Reading Francis

Last Sunday’s Old Testament passage from Deuteronomy was a beautiful passage from Moses on how the law of God is written on our hearts, and the Gospel was the Parable of the Good Samaritan, so my guess is that nobody paid much attention to the second reading, Colossians 1:15-20. But Paul says something interesting in v. 16 that I wanted to revisit:

For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth,

the visible and the invisible,

whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;

all things were created through him and for him.

Paul can be hard to read, especially on issues related to modern politics. In Romans 13, he clearly argues that Christians should obey whoever is in charge, which makes that passage a darling of whoever is in charge. This verse from Colossians seems like another vote for the status quo. 

It’s helpful to remember that, in Paul’s mind, the end of the world was literally upon us; Jesus’ Resurrection was understood as the first of many, with likely not much of a gap in between his Rising and a more general end-of-times resurrection. That “eschatological urgency”, as my professor Charles Talbert used to call it, is an important explanation of why bettering systems of government on a world that was rapidly passing away seemed like a distracting side quest to early Christians.

Two other things strike me about this verse, especially in light of the modern temptation to identify “Christian nations.” 

First, Paul supposedly wrote this while imprisoned by the Roman government (there are some theories that this was written after his death, authored in his name by a disciple). That same government executed him, as well as most of the original apostles. During Paul’s lifetime, the Roman Empire conducted campaigns against the Jewish religious minority that didn’t discriminate between the various Judaic sects, of which Christianity was included. So it’s unrealistic to assume that Paul is saying that the God through whom “principalities and powers” exist approves of how they use their powers.

Second, Paul begins and ends the verse with “all things”. In that light, it seems to me that Paul must be saying that, yes, the US was “created through him and for him.” Regardless of which administration is in power. And the same could be said of Iran, Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia, and all the others, now and for all time. 

Paul is not arguing for “good guys and bad guys”. He is arguing that this world, as broken as it is, is God’s handiwork, against any Gnostic claims that this world is a Hell from which Christ will whisk us away.

Heck if I know how these all could be created through and for a loving God, even as they pummel the life out of each other. I guess we’ll have to ask God later, when we get the chance.