Weird Christianity...

My Bible study this morning was on Colossians 2. (I use a study app called Through The Word) I found today's study to be very interesting and it contained a good warning for us as Christians about false teachings. So I thought I would share part of the lesson with you here...

Chapter 2 is all about keeping the main thing the main thing. And the main thing is Jesus. Seriously, if I don't know Jesus, I don't have squat. Christianity without Christ is just 'ianity', and that's worthless. But chapter 2 is all about what happens when we lose that, or when we listen to teachers who, as it says in verse 19, "have lost connection with the head." In other words, someone who loses connection with Jesus is like a body part disconnected from the head, still trying to go on functioning like they've got this life figured out without Jesus. But it's folly. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. Jesus is the head, and we are the body. And back there in verse 19, "the body grows and functions and holds together when it's connected to the head."

 It's a powerful picture. I mean, God designed all of the body parts with phenomenal abilities, but they only function properly when they stay connected. When a Christian or a church is getting it wrong, it can usually be traced back to a bad teacher. From a teacher who has lost connection. So chapter 2 offers us some of the warning signs, what to watch out for. The dangers are very real. Cultish Christianity, dead religiosity, and weird hyper-spiritualism have all been sneaking their way into church from the very beginning, like wolves in sheep's clothing. When Colossians was written, one of the primary cult groups were the Gnostics. Today the names are different, but the lies are very much the same.

We're going to walk back through some key verses to get a better understanding of what the Gnostics taught, where we find bad teaching today, and how the Bible responds. So let's pick it up again back at chapter 2, verse 1. "I want you to know how hard I am contending for you." Stop there a moment. This is the preacher's fight. Teaching the Word of God is a battle, and Paul fights hard. He fights for us, the church, and what he fights against, is the poison of bad teaching. The book of Colossians is essential teaching for every Christian but for any one who teaches the Bible or pastors God's church Paul serves as an essential example. His care and concern for the health of the church, his careful teaching, and the fight inside him that keeps him coming back. 

Now let's jump ahead to verse eight "see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world, rather than on Christ." In other words, don't fall for the lies. Hollow means it looks good on the surface, but there's no substance underneath. It's a deceptive philosophy, and it depends on human tradition. It's man-made, worldly, and it doesn't depend on Christ. 

And once again, he brings it back to Christ in verse 9. "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." Now that's huge. The fullness of God in a body, that's Jesus. The Gnostics taught that the fullness of God was chopped up and spread through everything. And Jesus was one emanation with an extra dose of God sprinkles. . It's actually a lot like Star Wars and the Midi-chlorians that were in Anakin Skywalker. Turns out the Star Wars universe was built on New Age concepts that are very much like Gnosticism. 

Now I'm not against Star Wars, Its fiction, though if you forget that, you could have trouble. But the Gnostics taught this stuff as reality. And Paul says, when it comes to Jesus, it's bogus. He is not simply one emanation of God. Look at verse 9. All the fullness of deity is in Christ. He is fully God. Gnostics also taught that Jesus didn't have a body. He was a phantom. Paul says it's a body. "In Christ, the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form." See, the Colossian church was being invaded by this bad teaching, and suddenly it wasn't all about Jesus anymore because Jesus was just one emanation, but there were more. That's the heart of the problem. And you can find that wrong, mixed-up version of Jesus today among the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Rastafarians, the Muslims, some Buddhists and Hindus, and sadly, to one level or another, in many Christian churches as well. 

I am not confronting anyone's faith. I respect your God-given right to believe as you please, right or wrong. But if you're going to believe the Bible, let's get it right. Truth matters, and what you believe affects how you live. The cornerstone of the church is Jesus. The foundational question of the church is, "Who do you say Jesus is?" And if we get that wrong, the church goes weird. 

Now, you may have heard of the Gnostic Gospels. News reporters or college professors like to refer to these occasionally in order to challenge the Bible. They were, in fact, gospels written that didn't make the final cut of the New Testament. Maybe you've heard of the Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Thomas, or Gospel of Mary. Reporters like to speak as if the ancient church was hiding them from us, controlling the information. So, is that true? Well, Gnostics then and now like to talk about secret wisdom that the rest of us are missing. Paul alludes to that directly when he talks about the mystery in chapters 1 and 2. But Paul says the mysteries are revealed. He wants us to know the mystery of God and have the riches of full understanding. But you'll notice something about the Gnostics and the reporters or professors who talk about them. They always talk about these Gospels, but they never just read them to you. If you want to know about them, read them directly. The stuff I read was a little weird. Okay, a lot weird but sometimes if you make stuff sound confusing enough, you can convince people that it's deep. It's not deep. It's convoluted.

