Ideas Have Consequences
The Grand Design: Rediscovering Male and Female in the Image of God with Darrow Miller
Darrow Miller’s newest book, “The Grand Design: Rediscovering Male and Female in the Image of God,” will be out in two weeks. Explore with us what it means to be transcendently and biologically human, male and female, made in the image of God. The Grand Design captures and restores a vision for what God has imagined for the human family, in all of its beauty. This biblical standard has potential to produce freedom and flourishing on one hand, or immense evil and harm when it is ignored. The impact is felt not only on individual levels, but even nationally and we are seeing the results all around us today.
Go deeper with the transcript and find details about the book and other recommended resources on the Episode Landing Page!
Darrow Miller’s newest book, “The Grand Design: Rediscovering Male and Female in the Image of God,” will be out in two weeks. Explore with us what it means to be transcendently and biologically human, male and female, made in the image of God. The Grand Design captures and restores a vision for what God has imagined for the human family, in all of its beauty. This biblical standard has potential to produce freedom and flourishing on one hand, or immense evil and harm when it is ignored. The impact is felt not only on individual levels, but even nationally and we are seeing the results all around us today.
Go deeper with the transcript and find details about the book and other recommended resources on the Episode Landing Page!
But I came to realize that the root of poverty was not lack of money, was not lack of resources. I came to realize that the root cause of poverty was a lie, was lies not just a lie, but lies. And as I was confronted with broken families, children abandoned on the street in the developing countries where I was working, I came to realize that one of the greatest causes of poverty in the world was a lie that men are superior to women.
Luke Allen:Welcome to Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance, a show where we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world to all the nations, but to also transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the Church has largely neglected this second part of her mission and today Christians have little influence on their 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 the living God.
Scott Allen:Welcome again to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance, and I'm Scott Allen, the president of the DNA. I'm really excited for this episode. Today I'm with my team members Luke Allen, dwight Vogt, and team member and special guest and author Darrow Miller is with us today. Hi, darrow, good to be with you. As always, darrow, we are so excited that we get a chance to talk to you about your newest book that's going to be released imminently, very shortly. The title is the Grand Design Rediscovering Male and Female as the Image of God In the DNA.
Scott Allen:These book projects are just something that they're big projects, they're important projects, they're difficult. There's a lot of work that goes into them, mostly on your part, darrow, for sure as the author. It really is a time of celebration when we're getting ready to release a book, and especially one as important as this. What we're going to do today is just let our listeners know about the book, why you wrote it, why it's important. We're just going to get right down into the heart of it. Darrow, I would love to just start our discussion today by you just telling us a bit about the book. Tell us, just give us an overview of the book, Then maybe the next question that would follow that you could kind of bleed into it, is just, why did you write it? What was the problem that you were seeing that prompted you to say, hey, I need to put this down as a book.
Darrow Miller:Well, let me start with the second question, because that's the one that gets my juices going. So for how many years has it been we've been working together, starting at Food for the Hungry, and then with the Disciple Nations Alliance.
Scott Allen:Well, it's been more than 26 years with doing this ministry of Biblical worldview, discipleship training that we call the Disciple Nations Alliance. I mean, we've been doing this now for a long time, and then we were working with Food for the Hungry for 20 years prior to that. So I've got the gray hair to prove that. So do you.
Darrow Miller:So do you, dwight. Well, we've had a privilege of working together all these years and Dwight and I have more gray hair than you do, scott. You still look like the young man. But this story began for me when I started working within Food for the Hungry and traveling globally with Food for the Hungry and I began seeing the poverty that was created by sexist culture. And everywhere I went I saw grinding poverty, because that's where Food for the Hungry was working, in some of the poorest countries in the world and in some of the poorest communities in those countries. And every place I went I found broken families, broken lives, children abandoned by their parents, children begging on street corners. It was horrendous.
Darrow Miller:And as I got to know some of the people we were working with and talking to the women, I'd hear their stories of what life was like for them as women in their communities, and I can tell you, over the years I've wept with a lot of women just listening to their stories and I came to realize that and this is another story entirely, but I came to realize that the root of poverty was not lack of money, was not lack of resources. Some of the poorest countries in the world are fabulously wealthy in terms of resources, and every country has her people, and I came to realize that the root cause of poverty was a lie, was lies not just a lie, but lies. And as I was confronted with broken families, children abandoned on the street and developing countries were working, I came to realize that one of the greatest causes of poverty in the world was the lie that men are superior to women. It is a lie.
Scott Allen:Darrell, explain how you saw that play out in some of the different countries that you were involved in. For our listeners, who may not be familiar with the kind of sexism that you're talking about, can you give us some stories or examples?
Darrow Miller:Yeah, I saw, for instance, men who saw themselves as macho, and the way you're macho is by having sex with a variety of women and getting them pregnant. That proved you were a real man. But what happened to the women who were on the other end of that relationship? They often would get pregnant and have children and have a lifetime of being a woman who's been separated from the man who got her pregnant and spends a lifetime as a single mom raising children. And we see that in the United States. We see that here. One of the greatest causes of poverty in the United States is fatherless children, children who are born to a woman and who the husband or the father abandons the woman and the child, and then the child very often ends up on the street as fatherless Horrible poverty.
