By Mark W. Christy, PhD
In Colossians 2:18-19, Paul writes, “Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.”[i]
After warning the Colossians against legalism in the previous verse, Paul here warns them against asceticism, angel worship, and mysticism. Within contemporary American Christianity, the threat of asceticism and angel worship seems to be largely on the wane. Mysticism, however, continues to be practiced especially among some of those who identify themselves as part of the Charismatic Movement.
According to John Macarthur is his commentary on Colossians,
“Mysticism may be defined as the pursuit of a deeper or higher subjective religious experience. It is the belief that spiritual reality is perceived apart from the human intellect and natural senses. It looks for truth internally, weighing feelings, intuition, and other internal sensations more heavily than objective, observable, external data. Mysticism ultimately derives its authority from a self-actualized, self-authenticated light rising from within. This irrational and anti-intellectual approach is the antithesis of Christian theology.”
Mysticism, then, is the practice of seeking a more personalized and experiential spirituality beyond that intended by God and offered to believers via a right relationship with Christ. In v.19, Paul directs his audience toward the practice of “holding fast to the head”, that is Christ. To hold tightly to Christ, one must delve into His Word, apply their minds to it, and obey it.
Instead of clinging tightly to His Word, Christian mystics seek out new revelations and visions. In Battle Field of the Mind, Joyce Meyer argues that “God places dreams and visions in the hearts of His people.”[ii] At another point, she recounts how she came to this practice of receiving visions from God: “For years I prayed for revelation, asking God to reveal things to me by His Spirit Who lived within me. I knew the request was scriptural. I believed the Word and felt sure I should be asking and receiving.”[iii] Here, Meyer is informing her readers that she “prayed for revelation.” This revelation, it seems from the context, must be new revelation and not the revelation of Jesus Christ found in the Old and New Testaments.
The writer of Hebrews makes it abundantly clear that God has already spoken through His Son and His Word as found in Scripture: “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world” (1:1-2). Unlike Meyer, the biblically-minded Christian is to seek God’s revelation by studying God’s Word (i.e., the Bible).
Further demonstrating her alignment with mysticism, Meyer also says in the aforementioned quote that she “felt sure” that her approach to God was right. From this, it should be clear that Meyer is allowing her feelings to be her guide instead of sound exegesis of God’s Word. Given the nature of feelings not to mention the fallen state of the human mind (cf. Rom 1:21), one wonders how Meyer can be so trusting of her visions especially since she herself acknowledges that Satan bombards the human mind “with a cleverly devised pattern of little nagging thoughts, suspicions, doubts, fears, wonderings, reasonings, and theories.”[iv] Whereas Christians are to humble themselves under God’s Word, Christian mystics desperately and arrogantly desire a personalized Word from God. Meyer admits to her culpability in this regard: “I had decided long before to believe what the Word says, and to believe the rhema (the revealed Word) that God gave me (the things He spoke to me or the promises He gave me personally).[v] Here, Meyer informs her readers that she has willingly chosen to surrender her mind to unverifiable machinations as opposed to allowing her mind to be trained by the Word of God alone.
[i]All Scripture references are taken from the NASB1995.
[ii]Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind (Tulsa, OK: Harrison, 1995), 108.
[iii]Ibid., 81.
[iv]Ibid., 15
[v]Ibid., 59.