What happens when we ignore God's design for gender and family? Today, we're positioning ourselves at the crux of this question, grappling with the implications of a society straying from the divine image of male and female. Darrow Miller joins us as we take a hard look at the consequences of rejecting this design, which includes the disruption of family units, distorted perceptions of marriage, and the ripple effects of the feminist movements on societal norms. As Darrow releases his newest book, The Grand Design: Rediscovering Male and Female as the Image of God, we get an idea of why he wrote it and what you can expect as a reader. This book provides a helpful exploration into feminism’s history and takes a proactive approach to offer a vision of God's design for each of us–a vision that promotes unity and beauty among the sexes, in families, and even on an individual level. Let's challenge the status quo, become revolutionaries, and strive towards a harmonious society that aligns with the biblical worldview.
Go deeper with the transcript and recommended resources on the Episode Landing Page!
What happens when we ignore God's design for gender and family? Today, we're positioning ourselves at the crux of this question, grappling with the implications of a society straying from the divine image of male and female. Darrow Miller joins us as we take a hard look at the consequences of rejecting this design, which includes the disruption of family units, distorted perceptions of marriage, and the ripple effects of the feminist movements on societal norms. As Darrow releases his newest book, The Grand Design: Rediscovering Male and Female as the Image of God, we get an idea of why he wrote it and what you can expect as a reader. This book provides a helpful exploration into feminism’s history and takes a proactive approach to offer a vision of God's design for each of us–a vision that promotes unity and beauty among the sexes, in families, and even on an individual level. Let's challenge the status quo, become revolutionaries, and strive towards a harmonious society that aligns with the biblical worldview.
Go deeper with the transcript and recommended resources on the Episode Landing Page!
We were made in the image of God. Male and female, we're not the same, but we are equal in our being made in the image of God, equal in our dignity, our value, our worth. And you have sexism on one side that doesn't recognize that. And you have feminism on the other side, radical feminism that doesn't recognize that. Maternal feminism recognized that Men and women were equal and they were partners in that equality. But together they brought their biology, their giftings, together to make a whole.
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 permission 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:Well, welcome again to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. My name is Scott Allen, I'm the president of the DNA and I'm joined today by my team members Luke Allen, tim Williams, dwight Voet and team member and also special guest, darryl Miller. Hi guys, great to have you back on. We're great to be connecting again on the subject of Darryl's new book, which is titled the Grand Design Rediscovering Male and Female as the Image of God Such an important topic. We've had a couple of episodes on this subject, on this book.
Scott Allen:We're super excited about the book being released now, and this is a book that you can purchase through our website, disciplenationsorg, and you can follow links to our resources to get to the place where you can get that, or you can also, of course, purchase it on Amazoncom. I encourage you to read the book and leave a five-star review. That would be really helpful for the algorithms to get the book into more people's hands. Anyways, darryl and team, great to have you on today. We have more questions, darryl, for you, just to help kind of unpack the heart of this book, and what I'd like to do today is I'd like to kind of get into the backseat and let Luke and Tim and others do some of the driving today. In terms of the questions, luke, I'm going to turn it over to you to kind of lead us out today with some thoughts and some questions for Darryl.
Luke Allen:Yeah, all right, yeah, the book's out. I'm excited to see how this goes. It's always really exciting launching books and just seeing the way that God spreads them and works through them and hopefully touches a lot of people's lives. As we've talked about on the last couple episodes we've done on the book the Grand Design, this book really gets at the core of what it means to be male and female. There's a lot of books out there, I think, that really do a good job of approaching certain different topics and arguments that we see within the roles of male and female, but this book really gets to the root of all that and from that root, from the idea core, you can elaborate into so many different areas and you can learn about. Really one of the core questions that we all have is what is my identity With a lot of these things? There's good ideas out there and there's bad ideas, and there's a lot of bad ideas out there in the world.
Luke Allen:I think we can all agree about what it means to be a man or a woman, male or female, and I think the best thing to do a lot of times when you see so many competing ideas is just to line them all up just to get them all out on the table, to look at them from a broad perspective and let's see which you know. Let's look at all these ideas and where they go. Let's look at the consequences Realistically. Where do these ideas lead? And then, once you see them at the consequence level, it's much easier to differentiate which ones are usually, which ones are biblical. You know, god's ideas are always good. So today I just want to take a look at some of the consequences we see in the world today from a rejection of God's design for male and female and just where we're at today in the world, in the West, globally, just some of the things we see as a consequence of, if not listening to God's, god's grand design.
Luke Allen:We see, you know, family breakdown at just staggering rates right now, with divorce. We see kids being raised in single parent households. We see a lot of young boys being raised without a father in the house. We see just as children being raised with a skewed view of what marriage is. We see cohabitation rates skyrocketing right now.
