The
discussion around Colossians 2:16 and its devastating implications for the
entire Jehovah’s Witnesses’ legalistic system of man-made prohibitions cannot
be overstated. Here, in the heart of Pauline doctrine, lies a text that not
only refutes but utterly demolishes the Watchtower’s endless list of forbidden
celebrations, foods, drinks, and so-called “conscience matters”—all of which
are designed to create an atmosphere of guilt, fear, and psychological bondage.
“Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with
regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.” In a
single inspired sentence, the Apostle Paul exposes the entire machinery of
religious micromanagement for what it is: a betrayal of the Gospel’s liberating
power.
When Saint
Paul dictated his letter to the Colossians, he was confronting teachers who
insisted that baptism into Christ was not enough. They pressed on the little
flock a catalogue of ritual observances—dietary fasts, new-moon rites, sabbath
prescriptions—claiming that only by these external badges could one hope to
stand righteous before God. The Apostle’s answer was a thunderclap of
evangelical freedom: “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or
drink or with regard to a festival, a new moon, or a sabbath. These are only a
shadow of things to come, but the reality belongs to Christ” (Col 2:16-17).
Every
earnest Bible reader recognises that Paul is not abolishing the moral law—he
would still say, “Neither the immoral nor idolaters nor thieves will inherit
the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 6:9-10). He is exposing the folly of letting
self-appointed guardians bind consciences with pre-Messianic ceremonial rules
once their prophetic purpose has been fulfilled in Jesus. The primitive Church
therefore felt at liberty, in the living guidance of the Holy Spirit, to
maintain or discard particular observances, to keep the Lord’s Day rather than
the Mosaic sabbath, to share one common chalice in place of temple sacrifices,
to celebrate the new Passover of the Eucharist and to rejoice yearly at
Pentecost when the Spirit first descended on the Twelve—an echo of the Jewish
Feast of Weeks, yet now transfigured by grace.
What, then,
becomes of the modern Watchtower claim that these very words of Paul forbid
Christians to cherish Christmas, Easter, Pentecost or any other festival? The
inconsistency is glaring: the leadership that shames its members for a birthday
cake or an anniversary card has simultaneously invented a calendar of its
own—Memorial evening once a year, tightly regulated “circuit assemblies,” even
a yearly commemoration of the organization’s corporate beginnings. The problem,
evidently, is not the principle of sacred remembrance but the Watchtower’s
allergy to anything it cannot police. Where the mainstream Chrianity sees in
Paul’s verse a liberation from obsolete Jewish ritual while welcoming the
spontaneous flowering of Christian feasts across time and culture, Jehovah’s
Witnesses wrench the text into a pretext for another catalogue of prohibitions:
do not salute the flag, do not accept a blood transfusion, do not sing a carol,
do not buy a raffle ticket at the parish fête. The Apostle’s very antidote to
legalism is re-purposed as fuel for further legalism.
What makes
the Watchtower’s tactics so grotesque is the way it arrogates to itself a role
that St. Paul explicitly condemns: the self-appointed arbiter of God’s grace,
the spiritual police, lording it over the flock and enforcing the most
minuscule, pharisaical rules. The irony is rich: the very sort of
“judgmentalism” Paul denounces is what Jehovah’s Witnesses elevate to a way of
life, and they do so with a straight face while branding themselves as “Bible
students.” Imagine grown adults surrendering their consciences, their ordinary
joys, and even the love they owe to their families, at the altar of anonymous,
unreachable men in upstate New York, who dare to claim a monopoly on salvation
and the right to dictate every detail of your existence.
It is no
accident that Paul’s words are so comprehensive. Festivals? No one has the
right to judge you. Food and drink? No one has the right to judge you. Sabbath
observance? No one has the right to judge you. Yet the Watchtower not only
judges, but metes out harsh punishment to those who dissent or simply exercise
the liberty that Christ Himself won for us. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day,
Christmas, Easter, even giving your child a birthday cake—these are all
proscribed, policed, and treated as matters of eternal consequence. Why?
