In Colossians 2:8, the apostle Paul writes: “Beware lest anyone capture you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” In this verse the apostle warns his readers against being taken captive by false philosophies. Rather, he says that they should adopt a philosophy “according to Christ.” This verse does not teach, as some have said, that philosophy itself is unworthy of Christian study. In fact, the verse teaches precisely the opposite.
David Wells, in his book "No Place for Truth," points out the breakdown in our moral world has indicators. He pointed to four major sign-posts, indicating changes that hasten people out of the moral world that the West long inhabited. Thinking has shifted from the objective and/or transcendent, to the subjective and culturally relative. The sign-post shifts are:
* from thinking about virtue, to thinking about values
* from thinking about character, to thinking about personality
* from thinking about nature, to thinking about self; and
* from thinking about guilt, to thinking about shame.
Follow these, Wells observed, and you’ve exited a moral world. The Cross then becomes simply incomprehensible.
Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is, no longer have the categories to understand it, no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories in their non-moral universe — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty.
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