Luke Allen:We see the whole pornography industry, which is just. I mean, I think last year their gross revenue was the same as NASA, so that industry is just huge right now. We see abortion, obviously, and how that is really a wrong view of what it means to be a woman, and then also just what it means to be made in the image of God and the sanctity of human life. That industry also is huge. In the US alone, there's over 2,000 babies killed every day, which is so tragic, and just all the consequences there. Not to mention there's a whole new movement in IVF, which there's a lot to say there and it's another. Just it's not God's design for the way things are supposed to work. I just heard the other day that only 7% of babies created in IVF labs are born alive, so there's a lot of harm there as well.
Scott Allen:In vitro fertilization is what we're talking about here In vitro fertilization yes, alright, and explain that that's IVF.
Luke Allen:Then, of course, the whole homosexual movement, transgenderism, also on the rise. A few years ago we all knew what it meant, what female and male meant, and now this whole question of what is a woman is on everyone's lips and we're struggling to even answer that one. We live in some strange times for all this stuff. So this book, I think, is coming out at the right time. We also see, of course, the whole sex trafficking. We mentioned this on the past episode. The whole sex trafficking industry is growing around the world. So, anyways, that's where we live today, and you know God's place is here as believers to live in such a time as this. So how are we going to respond? How are we going to promote God's design for male and female as we look at just the stage of where we're at?
Luke Allen:You know, a lot of ideas have brought us to this place, a lot of movements. One of the movements, obviously, at least here in the West, that's had a large impact here in the last 70 years is the whole feminist movement. I know that affects a lot of those consequences we just talked about. Just to start things out, we talk about the feminist movement a lot, but I think it'd be good to explain what that movement is. Where we're at today and we talk about the three waves of feminism a lot and we just kind of reference that in passing I think it'd be good to start out by digging into that and just explaining how the third wave that we're in now has brought about a lot of these consequences that we see on the rise right now. Darrell, would you mind just laying those out for us?
Drrow Miller:Yeah, luke, when we speak of the three waves of feminism, normally at least in my generation, we have thought of the second wave of feminism as feminism, and those of you that are of Luke's generation, you're thinking of feminism as the third wave of feminism. But before all that, there was a first wave of feminism. And why these different waves? The reason there's these three different waves is they are driven by worldviews. First wave feminism was maternal feminism. It understood that men and women were equal in dignity, value, and the roles they brought to society and to life were equally valuable but different, and the maternal being a mother forming a family. These were critical for any nation to thrive. And that was the first wave of feminism. And if we had lived 150 years ago, that's what the cult, how the culture would have thought, and that culture was born out of a biblical paradigm.
Scott Allen:Darrell, just before you go on to the second and third waves, just that first wave of feminism I mean, what you're talking about are biblical ideas, but wasn't it kind of in response to the Industrial Revolution and you know, a kind of a real shift in the way people were living as families from the pre-industrial time to the industrial time, where now women and men both kind of left the home, went into factories and things like that? Can you talk a little bit about what prompted that kind of original wave of feminism?
Drrow Miller:Well, I would not necessarily agree with the way you've said that, scott. I think the first wave of feminism is a biblical concept of feminism. It's a concept of what it means to be man and a woman rooted in Scripture, and it was that biblical narrative that actually changed the world from what we would normally think of of pagan. Religion had a concept of male and female. That was a pagan concept, and it was the Judeo Christian revelation in the Bible that put forth this concept that men and women were made in the image of God.
Scott Allen:So when you talk about first wave feminism, you're going way back to the birth of Christianity the very beginning. Yeah, I see In my mind it's kind of associated with, you know, at late 1800 or early 1900s, women. You know separate movement and things like that, but maybe I'm mistaken in my own thinking on that.
Drrow Miller:Well, I'm just saying the root of maternal feminism, the conceptual root, was a biblical worldview.
Drrow Miller:It doesn't mean that everybody that lived during that time could how would you say articulate where this cultural concept came from, but it was there because of Scripture, and one of the things we talk about in the book and this is getting off the subject you've wanted to start with Luke.
Drrow Miller:It was Dennis Prager, who's he's a Jew who understands a Scripture as a Jewish theologian, as it were, and he said it was the revelation in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, that revealed to the world what it meant to be a man and a woman, and that this revelation, when it was practiced, was what led, quite literally, from his point of view, to the birth of Europe, where we're moving away from a pagan concept where men have sex with men, where baby girls are inferior to baby boys, and if a baby girl was born in a Greek or Roman society, very often she would have been left to die because she had no value.
Drrow Miller:That's the pagan world, the pagan concept. And, of course, when the scriptures articulated that men and women were made in the image of God, not just men made in the image of God, but men and women made in the image of God, and in Genesis, chapter 2, they were made for marriage and for the formation of families. Now you're establishing the bedrock of what a society is, where families, the natural family, is the bedrock of any society. So that came very early on, and it was what allowed in the early church and then, from the early church, it's what created what we would today call Western civilization. All that was born out of a Judeo-Christian culture and not a pagan culture, and so maternal feminism was part of that.
Tim Williams :Darrell, let me read the quote from your book, on page 182 from Prager that you were talking about. It says when Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into marriage, it changed the world. The Torah's prohibition of non-marital sex quite simply made the creation of Western civilization possible. Societies that did not place boundaries around sexuality were stymied in their development. The subsequent dominance of the Western world can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution initiated by Judaism and later carried forward by Christianity. So I just wanted to capture that quote.
