Today's guest, Dr. Os Guinness, is a deeply respected and prophetic author, teacher, and cultural critic. We are honored to have him join us again as a guest on the podcast. In this two-part interview, we glean Dr. Guinness’s wisdom on various pressing cultural issues.
In part two, we get his take on the recently released “Twitter files,” revealing widespread government and social media efforts to censor free speech. How should the church faithfully respond to these urgent issues? Os offers his wisdom on this as well.
Today's guest, Dr. Os Guinness, is a deeply respected and prophetic author, teacher, and cultural critic. We are honored to have him join us again as a guest on the podcast. In this two-part interview, we glean Dr. Guinness’s wisdom on various pressing cultural issues.
In part two, we get his take on the recently released “Twitter files,” revealing widespread government and social media efforts to censor free speech. How should the church faithfully respond to these urgent issues? Os offers his wisdom on this as well.
So after 300 years of religious freedom being America's first freedom, it's now a matter of bigotry, and so on. And that's the change that the sexual revolution in the left-wing have brought in. It's deadly, just one more sign of a nail in the coffin of a free Republic.
Luke:Hello, and welcome back to Ideas Have Consequences brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance. Today's episode is part two of our discussion with Dr. Os Guinness. If you haven't listened to part one yet, today's discussion will make a lot more sense if you begin there, because we're starting directly where we hopped off last week, with Guinnesses call to action when he said that Christians who have been discipled in the biblical worldview, have no reason not to be boldly proclaiming Christ, every chance they get. For those of you who are new to Ideas Have Consequences, this is a podcast where we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world to all the nations, but it is to also seek to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of cremation. And today, Christians have little influence on the surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of
Os Guinness:As you look at the things that work for a free and the living God. a just and humane society, they're all there in the Scripture. We should be the most excited people around with our views of human dignity, truth, words, freedom, justice, peace, going down the line, we should be popping out of our skins with excitement of the gifts of the gospel, we have to share with the future of the world! So your generation Luke should be in the vanguard. But we got to do a good job because many of them to join the religious nones, I'm afraid.
Luke:So the application step there is look to the Bible and the framework for how to live in a free and just society.
Os Guinness:Passing on, how are we doing passing on? Again, the rabbi's point out and I learned this from them, what did Moses talk about the night of the Passover? They're going free! Never mentioned freedom. They're going to the promised land of milk and honey, he didn't refer to it. Three times in the Passover night, he talked about children. Because the way we hand it on to our children is the key to identity and the key to continuity. Now that should be the same for the Jews and the same for America. It's broken down, rotten education in the public schools, no specific education on any goodness. And now we have the catastrophe of open borders, which are not only humanitarian crisis, there are citizenship crisis. So today is relatively easy to get into the country. But almost impossible now to know what it is to be American. So yes, we got to explore the Scriptures. I haven't heard much of preaching that does that in ways that I do read it in the Jews. I mean, an incredible book is Leon Kass"The Founding of God's Nation", on the book of Exodus, very faithful to Scripture, but also incredibly fertile in terms of thinking about where we are today.
Scott:So Os, just to paraphrase here, or to recap what you're saying as an application, we just we as followers of Jesus Christ, we have to be really passing on these truths. We have to know them ourselves and pass them on to our children. And my wife and I homeschool, and one of the blessings of being a homeschool parent is that anytime you teach anything, you have to you have to go back and kind of learn it yourself first. There was so much like learning I had to do and Kim, my wife, had to do before we can talk to our kids about it. And I was just shocked how little I got it in public school, and it was a huge blessing. I learned things for the first time. So I just want to put a little plug in to Christian homeschooling and that whole movement.
Os Guinness:Awhile ago I was talking to a Senator up here and he said something about homeschooling and it said, "You know, there's only one difference between home schoolers and Harvard grads. The homeschoolers don't really realize how brilliant they are."
Scott:That's funny. Yeah, these ideas about the founding of America and the kind of the foundation of our constitutional order I just didn't learn when I was in public school, probably because I wasn't a very good student, frankly. But when you're teaching your own kids, you do have to go back and you have to ask these questions. And then you find some really powerful sources, although they're not mainstream, you have to look for them.
