AS I MENTIONED previously, I voluntarily put a lot of restrictions on what I eat. The bad habits (or lack of good habits?) that set in during the COVID-19 pandemic led to my gaining twenty useless pounds and troubling increases in my cholesterol and triglyceride levels. In the abstract, I already had committed years before to never letting myself become as dependent on medication as my parents had been, where a doctor prescribes two or three meds for one condition, then another to alleviate the side effects of those medications, and so on, ad nauseam. But after the pandemic, that commitment was no longer abstract. If I wanted to avoid taking medication, I had to make some difficult and concrete changes.

And thankfully, I did.

The good news is that it worked. I lost the weight. I cut those dangerous blood levels in half. Even then, they’re still borderline, but in theory I’m in a much better place healthwise than I was before. Moreover, I’ve become so accustomed to eating this way that I generally enjoy it. Store-bought goodies now taste way too sweet, too salty, too greasy, and there are many healthy ways to get a flavor boost in my food (kimchi is a new go-to).

The restrictions, in other words, were never meant to be ends in themselves, as if it was intrinsically virtuous to stop eating cheese. They were means to the end of better health, with the added benefit that new habits led to changed desires as well. If all that self-denial didn’t lead to healthier outcomes over time, what would be the point of doing them?

Now transfer that over to the realm of religion and spirituality. As we’ve seen, nobody knows exactly what was being taught or said in Colossae that was giving Paul (and possibly Epaphras) such concern. The false teaching surely had at least some Jewish roots, and possibly represented an early form of Gnosticism as well. There were already many restrictions in the Law of Moses, and some early Gnostic texts preached a severe kind of self-denial as well. For Gnostic devotees, this was based on a revulsion toward the inferiority of life in a physical body as opposed to one on a more spiritual plane. Indeed, texts like the so-called Gospel of Thomas even put such teachings in the mouth of Jesus.

Whatever their origin, however, Paul considers the ideas and religious rules being taught in Colossae as nothing more than human inventions. The Colossians have no need to submit themselves to such restrictions, because spiritually, they have been buried and raised with Christ, who died to what the New International Version translates as “the elemental spiritual forces of this world” and the Common English Bible renders more colloquially as “the way the world thinks and acts” (Col 2:20).

But such rules are not only unnecessary, Paul argues, but in the end useless even if they superficially make sense at first:

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. (Col 2:23, NIV)

This is now the second time Paul has referred to the “false humility” of the false teachers. Again, the word “false” isn’t actually in the text, but it makes sense in context; a few verses earlier, Paul described the teachers as being puffed up with pride over ideas that were actually quite worldly. The suggestion that they might be proud over their “harsh treatment of the body” reminds me of the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. (Matt 6:16)

Why do these people fast? Jesus suggests that they fast to be seen fasting as a matter of pride. If that’s their purpose, then fine, they have their reward. People will see their long faces and admire them for their self-sacrificial spirituality, but that’s all the reward they’ll get. Similarly, there may be people in Colossae who submit themselves to rigorous religious regulations, but for what? To bolster their spiritual pride? From God’s perspective, what’s the point of that? And do they even recognize how such a motivation ties them to the rewards of this world? That in itself would be deeply ironic for someone who claimed to be the self-denying kind of Gnostic.

Moreover, Paul argues that the restrictions are useless in “restraining sensual indulgence”; his wording suggests the “satisfaction of the flesh.” Again, Paul often uses the word “flesh” to refer not merely to the physical body, but to a life of rebellion, oriented away from God. If that’s the right reading here, then Paul isn’t simply saying that their technique is faulty, but their motivation and goal. All their religious rules may seem admirable and wise to others, but what good are they if they do nothing to orient them toward God? Going back to what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, people can give alms to the poor, pray, and fast either for their own pleasure at getting the admiration of others, or they can do these things secretly solely for the pleasure of God. Paul, I think, would consider the first way of being “spiritual” worse than useless.

. . .

SO ENDS CHAPTER 2 of Paul’s letter to the Colossians. In chapter 3, Paul will urge the Colossians to “set [their] minds on things above, not on earthly things” and “put to death…whatever belongs to [their] earthly nature” (vss. 2, 5). Paul criticizes the rules and restrictions of the false teachers not because he thinks all rules are wrong or that all behavior is permissible. Rather, these would-be spiritual guides seem unaware of the ways that their vaunted spirituality is earthly, worldly, unspiritual. He warns the Colossians not to listen to them so that he can set a better way of thinking in front of them. Let’s take a look at that next, so we can learn to think that way too.