Drowning in Shallow Water
The Hope of Colossians for Today's Culture

Drowning in Shallow Water

For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col 1:9-14)

Contemporary society is drowning in shallow water. If all of us could speak, we might confess from some deeper cavern of our souls that, in many ways, we are a fearful people. There seems to be loose in our individual and collective lives this great fear — could I say terror? — that the things to which we are giving our time, money, influence are, in fact, less than worthy pursuits. Are we drowning in shallow water? One of the more pressing issues seems to be that we do not know how to save ourselves, much less our society, from an uncertain future. Actually, we seem fidgety, even fretful over any number of predicted futures while, at the same time, being incurably nostalgic about the imagined past. Another indicator of our dilemma is our collective neurosis about the economy, all the while being told by Wall Street's pundits "it's the best in 30 years." And yes, to make the obvious plain, we are almost immobilized with guilt over the rearing of our children, having in many cases compromised the integrity of home for some as yet unrealized benefit "out there" somewhere. In a word, all of us are gasping for spiritual air in the churning waters of postmodern America.

The shallow water in which we are drowning laps around the ankles of our personal lives, every social structure, and even the community of faith. In these dawning moments of the third millennium, we are asking ourselves gnawing questions like: What of life really endures? What is it that is really important? Am I giving my so-called life to that which will out last my years? At the end of the day — my life? — did I give myself to that which ennobled others and brought glory to God? When we come to the end of life's journey and look back, I believe all of us want to answer that question with a satisfying "Yes."

At the same time, we seem afraid even to ask more troubling questions like: Did I give my life to trivial pursuits, to causes and work and values that do not endure? Then again, all of us are not sure how we plan to answer this one: Have I paid for life with cheap currency only to discover too late that life is far more valuable than I imagined?

We all have these fears, do we not? When we get to the end of our lives, will we be embarrassed by what we see? If that's not our greatest fear, it surely is near the top of the list. The words of a Christian popular song ask a very good question: "Will those who come behind us find us faithful?" We are not sure. In moments of transparent honesty, we are afraid to ask these and other difficult questions. Perhaps we are drowning in shallow water.

Cruise into any grocery store today, pick up a few items, and make your way to the check-out counter. Before you can place your purchases on the conveyor, faster than you can say "debit card," you find yourself surrounded by a gang of tabloid thugs. Pick up the headlines and feast your soul-hungry eyes on "the untold stories" of people you would rather forget. Do you know why they market the tabloids at the check out counter? For one reason, marketing mavens call them "impulse items." The headlines "grab you" while you are waiting your turn to check out. Many, indeed, do "check out." Next time you are there, surrounded by those bizarre headline bullies, ask, "How many are drowning in shallow water, living life by tabloid?" Andrew Walker, in his provocative book Telling the Story, accurately describes the need of so many today to find themselves by either publicly exposing their failures — think guests on shows like Jerry Springer or Montel Williams — or who use their own failures as a launching pad for talk show fame — think Oprah Winfrey. Walker writes: "If we cannot feel better, then perhaps we can become famous through our therapeutic failings. Oprah Winfrey is the symbol of triumph through dysfunction. Once we craved functional adequacy, now we flout our inadequacy."1 The once "normal" has become exception to some, bizarre to others. Now, the more weird it can appear, the more likely we are to leer like voyeurs into the seedy, shallow lives of people we would not like as next door neighbors. Tabloid television sells, advertisers know it, and American television audiences are buying.

With the advent of the information super highway, tabloid-like internet wallpaper spams your screen with the weird, lurid, even pornographic. Add to this psychic hot lines at $3.95 a minute, tarot card stupidity, and revolving door marriages and families and, before any of us can shout "Stop!", we have a society drowning in shallow water. What gives?

Where once we could turn to elected officials locally and nationally, now such options seem at best an exercise in wishful thinking. The political scene offers little encouragement. From President to precinct worker, the information age offers us more water without additional depth. Money laundering, alleged sexual impropriety, truth squeezing and position shifting are but a few of the goods trafficked in the political marketplace. Politically speaking, we are drowning in information, unable to connect it all together, much less get it all together. We have much, all the while terribly frightened about the prospects of being less.

Is there hope and help for this "new age" awash in turbulent, dangerous but shallow waters? A few years ago, I spent six weeks in Britain. One of the blessings of being in Britain for such an extended stay was escaping the United States gossip mongers. Nevertheless, it did not take me long to learn the British have out-tabloided us. They have their own scandal mills, cranking out the insipid and inane scribblings of hungry journalists. Not to shock you, but the British have tabloid papers that make ours look mild. After returning to the States, I went to the grocery store a couple of times and there, at the check-out line, were familiar friends: The Inquirer and The Star. I thought to myself, "How refreshing to come back to America and find a weekly tabloid rather than a daily." That's right, the Brits have daily tabloids. You can plunk down your pence every day, and drown all over again in stories of sex, bribery, extortion, murder, and worse.

The question lingers: Are we surrounding our minds with and giving our passions to all kinds of information and data that cannot lift us to higher levels of existence? In my judgment, many today, without their conscious consent, are allowing the shallow waters of trivial pursuits to drown their higher instincts in low thinking and even lower living. What is the God-destined, life-affirming purpose for which God created us?

The Bible does not leave us without help or hope. In fact, the Bible candidly acknowledges the fact that, left to itself, humankind will drown in the shallowest of shore-lapping waters. One tiny book in the New Testament reads with eerie precision in diagnosing our current predicament. Paul's Letter to the Colossians is a brief letter from the mid-first century that points with laser precision to these early third millennium moments. To read Colossians from a modern translation of the Bible is chilling. My reading and rereading of this tiny letter leaves me with the feeling that Paul could have penned the letter last week.

In a nutshell, Paul wrote to a first century congregation troubled by many things. In the pages that follow, I invite you to pick up this incredible document and let Paul's letter call you to live in faith's deeper waters. The good news, for all of with deep need but with shallow time, is you can read all four chapters in less than fifteen minutes. You may find, as I have, that Paul is speaking directly to us who are tiptoeing into a new century. In provocative prose, he addresses issues that faced a first century Christian church with such accuracy, we who read it today must remind ourselves the document is nearly 2000 years old.

One of the issues that falls out of the text of Colossians is the macro concern that life has more in it than we are as yet prepared to admit. More is going on in relationships, in families, in individual lives, in the struggles to be simply present and civil to others than the press could possibly report. Paul reminded the Colossians of the ominous, frightening truth that, if we are not careful, we will drown in the shallow waters of our age. In the chapters that follow, we will examine things like the "new age" movement, angels, friendship, job responsibility, temptation, family, prayer, the church, and worship. Right now, however, I invite you to prepare for the journey by looking at Paul's prayer offered on behalf of the Colossians.