Dwight:Yeah, something else was said struck me and it got me thinking. You use the word Gospel and use the word good news. And you were speaking of the understanding of these really important words in our society and being Americans. Truth and virtue and...
Scott:Freedom.
Dwight:And freedom and that not knowing those words and understanding them from a Hebrew context is where we've lost. And then you use the word good news and Gospel, I'm thinking, but one of the problems I've seen, you expand on this, that our gospel is just like, it's a very simple message.
Scott:It's a message of salvation.
Dwight:It's a message of Salvation, you're talking about Genesis to Exodus again, and how do we convince people that we're not being disloyal to the Gospel by sharing the Gospel? The bigger good news. The bigger good news. What do you do?
Os Guinness:Well, that's the disaster of this idea we should unhitch our faith from the Old Testament. Obviously, our Lord's faith was the Old Testament, or what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. And we just don't understand the depth and riches of the good news until we appreciate the whole of it. In other words, we are part of God's great narrative, his new working in the world from Abraham downwards. We're a part of that. And Christians who don't understand their part in the sweeper have a very diminished view. I listen, you know I love the notion of calling. I listened to a very eminent theologian recently preaching on Genesis 12:1, the call of Abraham. And he described Abraham as if he was non-Jewish, and really a reformed Christian, believing in the Solas. That it's absolutely absurd. Most of the Bible is the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, we've got to understand it to understand the New. And so I'm appalled by the marcionite tendency you often see coming in the Church, I find the Old Testament, I come away so excited by realizing the richness of its truth. Fufilled of course, and expanded in Jesus. We don't understand him unless we understand what was behind him.
Scott:Os I'm working on a book right now with the team here on words, actually, because I'm concerned as you are about how really fundamental words like justice and freedom and truth had been redefined in modern culture, and that Christians have often gone along with the redefinitions, the counterfeit definitions, because we just don't think about words, we just use them. And as I'm working on, right now, for example, I'm working on the word authority. And I'm just struck about the power of the biblical idea of authority. I mean, it's got elements that we all understand in terms of the kind of legal right to issue rules and commands that are to be obeyed, but the whole point of it in the Bible is to serve those under authority for their own good, it's always kind of other, it's looking out at the other, whereas in the fallen world authority is just this abuse of power for often selfish reasons or gain. And I'm just struck by the power of just that one word, much less freedom and love and beauty and you're right, our message is just, it's incredibly powerful. We have nothing to be ashamed of, I know the world tries to make us ashamed of our faith, but we just have such an incredibly powerful, beautiful, set of truths and ideas to get across. But I do think one of the problems with the church is people come to their conclusions or their beliefs about things very often over and against what other people will think about them, I'm not like them, as opposed to really looking at the thing itself, what is this thing here? So, I just wanted to make a comment on what you were talking about earlier.
Os Guinness:To provide a part of particular individual words we are the guardians and champions to the notion of words.
Scott:Yes. Os, talk about that. Just the power of the concept of words, because that alone is very deeply Biblical. Yeah.
Os Guinness:In the beginning was the Word, the whole creation was through words. And so you look at America, by contrast, we have cheapened words through consumerism. And I was using incredible words to describe relatively cheap and nonsensical products. We've cheapened it. And the other hand, now we've weaponized words through the social media and through politics. So Christians who supported the former president, many of his policies were terrific. But often his character, his words were appalling, above all his words and many other people's words. So by the standards of the Old Testament, if I'd been with him, and I did write this somewhere, I would have asked Mr. Trump to talk to his daughter and son-in-law who are Orthodox Jews, and ask them what is the Orthodox view of words? Because what he was doing was what the Jews called "Evil speech". And in the Old Testament, evil speech is tantamount to murder. And you can see the incredible power of words in the Bible. So we must let our yes be yes. Words are commitments. And I think we need a reformation of words in American thinking, and we should begin with us Christians, words are incredibly important, even before particular words, and also you have in the Bible, the extraordinary reordering of the senses. So sight, and you think you're very connected with sight, insight, foresight, hindsight, and so on? "Oh, I see!", we say, sight in the Bible has to do with appearances and images, and often temptations and sin. Whereas hearing is much closer to obedience. And I there are very profound truths here. So for example, television doesn't do nearly as well as sharing the gospel as the radio. And we need to think of all these things we of all people should have the most profound view of words in the forefront of redefining and rediscovering the richness of words. We are the champions of words, because of the Word.