Scott Allen:And this is a problem, of course, all over the world.
Luke Allen:This is just one element of it.
Scott Allen:I know in my own kind of experience with this Dero in different countries. I think where I started seeing it in such an acute way is in places like China and India, and it's certainly prevalent in many countries in Africa as well. It's just that there's just a greater value on, let's just say, when it comes to reproduction, on male children than female children. And when you combine that with policies like China had a one child policy that existed for many years, almost entirely, people would select the male using ultrasound equipment and things like that, and they would abort the baby girls. That's right. Same in India, and in some cases it wasn't just abortion, it was literally birthing and then abandoning, Abandoning burying the newborn baby.
Darrow Miller:Burying the baby alive, throwing the baby in a river, simply because the baby was born a girl.
Scott Allen:Yeah, it's just it's horrendous and it's just it's kind of almost an unbelievable this is called gender side. Gender side is the word that describes this.
Darrow Miller:Yes, and we don't talk about it. You don't hear that word much, but it is the radical elimination of a gender, and there are approximately 200 million, not 2 million, not 20 million 200 million fewer women in the world today than there should be.
Scott Allen:Because, of these practices of aborting and killing newborn baby girls.
Darrow Miller:Because of some countries they have dowry, and if the woman doesn't bring enough dowry to the marriage, she will be killed by her husband. So there's there's many different things that contribute to gender side, but the bottom line is there's 200 million fewer women alive in the world than there should be. This is horrendous.
Scott Allen:Yeah, it's. It's incredibly dark, incredibly evil, and we talk about ideas having consequences and the consequences are so severe. You know, there you mentioned poverty. You know communities that treat that view and treat females in this way are going to be broken and impoverished in all sorts of different ways. You know, we're seeing the huge consequences of this in China right now, where you've literally got a huge imbalance between now, you know, married, marriage age, young men and women. The women aren't there, you know, like they should be. So what do you do?
Darrow Miller:You know what's that mean for a society, whole communities in China, where you go to a small village and there's virtually no, no girls there. Yeah, you know, they are they are murdered when they are born, and today this is a whole sociological thing. There's 35 million Chinese men of marital age who have no hope of having a Chinese wife. So what are the social consequences of that? You have the kidnapping of women. Yes, out of Thailand and Vietnam and North Korea, north Korea.
Darrow Miller:Yes women are kidnapped and sold as brides in China. Yes, you have a policy of Chinese policy of creating projects like in Africa to build bridges, to build roads, to build harbors, and one of the points of the contract is that they need to take Chinese laborers. Why? Because there's so many men in China that can't get wives. So now you send all these workers to Africa to build roads and bridges and harbors and they, like any man, wants some sexual activity. So what do they do? And you find all over Africa now children who are half African and half Chinese and the consequences of that are incredible. It's horrendous and I've seen this in my travels over the years and it's broken my heart. And it's all because of a lie and that lie needs to be challenged and replaced with the truth.
Scott Allen:Talk a little more about the lie Darrow. You know how are women viewed in a lot of these different places. Maybe choose one or two. What does it mean to be a girl, a woman, a female in a lot of these places?
Darrow Miller:Well, I remember one time I was teaching in Africa and I was teaching on this subject and a young man came up to me and he said Darrow, in our tribe we don't have a word for woman. And I said what do you mean? You don't have a word for a woman. You've got to have the people in your tribe, or female? No, we don't have a word for woman. Well then, what do you call her? A tool?
Scott Allen:That's not a derogatory word that was literally the descriptive word for females.
Darrow Miller:That was the descriptive word for female. A man has a hoe, he has a machete and he has a female. That's how they were seen.
Scott Allen:That's what, literally, that's what when they looked at them, that's what they saw. That's what they saw a tool, yeah.
Darrow Miller:I was in Indonesia and giving a lecture and a man came up to me and he said you know, on our island we don't have a word for woman. I said you have to. I said no, we don't. Well, what do you call a woman? A slave? And that's where you have a culture, yeah, a whole language, and women have a word for woman.
Scott Allen:And women have internalized this. That's the way they see themselves. That's how they see themselves.
Scott Allen:They don't know anything different, and I yeah it's horrible it's and it's so different from those of us who grew up in the West, especially in. Now we're into our fourth wave of feminism. I think a lot of people just aren't familiar with it the fact that this lie exists all over the world at this level, where you know and I think the other thing that we take for granted, darrow, as Christians is, you know, we tend to kind of have absorbed and take kind of for granted the idea that human beings, male and female, are made in the image of God.
Darrow Miller:But people around the world don't have that concept, I think that's true and that's where the message of the scripture, when it's gone forward in with all of its power, it changes language, it introduces new language. So what does the Bible say? In Genesis one, that God created the heavens and the earth, and then in verses 26 and 27, it says let us not, let me Doesn't say let me. It says let us make man in our image. And so it says God made us in his image, male and female. That is a radical idea from a pagan culture, from, you know, in contrast from a cultural context where you view women as tools or as slaves.