Because in the end, the only way the Watchtower can maintain its authority is
by manufacturing a sense of crisis, difference, and perpetual anxiety about
one’s standing before God.
Yet Paul’s
teaching leaves their system in ruins. The entire edifice of Watchtower control
is revealed as a grotesque parody of the freedom of the children of God. “Let
no one disqualify you,” he warns (Col 2:18), “insisting on self-abasement and
the worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without reason by his
sensuous mind.” Substitute “Governing Body” for “angels,” and the description
could not be more apt. Where Christ calls us to sonship, the Watchtower calls
you to servitude. Where the Church administers the sacraments as free gifts of
divine grace, the Watchtower withholds everything except guilt.
Notice also
the self-contradiction in their interpretation of “magoi” in Matthew 2. One
breath they insist that the word must denote damned astrologers whom Satan
lured by a counterfeit star; the next breath they quote Colossians to prove
that God forbids any judgement against dietary or festival observance. Yet here
they judge the Magi most severely—indeed, they judge nearly every Christian
century as apostate for daring to rejoice at the Nativity of the Lord. Such
selectivity betrays what truly motivates the governing body: not fidelity to
Scripture, but the perpetual need to mark their followers as different, to
isolate them from the Body of Christ and from ordinary human joys.
Christianity,
conversely, does not fear creation. If a rib-eye steak may be enjoyed with
thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:3-4), if wine makes the heart glad (Ps 104:15), then
surely the rhythm of fasting and feasting, of Advent longing and Christmas
exultation, of Lenten penance and Easter alleluia, is a wholesome participation
in the redeemed cosmos. To be sure, Paul forbids us to treat festivals as if
they purchased salvation. But he also commands, “Rejoice in the Lord always”
(Phil 4:4), and Scripture itself records how the Holy Spirit descended on
Pentecost precisely while the disciples were gathered for the liturgical
festival that crowned the Passover season (Acts 2). First-century Christians
did not abolish the feast; they discovered its fulfilment. Why, then, do
Witnesses shrink from it? Because they cling to a truncated gospel. Shorn of
sacramental life, their movement has nothing to celebrate beyond its own
publishing statistics.
Colossians
2:16, read in its context, condemns the very posture the Watchtower adopts: it
warns against men “puffed up without reason” who “insist on self-abasement” and
who “disqualify” the faithful by measures God never commanded (v. 18). It is
not the rhythm of the Church year that contradicts the Apostle, but the dreary
spreadsheet of Watchtower taboos. Christian tradition, standing on the same
Pauline foundation that shattered the yoke of the old law, proclaims the
freedom of the children of God: a freedom ordered not to license, but to the
worship of Christ in spirit and in truth. This worship naturally blooms in
seasons and solemnities, because love loves to remember. The governing body may
try to erase those memories, yet Christian joy—like the star that led the
Magi—will keep reappearing, guiding all who are not afraid of light to the
Infant in the house, to the crucified-and-risen Lord, and to the Spirit who
still fills the Church at every Pentecost.
This,
finally, is the scandal that the Watchtower cannot answer. It is not a question
of whether one eats shrimp, or observes Christmas, or celebrates a family
milestone. It is the far deeper scandal of a religion that has fundamentally
misunderstood the Gospel—a Gospel that offers radical freedom from the very
yoke of fear and endless rule-making the Watchtower exists to impose. The
reason ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses so often cite Colossians 2:16 is not merely
because it “permits” celebration, but because it proclaims what the Watchtower
dare not admit: in Christ, the machinery of human control is dismantled, and
the soul stands free before God. Any religious system that seeks to reimpose
the bondage of the law, or to set itself up as the final judge in matters of
conscience, has declared itself the enemy of the cross. This is why, in the
end, the text does not simply refute the Watchtower’s rules; it exposes their
entire reason for existence as a monstrous fraud on the freedom for which
Christ set us free.
