The Western world has been described as a cut flower. This flower was beautiful and flourishing while rooted in a Judeo-Christian worldview, and yet, as it became increasingly secular and rejected God, it cut itself off from its roots. Today, the flower still looks good, but it will soon wither and die if nothing changes.
In this episode, we look at the increasing number of former atheists, Muslims, and agnostics who are calling out the erosion of Western civilization along with its former values of human rights, justice, and freedom. These people–including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Tom Holland, and more–are understanding that these Western values came from the Bible.
If Western society rejects God, it will also lose the virtuous and moral framework that created its foundation. This realization is leading to an awakening. It is a unique journey that has led people from an analysis of the culture and the West to the cross.
Join us as we unpack the roots that nourished the West. We consider the incredibly good impact the Bible can have on culture and the devastation we can anticipate when it’s rejected. We live in a pivotal moment in history. The consequences of rejecting God are evident in our society, providing us with a fresh opportunity to promote goodness, truth, and beauty, rooted in the Bible once again.
The Western world has been described as a cut flower. This flower was beautiful and flourishing while rooted in a Judeo-Christian worldview, and yet, as it became increasingly secular and rejected God, it cut itself off from its roots. Today, the flower still looks good, but it will soon wither and die if nothing changes.
In this episode, we look at the increasing number of former atheists, Muslims, and agnostics who are calling out the erosion of Western civilization along with its former values of human rights, justice, and freedom. These people–including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Tom Holland, and more–are understanding that these Western values came from the Bible.
If Western society rejects God, it will also lose the virtuous and moral framework that created its foundation. This realization is leading to an awakening. It is a unique journey that has led people from an analysis of the culture and the West to the cross.
Join us as we unpack the roots that nourished the West. We consider the incredibly good impact the Bible can have on culture and the devastation we can anticipate when it’s rejected. We live in a pivotal moment in history. The consequences of rejecting God are evident in our society, providing us with a fresh opportunity to promote goodness, truth, and beauty, rooted in the Bible once again.
Our point here is we get all of these ideas of truth, objective truth or morality, things like forgiveness or freedom. All of these things are legacies, are the fruit of the Bible, lived out over many hundreds of years, faithfully, in a way that formed a civilization, formed a culture, western culture. It's not perfect, but it's been deeply shaped by these things.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, welcome back to Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. As you know if you've listened to this podcast, on this show we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world, to all the nations, but our mission also includes to be the hands and feet of God, to 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 most 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 everybody to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. I'm Scott Allen, I'm the president of the DNA and I'm joined today by friends and team members Dwight Voate, darrell Miller and Luke Allen.
Luke Allen:Good to be here.
Scott Allen:I'm really looking forward to our discussion today. But before we jump into that, Luke, I know you had some announcements about the podcast I want to let you go for it there.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I mean the big announcement is this is episode 100 of Ideas have Consequences. So yeah, we're excited about that. With episode 100, we are going to be wrapping up season one of the show and next week we will start out season two. With that transition we're going to have a couple changes nothing too major. The show is going to. We're going to continue to bring you the show but at least for the next few weeks it's going to be every other week that we're going to be posting an episode. So you can just keep an eye out for that. Just with everything going on with Thanksgiving and Christmas and the things here at the ministry, we're going to be taking a little bit of step back in our weekly posting. The show is also going to sound a little different. Throughout this journey We've been learning how to do the podcast thing and enjoying it. So we're going to hopefully continue to improve the show and provide you with interesting guests and topics week to week.
Scott Allen:Thanks, luke. Thanks for all your work too. Luke does the lion's share of work here as our producer for the podcast and I just want to appreciate you for all that hard work, luke, my pleasure. Hey, listen. Today we're going to talk about issues in our culture and the relationship of the church with the culture. It's prompted by news that came out maybe a week or so ago that we had heard that Ayan Hercie Ali had confessed that she now believes in Christianity. She's attending church, and we were thrilled when we heard that news and wanted to talk a little bit about the broader movement that we see her being a part of right now. I think it's a fascinating movement. It's a really hopeful movement in the culture. But before we do that, I just a little bit about her. If you don't know her, I really encourage our listeners to become familiar with her. She's a fascinating person.