Darrow Miller:Yes, yes it's radical. It's a radical.
Scott Allen:And again, I just want to underscore something you said at the very beginning, darrow, which is, if you're working in a community that has this idea, this is their view, their worldview, this is a fundamental belief. This is literally the lenses that they have on that, how they see the world. If this is their view, and that that community will be impoverished, it will be broken in all sorts of ways and there's no way that you can develop that community through any kind of material transfer of money. You know, unless you deal with these ideas, you're not going to see change and I think that's the other thing I just wanted to underscore because we tend to think of poverty in the material terms.
Scott Allen:And you know, if we just give these poor communities enough development, enough money, then oh, things will be fine. No, not if they have that kind of idea in their culture.
Darrow Miller:No, because the root of the problem is not a material root. We've spent in the war on poverty in the United States 50 years. We spent $21 trillion to fight poverty. That's a lot of money and yet the the the arrow on poverty is virtually the same as it was 50 years ago, because the root is not a material root and all the money in the world will not solve that root. There's a fundamental root and you can call it of language, you can call it ideas, you can call it culture, whatever you want to call it, but the concept is that is missing. The concept that is missing is that women are made in the image of God.
Scott Allen:Yeah, darrow, I think we also, as Christians, take for granted the idea that we kind of assume that, oh, everyone knows this and this idea has been around forever. But historically, most cultures in the world, all cultures, had this kind of view of women that you're describing when Christianity was introduced well, judaism, and then Christianity, jesus himself it was a revolution and I think we don't appreciate the revolutionary impact of Christianity on this particular issue. You want to talk to that a little bit. Just what was that revolutionary impact that happened 2,000 years ago and began to unfold from that point?
Darrow Miller:Well, it began before that with the Jews. It began with the Jews understanding of marriage that we were made in the image of God to form families and those families were then to steward the earth. Again, that's another part of the radical nature of the biblical faith. We were made to form families. Pagan culture doesn't understand that. Dennis Prager has, I think, famously said if he's not famous for saying it he should be that it was actually the Jews, and later the Christians, concept of family formation and marriage that allowed the world to come out of poverty.
Darrow Miller:Yeah, things like monogamy, for example, yeah monogamy, where you are faithful to your spouse. What you don't find? That in the pagan world. Pagan ideology brings pagan sexuality and we're seeing that in spades today.
Scott Allen:And pagan sexuality is always going to be destructive towards well, it'll be destructive towards males and females. And females will pay a particularly steep price in a pagan kind of sexuality.
Darrow Miller:And I see yeah, you see this in the West. Well, the man will too, because he doesn't know who he is. If he doesn't know who a woman is, he doesn't know who he is.
Scott Allen:Darrell, go into the biblical antidote, if you will, a little bit more. Just that, the profound understanding, the true understanding. It's not just biblical, like some kind of biblical religious view, but this is truth. The truth is we are not random products of evolution. We are created beings and we have a created design. You have to start there.
Darrow Miller:Talk more about that, darrell, because this is the antidote to you the brokenness that you're seeing, but again it goes back to the root is in the biblical revelation that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. There is a creator, there is a not just a natural physical reality, there's a transcendent reality. And he made us in his image. Well, god doesn't have a physical image, he's not a physical being, but he made us in his image. And what does that mean? After his pattern, god's character, his nature, he has a paternal heart and a maternal heart. And when he makes man in his image, he makes us with a design, a physical design, to carry out the maternal and the paternal.
Darrow Miller:So this is you can look at the human body, whether it's the male body or the female body. You can see that they are different. You can also see that they fit together. They were designed to fit together and in their function and in their form they reveal their design. But in the modern world we say there is no God, so everything has come about by chance. So there's no particular pattern, there's no design, there's no design, it's all random chance.
Scott Allen:Random chance.
Darrow Miller:Yeah, and then in the postmodern world, the postmoderns have jettisoned reality, so they do not even admit to there being a biology nature, biological nature to us. They deny biology.
Scott Allen:Yeah, the postmodern idea Darrow is yeah, this postmodern idea is I create reality right. Reality isn't a given created by God. That's all gone. Now I create it right. I am the sovereign in this story and I can be whatever I want to be, whatever.
Darrow Miller:I want to be.
Scott Allen:And that's what we're living in now. So you've got the complete kind of abolition of these categories of male and female, because that comes from this. If you're a postmodern, that comes from this older, discredited biblical idea, well, it's not. I mean, it's fundamental reality. We're talking about Genesis, chapter one. Right at the beginning, god created man, male and female. That's a fundamental reality and, like you say, darrow, that comes out of God himself.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, thanks again for joining us today. This is just a quick announcement that the grand design rediscovering male and female in the image of God will be out in exactly two weeks, on October 3rd. So please make sure to visit this episode's landing page, which you'll see linked in the show notes, because it contains everything you need to know about where you can find the book, how you can help us share it, where you can leave a review, and so much more. If you follow us on social media, at Disciple Nations on Instagram and Facebook, or DNA USA on Twitter, or if you follow Darrow Miller on his Facebook, you will also be able to see updates about the book there as well. But again, the episode landing page, which is on our website and linked in the show notes, is really the one stop shop for where you can find everything you need to know about the grand design rediscovering male and female in the image of God.
