn't want any special show of care or affection; they didn't want a man to "take charge;" they didn't want courtesies or reminders of their femininity (like getting flowers, opening doors, etc.). That is, I had idolized a certain understanding of feminism that was probably out-of-date or not celebrated by any but the real fringe in 1975 and had used it as the template through which I would relate to woman in 2005. If she liked to cook, for example, I would take it as a sign that patriarchy had triumphed; she was just an unwitting tool of the role-philosophy that we as modern people had to "get beyond." But when you add this all up, I was living in a dream world, a world that no woman really inhabited. By continuing to judge relationships based on this non-existent and harmful world of 1975, I was cutting myself off, isolating myself from the very people whom I found attractive.

Thus, after repeatedly hearing from women that they wanted to be treated well (like "queens" as one said to me), I finally swallowed my pride and began to try to put that into effect. I began to hold doors for women, to be more attentive to their needs, to compliment them on so many things about them, to major on the "traditional" feminine things. Well, what do you know? They tend to appreciate it! And, in fact, it makes relationships much more enjoyable for me, because now they don't have to pass through the prism of an ideology that was probably dead before it hit the streets 30 years ago.

Though I might be hard pressed to say that this new kind of conduct results from my being "raised with Christ" or something like that, I would say that it is a practical result of being more comfortable with letting life open itself to me in this day.

Conclusion

Paul's ethical advice makes most sense to me if I can apply it to real life problems or struggles in which I am engaged today. It is hard to give up certain beliefs or ideologies which have been part of my life for decades. But I now can recognize how they ended up hurting me more than helping me. And, I can have the power to relate to women differently from before. Life is changing and, in the words of Paul, I am "clothing myself with the new self." It is not much in the grand scheme of things, but it is providing the occasion for a richer and fuller life.

Well, what are the ways you and those you serve are attempting to "put to death" things that haven't been particularly helpful or useful to them in the past? What are the things that they can use to "clothe themselves" with the new self? Unless we are able to make practical observations and practical advances in answering these questions, Paul's advice remains nothing but spiritual gobbledygook. Is is practical for you?

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