Scott Allen:She was born in Somalia during the time that the country, like it is today, was completely war-torn and violent, and so her family fled to Kenya. So she was raised in refugee camps in Kenya Muslim family. But she was apparently kind of a cultural Muslim. But during her teen years she did get kind of radicalized in her Muslim faith because of the work of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a movement out of Egypt, a fundamentalist Islamic group that really wants to see Muslims practicing very directly the teachings of Muhammad. So she became radicalized in her faith, her Muslim faith, and that lasted up until at some point, as a young kind of young adult, she was granted refugee status to immigrate to Holland, and so she moved to Holland and became enamored with kind of secular Western liberal culture and eventually actually went on and got involved in politics, became a member of parliament in Holland and had a real turning point in her life after 9-11 in terms of her Islamic faith, because she, like for all of us, that was a shocking episode and she just couldn't justify the behavior of those that flew the jets into the Twin Towers, and so it caused her to abandon her Islamic beliefs and essentially become an atheist.
Scott Allen:And so she became friends with a lot of the new atheists, people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, but at the same time, you know, loved living in the West, you know, and she has that perspective that a lot of immigrants do into the West of just appreciating the freedoms freedom of speech, freedom of religion, just freedom of assembly and all of these freedoms that we enjoy in the West. She really came to appreciate that she didn't find that in Islamic culture. She, I think, came to believe that those were the fruits of the Enlightenment an atheistic movement, right, this kind of French Enlightenment. And so, anyways, that's her backstory.
Scott Allen:She eventually immigrated to the United States that's where she lives now and she came on my radar because she started speaking out against kind of the totalitarianism that she was seeing in the United States under the rubric of woke Marxism, and she was getting invitations to speak. I remember her getting an invitation to speak at Notre Dame University and the students rose up and protested her from coming there and said no, you know, you can't come, we don't want to hear from you. They censored her, silenced her, and, which is ironic, here she is. You know, a black, somali woman. Right, you would think this would be somebody they would want to hear from, but no, we don't want to hear from you. And so they canceled, canceled her, you know. So she started speaking out against what she was seeing as a threat in the West rising up from within.
Luke Allen:Why did the chancellor dad? Is it because she was a free speech advocate?
Scott Allen:She was speaking out against the cultural Marxism that she was seeing on the campus. She saw it as totalitarian, rightly and she saw it as a threat to. Western civilization.
Darrow Miller:She's also very articulate. So, she's articulating what she thinks in a very clear way and that's threatening. That's correct that's correct.
Scott Allen:Yeah, and she's threatening too because of just her own identity, right, you know she's. She's not a white man, right, she's a black woman.
Scott Allen:Somali woman, right, you know, and so, anyways, you know she's married and has a child now. And then a week or so ago she wrote I was at the Wall Street Journal or where was it, I can't remember. Oh, it was. No, it wasn't the Wall Street Journal, it was unheard, I believe. Yeah, she published an article that says I'm now a Christian, I'm now a follower of Jesus. She didn't use that word and I think you're right, darrow. I remember when you read the article you thought I don't know if she knows Jesus yet personally.
Scott Allen:But she came, she's closed, she's attending church and she, what she did in the article was she says here's why I affirm Christianity, because all of these values that I came to see and love in the West, all of these freedoms that we love and human dignity, the basic idea of human dignity, which really is the cornerstone of Western culture, Western civilization, if you will, she came to realize those didn't come from atheism. And she read Tom Holland's book, which I have started, I haven't finished. I know, dwight, you've read that book. What's the title of that book?
Dwight Vogt:again.
Scott Allen:Dominion Tom Holland writes this new book I mean a couple years ago, a book about how deeply Christianity and the biblical worldview shaped the West she saw that and she said, okay, I was taught a lie.
Scott Allen:Number one these didn't come out of the atheistic French enlightenment, these came from Christianity. And number two, these are under threat. She saw the threat very clearly. They're under threat from within and they're under threat from external forces. She mentioned two in particular the threat from kind of this New, which you would call it, you know, newly confident kind of globalized Chinese Communist Party that wants to exert its influence around the world and is exerting its influence around the world, and from the Muslim Brotherhood, radical Islam, you know, which is also, you know, exerting influence now around the world and directly threatening the West. She saw the threats externally, internally, and she said and I thought this was really interesting, guys, there's only if the threat is a worldview threat, in other words, it's a threat from a comprehensive worldview. Having a kind of an anti worldview like atheism isn't going to cut it. You've got to have another comprehensive worldview to counter a worldview, and that's what Christianity has to offer.