Scott Allen:Talk up. People don't understand this very well. You've done so much deep thinking on this, darrow, but why did God create us, male and female? What are your thoughts on that? What did your learning teach you about that?
Luke Allen:Yeah, in that answer a minute ago, darrow, you said God created male and female in his image. The paternal and the maternal come from God. Could you just briefly? I think a lot of people's ears perked up when you said the maternal comes from God. Could you explain that for people?
Scott Allen:Explain this male and female from God Darrow? Maternal and paternal, yes.
Darrow Miller:Well, you just asked the question. Where did the concept of female come from? Didn't come from nothing. It was born out of the character of God, the maternal heart, the nurturing nature. God is a nurturers, he supplies. If you look at some of the words for God, they talk about his provision, his supplying. This is his nature, is to care, to show compassion, to provide food, nurture for a child. This is part of his nature. And so he said he wants to make some beans in his image. It's not just making the image of a male, of a masculine, it's making a male and a female. One man cannot reflect all the image of God, and neither can two men. One woman cannot reflect all that it means to be made in the image of God, and neither can two women. What does it take to reflect the nature of God, male and female?
Dwight Vogt:It's radical, I think Darrow. Why?
Scott Allen:Why do I?
Dwight Vogt:I think, darrow, why that's kind of mind blowing is, even as you talk about this, I'm sitting there, but most of us picture God as a man, and so he's sitting in heaven.
Darrow Miller:Yes, he's the creator, he's going okay, I've got all the pronouns are masculine pronouns he his him.
Dwight Vogt:So he's sitting down. He goes I got to create man and I'll create Adam. And then, oh, I need to have somebody else so we can reproduce, so I'll create.
Darrow Miller:No.
Dwight Vogt:I would disagree.
Darrow Miller:And I think not sitting up there thinking I'll create Adam and I make Adam and oh well, there's something missing. No, by design. He conceived of replicating his nature, his maternal nature and paternal nature in physical beings. He designed them for a purpose. That's what we're talking about. It's not, oh gee, an afterthought.
Dwight Vogt:Right, I'm just saying that that most you have to help people get into an understanding where God really is not male or female, but he's a God with characteristics and trying to express himself as the God of the universe. And I'm saying the same thing you are, but most of us just can't think that way that.
Dwight Vogt:Here I am. I want to express myself. How do I best express myself? He could have started with female, but he started with male, but in the end he created male and female because he. I just want to underscore what you're saying.
Darrow Miller:Yes, but again, I'm not sure we're saying the exactly the same thing. If you look at the Sistine Chapel, michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, the thing that's so famous about that is the moment that Adam is created, and Michelangelo has put this God in the figure of an old man and he's reaching out and at the end of his finger you see the finger of Adam and you can't quite tell if they're touching. At least when you're down on the floor of the Sistine Chapel, when you see a picture of it, you can see. It's just the moment of separation. Where's Eve? She's in that picture. Michelangelo understood that she wasn't an afterthought, she was part of the plan, and he shows her the face of Eve in back of the head of the Creator. She's coming next by design, for a purpose, not by chance, not by an afterthought. We were conceived of male as male and female. The conception of that occurred in the mind of God at the same time. This is what it's going to take to reflect my nature.
Scott Allen:I think one of the things that helps me, darrell, on this subject and I think we should push into it because this is a sticky, can be controversial subject but because God is triune, I think that to me helps me understand why, when he created beings in his image us we couldn't be one thing. Because in the triune nature of God himself Father, Son and Holy Spirit you see both a unity and a diversity.
Luke Allen:And there's that community, it's community.
Scott Allen:The unity and diversity of the Godhead is reflected in the unity and diversity of these beings that God created in his image. Correct, exactly, and that's really important. That's why, to me anyways, god created us, male and female, to reproduce children. There's three there To reproduce community To create community.
Darrow Miller:Because God, father, son and Holy Spirit are a community, yes, a community that's bound together by love.
Scott Allen:Yes, but I want to ask just back to Darrell or Dwight's question, to push in a little bit on that, because I want to just make sure that we're clear for our listeners. Darrell, You're not you know, you're not suggesting that the Bible is incorrectly translating God as father or male or something like this. I know that some Bible versions have gotten away from that and they're kind of getting you know, God is now person, but he's not a father, he's kind of genderless. That's not what you're saying.
Darrow Miller:No, not at all.
Scott Allen:No, okay, explain that a little bit. He's father and Jesus' son. Male, male yes.