Drrow Miller:Thank you very much. You know it's a great quote, a great insight. There's a whole discussion around that I don't want to get into it right now.
Drrow Miller:But it was this understanding that made the West possible, and we've forgotten that today. We don't think about that today Because we don't think that deeply about history and we don't think that deeply about ideas having consequences. That idea had a consequence and it was part of what made the Western world the Western world and the Western civilization. The Western civilization rooted in a concept of human sexuality, rooted in the concept of a covenantal relationship between men and women to form families, covenantal relationship between men and women before God. So this is critical.
Drrow Miller:My generation grew up in a very different worldview than the biblical worldview, and so we had a different concept of feminism. And Luke, your generation has grown up, is growing up in a very different worldview than the atheistic, materialistic worldview. You're in the postmodern world or the the neo-Marxist world concept, in which reality has no meaning. Reality is what you have in your mind, not in the world, and so there's a whole new concept of feminism that has blossomed in these last few years. And were you determined whether you're going to be a boy or a girl? Or you're going to be both or you're going to. I mean, it's amazing where we are today, and it's a reflection of the pagan culture manifesting itself in a discussion of human sexuality. So you have the first wave feminism eternal feminism. Second wave feminism is a the secular feminism or modern feminism. And the third wave of feminism is this postmodern feminism. Each of them are reflecting different worldview frameworks to create very different concepts of what it means to be a family and what it means what human sexuality is.
Tim Williams :So I'm pretty familiar with the postmodern feminism as I'm living in it right now. I want to ask you about the modern feminism for a minute and any thoughts on that. I also wanted to just offer a paragraph again from your book on maternal feminism and what, who they are, what they fought for, how they're a bit different than we think of these days. This is from page 186.
Luke Allen:Yeah, and maternal feminism. Is that first way we're talking about Exactly.
Tim Williams :Yeah, yeah, maternal feminists sought to help create a society that supported the health of the family and the child. They sought to fight the forces that would undermine the family and destroy the nation. They opposed sweatshops, where women were paid low wages and kept from mothering. They opposed child labor, where children were kept from learning, and they supported a family wage so the husband could work and the wife fulfill her maternal call. They fought for temperance against the abuses of alcohol that were so destructive to the family and for women's suffrage to exercise a maternal voice and vote in the public square. So I just thought it might be useful to see what, what were some of those stands that women were taking in that first wave and that maternal feminism and that was based on a root of caring about the family and caring about children and recognizing the significance of a mother in the home with her children and the impact that she has on on a child in that state of care and then how that impacts the whole nation as a whole.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, thanks again for joining us today. We are so excited to release Darrow Miller's new book, the Grand Design Rediscovering Male and Female as the Image of God. When we recorded this episode originally, we thought the book would be out by now. It is not, but it is so close guys, it should be out any day now. I just saw the first print a few days ago, so the first batch will be printed momentarily.
Luke Allen: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 book review, and so much more. If you follow us on social media we are the Disciple Nations on Facebook and Instagram and DNAUSA on Twitter or if you follow Darrow Miller on his Facebook page, you'll be able to see all the updates about the book there and a notification for when it is released. But again, the episode landing page, which you'll see linked on our website or in the show notes, is really the one stop shop for everything you need to know about the grand design rediscovering male and female as the image of God. We are so excited to get this book out to you guys, so hang tight, it'll be out any day now.
Drrow Miller:That's right. And a woman in that situation, as a mother, understood that she had a voice, not only in the family but in the community, and that her concern was her children and creating a home for her children to be raised to be virtuous men and women. And she would enter the marketplace, as it were, the public square let me put it that way to represent that voice that society needs to understand the importance of the family. And so there was a domestic sphere where she was fully engaged, and then there was the public sphere where her voice could be projected into the debates going on within the public sphere.
Drrow Miller:So very, these weren't how do you say it? These weren't manby, pamby women. They were very strong women. And they took Phil when he came to the United States and he saw the family and he saw maternal feminism. He said basically that he's never seen such strong women anywhere in the world as he found in the United States. They were breed, apart from women in other parts of the world. And why is that? Because of the Judeo-Christian concept of the family and that women were made in the image of God, not just men being made in the image of God.
Luke Allen:Yeah, so the first way of feminism. I think this can be confusing for people because they still fall under that title of feminism and yet, as Christians, we say those guys were amazing, those maternal feminists were amazing, we applaud them. But then something happened around 1950s, early 60s, in which Christians stood back and started criticizing feminism. And it's confusing because it's under the same term, feminism, and that's why you really need to break it up into three categories.
Drrow Miller:No, you do. You need to distinguish.
Luke Allen:Some we applaud, some we definitely want to resist, and nowadays we just say enough of this entirely. This is crazy. So in the 60s, second wave started out. This was the whole movement of I can do what a man can do, but I can do it better, which, as we talked about two weeks ago or a couple weeks ago, is really a sexist claim, because you're rejecting God's entire design for what a female should be and just saying, you know, the only gender that matters is male, so we want everyone to look like men, essentially.
