Fake news? (Colossians 2:8-12)
It’s incredible how quickly fake news spreads! There have been countless e-mails and what’s app messages going around at this time of the COVID-19 pandemic that causes people to panic, only to discover later it was fake news. The other thing that amazes me is that we so often believe the stuff we read because it was published or on the internet. Not everything we read is going to be helpful or even accurate.
Paul is instructing the Colossians not to believe everything they hear. He urges them not to be captured by the world’s way of thinking.
Colossians 2:8 (NLT) Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.
What is shaping your thinking? Whatever you’re spending time reading and filling your mind with is going to shape the way you see the world, yourself and even God. So much of what we read sounds really good, clever and wise. It also sounds biblical. But how would we know if it really is? There’s only one way. Read the Bible for yourself. That can be a daunting task because we always come across passages that confuse us, but that is the reason we need to be in a Christian community. We grow as we talk to other Christians about what we’ve read and we learn from each other. We also have the Holy Spirit within us, teaching us and revealing himself to us as we open our hearts to him.
Why would we listen, believe and allow our hearts and minds to be shaped by the world when Jesus is offering us the life-giving truth? As Christians, our sinful natures have been buried with Christ, and we are new creations in him. God’s power that raised Jesus from the dead is dwelling in us; now that’s the kind of truth that should be in our thinking.
I would encourage you to be critical of your view and thinking on various topics. Has Jesus shaped it, or are you thinking in a way that has been shaped by the world? Consider how you view God. Are you seeing him as the God who your Bible describes or have you got an image of him that is contrary to what you’ll read in scripture?
The answer is to read your Bible and discover all the wonders and beauties of our amazing Saviour, Jesus Christ. Ask him to reveal himself to you and prepare to be overwhelmed by someone who loves you more than you know.
Two words that matter 