Category: Book Reviews

This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

Question #3 –

Poetry of subversion. The authors explore how the hymn presented in Colossians 1:15-20 is a hymn of subversion of Empire. It takes the language of Empire and proclaims the supremacy of Christ over Caesar – radical, subversive, dangerous. They then contribute a “targum” (an extended translation and expansion that reads our world through the eyes of the text) of this passage. You can read it on p.85 or here. (and a short article on the point they are making here). What is your reaction to the poem? Does this imagination of an alternative to empire make sense?

I love that poem/hymn. We do live in a culture of images vying for our attention, or allegiance, our time and our money. The numbers vary, but it is thought that an individual is generally exposed to around 600 advertisements per day. We pay companies for the right to wear their name brand on our chest or butts.

I watch TV, I buy stuff, I surf the web (a lot). I don’t see any of that stuff as evil in and of itself. In fact most of that stuff has and can be used for good. I see the value in patronage and support and sponsorship. Issues arise though when said images and economic structures dominate our consciousness. When we allow the greed promoted by our economic system to let us forget that Christ is the image we should focus on. As Walsh writes, “this means that the ideology of economic growth is not Lord over our lives. We are not subservient to the imperatives of consumerism, ecological despoliation, technological innovation, and seeking our own self-interested security because we are subjects of another kingdom. We are committed to submitting our lives – including our economic aspirations, consumer habits, ecological practice, political involvement – to the one in whom, through whom and for whom all things are created.”

So this is about being image bearers for Christ rather than for someone else. I personally don’t see this as a polemic against style but an attitude encouragement. And neither is the point to eschew name brands in favor of whatever the cheap brand is. The allure of Walmart is just as seductive as that of Abercrombie – when both challenge the supremacy of Christ’s love by using his children in sweatshops our patronage of either demonstrates our allegiance to an economic system over Christ.

I don’t do a very good job at this. I live in suburbia. So many days I really don’t stop to think if my economic purchases put Christ first. Scratch that, most days it is only about my needs and wants. The poem proclaims –
the church reimagines the world
in the image of the invisible God

I’m trying to figure that out. To see the good in stuff. To not be a slave to systems of greed. To think about if my purchases are just. To be an image bearer.

This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

So Question #2 –

Empires are defined here as (1) built on systemic centralizations of power, (2) secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control, (3) religiously legitimated by powerful myths and (4) sustained by a proliferation of imperial images that captivate the imagination of the population. In comparing how both the Roman and current Western empires maintain the status quo of privilege and oppression the authors give the examples of “most major corporations use the equivalent of slave labor to produce clothing, toys, tools and some foods. Most of this labor is done by people in Asia, Latin America or Africa. While cash-crops farmers include both men and women, the majority of those who work in sweatshops, on coffee plantations and in the sex trade are women and children. … although our culture does not openly subscribe to an ethos of patriarchy, racism, and classism, the effects of the global economic market create the same kind of societal dynamic that was present in first-century Rome.” (p 59-60). I want to ask the same questions the authors then ask – “In the face of an empire that rules through military and economic control, what is the shape of a community that serves a ruler who brings reconciliation and peace by sacrificial death rather than military might? If the empire elevates economic greed and avarice into civic virtues, while Paul dismisses such a way of life as idolatrous, then how does a Christian community shaped by Paul’s gospel live life in the empire?” (p61).

Start calling America an empire and you get in trouble (even if you are the Vice President). Granted I’ve heard dispensational interpretations of Daniel’s vision that insist that Rome never fell so we are therefore still living in that fourth empire waiting for the seventieth week pre-trib rapture and all that, but even then the spin was pro-America.

I agree with Walsh and Keesmaat that America is an empire in the tradition of Rome and I don’t think that’s a good thing. The very raison d’etre of empire is power which directly contradicts the way of service and love preached by Jesus. But the systems and values of empire creep into the lives of its people, even those who ostensibly profess other values. Under the Roman empire the apostles had to combat warped values like it being okay to use people as slaves if it increased your profit or made your life easier; if you didn’t like another people group or wanted resources off their land, you liberated them of such land; sexual promiscuity and gluttony being considered natural indulgences of one’s appetites; and women being seen as mindless sex objects. But of course that’s all different today, right?

What really gets me is the subtle replacement of the values of the cross with the values of empire. The propaganda machines that push the virtues of the state have swayed Christians so that now civic virtues are promoted and Christian virtues questioned. When I can sit in a church and hear sermons in support of capitalism, preemptive war, racial discrimination, and sexism and fail to hear the words of Jesus actually preached, empire has won. When we sing hymns in praise of our country and think that forcing our children to say creeds of allegiance to an idol is a form of Christian witness, empire has won. When it is more important to be patriotic than care about the children we blew up, then empire has won. We have been taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

So how do we live in this empire? How do we love and not fear and yet challenge that which promotes evil? How can we (and I am very much included in this) stop pointing fingers at individual sins and actually think about how we’ve bought into (been indoctrinated into?) the values of empire? Can we stop trying the mesh or replace the values of the Kingdom with the values of the empire? Basically can we take a step back and ask why? Why do I believe/buy/promote this? Is this really a good thing? Does this fit into Jesus’ message? What is Jesus’ message anyway? How do I need to change?