The game ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ first came to light in 1974. Players of D&D create characters which they live out in an alternative reality. And so D&D is a fantasy role playing game where players embark upon imaginary adventures in a created world. Although there’s a few variations of the game, a typical D&D game consists of an ’adventure’ where the players live and breathe another life story with all sorts of goals and ambitions as determined by the storyline. The fictional locations for these stories can vary: the story might be set in a city, another country, another planet or even in an entire fictional universe.
It is estimated that by 2004, 20 million people had played the game. There is something appealing about creating a new reality free from the problems and contradictions of this world. There is something seductive and exciting about living in a world filled with halflings, elves, dwarves, half-elves, orcs and dragons. A world where wizards memorize spells which expire upon use and must be re-memorized for the next day.
D&D draws people in—especially young people—because it has the power to capture their imaginations. In one of the latest games called ‘Forgotten Realms’, dragons fly the night skies, valiant heroes seek fame and fortune, the gods themselves speak through their pious servants, and mysterious wizards hunt the secrets of magic lost in time.
Symbols and images constantly remind the participants they are living in an alternate reality. D&D offers an alternate story for life—a world where kids can live out their dreams without the pressures and burdens of survival in a modern world. In this alternative reality, hopes and aspirations come true. ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ offers a Disneyland gospel which captures the imagination: for if you wish upon a star then all your dreams really will come true.
Teenagers aren’t the only ones good at playing games. Societies construct their own realities and live out their romantic fantasies. Ever since the Tower of Babel when mankind abandoned the idea of God at the centre of society, ‘the Lord scattered them over the face of the earth’ (Gen 11:9) and people conspired in their sinfulness and produced fragmented versions of reality. And so the games this world plays are foolish games of survival. Society dreams that we can rule ourselves and the world without God. In your dreams: the reality is that God put us in the world to rule over it as we live under the rule of God. And so together men and women and the created world were made to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
But outside Eden, dreams are more seductive than reality. Imaginations are easily held captive to lies which promise so much even though time and time again they fail to deliver. Society dare not admit that dreams of a brave new world may indeed turn into our worst nightmares. The pessimism of George Orwell who predicted widespread political oppression in 1984 has no place in the modern world. Hollywood movies predict the worst but so entrenched is the dream we laugh away apocalyptic visions of doom. However, judgment will come! But until it does our world lives the lie and it extends an invitation to Christians to abandon the reality of the gospel for the sake of a dream which leads to hell.
First century Rome was seductive. The world had never been safer, life was everything one could ever hope for or imagine. The Emperor Caesar was lord and saviour. Through his victories he brought peace and prosperity. Caesar was a worthy object of worship along with other lesser gods in the empire. And there was lots to give thanks for: advanced military power, safe travel unlike the world had ever known, aqueducts to carry water, economic prosperity, personal happiness and security. The prospect of a bright future. The key word was ‘peace’ and Caesar had brought peace in abundance.
Everyone loves a good story and the story of the Roman Empire can be summed up in two words, Pax Romana. Rome saw herself as the bearer of cosmic peace, fertility and prosperity. With the coming of the Roman Empire a new age had dawned because the gods were happy. And in conquering the barbarian peoples who populated the known world, Rome was ensuring that its story of peace was forced upon everyone—even if they didn’t want it.
This story shaped the rhythm of life in the empire. Feasts and festivals celebrated Rome’s victory over the barbarian hordes. Festivals in honour of the birthday of the Emperor; coins stamped with Pax, the goddess of peace on one side—weapons on the other. Sacrifices to those who ruled Rome. Unavoidable images and symbolism that reminded Roman citizens who were the gods in their world. The very fabric of society was ordered to retain the status quo: the economic importance of women, children and slaves was carefully guarded in Roman law. To the undiscerning Roman citizen it was ‘peace, perfect peace’. The Roman version of reality was seductive and it held captive the imagination of its citizens. Appease the gods—live the dream—join the emperor cult—pay homage to Caesar—conquer foreign nations in the name of the gods—go with masses and all your dreams may just come true.
This is the world of Asia Minor in the time of the Apostle Paul. And in west-central Asia Minor is the Lycus River Valley and the city of Colossae (put a map on the screen). Colossae was known for its textile industry, but by Paul’s day its importance had declined and Colossae was outshone by the neighbouring cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis. Paul had strong pastoral ties with each of these cities and, as Col 4:16 suggests, he had written a now lost letter to the Laodicean church.
The Colossian church was planted by Epaphras, who was probably a convert from Paul’s three years in Ephesus (read about it in Acts 19). After establishing a church, Epaphras returned to Ephesus concerned about a dangerous and slippery variation of the gospel that stood to comprise the Colossian faith. However, when Epaphras reached Ephesus he was imprisoned with Paul and Aristarchus (Col 4:10). For this reason, these three men send their greeting to the Colossian church in 4:10, 12.
