The difference between kidnapping and abduction is that the former includes a demand or ransom. Both involve force, fraud or persuasion to take someone against their will, but it is particularly irrational (and disturbing) when the act is not tied to a request. According to the FBI, less than 1% of missing children are abducted by strangers. Yet, think of the lengths to which parents go to protect their children against it. They build fences, they walk with them all the way to their destination, they teach them not to talk to strangers and they use tracking technology so they always know their children’s location.
What’s more, parents unapologetically put those measures in place. They are not concerned about the opinions or potential judgment of others. It’s just too important. Despite the statistically minute chance that this could happen to a child, the consequence of being wrong is just too high to risk it.
The Bible talks like this about your spiritual protection as well. It warns against being “taken captive.”
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. (Col. 2:8)
“Elemental spirits” is a reference to the basic principles or concepts of the world, not supernatural beings. So when you woke up this morning did it occur to you that the aim of the civilization that you live in is to abduct you? The standards, thinking, ideology and beliefs of your culture is mounting a coordinated effort to steal you away. What is “virtuous” (today) is communicated by the world’s darlings in movies, it’s reinforced by celebrities, it eventually is codified in legislation and then its opponents are “cancelled.” To take a stand for biblical truth is often viewed as narrow-minded, ignorant, weak or bigoted.
The world is constantly blurring lines, but God’s Word is clear. Galatians 4:3 reveals that before Christ we were wholly subjugated to the world’s way of thinking. “When we were children we were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.” Later verses comment on those that turned back to their enslavers after having been freed!
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? (Gal. 4:8–9)
Once you have been freed from the rules of the world’s game (one characterized by oppressive servitude), why would you return to those shackles? Colossians 2 warns of the same thing.
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Col. 2:20–23)
The elemental spirits of the world make bold proclamations about what is good when the Bible clearly describes them as evil. Conversely, the world criticizes or censures things that the Bible declares are good. Those that promote these lies will be held to account, however, you, having been freed from those philosophies and that empty deceit, are regularly faced with decisions. Will you kiss the ring of widespread social acceptance, or will you sink roots into the unchangeable truth of God’s Word?
The warning to Timothy is as applicable to us today as it was for him in the first century.
O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. (1 Tim. 6:20–21)
You are not enslaved to the philosophical framework of this world. There is an effort underway to take you back to its chains. You must guard what you know to be true and avoid the seduction of the world’s lies that might cause you to swerve from the faith. Instead, “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Col. 2:6-7). In this way you will not, you cannot, be taken captive.