Week 16: Day 1

Intro: Hey everyone, my name’s Nathan and today we get to break down Colossians 2:8 together. What I love about this passage is, if we get it, if we have that lightbulb moment with it, it will change the way we think about the way we think. Let me read it.

Bible: See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.

Thoughts: In this passage Paul gives a warning to the Colossians that there is this one thing that can take them of focus and strangle the life out of their communities. And what was that thing? Well, we’re told it’s philosophy. Now you may be thinking to yourself “Philosophy, I didn’t pick that for GCSE or A level, and I don’t really care about Greek theoretical concepts, what difference does it make to me?” Well, let me offer you a couple reasons that explain how philosophy can be a danger to our spiritual growth and what we can do to not be taken captive by empty deception.

First of all, it would be helpful for us to understand what we mean when we say philosophy.

Philosophy is a field of study that is concerned with asking the deepest questions about our reality as humans, can we know truth, what is a good life, how should we live?

When you view it like that, we consume presentations of people’s philosophies all the time, from our favourite show on Netflix, to the lyrics of our most played Spotify songs, to the short clips we scroll through on Instagram and Tik Tok.

After a while these little bits of ideologies can settle in our minds and in our hearts and reform our beliefs and motivations in their image.

For the Colossian church, the weird philosophies that were coming into the church were coming through other self-professing Christians in the church. So damaging ideas that are based on a worldly way of viewing things can also come through Church!

Now I’m not saying that all Philosophy is bad, or media for that matter, what I am saying is that we’re just as susceptible as they were to being caught and taken captive by damaging beliefs. So, what can we do about it?

We can come to Jesus in prayer and receive his wisdom by his spirit. We can ask him to open our eyes when we read the Bible so that we would be able to recognise his wisdom speaking to us and have the endurance to push through to understand more difficult sections. It’s about seeking to see things from his perspective and learning to rely on his wisdom rather than our own or something we’ve picked up from other people’s philosophy.

Then when as we grow in knowing Jesus and become alert to recognising destructive ideas, at that point we have a choice, we can consciously commit to rejecting these ideas. In other words, we are taking our thoughts captive instead of being taken captive by them, so that we can continue to live in the freedom that Jesus has one for us.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you that we can know you. Thank you that you give us wisdom. Thank you that by your Spirit we can know the difference between your wisdom and the worlds wisdom. Help us to live in the freedom you have won for us. Amen

Silence: There's now just a few moments of silence for you to pray, reflect on these ideas, or simply sit and be still.

Action: Today think about your favourite Netflix show or album that you’ve been listening to lately and ask yourself what are the philosophies that this show is trying to tell me. Ask yourself what part of this show lines up with God’s wisdom and what doesn’t.