Continued from previous post...
And, although I doubt that anyone questioned which day the Sabbath was on, the idea that Gentiles had to observe the Sabbath was also dealt with:
Colossians 2:15-23 "When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day--things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.
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, 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.
If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as,"Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!" (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)--in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?
These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.
I want you to notice two things about the section you qouted above. First, it seems that someone was judging the Collasian Christians because of their observance (or lack of observance, as the case may be, we shall soon see) of various "Jewish" (I prefer "biblical") traditions regarding diet, feast days and sabbaths.
The Collosians lived in a Pagan society. Christians, as well as non-Messianic Jews, were in the minority. Paul doesn't say which it was, because his readers would have known, but there are two possibilities here. Either the Collosian Christians were disobeying the biblical commands regarding dietary rules, sabbaths, feasts, etc. and were being judged by the Jews (a small minority of the people), or they were obeying those commandments and keeping the Sabbath, the dietary rules, etc. and were being judged by the Pagan society they lived in. Which is more likely? Well, which would be more likely today? Are you more likely to be "judged" by others if you go along with whatever society finds acceptable at any given time, or is it more likely that people will say something if you go against the grain of society by pointing out it's faults? I believe that they were obeying the Bibles commandments and were, therefore "different" than the rest of society, and were being condemned by their Pagan friends for not being like everyone else.
Secondly, it says that they had died to the "elementary principals of the world", but were again being subject to those principals. In other words, these principals - not handling, touching or tasting - were something they had lived under before becoming Christians. But that coudn't have been the OT law, since they were Pagans and didn't live according to God's law before they were saved. Their religion had different laws, and they died to those laws of the gods they formerly believed in. Now, however, they were beginning to follow those old Pagan laws and traditions again, as a result of the pressure from their Pagan society which was judging them for being different.
Food and "days" were also discussed with the Roman church as well
This isn't talking about clean or unclean meats, but about meat sacrificed to idols. Even though this isn't explicitly stated, you can tell that that's what's being discussed by the mention of vegetarianism. There is no rule in Judaism, and never has been, that prohibits eating any meat at all. The reason that some people stopped eating meat all together was that most of the meat available in the marketplace had been sacrificed to idols. Since it wasn't labeled, some people chose rather to become vegetarians, rather than risk eating defiled meat.
So, sorry Theo, I have to disagree with your premise that these issues are not addressed.
Like I said, I'll stick to the subject of food for now. This is long enough as it is, and I don't want to make it so long that nobody will read it. I believe I have shown that none of the verses you quoted actually address the issue of the OT dietary rules. They are about meat sacrificed to idols, Pharisaic rituals and Pagan rules and traditions, not about God's law.
What to eat and when to worship were indeed addressed and fall into the same category as circumcision...not mandated, but not forbidden.
You are right in saying that these things are in the same category, but I'm afraid we don't agree on what category that is. There is some confusion as to what the issue of circumcision was really about. It wasn't about the biblical commandment to circumcise our children, but rather a euphemism for converting to Judaism. If you want to join a Christian church, you will have to go through a process, which will vary from one denomination to another, as well as from one congregation to another. This process may include talking to the pastor, taking a short course in the church's basic beliefs and other things, and will usually end with baptism. In Icelandic, we say that someone is baptised into a church, mentioning only the last step of the process to refer to the whole that is necessary to become a member. What is talked about in the Bible is similar. It is using circumcision to refer to the process of conversion. This process includes learning Hebrew and how to interpret the law, and can take years to complete. Paul tells us that we do not have to convert to Judaism to be saved, but he does not tell us to stop circumcising our male children. Likewise, keeping the Sabbath, the dietary rules, etc. isn't necessary to be saved, but that doesn't mean that God doesn't expect us to obey him in these areas as well as others. God told us not to eat certain foods. Even though we may not understand why, the fact that He told us to should be enough for us to obey Him.
However, if one chooses to be circumcised, or to observe the Sabbath or to eat only clean meats...it need be from consciences' sake, and not from the idea that it is necessary for our salvation. To make these issues salvation issues would mean that one is putting oneself back under the Law, and there is no salvation in that at all.
This is a problem I keep running into, not only here, but in real life as well. If asked, most people will say the same as you, that we are free to do these things, but it is not an issue of salvation. But when I tell people that I do, indeed do these things, they assume that it's because I'm trying to earn my salvation, no matter how many times I tell them that I'm not. Nobody says I'm trying to earn my salvation if I say I believe that the commandments against murder, adultery, homosexuality or a host of other things are still valid. Those are a matter of obedience to God's word. Why can't the same be true of the dietary rules? Well, I decided to find out for myself a few years ago. I read the Books of Moses and wrote down every commandment I saw. Then I classified them and took out duplicates, as well as commandments that were not intended for the common people, but only priests, Levites or some other group. Then I sorted the rest into two groups - commandments that most Christians keep (or at lest say they keep) and those that most Christians don't keep. Then I was going to go through the ones we usually don't keep and see what the New Testament had to say about them. But, before I did that, I noticed something that made it unnecessary. I realized, just from looking at the list, what the reason was that we don't keep those commandments. Everybody, includign Pagans and Atheists agrees that it's wrong to kill, steal and commit adultery, just to name a few. In fact, all of society, including non-Christians, keeps most of the commandments in the Old Testament, and those are the same commandments that we Christians keep. The ones we don't keep are the ones that would make us different from the rest of society. The only real exception to that rule is the command to believe in God. The sad fact is that we allow society to dictate our behavior more than God's commandments.
The end (for now)