Scott Allen:So any before we talk about I think I on her, see Ali here coming to Christ. It brought to mind people like Jordan Peterson and many others. There's a movement right now to the faith or to Christianity from a particular kind of people and they're coming in the same way that she is, which is they're through, you know what I would call the Avenue of Culture. They're looking at what's happening in our culture, the things they love about it that come from Christianity. They come to realize that they see the threat and it's causing them to become Christians. It's kind of amazing. But, guys, I'd love to hear your thoughts now, just kind of open up to your thoughts on just her story. What did you? You know her backstory or her recent kind of conversion story? Any thoughts?
Luke Allen:Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. Like you just said, it's similar to Jordan Peterson's story. I keep hearing the same story for people you know the world's crazy. I can't make sense of it. Oh, christianity is at the back of most of the things that I really love and appreciate in life. You know freedom, peace, you know free speech. So many of these things that have built the West as we know it, in the good that we see in the West, are based from Christianity. If you're honest, you can you can make that connection pretty easily and I see her noticing that. I see Jordan Peterson, james Lindsay, douglas Murray, tom Holland, as you mentioned, michael Knowles. You know a lot of these people have kind of recently either are becoming Christians or are looking that direction. I think it's really interesting.
Darrow Miller:Rodney Starks is another one to put on that list.
Luke Allen:Yep.
Darrow Miller:Yep, the rise of Christianity was the beginning point of his journey towards the cross. He was a sociologist and atheistic sociologist and he said that the most profound sociological revolution in history was Christianity. And if there's no God and no miracles, how do you explain this? And that was his book, the Rise of Christianity, and that was his beginning journey and ultimately he came to the cross, like we're witnessing with a lot of these other people.
Dwight Vogt:And that was about 10 years ago. Yeah, 10 or 15 years ago.
Darrow Miller:Yeah, because he was one of the first ones that I became aware of.
Dwight Vogt:Yeah, yeah, scott, you mentioned Dominion to me a couple of years ago and so I picked it up, and you mentioned Tom Holland, both of you. But yeah, he was an atheistic historian, yes, and validly so. But to read his book is yeah, the subtitle is how the Christian Revolution Remade the World, and basically he goes through point by point and talks about. You know, where did this idea of charity come from? Where did this idea of forgiveness even come from? Where did this idea of human dignity and goodness for all, not just for the Jews, not just for this subgroup, not for this subgroup, but a goodness that can reach the world? And he unpacks all of these ideas and then says they came from the Bible, from the story of the Jews.
Darrow Miller:I think Holland also points out that the language that we speak is a language born out of the Scriptures, out of biblical faith, and even people who are atheistic use language like compassion, that atheists really have no place to hang, that it just floats in air. But Holland says, no, this came from somewhere. The language we speak, that we still speak today, even if we're atheists, the language we speak has been shaped by the Judeo-Christian revelation.
Luke Allen:I think of also. I mean justice we talk about that a lot or thankfulness we talked about that two weeks ago here on the episode and how that really does come out of Christianity. What do you guys think about human rights? I know we're always having people talking about human rights right now. I would say there's a clear connection there between understanding of a Mago Day, right.
Darrow Miller:That's absolutely rooted in a Mago Day in the image of God Without the image of God, and the fact that human beings, all human beings, young and old, male, female, are made in the image of God. That is the foundation for human rights and we talk about human rights all the time, and we should be. But where does that come from? It doesn't come from a secular, atheistic worldview. A secular, atheistic worldview produces Mao and Stalin and people like that who see no. And abortion on demand, darrell, abortion on demand.
Scott Allen:Darrell Right, no, the idea that human beings are made in the image of God and have intrinsic dignity and worth. I heard someone describe that recently as the cornerstone of western civilization or western culture. That is the absolute bedrock cornerstone. Again, it didn't just come out of nowhere. I think no other worldview has a basis for that kind of human dignity.
Luke Allen:Here at the Disciple Nations Alliance, dna, we equip believers throughout the world with a biblical worldview, empowering them to break the bonds of poverty in its many forms in their lives and communities and bring about God's intended flourishing for families, churches and nations. Our core training resource here at the DNA is called the Kingdomizer Training Program. If you want to learn more about who we are and how you can begin to break the bonds of poverty around you, make sure to check out the Kingdomizer Training Program and join over a million others who have learned how to bring biblical transformation into every corner of society by signing up for the Kingdomizer Training Program at quorumdaocom today. Again, that is quorumdaocom, or you can find the link in this episode's landing page.
Darrow Miller:I think this movement that we're sort of talking about today normally within a Christian framework, we think of sharing the gospel in a religious context. You know, it's religion, it's Christianity. But the people that we're referring to today are not being approached from a religious context. They're being approached from a cultural context. And they're saying where has this culture that we love come from? And oh wow, this is a culture, this is a civilization that was born out of a culture that came out of the Judeo-Christian Bible.