Scott:Yeah, that's so good Os. Darrow Miller is fond of saying that in the beginning, God created the universe through a spoken word, and man who has made in God's image, uses words and language to create culture, I've always been struck by that, just again, it gets to your point of the power of words, and that words, I think, we live in such postmodern times, even the church is very shaped by postmodernism and just relativism, that we don't reckon on true definitions of words, we tend to think words mean whatever people want them to mean, they're just kind of empty vessels that powerful groups can fill with whatever meaning they want to. But words actually come, like so many of these words that we've spoken of like the word freedom, for example, it actually comes from the Bible. There was that famous book many years ago, "The Gift of the Jews" by I'm trying to remember, Thomas Cahill, and he talked, it was really a great book, because he talked about how so many of these words that we use every day, and we think just have always been around like freedom, or justice, actually have their source in the Hebrew Scriptures. And the reason that they are around the world today is because of the work of Bible translators, and those ideas came in to human consciousness through the Bible. And just so anyways, I just so appreciate what you're saying about words Os here. I wouldn't mind Luke and Dwight, do you have other ones that you want to jump on to? I've got some other topics I want to touch on.
Dwight:Os I'm wondering, what would you say to the pastors of America? I mean, I feel like that's still an important voice in our culture and in our church, and yet, I personally feel it's pretty weak. Maybe you don't, but what would you say to them?
Os Guinness:Well, my heart goes out to pastors. If you think of say the pastor today, compared with the pastors in past Christian history, you can see the social status has diminished and the expectations have risen, making an impossible situation. So today's pastor is supposed to be a Billy Graham in the pulpit and super administrator like a Jack Welsh and the church and a great counselor like Sigmund Freud with Christian and so on. He's supposed to be everyone. It's impossible. But what I said, I was speaking to pastors last week, pastors have the privilege and responsibility of standing between the law to his people every Sunday and speaking the Word of the Lord to His people, and that's why pastors are essential and absolutely critical in this crisis. Now I was telling them, when I came to faith in the 60s, I knew Martyn Lloyd Jones, I knew John Stott people like that. They wouldn't trumpet this, but I knew for example, Martyn Lloyd Jones, in the hour before he preached, spoke to nobody. He was a few 100 yards from Buckingham Palace, that if the queen or a suicide occurred, he wouldn't have seen them, someone else would've. He was with the King of kings. And when he stepped out to bring the Word you knew it. He didn't say it, but you knew his authority to go about what he was saying, Scott. John Stott, in the Old Old Souls has been reconfigured and rechanged. In the Old Old Souls, you couldn't see it, but before John into the pulpit, he was prostrate on his face, and then into the pulpit. He never said"Thus said the Lord!" in the pulpit. You could tell it by the authority of His preaching. And so often today, I lack that sense in much American preaching I've heard, this is an extreme, but I was in a California church where they said "Barna says" more times in the sermon than"The Bible says", just typical of the relative trendiness of the sermon. Or often the Puritans had a quarter of their sermon application. And I think today, the equivalent is you preach something from the Word. You've got to show how what the Word says is often diametrically opposed to what the world is doing. So unless the Christian leaves the church with a sense of tension, challenge, "What are they going to do to take it on?" The Word will just float away as spiritual truths with no earthly relevance. So I have a great respect for pastors but I long to see not only preaching many other things, but that centrality of preaching the Word in power and the Spirit returning.