With Epaphras behind bars, Paul commissions Tychicus to return to Colossae with his letter. So Paul reports in Col 4:7, ‘Tychicus will tell you all the news about me’. Paul describes him as ‘a faithful minister and fellow servant of the Lord’. Then verse 8, ‘I am sending him (Tychicus) to you for the express purpose that you may know about our circumstances and that he may encourage your hearts’. When Tychicus arrived in Colossae he would have found a predominantly Gentile church meeting in house churches, such as the one in Nympha’s home which is referred to in Col 4:15.
Nympha and the wider church in Colossae struggled with being Christian in a modern, cosmopolitan society. This alternate reality demanded that Christians relinquish their imaginations to majority of the world who worship spiritual beings apart from Christ. And so there is a particular focus in Colossians upon spiritual beings and their influence over us. Of course, this only makes sense if we admit the existence and activity of the spirit world. Paul has no hesitation and so he asserts the supremacy of Christ over the unseen power and authorities. Christ is the ‘head over every power and authority’, he says in Col 2:10. And in Col 2:15, God in Christ has ‘disarmed the powers and authorities, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them on the cross’.
And yet spiritual ‘powers and authorities’ are not to be taken lightly. They have the ability to sway us and weaken and dismantle our trust in Christ. The spiritual warfare in the invisible, spiritual world plays upon our sinful natures, seeking to lure us away from Christ. Paul reminds us that Christ alone has the power to deal with the threat these powers pose to us.
Paul writes to preserve the integrity of the Christian assertion that Jesus is Lord’.
Like Nympha living in her first century Roman world, we live in a constructed reality which is flawed but holds captive the collective imagination of our Western world. The collective dream of those living in Australia is that given enough time and technology we can solve our own problems. Given enough time we will do what the builders of the Tower of Babel were unable to do: occupy the heavens and become all powerful despots who, without hindrance, rule the world.
This is why economics is so important. This is why everyone is panicking. In order to move forward society need money and surplus money for research and development. The more money the faster the technology comes and the sooner medical science helps each generation live longer so it can abundantly enjoy the fruits of its self-imposed godlike status. And as technology increases the gap for God gets smaller until the ‘god of the gap’ is squeezed into oblivion. Then society, with its head held high, can truly claim its arrogant divinity.
Never mind that the dream has proved itself flawed time and time again. But you never know—if you wish hard enough upon a star then all your dreams might come true. Above all else, our society passionately wants to keep the dream alive. And so we live in a world full of symbols and images which remind us to make consumer choices for humans, after all, are primarily units of consumption. Corporations such as Disney, Coca-Cola and McDonalds unashamedly flash their images which reflect consumer affluence, Western superiority and the march of economic progress. Corporate logos remind our culture to keep the dream alive, ‘I shop, therefore I am’.
As Nympha and the wider Colossian church struggled with being Christian in a modern, cosmopolitan society—so do we! Our society is intolerant of Christians who hold firm to the supremacy of Christ. The call is to relinquish our imaginations to the majority who worship the progress myth and other minor, less confronting gods—like the gods of career, laziness and sex. Indeed, the false teaching encountered by the Colossians is still live today. Col 2:8, ‘See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ’. We ought not take the influence of ‘spiritual ‘powers and authorities’ lightly. They have the ability to sway us and weaken and dismantle our trust in Christ.
We are engaged in spiritual warfare and Colossians speaks to Christians who know the direct assault of the evil one. Satan and his cohorts are working in and through the various structures and institutions of this world which hold sway over people and the letter to the Colossians speaks to Christians who think they can blindly mix the gods of this age with their confession that ‘Christ is Lord’. Colossians is written to ‘afflict the comfortable’ and ‘comfort the afflicted’. To this end, Paul unravels the implications of the sovereignty of Christ for Christians living in ‘the dominion of darkness’ (Col 1:13).
When Epaphras brought the gospel to Colossae many put their faith in Christ and were siphoned from a godless reality into the reality of the kingdom of the Son. Look at Col 1:13, ‘For he (God) has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves’. When we believed the gospel, we were drawn out of this world into the reality that God created for us. When God made the world he constructed reality and the gospel calls us back into that reality—the reality of the kingdom of the beloved son.
The gospel is not game. It introduces us not to another social construct. The gospel and the Christian life isn’t a sophisticated game of ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ where the participants live in a fools paradise. The gospel takes us out of the fantasy world and puts us in the real world. Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians in 75 AD because the church was at risk of having its imagination stolen by a teaching which offered a false reality. The church was at risk of abandoning reality and returning to the fantasy world.
