Colossians 2:8 (NIV): See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
This warning needs to be taken seriously today by every member of the body of Christ. The enemy of our souls is subtle and crafty. He has always been that way (cf. Genesis 3:1), and he will be until he is finally taken away at the end of all things. He will never use a direct assault against one of God’s children, because that is too easy for them to see through. He will use trickery, deceit, and flawed logic that seems reasonable, at least at first glance.
One of the greatest traps for Christians today is a humanistic, naturalistic worldview. This worldview/philosophy rejects the supernatural in favor of the material. It rejects the miraculous n favor of “science,” things which can be directly observed, repeated, tested (which miracles and other things dealing with the spiritual realm cannot). The biggest weapons used by those who are pushing this worldview are personal attacks and shaming. They call those who believe what God has written in His word unsophisticated, unscientific, primitive, and ignorant.
But the fact is, the ones who refuse to believe that God exists, who believe that the material world is all that there is, and that purely natural processes happening at today’s rates are capable of bringing into existence all that exists are truly the unscientific ones. The first true scientists believed that God created everything, just as He says in Genesis 1 and 2. They also knew that God is a God of order, so they believed that they would be able to discover the laws that He set in place to keep everything orderly. And they did discover many of them, and used those same laws to advance their discoveries and to invent new things.
But the current naturalistic philosophy, genuinely a hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ, discards all of that. It ignores even the laws that were discovered and validated centuries ago (and are still accepted in every other area of science), such as the need for a cause that is sufficient for the observed effect, the fact that life can only come from life, and the clearly observed fact that all things reproduce according to their own kinds. (Yes, there is observed variation within kinds, but scientists have never observed one kind changing into another kind. Finches with varied kinds of beaks are still finches, and still reproduce finches; bacteria may develop resistance to antibiotics, but they are not only still bacteria, but the same kind of bacteria, and reproduce the same kind of bacteria.) God is the only cause great enough to call into existence a universe as complex and finely tuned as the one we live in. He is the life that is the only source of all living things. And He is the one who created all of the various kinds with vast diversity built into their genetic structures, so that they were able to reproduce and fill the earth with all of the varied forms of life that we see today.
It is vital that we as God’s people do not allow ourselves to be taken captive to naturalistic and humanistic philosophies. They are not only inadequate in providing the answers that mankind needs and hungers for, but they are dead-end philosophies that offer not hope for the future, and no path to eternal life.
Father, I agree. I used to hold to those dead-end philosophies. Thank You for leading me beyond them into the truth of Your word, the truth of Your very being. Amen.