Scott:I just resonate too with what you're saying at the end there Os. The preaching has to address the difference between what the Bible puts forward and what's being taught in the culture, what we're picking up in the culture, because I feel like that often isn't done. There's good Bible teaching, I go to a church where there's great Bible teaching, good Bible expository. But it seems like the assumption is often just people will figure out how to live this out in their families and their sexual lives and their vocations. And I just think,"No, those things are going in such a different direction from what the Bible teaches that we need help, we need some help and some shepherding. I know, that's asking, again, a lot of pastors because they have to be also kind of aware of what's happening in the culture.
Os Guinness:You're right, that's tough. We all need friends and ongoing conversation all our lives. So we're wrestling daily with what the Word is saying and what our culture is doing. It's an ongoing challenge.
Scott:Yeah. But that's, that's why people like you are so valuable is because you really help us in this this area. Try in a small way. Well, I was I, I'm curious to know, just a different topic. We've been reading about the Twitter files. And what's kind of seeming to come out of it, as I read that Os is just pretty clear cut kind of collusion, I guess you could say, between the government and private companies, in this case, social media companies to censor speech. It seems pretty alarming to me. What are your thoughts on this whole thing? That's, that's coming out right now.
Os Guinness:The genius and the importance to the First Amendment is that guarantee of freedom of conscience and freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. To see the way the government is violating that, at the end to see not just the tech companies but the liberal press. I used to work not very long for the BBC. It was a canon of everything that the press were the guardians of free speech. See, the American liberal press on the side of censorship is a scandal in history, and a terrible black mark, and an indication of how badly America is doing at certain points today, the way civil liberties and your people like great champions of civil liberties like say, Alan Dershowitz, lifelong Democrat, Charlie Raymond Todd and I received a lifelong Democrat, but now standing against their own Democrats, because of their contradiction in some of these basic rights, these are terribly important. Obviously, this is the result of the sexual revolution. So after 300 years of religious freedom being America's first freedom, it's now a matter of bigotry, and so on. And that's the change that the sexual revolution and the Left wing have brought in. It's deadly, just one more sign of a nail in the coffin of a free Republic,
Scott:as well, do you have? Do you have something there? Yeah.
Luke:Well, I'm curious on that point, as we're talking about the media, I know for myself and many other young people, it's so hard to get accurate stories out of the media, we want to go find what you know what's going on in the world, learn more about a current event learn about an issue. And it's so hard to sift through what seems like a lot of times opinions and narratives when we're just trying to look for facts and the truth of the matter. When it comes to researching current events. Do you have any tips on how to do that, as believers searching for the truth?
Os Guinness:Well, the problem look, as you recognize comes from postmodernism, there is no truth. So whatever you say, and make it stick, that can be true. So last week, you even have one of the leading writers, New York Times, and he's given up quote"on objectivity". Now, of course, none of us is infinite under the Lord is infinitely objective like that. But to give up that way, is absolutely appalling. Now, how do we lean against it? Well, first, we always need to know the presuppositions the assumptions, philosophically what we're reading, no matter where they're coming from, will shape what they're saying. And secondly, another way to do it is to maybe be a little skeptical about taking our sides view of this well read the other side. And in the clash of opinions, the whole notion biblically of a hearing, one side seems right until the other side steps forward. That's why you have hearings in law courts, we need to have solid hearings in our own mind, listen to that side, listen to the other side. And then do our best unto the Lord always asking, What does the Bible say if he does, and Lord through your spirit, direct me and check me if I'm wrong. And then again, I mentioned groups of friends, iron sharpens iron. You know, I thank Lord for the friends I have over the course of my life. They encourage sometimes when you need it, and they confront sometimes when you need it. Some we all get, we go wrong, we get too big for our boots, or whatever it is, and we need friends who are able to tell us tell it to us straight.