Luke Allen:Well, I was a lot of evil came out of that. Obviously, as we listed at the beginning of this, A lot of those consequences I listed came out of this, this second wave, I think the.
Scott Allen:I think the key thing for me, anyways, on the second wave is is to become we this idea that I can if I'm a woman. You know what you know I can be a man. I can do anything a man can do. I can do it better. The revolutionary aspect of that second wave was to be like a man. I need to get rid of the maternal part of what it means to be a woman, and that means I mean I need to get rid of, you know, birth children.
Scott Allen:And so the core of that second wave was the movement to develop the birth control pill, abortion, just anything that could get the woman out of the home, which was viewed by second wave feminists as a place of oppression and into the workplace, I think to me anyways.
Drrow Miller:Darryl, go ahead. I would say that both of you are talking now about the programmatic level of the sixties, but this didn't begin in the sixties. This began a hundred years before that, and this, again, is why this podcast is called Ideas have Consequences, because there was a worldview shift in Europe where we went from Judeo-Christian theism to atheism on a worldview level. And when you do that, it changes everything. So we move from a universe that has a transcendent reality, has a spiritual reality as well as a physical or natural reality. That's the biblical concept. It's one reality, it's holistic, it's comprehensive, and in that framework we understand what it means to be a man and a woman, what it means to form a family, what human sexuality is all about.
Drrow Miller:But as the culture in the West revolted against God and then Darwin came and gave an explanation of how we could get here without God, we moved from this full or holistic worldview to a simply naturalistic worldview. The only thing that is real is nature. There is no God, there is no transcendent reality, there's no transcendent sexuality Is all you have is nature, you have physical sexuality. Everything is reduced to simply physical sex. And when the material world is the only thing that is important. What does that mean? It means the marketplace, and money is what's really important. And as those ideas moved through culture to the point where they began to be manifested in the physical world, that's what you were talking about, luke, when it was at birth fourth yeah, that's when the consequences hit the ground.
Luke Allen:That's right.
Drrow Miller:The consequences are the programmatic side of the ideas. The ideas have been developing. They're going through the university, they're going through the culture, they're going into the arts and to music and into the political sphere, where policies are generated. And now, all of a sudden, what's important? The marketplace is what is important. What is not important? The family, the maternal, that's not important, because what's important is money and what money will buy. So society in the 60s began to say that women had no value as mothers, as creators of a home. If they wanted to have value, they had to be in the marketplace. And that concept began to blossom in the culture and basically, a woman who wanted to be home and raise a family was looked on as a pariah cancer, someone who wasn't supporting the modern ideal. And I'll never forget this was a few years ago, when Donald Trump was pregnant, when Donald Trump was president.
Scott Allen:That's the confusion we're in right now. That's a close modern feminism, close modern feminism. We'll get there soon.
Dwight Vogt:Didn't you hear?
Drrow Miller:Well, you see Trump with his big belly. He's a man that's going to have a baby.
Drrow Miller:No when he was at the State of the Union, gave the State of the Union speech. Our country is so divided, whether it's Biden now or Trump. Then they make a statement and half the people stand up and clap and half the people sit on their hands. And there was one statement that Trump made where both the Democrats and the Republicans stood and gave him a standing ovation. The only thing in the whole speech and you know what the statement was we have more women in the workplace now than we've ever had before, and both parties stood and applauded that. And that's if you have a materialistic paradigm and your worth is found in how much money you're making, oh wow, we have success. But what does that mean? That more women are in the marketplace now than they have ever been before? It means they're not home nurturing their children, and that has incredible consequences in our society. So you're right, luke, this stuff started coming out in the 60s, but it didn't begin there.
Drrow Miller:It began with the rise of evolutionism and the concept that there is no transcendent reality. We are only highly evolved animals. There's no transcendent concept of sexuality Is. All you have is biological sex.
Luke Allen:Before we get to the third wave, because I think the second wave, feminism, is still there's a lot of consequences affecting us still. We're in the third wave now, but it's still affecting us. The second wave, I think especially in Christian circles, because we always tend to be late to the game and cultural movements.
Drrow Miller:So we are, instead of leading the cultural movement.
Luke Allen:We are late to the game in what's happening, yeah, and an example of that is right now. You see a lot of this second wave feminist ideas affecting the church. So we talk about egalitarian versus complementarianism. That's big in the church right now. A lot of that stems out of second wave feminism. I hear a lot of times with my younger Christian peers is I'm at the stage you know I just had my first kid know a lot of people in this stage of life and a lot of young women are struggling with I want to stay at home and nurture my child, but I also need to keep my job because we need the income or maybe they can support themselves on one income with the father. And yet the wife loves her job and she finds she feels like she finds identity in that job more than she does in nurturing her children and she's torn and she wants to stay in the workplace and maybe put her child in childcare.
Drrow Miller:There's a lot of different questions here.