The early church leaders kept it out of the Bible because it was wrong, because it directly contradicted the teaching of the apostles who were eyewitnesses to Jesus. It wasn't about controlling information. It was simply about discerning right and wrong, discerning true gospels from fakes. Somehow modern scholars discount the decision of early church leaders who were there and trust their own conclusions some 2,000 years later. And the problem is, even though the earliest church leaders rejected Gnostic teachings, they're still around. So to help us be careful, a quick review of what they teach. Gnostics believe in a secret knowledge, a mystery only discovered by a few. They wrote supposed Gospels with Jesus' story, but it's a different Jesus. They twist every core doctrine, and Jesus is a totally different character, an invented one.

The Gnostics attribute those Gospels to Bible characters like Mary Magdalene, Thomas, and Judas, but there is no evidence whatsoever that those people actually wrote them. They generally showed up much later than those people were around. The Gnostics believed all material things are evil. Therefore, Jesus was not material. He was a phantom. Gnostics taught that Jesus was not fully God, but just one emanation of God.

As I said before, what the Gnostics believed about God is closer to Star Wars than the Bible. The fullness of god was diced up into countless little parts and sprinkled all around. Gnostics also believed some weird things about females. Here is a direct quote from the supposed Gospel of Thomas, "Simon Peter said to them, make Mary leave us for females don't deserve to live. Jesus said, I will guide her to make her male so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."  WHAT? Okay, to be clear, that is not in the Bible and it is not truth! There are of course ways to reinterpret the Gnostic Gospels to make them seem not quite so demeaning to women, but I'll let you do that research on your own.

But Paul writes adamantly here in Colossians to defend what is truth. The truth is found in Christ. So, do we have to worry about this stuff today? Well, there are still practicing Gnostics around, though those are less common. The more common threat are the variety of teachings that creep into many churches, as well as those churches that are founded on unbiblical teachings. And Colossians is actually quite useful to help us discern and respond. For example, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses both teach that Jesus is not God. They say that Jesus is the created Son of God and God can be seen through Jesus, sort of like the emanation idea of the Gnostics. But Colossians 2.8 refutes it. "For in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form."

And there are many other verses, though this is a difficult conversation to have with a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness. The argument usually veers off into other things. If you dig in, you'll discover that Mormon teaching is built on the visions of Joseph Smith and others. And it all sounds pretty amazing. But take a look at Colossians 2.18. "Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen. They are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual minds." I won't pretend to know more about Mormon or Jehovah's Witness teaching than I really do. But I do see a lot of connections here. Angel worship, great detail about visions, and the end result is always legalism. That is a rules based righteousness built on what you must do and not do to be a good follower. And people just one another based on what they eat and drink. Look at verse 16. "Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration, or a Sabbath day." Sound familiar? It's in other churches too. 

Consensus is mixed as to how to categorize Seventh Day Adventists. To a large extent they have a strong biblical focus and believe in the Trinity. I know some wonderful Adventists but I do disagree on some important theology. They emphasize Saturday as the true Sabbath and they are vegetarians. To that, I would encourage reading verse 16 again. "Don't let anyone judge you by what you eat, nor by a Sabbath day." And there are many churches by many names who fall into this general sort of judgmentalism over man-made rules. But verse 17 says, "All of those rules and rituals are a shadow. The reality is found in Christ."

Understand that when we follow Jesus, there are a lot of things that we used to do that we don't do any more. But that change does not occur because of rules. We change because we are made new. We are rooted in Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit who helps us leave sin and live righteous. That's not a shadow. That's reality. 

Now look at verse 20. "Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules? Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch. These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings." Did you catch that? These rules are man-made. You know, all the rules that make Christian life feel like a big box of 'do-nots', that we're not allowed to have. But that's not following Jesus. It's just following rules. 

Verse 23. "Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility, and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." An appearance of wisdom. They look good. Why? Self-imposed worship... forcing myself to be good for God's sake. False humility. It looks like humility, but it's not. Rules don't make you humble. When you follow rules, you get puffed up with pride when you get it right and feel guilty when you get it wrong. But never do they humble you. Humility comes when you realize, I can't do it without Jesus. And harsh treatment of the body. When discipleship feels more like boot camp, you might think, I'm in training. This is going to work. Be tough on me. Make me stop sinning. It all has an appearance of wisdom, but Paul says it has no value in restraining the flesh. It's all trying to change what you eat when God wants to change what you crave. You don't tie the flesh down. You let it die... on the cross with Jesus and you live a new life in Him.