Darrow Miller:Okay, I mean that's all the way through the Scripture. You see those pronouns where God refers to Himself in those masculine pronouns.
Scott Allen:But I think this is where Dwight's saying it's challenging for people because because of that, then it's very natural for people to go oh well, then males are superior to females, or something like that.
Darrow Miller:Well, no, that's exactly right and that's part of the problem. And we find this problem in the church as well, where people in the church say that men are superior to women. No, they're not.
Scott Allen:They're different than women, but men and women are equally made in the image of God, equally valuable, equally have dignity and these characteristics of the kind of the maternal heart, as you say Darrow, the nurturing heart of a woman. They don't just spring out of nothing, they come from God Himself. Yes, that is a little mind blown, you have to admit. Here's God, the Father, and yet these maternal instincts come from Him. I don't want to get too carried away on this, because I think Read the book. It gets worse.
Dwight Vogt:Dwight, it gets worse because, no, it gets much worse. Because one of Darrow's one of the ones that chapters that impacted me the most, was where he's talking about the nurturing heart of God and he uses the word El Shaddai, and in the Hebrew Shadd is the breast and he says the breasted one. So now we're talking about the Father God, who's the breasted one, and I'm just like freaking out, you know, like well how does that work?
Darrow Miller:That's what El Shaddai means.
Dwight Vogt:El Shaddai means the breasted one, and so he's the nurturer.
Darrow Miller:He's the provider.
Dwight Vogt:And so he's. I'm just saying it's a bit mind blowing to think of all of those characteristics or the nature of God as being full-orbed, and when we think of Him as Father we don't see Him as full-orbed.
Scott Allen:Darrow talk. It is easy to get kind of Go ahead, Darrow, I don't want to cut you off on that.
Darrow Miller:I just you know we're talking about it sort of abstractly but one of the before I did anything else with this theme, I developed a lecture called the Maternal Heart of God. Everybody knows the Father Heart of God. There's books written about the Father Heart of God. Youth with a Mission has a whole week on the Father Heart of God. Is that true? Yes, it's true, yes, but where did the maternal heart come from? And I've developed a lecture called the Maternal Heart of God and I can tell you, most of the time when I teach this to a live audience, the women start crying Because they've never heard that before and they've never heard a man say that before.
Darrow Miller:And very often, after the women start crying, the macho men and I'm saying that because this happens in Latin America as well the men begin to cry. Why is that? Because they know how they've treated women and they hear the pain in the voices and the weeping of the women. What have they known to this point? It's just, it's the sexist culture, and the women see themselves in that role as objects. The men see the women in that role of objects to be toyed with, to be played with, to prove a man's virility. This is how they think and all of a sudden, they're hearing something from another world. They're hearing something from the Scriptures that is overwhelming them.
Scott Allen:I think for me, when I've seen that, I just think what it is is that you have women who, when they hear you speak about these things, they understand at a much deeper level than they've ever understood that they too, as women, as girls, are made in the image of God. It's easy for men, because God is, you know that, you know he's our Heavenly Father. He's masculine, you know in the Bible, and so it's kind of an easier thing for us to understand. But that's not wrong. There's a lie there. You know this lie that we are. But being a female, being a woman, you are not. And I think this deep understanding, it's very profound. When people have that understanding, it's life-changing. It's life-changing that I am made in the image, I am an image bearer of God as a female, as a woman.
Darrow Miller:I remember one time I was teaching in Brazil to a group of young Christians, bible-believing Christian development workers, and we did this session and we had this kind of a response. And I asked this group how is this lie perpetuated in Brazilian culture that men are superior to women? And one of the main ways in that culture is through proverbs. Now it can be done through sayings, through lack of words, but in their case it was through proverbs. And I said I'd like you, during our coffee break, to write down the proverbs that you know that express the concept that men are superior to women. And we came back from the coffee break and there were about 60 pieces of paper posted up on the wall. I didn't speak Portuguese so I didn't know what they said. So I said can someone read these for me? And no, I'm sorry, not proverbs, jokes, jokes about women.
Darrow Miller:And somebody started reading them and no one was laughing. Why? Because it wasn't a joke. They heard what their culture said and did. And after we had a discussion and unpacked that we must have spent the better part of the day doing this, I said what do you want to do now? And they said we want to go outside and create a fire and burn these and make a commitment that we're never going to tell these jokes again. I'll never forget that day. It was profound, and they prayed, asked forgiveness, gave forgiveness, because they had never heard the biblical message. Even though they were evangelical Christians, they'd never heard the biblical message that he made us in his image, male and female. That's the level we need to come to.
Scott Allen:Darrow before. I really want to hear from Luke and Dwight, but I just want to underscore that this is a book, darrow, about male and female and what it means to be made in God's image, and I think for a lot of our listeners, when they get into that subject, their first thoughts will go towards debates between complementarians and egalitarians, or they'll go towards things like the degrading of males in our Western culture and toxic masculinity. I just want to. Those are important issues and the book is going to speak to all of those issues. But this is a book that's born out of the brokenness of communities around the world that many of us don't have experience with, where, you know, there's real serious poverty and brokenness because of male sexism, and that's kind of what's driving it. But, luke and Dwight, I really want to open it up to you guys. I know you've got questions and I want to let you get those in to explore.
