A persistent teaching of the New Testament is that every human being is a servant of someone or something, that we all have a “master”. So the question arises as to just what form this master takes, and it is here where we find the answer to this question. Our verse at hand begins as follows in the NIV: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy”. This is presented as a command, for the verb translated as “see to it” is the present active imperative of blepo, which essentially means to “see”. Now we must note here that there is more than one form of seeing, and the seeing here refers not to the eyes, but rather to see as to perceive or understand. We are to be on the lookout or on the alert perceptively, because the captivity we must avoid is a captivity of our “understanding”. The reason we are to be on the alert is given here as due to the fact that we may be “taken captive”. The Greek term “captive” here is the present participle of sylagogeo- to be carried off as a prisoner. This captivity may be understood as a more subtle form of the demon possession we see in the Gospels, for our enemy now seeks to possess us through more subtle means. The means of this “possession” is referred to here as “philosophy”, the Greek term philosophias- literally a friend or lover of wisdom. This term refers to our fundamental means of perceiving and understanding reality, our worldview or the ideology which undergirds all of our thinking and perceiving. As this verse indicates, all human beings are possessed by an ideology, a worldview, a philosophy, and our enemy seeks to deceive us into being possessed by an unbiblical ideology. There are many of these “ideologies”, and they are all referred to here as “hollow and deceptive”. The Greek terms used here are first “kenos” then “apate”. Kenos is commonly translated as “vain”, here in the sense of futile or useless. Apate is a word referring to a deception or delusion, so we find that all of these “philosophies” are deceptive and futile as a means of perceiving and understanding reality. So, what we ultimately find here is that all human beings are possessed by a “philosophy” or ideology, and that those possessed by any ideology other than a biblical one are ultimately servants of the kingdom of darkness rather than the kingdom of light.