As I read through Scripture, I am always looking to understand it better. At the same time, I am listening for God to speak to me. In the process, I notice things. Like today. I noticed Paul’s statement to the Colossians:
I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.
Colossians 2:4 ESV
Hmmm… the delusion of plausible arguments. That’s an interesting phrase… (So it seems to me, anyway!) I want to explore that a bit further.
Context is always important. the context for this statement is Paul’s letter to the people in Colossae, a very Greek city. He had already been to Athens where the Athenians spent significant time telling and listening to the latest ideas. (Acts 17:21)
In our modern view, we might imagine an ancient think tank in which new ideas are explored and developed toward some greater ends. We might be tempted to see Athens as an incubator of ideas for the benefit of mankind.
Luke, the writer of Acts, was not being complimentary, however, when he made this observation. The context suggests a contrast between a desire for novel ideas and a desire for truth. Ideas for the sake of ideas and novelty for the sake of novelty may be an erudite pastime for the bored elite who enjoy comfort and privilege, but they are not noble pursuits in themselves.
Unless one has a desire to know truth (and put it into practice), entertaining new ideas is only an exercise in futility, diversion and delusion. The ancient writer of Ecclesiastes, writing about a millennia before Paul set foot in Athens, recognized “there is nothing new under the sun”. (Ecc. 1:9)
Even way back then! Chasing after ideas that are new for the sake of novelty is just a distraction from the truth. It is meaningless!
Paul views the sharing of ideas for the novelty of them in the same way modern people might play video games or read a book – entertainment to pass time. He obviously thought little of such things and had no time for it.
Truth had been revealed to Paul in the form of the risen Jesus, whom his people had crucified and Paul had persecuted. Paul’s whole life was interrupted one day as he traveled with the intention of arresting and imprisoning Christ followers in Damascus, and the course and trajectory of Paul’s life was forever changed.
Paul’s life would never be the same. By the time Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians, his motto had become “to live is Christ and to die is gain”. (Phil. 1:21) Other things, including a preoccupation with novel ideas, has become mere distractions not worth his time.
If we can tell anything about the biographical and autobiographical sketches of Paul in Acts and his letters, we can see that Paul was fiercely and uncompromisingly concerned about truth. That attitude led him to persecute the followers of Christ with zeal when he thought the truth lay in that direction.
It was Paul’s commitment to truth that prompted him to turn in the opposite direction and accept the same Jesus Paul had persecuted as his Lord and Savior. Paul gave himself completely as a servant of the risen Lord to the point of sharing in his own body the sufferings of Christ (as described in Colossians 1:24).
Paul’s turn of phrase, perhaps, is what caught my eye as I read through Colossians this morning: the delusion of plausible arguments. It deserves some additional contemplation.
Continue reading “On the Delusion of Plausible Arguments, I Hold to Christ in Me”
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