Darrow Miller:Can I say something? Yeah, go ahead. One of the things we talk about in the book and when I lecture without the concept of Trinity, you have Aristotle and Plato. Aristotle and Plato and they had a running disagreement and Aristotle said everything is diverse. And I think it's Raphael's painting of the School of.
Darrow Miller:Athens School of Athens and he has a picture of Plato and Aristotle and Aristotle standing there with his fingers splayed, saying ultimately, everything is diverse. Plato is standing there with one finger pointing towards the heavens and Plato say no, everything is a unity. And that gets translated into the discussion of sexuality, where everything diverse gets translated into men and women are different and men are superior to women. The diversity means that men are superior to women. The reaction to that is no, we are all equal. That means we are the same. There's no distinction. And you have those two. You have sexism on one side, radical feminism on the other side, because there is no concept of Trinity. And Trinity says no, there is one God and three persons. God is community, and you have unity without uniformity and you have diversity without superiority. That is the nature of who God is One God, three persons.
Scott Allen:I just want to underscore the importance of that. You see this in the Trinity and this is to be carried over into human community Unity without uniformity, diversity without superiority. We can kind of go over that too quickly. It's one of the most profound truths in the universe, in the Bible, and when cultures are built on that truth and it's very rare to find them West East, anywhere cultures begin to flourish. Because it underscores the goodness of diversity and yet allows for a unity and a diversity. This is, you were saying, where there's a diversity male, female we tend to have a superiority. Men are better than women. Or in the West today it's the opposite Women are better than men. Wherever you know, in whatever way that diversity creates this kind of sense of division and superiority not in the Bible and you can have both a unity and a diversity where you know there isn't uniformity and there isn't a superiority. It's just such a profound thought and it's really, it should be the very bedrock basis of human community.
Dwight Vogt:Yeah, I think one of the fascinating things about the book too is, darryl. You talk about the waves of feminism and you start with first wave feminism, which was really a biblical feminism, then you talk about second and then you talk about third and it's interesting third wave feminism, which I think we're actually coming out of.
Luke Allen:Oh yeah, we are right now.
Dwight Vogt:But it was a feminism that and I think you alluded to this earlier it was to become male, thank you. So, males, even though it was a feminist movement, males still won, because the end goal was maleness and masculinity.
Scott Allen:It was this idea that my wife had this. Anything a man can do, I can do as a woman, but the standard for what we want to do is kind of a male standard. We need to not nurture our kids at home. We need to go into the workplace because that's you know, or whatever it is.
Darrow Miller:You see, that's the point of the second phase of feminism. You reject maleness on one level, but not on another. You reject sexism. But where does a woman become most like a man? When she can abandon the home and enter the marketplace, when she can have sex and not get pregnant. So what is the value still in the feminist, radical feminism? What's still valued? Maleness?
Scott Allen:Does that mean a woman?
Darrow Miller:can't be in the marketplace.
Scott Allen:No, but what's devalued in that feminism is these very core characteristics of being a woman, Of being a woman of feminine and maternal yeah, burying and nurturing children. That whole wave of feminism went to war against that. I mean it was the rise to the birth control pill and abortion on demand, because modern feminism is sexist as well.
Darrow Miller:They value maleness over femaleness. And then the third wave of feminism, postmodern feminism, in which their postmodernism has jettisoned reality and jettisoned reason, and now it's whatever you feel. So it's not. There's no longer biology, male sex, female sex, there's whatever you want to be, and we've gone from male female categories of 10 or 20 years ago to how many today? 70, 80 categories of gender, because there's no reality anymore.
Scott Allen:Yeah, reality is what you want it to be. You know we are, you know, as human beings in the driver's seat, we create the world, so to speak which is a lie. I mean, of course, this is a lie, and you know, when we try to be something that we're not, we hit the wall, you know, and it just we end up breaking ourselves. And that's the world we live in today. You know people are trying to be something that they're not thinking that there is no God, there's no designer. I create reality.
Scott Allen:But then they're trying to live that out in a world where there actually is a God and it is a designer and they are designed in a particular way.
Darrow Miller:So and that's where it is both the biblical revelation that God made us in his image male and female and the reality of creation itself. You can look at who we are and science tells us there's a male human being and a female human being, and it's not just the external sexual body parts. You can cut off a woman's breast or a man's package and it doesn't change a thing except for the external look, Because inside there's 6400 different markers of male and female. Yes that's reality.
Scott Allen:It's deeply interwoven into our very being, biologically, into our very cells and genes, exactly.
Darrow Miller:And that's why I'm saying there is a biblical revelation, but there is a creation revelation. You look at what God has made. Or if you say there's no God, simply look at male and female and it's obvious.
Scott Allen:Yeah, Lou, you had some questions.
