An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 226: Typical Mystery Cult Stuff. Plus, All Tyrants Are God’s Fault (Colossians 1-4)

Colossians 1-4
Typical Mystery Cult Stuff. Plus, All Tyrants Are God’s Fault.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Colossians 1

“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son”

Paul, and Timothy, write to the Christians (“saints”) of Collosse, apparently on the recommendation of their local teacher Epaphras (“Epaphras our dear fellowservant, who is for you a faithful minister of Christ who also declared unto us your love in the Spirit.”).

This first chapter is mostly greeting and re-iteration of the statement of faith, but given some re-wording here we can get a better idea of what this means to Paul (and, we suppose, the other “saints”). It is that Christ is “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature” and that His sacrifice redeems “sins” of the believers – “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins”. What this means, in practice, seems to be that the believers gain spiritual strength – “Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness” from their belief, and also a measure of spiritual salvation – “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son”.

This latter part is interesting to me – recall that I pondered many a time during the gospels what Jesus meant by the “Kingdom of God”. Here, Paul turns it into the Kingdom of the Son, but he’s also equating God and Son in this chapter, so perhaps it’s the same thing. However, the implication here is that the “saints” are already in the Kingdom of the Son, in other words it isn’t a promise to enter heaven but an alternative spiritual way of being. I scoured this chapter and it only appears to be about spiritual gifts in the current life. In other words, a mystery cult – Jesus, upon becoming Christ, became a magical power that can remove “sin” in believers, and this is something hidden and unavailable to non-believers – “Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints”.

By “sins” Paul seems to be referring to bad deeds – “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight”. There’s no concept of “original sin” as later tacked on, simply due to being born human. This seems more to be about the psychological effect of accepting and admitting failings, and receiving a way to remove the psychological weight or guilt or remorse.

I was also caught by a passing phrase – “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him”. So God created human political systems for himself? Does that mean that all the awful tyrants from history have been due to God? Can that really be what Paul means? Mind you, He did deliberately inflict mad king Saul on the Israelites.

Colossians 2

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

Yes, don’t listen to other people. Paul’s religion is one of feeling, not thinking. “Wisdom and Knowledge” are defined as things that can only be arrived at through worship, in other words secret magical powers. There’s some good metaphor here about the worshippers sharing in the mystical experience of Christ’s death and rebirth –“Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God”. The worshipper is baptised into the faith, whereupon they become “dead” to their sins, as Jesus was dead, but then rise anew with their “handwriting of ordinances that was against us” metaphorically nailed to the cross. It’s pretty clearly a death-rebirth sun god/year god/fertility god kind of myth but one in which the worshippers can partake of the same mystical energy in order to achieve psychological refreshment.

Paul then seems to imply that having been reborn in Christ, the “saints” are then not accountable to mortal laws, at least as they apply to worship –“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days”. He’s taking the Christ worship away from its Jewish roots bit by bit, and again I kind of suspect some sort of doctrinal rift with Peter.

The chapter ends with what reads like a command to eschew physical things – “Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using”, but the last verse I can’t tell if Paul is saying that “satisfying of the flesh” has no honour, or that there is no honour in neglecting the “satisfying of the flesh”. It would make sense that he would posit a dichotomy between the spiritual (yay) and the physical (boo), but possibly he’s speaking out against those who go too far in self-mortification.

Colossians 3

“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.”

Okay, from the end of last chapter, Paul was making the spiritual (yay) and physical (boo) dichotomy. “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”

By this, Paul means “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry”, and also “now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth”. Now … I’d argue that these are no more “earthly” than the replacements Paul would like from the “saints”, namely “Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another” and” above all these things put on charity”.

I’ve used the terms “spiritual” and “mystical” in the past few discussions but this should not be read that I in any way believe in the actual existence of the supernatural. However, these are abstract mental constructs to describe somehow ineffable and expanding thought processes, and I would argue that anger and covetousness are thoughts/feelings as much as are forgiveness and charity. Both directions are entirely human things to think and feel. No, one should not allow, for example, excessive anger to rule our lives but that’s because to do so makes things unpleasant for both ourselves and others. We should not, however, feel guilt and shame for feeling anger in the first place – it’s a natural process, as are desire, covetousness, envy etc. That these are somehow bad-wrong things that should be suppressed or driven out is a fast track to mental breakdown, and a pernicious undermining of what it means to be human and normal.

I also take exception to the spiritual/earthly dichotomy. Whilst I can understand the idea from an abstract viewpoint – Paul, as a religious leader, wants the attention of his followers to be on religion and not “everyday” things – it seems to me to be somewhat disrespectful of the very God he professes to love. If, as is explained in Chapter 1, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth”, why is the earth a bad thing? It was, as discussed back in Genesis, created by God for Man. By the logic of Paul’s own belief system, it seems a bit ungrateful to assume that anything physical is therefore “bad”.

I have no particular grievance with many of the ideas expressed in this chapter, about the “saints” being a kind of brethren beyond race and nation, except that it seems to me that the Muslims seem to have achieved this concept a bit better than the Christians. And although the various verses about women, children and servants obeying the master of the house are obnoxious and easily abused on their own, in context they do point out that a husband, father and master all have obligations to ensure the happiness of their wife, children, servants. So, that it supports this patriarchal system as a given is dubious by modern standards, I’m willing to give this a pass here and say that it’s more about responsibilities to one another in order to make societies run smoothly.

But it’s still dodgy.

Colossians 4

“Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.”

I’ve wondered sometimes, during this read-through, who decided where chapters should start and end (and don’t say “God”). Because the first two verses here would fit much more neatly at the end of the last chapter, completing the ideas put forward there. The rest of this chapter would then be given largely as the extended letter sign-off that it is.

To the quoted verse first, following on from the last chapter this serves as a reminder to masters that they too, under Paul’s religion, are also servants and would seem to serve as a veiled threat about treating others as to how you would be treated. And it makes the previous chapter seem less about simply telling people to obey one another (or, rather, the man of the household).

“Walk in wisdom toward them that are without” says Paul, whether in order to covert non-believers or to treat them with a certain respect, or both, is not clear. The next verse, “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt” is interesting in that it demonstrates how metaphors change. I’d assume, from the context, that being seasoned with salt is a good thing; speech seasoned with salt is welcome speech. But to me, it sounds more like Paul is telling his fellow believers to be polite but with a touch of stern-ness, to be passive-aggressive., to be, in current parlance “a bit salty”.

The latter half of the verses list various names sending good wishes, or being wished well. Amongst them are Tychicus and Onesimus, who are also the co-authors if this particular letter (once again I wonder what the exact mechanics are). Without looking back to check, I’m fairly sure Tychicus was one of the co-authors of the Corinthians letter that told women to shut up; I wonder if he again is the author of the bit about obeying the man of the household? I’ve got my eye on you, Tychicus…

No other names really stand out except for “Jesus, known as Justus”. There was a reference earlier (Romans, I think) to another Jesus who was a preacher, so evidently not an unusual name (I think the non-Greek version is Joshua or Yeshua).

And … that’s it for Colossians. Some of the principles of Paul’s belief are explained in a different fashion, making them a bit more comprehensible compared to the muddled language of some of the earlier epistles (earlier in publication order, which I don’t know if this matches writing order). It makes it plain that it is a kind of mystery cult, that the worshippers, the “saints” can hope to tap into supernatural strength and capability via their connection to the figure of Christ, who Himself did so via self-sacrifice. Somewhere in the back of my head this reminds me specifically of another religion, perhaps it will come to me as I continue.