Luke Allen:In this stage of life, what would you advise young women who are on that fence? I know there's just it's. The big debate is, you know, stay at home mom versus working mom. What would you? How would you talk into that debate?
Drrow Miller:Well, even the way you phrase that, Luke stay at home mom versus working mom. What is the implication of that?
Drrow Miller:That one's not working right yeah one's not working Once staying at home has her feet up on the couch watching television, she's not working. What's what's? Who's working? It's the person in the marketplace who's making widgets. She's working. No, women at home being mothers probably work harder than women in the marketplace.
Drrow Miller:And there's something I mentioned in the book where what is it? I think a group called salariescom or something like that looks at salaries and they ask what, what would the salary be of a mother? And of course there's. There's no, there's no value in being a mother. So the mother doesn't have a salary. But what would the salary be if you took into account the number of hours she works in the home and the kinds of things that she has to be able to do, whether it's fixing meals or being a psychologist or being an educator? You know, you look at all these things that a woman does in the home as a mother, and it was something like I don't know $180,000 a year she'd be making.
Drrow Miller:And we don't think in those terms. In the modern culture, in second wave feminism, a mother has no value, and even in economic considerations, you know, if you're an economist, you do not consider the value of the contribution of a mother to the economy as a whole, and this nation would not and will not survive if we do not recognize the significance of what it means to be a mother and a nurturer, because you're not just nurturing your family, you are nurturing the future generation of citizens, you are nurturing the nation, and we don't think in those terms. Now push back at me with that question. You asked if you need to.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I think you explained it well. I still think it's hard for a lot of people that find their identity in their work, especially if they're in their 20s and they've been working for 10 years or so, and then here comes this baby. It really interrupts their life, you know. Well of course, and this vision change is just, I think, difficult for some women.
Drrow Miller:But what is that? It's a worldview. What worldview do they have?
Luke Allen:Materialistic.
Drrow Miller:It's a materialistic worldview and that's what's supported in our society. And well, you need to have two people to work full time in order to live at a certain level. Well, who says you have to live at that level. That's the materialistic set of assumptions.
Tim Williams :Darryl, you did a beautiful job in the book of really elevating the view of both homemaking and educating children and just saying that there's. I mean, I wouldn't even venture to put it in my own words at this point, but you did a great job of that and I just love to have you speak to the value of that homemaking and educating children.
Drrow Miller:Well, I deliberately use the phrase homemaking, but most people don't speak in those terms, at least not today.
Drrow Miller:They speak in terms of housekeeping, and there's a difference between housekeeping and homemaking. And the words that we use are important because they reflect how we think, how we see the world. To make a home is to take the four walls of a house, as it were, and transform it from simply a building into something that's more than a building. It's to bring a moral, spiritual, transcendent life into a physical space and create a space where life is celebrated and life is lived. And that's very different than simply taking care of a house. And if you look at the feminists second wave feminists they are very quick to say oh well, if you're mopping the floor and doing dishes, you could be doing so much more if you weren't having to do that. And they're looking simply at housekeeping, not the art of homemaking. Those are two very different things and you need to look at the keeping of the house within the context of the making of a home, which is much broader and really in fact takes a whole lot more creativity and imagination.
Tim Williams :Well, I mean to have a home where people can experience true hospitality. That takes a lot of effort To have a home where there's a husband and a wife and they serve one another, but it's a space of rest and recuperation after the busyness of work and activities. It's a space of rest, it's a peaceful space, it's a beautiful space and a place where children are intentionally nourished, nurtured, educated and you talk about the education of children in a special way with mothers, if you want to speak to that.
Drrow Miller:Yeah well, mothers and this is something so obvious, if we could simply see it mothers by their design and this is called the grand design mothers by their design, have been made to nurture, and whether it's nurturing the baby when it's first born, in holding the baby, in breastfeeding the baby, in the contact of skin on skin, eyes to eyes the eyes are the windows of the soul, and when a mother is looking into the eyes of her baby, she's looking into the soul of the baby, and all of this is so much more than simply the physical, material aspect of things, and it used to be that a woman, when she was younger, would gear her whole life to being a mother, to getting married, to forming a family, to being a mother, to nurturing and educating her children.
Drrow Miller:That was what she was made for. And you look, simply look at the design of a woman's body, and that physical design reveals something of the transcendent nature of why she was made, and that's something we forget today because we don't think in those terms.
Tim Williams :You talk about this education piece and you know, even as you talk about a woman nursing a child, it's obvious to us the father, the men they're not going to do that, they can't do that. That's not how God created them. God created a woman in a special way for that, and it's so beautiful.
Drrow Miller:You quote Lydia Sigourney, not Sigourney Weaver, not Sigourney Weaver.
Scott Allen:Nothing against Sigourney Weaver.
Drrow Miller:Is that what I said? It's just an unusual name, Sigourney.
Tim Williams :Yeah, but you know I mean the woman as she's there nursing and holding her child. You know, numerous times a day she's implanting her image a nurturing sweet, the child is being nourished and the child's looking into the mother's eyes and the mother's image is implanted in that child and you just go in and you say the child is, you know, in so many ways going to be in the image of the mother.