Scott:Yeah, that's, that's really a great question. Luke, I was really curious to hear OS's response to that as well. Just, you know, the, what that New York Times journalist, what he just confessed, I don't believe in objective truth anymore. So it's all just picking a preferred narrative of whatever it is, whatever benefits me or the group that I'm a part of, and that's what we're going to call news. It seems pervasive today. And, and so then it becomes almost impossible to kind of know what to believe about anything, you know, and there's important issues COVID, or whatever it is, that we need, we actually need some accurate information on so, but I think what I'm hearing you say is that, you know, we have to Yeah, we've listened to both sides, perhaps is one way know where people are coming from their objective, or their philosophical biases. A lot of that is I agree completely with it's also probably more work than most people are going to do. You know, I know, my parents, they just turn on the news. And I love my parents that are great, which for them is often CNN. And because I think they grew up in a day where there was maybe a leaning there, but it wasn't as it's changed, they, so yeah, for people that don't have the time or the inclination, I just wonder how do we, you know, it's, it seems like a problem, how do we get good information right now, I don't know
Os Guinness:what it is a problem. And the Bible says a lot about the day of the lie that's coming in, you have examples in history, like Hitler's big lies very close to that in this country now. But again, we are the champions of truth, think of salts and it's in one word of truth is the entire world. We should be unashamed champions of truth, and make sure that in our own circles, we're always living in truth and we are people of truth. So we're a counterculture in this crazy postmodern culture,
Scott:yeah, I heard it yet. I I heard a young Christian as you reminded me of this, and he kind of had given up on this idea that we could know something as objectively true because he said, we live in a postmodern world, he would confess where it's all spin and narratives. And it struck me as just just really wrong. You know, I said, you're I mean, he's right, in the sense that, like you said, None of us are God, we don't see things. We don't have the God's eye view on anything. But to give up on the idea of objective truth, even if we can't know it fully, but just partially we have to, we have to work. To to know the truth about something, you know, yeah, this kind of just shrugging your shoulders and saying, that's impossible. I thought, Oh, that's horrible. Anyways,
Os Guinness:no, that is horrible, I think, to deal with it's God is to push people out to the logic. And what they're saying was, if truth is really dead, and we're going the way lies spin on all this today, and everything is only power, and we are elated, who wants to be manipulated? In order to stand against manipulation? You need truth? Yes, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Our Lord's words are very profound, and we need to pack them in terms of post modernism.
Scott:Yeah, excellent, as well, I just I'm so encouraged by your perspective on these things.
Luke:Yeah. Another question. This is as follows up, or we're just saying, as, as we champion the truth, a lot of times I've seen this myself is I'll be searching for, you know, resolution on an issue, let's say justice, and I'm searching and searching. And I finally come across, you know, the, here's a good understanding of biblical justice, and that I want to go out into culture and my friends and my circles and promote it. And yet, too often, I think, the problem with that, or the trap we fall into is we, we almost become the activist type. And we look at other people out there that are doing a good job of spreading ideas. And as Christians, we hop on and we kind of utilize their tactics to spread ideas. And yet, a lot of times those toxic tactics can be very toxic. And way too, emphasizing the maybe the truth side and forgetting the grace side. How do you how do we balance that tension of promoting biblical truth into culture without becoming that toxic activist who's just screaming at people?
Os Guinness:Well, there are obviously two extremes, which are relatively easy to see were so gracious and winsome, that were soft, and were compromised, and we do nothing. Or we're so truth fired that we're fanatical and ugly in our extremism, hotheads, and I think we have to examine our own character, am I likely to go towards one or the other. And then we look at our culture and the fight we're into, is it more conducive towards one or to the other, so help lost and that mean, that's where our friends come in, you're getting a little extreme. Oh, wait a minute time to make a stand. And you can see, the blue leaning evangelicalism tend to be winsome to a fault. And some of the red leaning more populist angelical is tend to be truth and justice to a fault. And we need that incredible balance my Lords truth and grace, which is not easy, particularly in the craziness of where we are today. That's a great question.
Luke:When I've heard this a lot of times from Christians when when someone's talking about speaking truth in the culture, and maybe this person is more of on the nice of the winsome side, in their, their response to that instead of No, they say, No, we shouldn't speak truth in the culture, we should mainly focus on spreading love and the gospel just like Jesus did. When he was here on earth. He lived at a time with a lot of political unrest, and you could say very negative towards a negative culture. And yet, a lot of times they'll reference Jesus as an example of someone who was just nice and winsome. What would you respond to that?