Our situation is not unlike the Colossian situation. We live in tension with our culture which unashamedly wants to recapture our imaginations by convincing us to abandon the kingdom of God for the kingdom of the empire. The letter to the Colossians chastises us for worldliness and reminds us to be holy for the Lord our God is a holy God.
Have a look at the first verse of Colossians—for it is here that reality begins to bite. The letter is ascribed to both Paul and Timothy, although Paul is the likely author and Timothy probably included because of his pastoral involvement with the Colossian church. And you’ll notice that Paul is not shy. He asserts his right to speak into the Colossian situation for he is ‘an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God’ (Col 1:1).
In a multi-cultural, cosmopolitan world the only truth is that there is no such thing as truth. This doesn’t stop Paul from asserting his authority in verse 1. As an apostle, Paul speaks the truth and he injects it into the Colossian situation in order to shut down the potential danger of the false teachers. Paul identifies himself in such a way that not only does he have divine authority, but so does the text that he writes. And it gets worse. Paul addresses his letter to the ‘holy and faithful brothers in Christ’ (Col 1:1). If this be so, if some folks be saints and faithful, then others in Colossae must be sinners and faithless. The truth penetrates society and people are polarised, either for the truth or againstt he truth. Reality bites.
Paul goes onto to say to say, ‘grace and peace to you from God our Father’ (Col 1:2). Some later manuscripts add ‘and from the Lord Jesus Christ’ (most of you have that in the footnotes). Either way, the words ‘grace’ and ‘peace’ strike at the heart of what Paul says in the rest of this letter.
‘Grace’ is a key theological concept for Paul. And although the word occurs only three more times in the letter (Col 1:6; 4:6, 18), Paul’s emphasis on ‘thankfulness’ to God reflects a mature understanding of ‘grace’. We understand the grace of God when we realise that our status as God’s people came about by God’s own, unmerited intervention on our behalf. By the grace of God, we were shifted out of the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son (Col 1:13). We deserved death. We deserved hell. Once we were dead in our sins, we were as lifeless as dry bones in the burning sun. There was no fear of God before our eyes.
Now let me read to you Eph 2:4–5, ‘But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved’. The Apostle Peter says, ‘Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy’.
The grace of God introduces us to the ‘peace of God’. Peace is rooted in grace. There can only be peace if God enters our conflict-ridden, distorted, oppressive and broken reality with initiatives of grace. When Paul uses the word ‘peace’ he is thinking of the Old Testament prophetic hope that God’s people will live in an era of shalom. This will be a time when they will be delivered from their enemies and enjoy both physical and spiritual well-being. Shalom has to do with blessing, richness, abundance and a far reaching harmony that characterises all our relationships. And so peace is far more than the absence of trouble, it is the fullness of the presence of God himself.
Peter O’Brien points out that when ‘Paul prays for peace for the Colossians it is not simply a wish for spiritual prosperity. Nor is it a prayer for inner contentment. His request is that they may comprehend more fully the nature of that relationship of peace which God has established with them’ (O’Brien, 6). By grace alone and with the gift of faith in Christ, God has called you into the fullness and wholeness of relationship with him. You have peace with God. He is your Heavenly Father. You are his sons and daughters. The heart that is at peace with God shares the words of the psalmist, ‘I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live’ (Ps 116:1–2).
Paul prays that the Colossians and ourselves will continue to experience and enjoy the peace of God which flows from the grace of God poured out upon us. And so we are ‘in Christ’—verse 2. We are no longer spiritually located ‘in this world’—we are ‘in Christ’—we are located in a new place, the kingdom of God’s Son which re-orientates our whole existence. We have been pulled out of this world for life in another world. As we unravel Colossians we will hear God saying to us that we shouldn’t be living as though we still belong to this world.
Grace and peace—we are in Christ. Ultimately the Roman Empire couldn’t deliver peace. Historians say Rome fell 476 AD when the last Roman emperor was deposed. Neither will our Western society ever bring perfect and lasting peace. Peace comes when we are reconciled to God—not to culture, and not to ‘powers and principalities’ which capture us through deceptive philosophy. Peace comes when we are reconciled to Christ and so at the heart of the letter to the Colossians is the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ—whether it be for those living in first century Asia Minor, or for us living in 21st century Sydney.
Short conclusion. Our society is like first century society under Roman rule: seductive and comfortable. It risks recapturing our imaginations and holding us captive. For if you win my imagination, then you’ve won my life. We are ‘in Christ’. God has captured our imaginations because he has poured out his grace upon us and so we are reconciled to God. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So in all you do be thankful, giving yourself to the one who died for you and rose again so that you may have life.
