I was quite dyspeptic this morning, and put a fairly sarcastic quote on the web page. The comments I added added salt to the wound. The post is down — even though (in my non dyspeptic moments I find progressives irritating to dangerous, I should not be quite that rude.

Paul today talks about what he need to do. And this is a challenge.

Colossians 3

5Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. 8But now you must get rid of all such things — anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

When one looks at this list of things Paul has divided them into three parts.

1. Internal Attitudes. Paul is not talking about civil crimes here. He is talking about actions and thoughts that are not of Christ. He is not talking about adultery, theft, or perjury — he is talking about unmarried sex, lustfulness, anger… and greed. Most of us deal with these thoughts daily. We may give in to them, or we may be blind to our sin. We literally may have a log in our eye — on say greed — and not be aware of it.
2. Interpersonal harm. Or harm between each other and our neighbour. The terms used here are wrath, gossip, malice. I crashed through this earlier today (which is why the post is down and not going back up). I think being untrue about one another — either by malicious and false gossip or the soft lie of an excuse fits in here. One of the wiser practices the Romans stopped in Vatican II was the confessor — who could tease out what was going on in one’s life.
3. Stigma and judgment. Paul includes within the church the enemy (Barbarian and Sycthian), Imperial subjects who hated each other (Jew and Greek) and people of all status (slave and free). We tend to deal with people in these categories. By labels.

But the person is not the label. The file is not the territory. And we daily need to take up our cross and deny ourselves indulgences here. For we cling to our desire, our wrath, our greed and our sense of self-importance.

And that does not glorify God.