Subverting the empire in a post-modern world

I have just read Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, which is a fantastic book looking at the first century New Testament letter to the Colossian church/community for anyone who today identifies with a post-modern world. How do you read a biblical text that to post-modern ears can seem to talk of rigid absolutes that punch you in the face? This book attempts to help us hear the radical challenges that this letter would have originally sounded. Refreshingly creative it uses targums (extended modern para-phrases of the text) to bring the text to life and reveal that just as the first century community was under an empire (Roman), so too is our world (global consumerism). Rather than “flying the flag of empire”, the church is to be a, “community in refusal of the empire that bears the image of another Lord in its daily life.” It is to be a community that subverts the empire and provides an imagination alternative. This isn’t an anarchistic rant against consumerism or globalisation – it is much more, it is a call for the church to be a community made up of, “citizens of the kingdom rather than subjects of the empire.” Perhaps we’ll share a few more quotes and thoughts in the future, but for now if it strikes a cord with you get hold of a copy (it isn’t the easiest read, but is well worth the effort) and perhaps join us as we ask how our lives are ‘subverting the empire’.

“Paul’s ethic in the third chapter of Colossians is rooted in the narrative of Christ – died, buried, risen, ascended and coming again. This is not a narrative that imposes a series of absolutes to oppress us; it is a story of liberation from an empire that would take captive our imagination while it rapes and plunders the earth… This is a story of restored relationships, a love story that calls forth an alternative community characterised by compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, love, peace, gratitude and wisdom. This is a story of creational restoration, a renewal to full humanness, in the image of the Creator. This is a community in which the word of Christ dwells richly. This is a community that is shaped as a countercultural force through the subversive worship of a subversive Lord.”

‘Colossians Re:mixed – subverting the empire’ by Brian J Walsh & Sylvia C Keesmaat