GEN2REV, if you could, post for me your interpretation of Colossians 2:16-23. It's an excellent passage with a great deal of bearing on the question at hand. I'll post some preceding verses as well, so more of the surrounding context is readily available.
God bless,
- H
13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped away the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the midst, having nailed it to the cross. 15 And having stripped the rulers and authorities, He made a spectacle of them publicly, triumphing over them in it.
16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the body of Christ. 18 Let no one rob you of your reward, delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, investigating into those things he has seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.
20 Therefore, if you died with Christ from the elementary principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations— 21 “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” 22 which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? 23 These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in will-driven worship, self-abasement, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.