Scott Allen:Let me give three examples, guys, because I think these are so just insightful. Three quick examples. One is Luke. You mentioned James Lindsay. James Lindsay is a scientist, a mathematician, and famously he was kind of associated with that new atheist movement 10 years ago. He was very much on board with that, very open and outspoken against his belief in Christianity. And he had a profound shift again because he was confronted with just the, the chaos on college campuses and he began to see in his case it was truth, it was the issue of truth.
Scott Allen:Truth mattered to him. He was a scientist, a mathematician and that whole enterprise is based on a belief in objective truth. And he saw, rightly, that this woke Marxist worldview didn't have a value for truth. Truth essentially was secondary or you didn't even really count. What mattered in that worldview was power. So if telling lies got you into power, telling false narratives got you more power, fine, you do that. There's no value for truth. So he said, oh, we can't live with this worldview that doesn't value truth. And then he started asking right, where did this belief and objective truth come from? You know, it doesn't really come from atheism and it led him. He's not a Christian yet, but he's really on the road. So that's example one.
Scott Allen:Jordan Peterson, I think, is a different example. In his case it wasn't so much truth as it was Initially, it was free speech. Right, because he was confronted with that new law that was on the books in Ontario you can't speak, you have to use transgender pronouns, and if you don't you'll be fined by this government. Right, he was compelled speech and he said, no, you can't come listen, we have to be able to speak freely. And he went on and on about how important that was. That's really. What put him on the map was free speech, not being compelled to speak things that you don't believe in. And then that got him questioning, I think, in some ways, where did that value of freedom and of free speech come from? Again, these don't spring out of nowhere. They come from the Bible, from Christianity, from this worldview.
Scott Allen:And then, yeah, douglas Murray is another one who you know. He, dwight, you mentioned forgiveness and I remember him looking at the woke worldview and how it has no basis for forgiveness. It's all oppressed, oppressor, and you know, if you're oppressed, you want to get, you want to destroy the oppressor, make them pay. There's very much a virtue of retribution, of payback. There's no forgiveness. There's no. That just doesn't even exist in this worldview.
Scott Allen:And he started thinking about forgiveness and just how powerful that concept of forgiveness is, and what happens in any relationship or any family or any culture where there isn't a value of forgiveness. It all falls apart. Everyone's just dog-eat-dog at each other's throats. And then he started going where did this come from? Where did we get this value of forgiveness? So it's so fascinating. There's many more examples, but these are thoughtful people who are seeing the loss of things in our culture, because there really is a huge shift in the culture. They're seeing it, they're seeing the threats and it's driving them to go. Where did these come from? And it's leading them to the Bible. And you know, it's exciting. I don't know if you would yet call it an awakening or what, but there seems to be something happening right now In the midst of all the stuff that we're seeing, that's in our face every day, there's this thread of positiveness, of hopefulness, hope.
Darrow Miller:Right when you see folks like this, who are very thoughtful, who very often think outside the box in their own vocational area, and they're raising these questions and, as they pull, look for the answers, they're coming back to the same basic source.
Darrow Miller:You mentioned something a minute ago, Scott, that I just want to add to you who are talking about truth, the pursuit of truth and it's not just that there is objective truth, counter to what the new Marxists speak or wokeism speaks there is objective truth, but human beings have intelligence and the truth is intelligible. There's a connection. If we were all just dumb animals, we could live in a universe that has reality, has natural laws, has moral laws, but if we were dumb animals, we wouldn't have the intelligence to discover them. So it's both. Here is the nature of what God has made and he has made us in his image. We are intelligent human beings and we can discover. Our nature comes together with the nature of reality here and we can begin to discover these things, and that's very exciting and we're seeing it with people today who do not profess to be theists, but they have the ability, they are intelligent and they're seeing the intelligible nests of creation.
Scott Allen:Yes, yes, I heard the famous Oxford or Cambridge mathematician John Lennox just recently and he was talking about objective truth. He brought up a really fascinating thing to me. He said and, dear, I've heard you speak similarly. He said he drew a contrast between truth as true propositions. Sometimes secular people will say we believe in truth as kind of truthful propositions. He said he drew a contrast between that and truth as a person. And he talked about Jesus and he said Jesus didn't come saying you know, I say true things, I speak true things. He said I am the truth.