Tim Williams :If the mother is, yeah if the mother's present, if the mother is applying herself to the role and the significance, recognizing this eternal gift of life and what it can be and will be in her home, in the community, in the nation. It's a huge task.
Drrow Miller:She is nurturing an eternal soul. Think about that. She is nurturing a human being, made in the image of God, who will live forever. Isn't that enough? And I don't mean she shouldn't do anything else, I'm just saying we need to recognize as a culture, as a society, the incredible thing that it means to be a mother and to be a nurturer and to be an educator of her children. We can put this in large economic terms, but we can also talk about it on a micro level, and we need to look at both of these things. But isn't it enough to think that I can shape an eternal soul? I'm the one who will live forever, I'm the one that has the ability to shape them from before they are born and when they are born?
Dwight Vogt:Yeah, I just want to. This is Dwight, I want to jump in. I want the listeners to know that at least my impression of the book is not so much to bash feminist movements which you speak clearly about feminist movements but this idea of calling us back to God's transcendent design for humanity and for the male and the female. And that doesn't mean your wife doesn't have a side job, doesn't work in a career, doesn't pursue a PhD, any of that. And you make that clear, and I don't want the audience to misunderstand you on that, because you don't say that what you're calling us to is a transcendent understanding, meaning a divine understanding, a sacred understanding of what it means to be a male and female.
Dwight Vogt:What means we, a mother and a father and I was just as you were talking, darrell I'm thinking how much would we spend on our child's health? Would we spend 100,000? Yes. Would we spend 500,000? Well, we'd go into debt, we'd mark on our house, but it meant life and death for that child. But when you think of shaping the soul of a child for eternity, what's that worth? And that's what you're calling us to. And so, yeah, we've let the world's economics confuse us.
Drrow Miller:We've let the world squeezes into its mold.
Dwight Vogt:Right and shape our values so that we just don't see it. Honestly, it's like we're not. I think it's mostly blindness. We just don't see it, and I think it's a call to the church first and foremost. No, you're right. Anyway, I just want to highlight that.
Drrow Miller:And, as we say so often here, if the church isn't discipling the nation, the nation will disciple the church. And in this arena that we're talking about today, about human sexuality, family formation, the culture of the pagan culture, the postmodern culture, is shaping our lives and we don't recognize it. We just think, oh, this is just how life is and this is how we see things and it's how we value things and it's how we behave Really, At what point will we step back and say, well, what does it really mean to have a biblical worldview? What does the Judeo-Christian concept of the universe mean for my life? What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? And what does it mean that we are made in the image of God?
Drrow Miller:And it took a man and a woman. It takes a man and a woman to fully manifest what it means to be made in the image of God. A single man couldn't do it. Two men couldn't do it. A single woman couldn't do it. Two women couldn't do it. We were made in the image of God. Male and female, we're not the same, but we are equal in our being made in the image of God, equal in our dignity, our value, our worth. And you have sexism on one side that doesn't recognize that. And you have feminism on the other side radical feminism that doesn't recognize that. Criminal feminism recognized that Men and women were equal and they were partners in that equality. But together they brought their biology, their giftings, together to make a whole.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I think so often, as young people, we're looking for purpose and meaning, and we look for it in all the wrong places. And, as you were just explaining, that maternal role that mothers can play in shaping an eternal soul and in discipling a nation through their family. That's an incredible purpose. It's such a beautiful purpose and a call for us, and yet, you know, the big, fancy house and the shiny car seem like they're more attractive right now to a lot of people, I think.
Luke Allen:I do think, though, a lot of women do desire to be moms and to be mothers, and they see that as a really important calling in life, and yet a lot of them just can't get married these days. It's hard, it's. I think the average age of people getting married in the US is like 29 now, when not long ago was 21, I believe in the less than 40 years ago Need a double check that but the age of marriage is getting older. A lot less people are getting married. All of this is affecting this Opportunity that people have to participate in God's grand design for mothers and fathers. It's a really beautiful design who's?
Luke Allen:you were just saying. What would you say to these young men, though, that aren't Finding a wife, that aren't giving women the opportunity to be mothers, to be wives and to Experience this beautiful calling? I know a lot of guys in their 20s want to go find purpose outside of the house, outside of the home, outside of a marriage. They want to go have fun, be free, spread their wings. I hear all these things from from my generation, and yet for a lot of people, you know, the call to marriage is a much higher one. What would you say to these guys?
Drrow Miller:Get off your computers and stop playing video games. Now I'm serious when you look what.
Drrow Miller:What is it? Today, the average child spends six hours a day playing video games. And now they're Teenagers, and now they're late teens and they're still playing video games. Does that mean you don't play any video games? No, but that's not what your life is about. And Again, we are. Our culture has Squeezed us into its mold. Oh, this is what we do all day. We play video games. We, we do what we want. No, you are here for a purpose, and part of that purpose is to form a family, and another part of that purpose, as we read in Genesis 1, is to Steward creation. You are here to take what God has made and do something with it, and one of the greatest gifts that he gives you is time. And Are we redeeming time or are we wasting time? And we live at a time of history where wasting time is yeah, that's what you do, because we don't understand, again, genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2, and I'm afraid the church doesn't understand it either. I.