Os Guinness:Our Lord didn't tag political issues, but my word he was outspoken, waited. Get behind me Satan, to his good friend Peter and saw Lord was blunt the outspoken when he needed to be and so should we be. You look at say, by Ptolemy, las cosas, or William Wilberforce or many of the great reformers when they confronted what is evil. They were frank and outspoken in their denunciations. And today, you have in America sometimes evils, sometimes hypocrisy, and we should be absolutely outspoken and unafraid to challenge it. Although it was both
Luke:Yeah, sometimes I feel like it's, it's a little difficult when you get down to the personal relationship. When you when you see someone who's who's working through a sin problem or see an issue or different and versus a leader and someone promoting that, let's say with the issue of transgenderism, I'm thinking of Matt Walsh and his documentary last year, I felt like he did a good job of this. But there's people that are caught in that, in a way, a lot of times they don't even recognize the sin that they're stuck in. And it's a very sad, sad thing to see versus the politician out there who's promoting it in the classroom, and the, you know, drag story hour and things like that, how do you interact with those two people differently without giving up truth?
Os Guinness:Well, we got to recognize that you just have, there's a huge difference between the postural, there is no one, even the vilest enemy that we should not respect as a fellow human made in the image and likeness of God. The way we speak to them has to have that respect, and, and that, and so on, that's the postural. But then you've got the philosophical. And then you've got the political. And there are times to be really blunt about where the philosophy comes from, and is leading to, and about the political and its consequences. But we got to keep that balance. The Pastoral is one thing. And the political and philosophical is something else.
Scott:Yeah, I love that. Because that's really helpful. I think, you know, just in our interactions with other people today around in this time of crisis that we're in, we have to balance those three, you know, because I hear Christians wanting to polarize over, you know, you know, we need to be pastoral, or we need to be political, or we need to be, you know, philosophical, you're saying it, you have to have to be all three. And we have to kind of find a balance there in that we can't just fixate on one of those.
Os Guinness:Yeah. And who are we talking to at a particular moment?
Scott:Hmm, yes, right. Yes. Yeah. I think of Jesus again, in his engagement with the Pharisees. They weren't all the same, right? It depended on who he was talking to, didn't it? And Nicodemus versus, you know, I don't know the name of the Pharisees, but the ones that he called whitewashed tombs.
Dwight:Well, and the genius is to be able to speak and no at all three levels. I mean, I don't think we challenge ourselves as going back to the pulpit in the church, do we? Do we challenge each other at the philosophical level? And certainly, we'd go into the pastoral level. And, you know, the personal love, of course, but yeah,
Scott:I just think that's really helpful is
Os Guinness:that, again, as I said earlier, we have to look into our own hearts, because we are all temperamentally, you know, biased towards the way the ball rolls one way or the other. And sometimes you got to lean against our normal bias in the name of the Lord's principles. And if we prefer to be rather fearful and winsome, and therefore not saying anything time to take the courage to do seven ISOs or
Scott:vice versa. That's really a great word. Yeah. I want to just wrap up our time by coming back to your most recent book,
"Zero Hour America:History's Ultimatum Over Freedom And The Answer We Must Give". Just a quick comment on the title because I haven't read this book yet. I'm going to read it. I'm anxious to read it, actually. But I noticed that your titles of late have seemed pretty dramatic in terms of the hour that we're in is zero hour America, or the last call for liberty. When I when I read these, I don't disagree. I think this is we are in a time of crisis. But again, I get this question we kind of explored with you earlier, I often struggle with mice. You know, this is the time God's called me and us into collectively, what do we do? How do we respond rightly to this time? I? I don't feel like I fully understand the answer to that question yet, you know, so,
