Reading Ephesians and Colossians

"It is all too easy for the church to conform itself to the norms of a consumer capitalist society, marketing spirituality to an experience-hungry culture, or to allow itself to be co-opted into the belligerence and self-righteousness of one side or the other in the culture wars of our time. It is much harder, and infinitely more beautiful, to live out the way of life that Paul urges the readers of Ephesians to pursue, performing an identity that is grounded not in soil, skin, nostalgia, or utopianism but in the person of Christ, and asserted not in anger and coercion but in gentleness and love. Given the prominence of those two factors within the situation that Paul is addressing in Colossians, it is not surprising that the letter has a double purpose. Negatively, it warns the readers not to submit to teachings that are framed "according to human tradition, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ" (2:8)"--