Scott Allen:Think Darrow for a lot of the church that it's just this idea that Christianity, or the Bible, or biblical worldview, biblical principles, leads to or shapes a particular kind of culture. Is not that, it's not a common way of thinking. Most people, people don't think, they don't connect Christianity and culture in that way. They they Think about it in very personal terms in terms of my relationship with Jesus.
Scott Allen:You know my Personal spiritual growth, but they don't think about how the Bible would shape a culture in all of its ramifications, including marriage, family. And because they don't, they just Adopt whatever the whatever's happening in the church or you know, and and they kind of live this, you know, this kind of double-minded way where they're Christians but they're living largely, you know, in ways that are largely Shaped by the culture. I think that's really true in this area of male-female family Issues, and this really is something that I think you're calling us away from right.
Drrow Miller:Darrow, just, I am yes and as people who have read DNA books in the past or listen to this podcast. Where is culture derived? Culture is derived from worship, cult the word culture Comes from cult and cult is worship, and so the culture is a Reflection of the God or gods that are worship, the character of the God or gods that we worship. If we say there is no creator God, we're all here. We're living in a universe in which there Everything has come about by chance. That Creates a culture that has certain ramifications, and so we really need to.
Drrow Miller:We need to look at culture, but we need to do it in a conscious way, to recognize there's a relationship between the culture that we're living in here at this moment in history and the God or gods that are worshiped. And if you want to change the culture, you really have to change your worship, and the Judeo-Christian culture was born out of the worship of an infinite and personal God who created the universe, and he was personal and we can Engage with him and communicate with him. That creates a different culture than a universe that has there's no sound to it, there's no life to it, it's just. It's just material things that, over eons of time, has Cranked up human beings.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I want to go back to that quote that Tim read earlier from Dennis Prager about what you're calling. There are the first wave of feminism, which was really the introduction of the Judeo-Christian Concept of male and female made in the image of God.
Scott Allen:Dennis Prager called that a sexual revolution. Yeah, I thought that's very powerful Because we we think of sexual revolution is something that started in the 1960s. But Prager goes back and says, no, that you know that was a sexual revolution. It revolutionized the way we understood male and female and children, marriage from what was what was happening before in this kind of fallen pagan world.
Scott Allen:And if you think about it in that way. It you see things that in our present, in a very different way, we're we're actually reverting back to kind of that fallen pagan that we are. Worldly way you know we're not actually advancing in any way. Here we're, we're reverting back Because of our rejection and our abandonment of that original sexual revolution, the biblical one so pagan worship produces pagan Sexuality and and all of those negative consequences that, Luke, you know was at the very beginning.
Drrow Miller:That's exactly, yes but there's a relationship.
Dwight Vogt:But between those, two things. I'm gonna, I'm gonna counter you now, darrell.
Drrow Miller:That's fine.
Dwight Vogt:I I'm thinking of Hosea, the book of Hosea, and I think we're in a situation in modern-day Christianity, at least in the US, where we can worship God and actually still follow a pagan culture, and Yet we are worshiping this, the God of the universe, and I, hosea, said that's what was happening in his time You're worshiping God, but you're not following him.
Drrow Miller:So there's then you talk about then, what does it mean to worship?
Dwight Vogt:That's, that's maybe the question. You you say the answer is to worship God, and I'm going, we are worshiping God, we're worshiping God all over. We have, we have praise songs everywhere you listen now. So it's happening.
Scott Allen:But it's an outward or kind of this external.
Dwight Vogt:Well, darrell, what do you mean? Yeah, what do you mean, darrell?
Drrow Miller:Well, if you worship the living God, we should know something of his nature and character, and we should know something of what he has made this universe for and who he has made us to be, and then that should form his, his nature and character, should form the very basic Attributes of our culture. Exactly so. We go to church on Sunday and we sing praise songs and we go out into the world on Monday, because we're, as we talked about before, there's this sacred secular divide, and what you do in church is one thing and Then how you live in the world is a very different thing.
Scott Allen:Yeah, do I hear? I think of Old Testament passages like Isaiah I can't remember the chapter, but there's. It references this throughout the Old Testament where God is saying to his people you know, I'm tired of your external worship practices, your fasting and your Sacrifices, and yet you're doing injustice. In other words, you're living. You're living in a way that's just the same as the pagan world, with this kind of veneer of he's like. I just find that detestable. What it means to worship me is to worship me In every area of your life, not just some kind of external, you know, practice of going to church or singing praise songs or whatever it is you know, there's got to be a consistency of Living a life based on the worship, the true worship, of the living God and, and as Darrell said, his own nature and his own character.
Luke Allen:Yeah, yeah, what I was doing the research for this episode and I was researching those consequences, at least at the beginning. Pornography rates in America it's about 70% of males, regularly, consistently, are watching pornography. 40% of females. Those stats are the same inside and outside the church and that's just an example of how you know. You go to church on Sunday, but your actions are not portraying that on a weekly basis.