Os Guinness:one way of responding would be, you know, I've lived here 30 ideas now. Many, many good things taught in the American church. One of the things I think missing from the biblical worldview, since you guys are about that is instead of time and ERATION. Day, our moment, you take that incredible moment, which we'll be celebrating soon. On. Just before Easter, when our Lord weeps over Jerusalem, why does the Lord Wait where he sees three times? On one day? He always he looks at whatever that day was at 33 or whatever. He's was right in front of it, but he's a second time he sees at 70 Each of the Romans and not one stone left on another. Yes. But if you look at it carefully, it's all because you missed God's moment when he came, was there some moment in his ministry, when it might have gone a different way? seize that moment that they missed, he's actually sees three times. And it crushes him and he weeps. Now, many Americans don't have a sense of time. That's incredibly biblical. Now, I may be wrong. The Lord hasn't said to me, quote, this is the zero hour. No, but in my reading, and where we are in the light of what I think is a biblical view of time, I think we're in a very significant moment, I boil it down in that book to three words, "Revolution", the whole wokism radical left, and I would say, Please God, no."Oligarchy", the second word, the growing gap between the elites and the people, the hollowing out of the old liberal center. And again, I would say, Please, Lord, no. And the third word "Homecoming", and you have our theologians, you probably know that the biblical word teshuva, unlike the Greek word metanoia, two words for repentance, the biblical word is not only Yes, the Old Testament word is not only an About turn of heart, mind and spirit, it's coming home to truth in the Lord. That's what America needs. America can only go forward by coming back first. So I think we're an incredible moment, the Republic is almost dead. democracy itself is under threat. So this is quite an extraordinary moment for America. And that's why I have to write that particular book with the urgency that I truly feel that as I read and watch and think, in the light of where we are,
Scott:I believe as from another podcast that I listened to when you were speaking on the book, you you refer in three waves. Am I correct? A red wave, a rainbow wave and a black wave. The red wave is Marxism the rainbow wave is wokism. You know, the social justice wokism? The black wave, radical Islam, I believe is what your talk referring to.
Os Guinness:And it's a book I've finished hasn't been published yet, on the crisis. Because put very simply the West is the product of the Christian faith. Christian faith made the West. But the first great challenge was enlightenment secularism. And the key thing there was secularism is against the church and against the Christian faith, but not against the West, it thought it could replace the faith to lead the West. But now we have what's called the war on the world's: Ideologies which are not only against the Christian faith, they are against the West. And that's why this radical situation has developed. And you're right, I call it the red wave, various forms of Marxism, the rainbow wave, the sexual revolution, and the black wave, radical Islamism, which not only sees Israel as the little Satan, it sees the West and America as the great Satan. So we're in an extraordinary moment, not only in this country, but I think in western civilization.
Scott:as if you if you could, if you could just speak to a group of people on one of those waves was is there one that you feel like this is the one we've really got to address this is this is urgent?
Os Guinness:Well, the black the black wave is less important day to day. Red wave and the sexual rave are very important. Take the sexual way. When I came to faith in 1960. The challenge to faith was liberal theology what we now call revisionism. Most evangelicalism, most Catholics stood firm, yes, 200 ideas of liberal theology, boatman and all that sort of stuff. Yes, but we have caved into the sexual revolution at an incredible speed of compromise. And it's far more deadly than liberal theology. And you have that in many of our churches, sadly, and, and so many of our colleges. So I think we've got to come to terms of the red wave and the black. The trouble with the red wave is that in most of the world, red is left. Whereas in this country, red is the conservatives. Oh, blue is red and blue states, right. Yeah, that's true, which is a little confusing. Most of the world red is left and the color of the barricades and the revolution and so on.