Luke Allen:Before we get into the application here. There's a lot of different rabbit trails. We can go down with this, which is awesome. There's a lot of really practical application.
Luke Allen:But when I think, when we read the title of the book the grand design, rediscovering male and female immediately, like we said, a lot of different words come to mind. We think of sexism, we think of egalitarian versus complementaryism, we think of the new evil movement of the manosphere all these different applications. You can quickly go down the different roads at the practice level. How do we combat each one of these? And I think as Christians, especially in the world of Christian books, we see books all the time that attack these different things and a lot of times these books they're good books Attack these different things, Different arguments.
Luke Allen:One book that's the biblical view combating feminism, or a biblical view of masculinity, and they're all at the practice level. What I love about the grand design is it's not looking at the different things going on in our world, in our crazy world of sexuality, and it's not written from a reactionary standpoint where it's attacking these unbiblical worldviews. This book gets back to the core of what it means to be male and female and from that core we can apply these lessons into our lives, and it applies to all different areas of sexuality all over the world. This book was you were inspired to write it from your interactions with a lot of other cultures outside of the West and what you saw around the world. In that lie that you said at the beginning that men are superior to women In the West that lie is still pervasive and yet we see a different view of male-female relations. And yet this book again it gets to the core of what it means for us to be made in the image of God. It applies to all of these.
Luke Allen:So that's just. It's such a practical standpoint, One that I don't really see in many other books, and for that reason I think it's. I'm really excited to see what God does with this book, because it's such a practical analysis for all of us to read. And then from that standpoint, from that grounding in God's truth of who we are, our identity, we can apply it into our lives and into our different cultural contexts and our different world views that we're coming from. So there's no question there. That's just a statement of why I like the book, Thank you, I'd like to ask a question of you.
Scott Allen:This is the second book that you've written on this subject. I'm thinking maybe 10 years ago or more you wrote a book called Nurturing the Nations Very similar topic. You're coming back at it again. Why did you write a second book? What's different about this book from the first book, nurturing the Nations?
Darrow Miller:Well, first let me say very clearly if I could have only written one book, it wouldn't have been Discipling Nations, it would have been Nurturing the Nations, because that is so fundamental around the world. That lie. Why did I write a second book? Because the world has changed in the last 15 years and we've gone from the second wave of feminism, of radical feminism, the materialistic mindset, to the postmodern world, totally different. We've shifted in practice, in what's going on in practice from one to the other. I think all of us have had our breath taken away by how fast the practical shift has occurred.
Darrow Miller:And those of you that are familiar with the DNA and with this podcast know that we have written Scott and I have written about this Scott and his book Social Justice is not Biblical Justice. And then in the book we did together the Toxic New Religion. Those ideas have been coming for over 100 years, but in the last 15 years it's like they've exploded globally. And so what's going on today is out of the same atheistic, materialistic philosophy, but it's a new statement in postmodernism or neomarksism or whatever you want to call it, and we're seeing this explode in front of our very eyes in the last 10 or 15 years and almost every week we see something new popping up that just breaks your heart.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I mean just to remind people. I mean we all have lived through this and, like you say, dear, it's happened very quickly. But we went from a discussion on homosexuality to legalizing so-called same-sex marriage and we went straight from that into kind of the elimination of male and female and transgenderism. And now this movement to mainstream kind of surgeries and even to put these ideas into children and to kind of reinforce it in schools, and we're moving towards legalizing pedophilia.
Scott Allen:And that's the next one that's coming. Right now there's a massive movement to legalize pedophilia, and just this summer we saw the rise of the powerful film.
Luke Allen:The Sound of.
Scott Allen:Freedom, which was shining a spotlight on the fact that we're trafficking children because of this pedophilia all over the world now. It's one of the grossest and gravest injustices in human history happening right now.
Darrow Miller:And all of this is hmm. There are organizations out there that have spent years and years fighting against female genital mutilation yes, that's their whole purpose for existence. And now we are promoting genital mutilation for girls and boys, and it's becoming a billion dollar industry Before our eyes. What is going on here?
Scott Allen:Yeah, there's just incredible. It's like a bomb went off and everything is just chaos and confusion. On this subject of what in the world does it even mean to be a human being, much less male and female? And, darrow, I think really your book is speaking into that incredible confusion and just bringing us right back to Genesis, chapter 1, this profound bedrock truth that God created in his image, male and female.
Luke Allen:Yeah, again, that's what this book does so well, because we see all these extremely evil things going on in the world. You see abortion at larger rates than it's ever been. You see sex trafficking. You see pedophilia on the rise. You see sexselective abortion.