Scott Allen:So one of the ways it yeah. It's just we're not, we haven't, we're not living our faith as a culture.
Dwight Vogt:Yeah, and I think what I'm trying to tease out is, is this idea of culture, and that you can't. You can't separate worship of God from your practice of culture, your understanding of culture. And so and yet we do. We tend to say, well, I worship God, and then I'm ethically, I didn't lie today, I didn't steal from anybody today and I didn't cheat anybody today, right, but but but your cultural values, which you don't think about. Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose? What's you know? The things that would cause me to look at porn? Those aren't answered in my understanding of God, and that's where we're, darrell, I feel like the book is reminding us. There is an understanding that flows into culture, and then what that means culture being family, being who I am, what does it mean to be male?
Dwight Vogt:What does it mean to be female? What is, what is God's beautiful, wonderful, amazing Grand deals, transcendent design for us as human beings? And when you get those questions answered correctly, a Lot goes right. A lot goes right, you are then you are then in the kingdom, I mean you're, so I and I feel like that's where you're Read the book.
Scott Allen:Darrell's a revolutionary. He's. Darrell is pushing for a sexual revolution, but he's he's pushing for the sexual revolution that happened when the Judeo-Christian worldview broke on to the scene and changed everything. We need to have that same revolutionary spirit again and we need to get back to the grand design. And that's really what this book is about. It's about recovering an understanding of that, those powerful, revolutionary ideas that come from the Bible that create Thriving, flourishing cultures, in a way that we are not experiencing in the West today.
Scott Allen:Darrell, as we wrap up our podcast, I just again I want to encourage everyone to go out and get a copy of this book and become Revolutionaries, along with the DNA here on this subject. Any final words from you or final thoughts, just encouragement from your heart to people that are, are, you know, interested in in this subject and in this possibly getting this book.
Drrow Miller:Well, I think what's just been said again is a place to end. We are talking about a revolution, a Revolution that takes us back to first principles, biblical principles, and those principles aren't just Floating in the air. Those principles exist because God exists. He has a certain nature, a certain character. He has made the universe for a purpose and he has designed our physical bodies as male and female, as male and female, to reflect transcendent characteristics. And we need to move away from the flat earth, evolutionary concept that we are only Bodies. That's only plumbing. No, it's not just plumbing. There is a design, a grand design that we can see In our physical bodies and the way they're made. That reflects something of God's eternal nature. And One of them is a woman. If you look at her body, she was designed to nurture. Where does that come from? Where does that concept of nurture come from? From God. He is the God of supply, the God of nurture. So let's have a revolution.
Luke Allen:That. That that was my takeaway to you from the book. Yeah, we do, yeah, sexual revolution. I like that wording. We need to. We need to have a new biblical view of this. Not new as in we're making this up but we're just turning back to the Bible. That's right, I think, for some people listening the first time I heard you know, whenever you think you need to have a biblical view of Everything in your life, some people think, well, that's kind of a boring life.
Drrow Miller:No, it's not. Not at all life, not at all. That is wrong view of what the Bible is.
Luke Allen:It's a beautiful view of what life is.
Luke Allen:This is truly the most beautiful way to live when you see a family where the mother and the father love each other and the Children love the parents. It's a beautiful thing when you see a father leading his family the way God designed him to lead, the way the Bible Tells a father to lead a family. It's beautiful and it creates beautiful nations. And that's that was my takeaway from the book is, when we go out into culture, this crazy world that we live in, with all these, you know, harmful consequences affecting so many people, how can we promote such a counter narrative? We can promote it through beauty. That's the way that we can, that we can advance this in the face of such evil.
Luke Allen:I think we need to be be the one showing shining beauty into all that. Very good Thanks.
Drrow Miller:Thanks, luke.
Scott Allen:Thanks, tim, and thank you all for listening to another episode of ideas have consequences. And again, the book is titled the grand design discovering male and female in the image of God. Darrow, thank you so much for writing that book and for your heart, for this message, and I just want to encourage you all go out, get a copy of it, leave a review On Amazon if you feel so inclined. We'd be really grateful. And, yeah, just join in this really important discussion. Again, thanks for listening to another episode of ideas have consequences. This is the podcast of the disciple nations.
Luke Allen:Thank you for listening again.
Luke Allen:The grand design rediscovering male and female as the image of God has not been published yet, but it will be published any day.
Luke Allen:Now, as I mentioned before, the episode landing page this week, which you'll see linked in the show notes, is where you can find everything you need to know about where you can find the book when it's out, how you can help us share it, where you can leave a review and where you can also find the link to the book and where you can also find the grand designs free online training course with Darrow Miller, which is what the book was originally inspired by. I have personally gone through this course twice now and I would highly recommend it for Christians in the times and seasons in which we live. So again, make sure to visit this episodes landing page, which you'll see linked in the show notes. 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 disciple nations org. Thanks again for listening to this episode of ideas have consequences.