Scott:Yeah. It's interesting to the red wave Marxism and you mentioned earlier Cultural Marxism and you know my own research on the on the Frankfurt School and you know people like Marx who's I mean, he was also one of the founding fathers of the sexual revolution so there's there's an overlap between those two things. You know, I although I think it's it's helpful what you're saying there to make them distinct as well. So
Os Guinness:let's got even MACUSA the sexual revolution goes back to the same region the same quarter in Paris as the political revolution to the Palais Royale. Interesting. People like Mikey decide some of the people or lady she wells and Vilhelm Ray, they are very you, for instance, you take the little paperback, the sexual revolution 1920s, or whatever it is by right. He says very clearly one, we're out to subvert 3000 years of civilization, Jewish roots and Christian civilization to who are our enemies, the church and parents. How will we subvert parents through sex education at three and four? That was what we've seen in the last five years, is not new. And we've been forewarned, we should have been forearmed that many people were asleep. And they were kept totally by surprise when it broke out. It's all there in their writings.
Scott:Yeah, you know, it's, I was talking to some fellow Christians here just last week, and we were reflecting on this new television show that is I haven't watched an episode of it. But I know it's very popular right now. Yellowstone, and it's popular even amongst Christians. And it's it's quite apparently, it's quite sexually explicit. And it just kind of greed, my heart because you're right, we're so, even evangelicals are very compromised. There's just not a sharper, clearer sense of right and wrong on this issue anymore. You know, we're, we've become so compromised. People can watch these things and know it's okay. It's no big deal. It seems almost like, I don't know, there are certain sins that are serious racism, right, that's really bad. But sexual sin not not as much. And
Os Guinness:that's why your own work is so important. And you're doing it not only in the West, but in the global world, because the challenge your cause, I mean, I'm an Anglican. If it weren't for the church in Africa, the Church of England, the Episcopal Church would have led us down the hole already. We thank God for the church in Africa, but unless they are warned of what's coming with modernity, the same things that have undermined us will be tempting and threatening to them. And that's why your work around the world is so incredibly important.
Scott:Thanks, guys. It's funny, the our work has been shifting a little bit on this, it's been pivoting on this issue of the sexual revolution, because as you know, it's this, the proponents of the ideology of the sexual revolution are very missionary, if you will, they've got a vision for discipling nations, and they're very active and bringing these ideas through often public education around the world. And as I travel, I was in Uganda not too long ago, of course, Colombia. And pastors were coming up to me and showing me you know, the curriculum, often it's in the form of, for grade school kids and their their countries in the form of very graphic kind of comic book style things. And they're just so alarmed, and they're saying, Scott, this comes from your country, you know, what, kind of what are you doing here teaching us you need to go home and get that sorted out. And I guess, part of what I find refreshing in that is just the very often they have a very clear kind of this is really wrong. This is really evil, that this is sinful, in a way that I don't hear often in the church in the West. And I appreciate that. And they're often very quick to take kind of bold action to make sure that it stays out of the public schools in a way that we I feel like we don't do quite as much of here. So
Os Guinness:you don't remember what's underneath us is modernity, and modernity is coming to them. Yes. Right. Right. That you're right. They're absolutely bold and clear now.
Scott:But But you're right, it's coming. Yeah, that's right as well exciting and challenging times we live in that's for sure oz. But I think you guys are doing well you to Os and I appreciate the hopefulness that you have that just even though these are challenging times and urgent times is the titles of your books, you know, allude to that? You know, it's not a hopeless time is it? I mean, you can come home Yes, we can come home. That's correct. You know, God is still alive and still at work in the world, isn't he? So?
Os Guinness:Yeah, nothing is inevitable because we have free and the Lord is sovereign.
Scott:Amen. Thanks. That's a great way to end us. Os, thanks again, thanks so much for this has been super helpful for me. And I'm sure our listeners as well and the team. So thanks for your just your clear, courageous voice and balanced voice on these really important issues today and for being with us again,
Os Guinness:Thanks for having me all of you, God bless you.
Scott:Thank you and just want to encourage our listeners to go to Os, what's your website? Is it just Osguinness.com?
Os Guinness:Yeah,
Scott:I encourage everyone to go to that website, because you'll see all of Os's books. My personal favorite as probably many Christians would agree is"The Call", about vocation about biblical theology of vocation. But all of these books are really terrific. And I just really want to encourage all of you if you haven't picked up one of Os's books you need to start reading and listening to us so Alright, thanks again everyone for listening to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.