Luke Allen:You see, pornography. These are all connected and it's because we have the wrong understanding of what it means to be made in the image of God. And instead of running around trying to put out all these fires which that's important but instead of always doing that in this kind of again, reactionary approach, we need to be proactive in casting a better vision for what it means to be male and female and not, you know, casting your own vision, just going back to God's vision and saying this is the one that actually works, this is the only one that can unify us. And, you know, if we actually have this vision and we actually disciple our nations with this vision, then all these other fires that are popping up everywhere will be able to take a stance against those.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I think, luke, you're saying something really profound there. I just want to underscore it that you know it's important to fight these evils when they come up. You know, same-sex quote unquote same-sex marriage, abortion, pornography, pedophilia, these are sex trafficking, these are all evils and we need to fight them. But what you're saying is there's something deeper. Okay, you know, we can't just react to whatever is happening, because it's just happening so fast. We've got to go back to this core thing that kind of unites them all at a fundamental level and deal with that as Christians. And that's what you're saying Darryl's book is doing it's getting back to this core issue.
Darrow Miller:Well, there's something else that's going on here that Luke, I think, is pointing to. There's an enslavement. All of these issues that are out there, they're rooted in something and they enslave people, they destroy people and it's not simply.
Scott Allen:And they destroy marriages and families and you know, human community, right, yeah, go ahead, darryl, and physical bodies, yeah, literally destroy.
Darrow Miller:And literally destroying human bodies and destroying human life, I mean, and it's like an addiction. People are addicted to these things and we need to weep. We need to be angry at the evil, but we need to weep for the people who think that the evil is good and have been enslaved by the evil.
Scott Allen:And Darryl. That brings us all the way back full circle. The root of brokenness in the world is a lie, and it's a lie around our very nature. What does it?
Darrow Miller:mean to be a human being.
Dwight Vogt:What does it mean to?
Scott Allen:be male and female. The way you phrased it was males are superior to females. There's so many lies now that surround this issue, but that's the root. I mean we need to weep for the brokenness, because the brokenness is just.
Darrow Miller:it's growing exponentially all over the world and these are human beings whose lives are being shattered because they're following a lie.
Scott Allen:That's right and these are important theological discussions and academic discussions, but we have to get to where you are, darryl, and this is something I've always so appreciated about you your heart breaks for the consequences of these horrible ideas and lies and that's where we need to be kind of focused just the real life consequences in people's lives, in communities and nations. They're really destructive lies and the truth is incredibly beautiful.
Scott Allen:It's incredibly powerful. We're made in the image of God. Unity without uniformity, diversity without superiority. This is a uniquely powerfully Christian idea, biblical idea. We've got to be the champions of that. We got to live that out right. That's our call.
Darrow Miller:And I hope the book will captivate people to see something beautiful and wonderful and they will want it.
Scott Allen:I'm sure that that they will and, darryl, you've done such a magnificent job of just really showing it in its glory and it's in its beauty and its grandeur. It's such a powerful truth. Thank you, darryl, for writing this book, for your passion for this subject. It's needed more than ever, darryl. Any final thoughts as we wrap this.
Darrow Miller:Well, just by finding the book helpful. Let me encourage them. Whoever finds it helpful to put a review on Amazon or good books, wherever you shop for books.
Scott Allen:Yeah, please, please, give it a review. If we get enough people to give it a five star review, that that actually helps in the sales with the algorithms and whatnot. So, yeah, encourage y'all to read it, give it a great review, and that'll help us to get the book out to even more people. We want to get this out as as widely as we can. So, and I might also just mention or, dwight, I might have you mention that not only is there a book, but there's an online course, and that's also a resource that's available for people. Do you want to explain that?
Dwight Vogt:Yeah, you can find that as well at our website, disciple nationsorg, or go direct to the platform, which is quorumcom, C-O-R-A-M-D-E-Ocom, and you will find the grand design taught by Darryl in all of his fullness as a video course.
Scott Allen:And we'll be. We'll be talking further about this book. We're going to do a couple, at least a couple of podcasts, if not more, on this subject, but we're so excited, darryl, to have the book you know out Congratulations to you on all your hard work now coming to fruition, and we pray that God would really use it in a powerful way to just remind us all of these fundamental truths that are so needed in our confused world. So thanks, darryl.
Darrow Miller:Thank you very much. It's been good being with you in this role today.
Scott Allen:Awesome, All right well, thank you all for listening to another episode of Ideas have Consequences, the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.
Luke Allen:Thank you for listening to this interview with our usual co-host, but today's special guest, darryl Miller, author, speaker, pastor and co-founder of the Disciple Nations Alliance.
Luke Allen:Again, the grand design rediscovering male and female in the image of God will be out in exactly two weeks, on October 3rd. As I mentioned before, the episode landing page, which you'll see linked in the show notes, is where you can find everything you need to know about the book, where you can find the book, how you can help us share it and where you can leave a review for the book if you would like to do so. Ideas have Consequences is brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance. To learn more about our ministry, you can find us on Instagram, facebook, twitter and YouTube, or on our website, which is DiscipleNationsorg. Thanks again for listening and we're hoping you'll be able to join us here next week for an interview with Lisa and Nelson Montero, who played an integral role in the creation of this book and the course that goes with it, and who have both seen the life-changing effects that it has had on people from conferences and groups where Darryl Miller has taught on this subject. So, again, that episode will be out next week here on Ideas have Consequences.