Scott Allen:And how truth? If you keep pushing backwards and keep asking all the why questions at the very end of that, you're going to come to a person, jesus Christ or God himself. Right, I am, the great I am. You know he's the bedrock source. God, the person of God, is the bedrock source of all truth. That's a very Christian idea. We, you know.
Scott Allen:Again, our point here is we get all of these ideas of truth, objective truth or morality, things like forgiveness or freedom. All of these things are legacies, are the fruit of the Bible, lived out over many hundreds of years faithfully, in a way that formed a civilization, that formed a culture, western culture. It's perfect, but it's been deeply shaped by these things. What I find ironic, team, here, is that the Church doesn't. I feel like sometimes the evangelical Church doesn't really understand this or appreciate this. We have to hear this from newcomers who are outsiders. Right, they're the ones that are reminding us of this and there's an irony to that to me, Before you get too deep in that thread, because I think we should pursue that thread, absolutely yeah.
Darrow Miller:These words, when you discover these words of compassion and truth, and human dignity, the image of God.
Darrow Miller:They are descriptive of what is real and there's something inside of you that says this is what I have longed for but haven't found. Or I have seen it and I wonder where it's coming from. And it's something, it's like a sweet fragrance that can draw people to something that they have not seen or witnessed or experienced before. And, like you started to say here, scott, we as the Church, very often we have reduced the biblical narrative, the biblical faith, to something very, very small, to a Sunday religion and not something that's capable of creating a godly culture. And that's something I think we need to take a look at again, and I think it's part of the reason we're having this broadcast is to say, hey look, this legacy is the legacy of Christians and Jews. Do we understand that? And we need to raise that question, because we're missing something here as the Church.
Dwight Vogt:I want to suggest Absolutely Darrell.
Scott Allen:Yeah, no, I want to go there and talk about that irony that. Go ahead, dwight, though. Yeah, yeah.
Dwight Vogt:I want to suggest one other line that doesn't hopefully detract too far from the intellectual line, but I heard something the other day that I think is also really true, and it comes back to natural truth and an awareness of natural truth. This woman was speaking on a podcast and she's a Gen Z, like Luke, a younger person, but she was just amazed at how many of her liberal thinking friends mostly women who have moved farther left in their thinking in the last five years are looking at their lives and going. The hookup culture doesn't work. Birth control pills are messing me up physically and hormonally. I'm not who I am, I'm lost, and there's just this awareness that the culture is not only broken out there but it's not serving me, them themselves, and there's this breaking that's taking place Now. They're not having an intellectual response of going oh look, christianity in history actually reveals truth, but they're dealing with the culture now and going. This isn't working for me. This is broken, and I think both are cultural realities.
Dwight Vogt:I mean, I think the church needs to see that as a cultural issue, not just. Oh, they lack some biblical understanding, morality.
Scott Allen:Absolutely.
Luke Allen:Yeah, speaking of Gen Z, I thought this was interesting. They did I can't remember off the top of my head who did this poll, but it was one of the reputable polling groups and they did a research among Gen Z for what they would like to see more of out of media entertainment and I thought the results were fascinating. Gen Z's overall response was we want to see more real relationships shown in movies. We want to stop showing us all the R rated content, all the sexual R rated content. We don't care about that. You throw that in every movie and show. We don't want to see that anymore. We want to see real life and we want to see you know good, you know character development and so forth.
Luke Allen:And I thought that was so interesting, coming out of the generation that everyone thinks is just saturated with all this garbage on the Internet, and which we are, and I think that's why we're having this pushback. It's you know, this world's gotten too crazy. Let's let it. We want to see a little bit more real life. You know Gen Z continuously says this. You know I want to see authenticity.
Darrow Miller:The world's too fake, this online world's too fake, so that's just a little example to your point, dwight, to pick up on what you said. As an addition to the intellectual pursuit, another word that could be brought in here is the word love. People are looking. They're wired. We are all wired to love and to be loved, and in the modern culture, love has been reduced to sex and sex to recreation and entertainment, and it's hollow. There's little there. And so what are people looking for? They're looking. They're looking for that deeper thing of love. And where are they finding it? Where can they find it?
Darrow Miller:I remember I was this was years ago when Marilyn and I were living in Switzerland we had a young lady staying with us as a guest in our home and she had left home when she was 14 years old, I think.
Darrow Miller:She was kicked out of the house and since she was 14, she was in her mid-20s now. She had been on drugs for more than half of her life and she'd come to La Bre and I remember sitting under a tree, talking with her out in the beautiful Swiss forest and I thought what is she? She's testing me to see if there's love here. Thanks, I love her as a human being, even though she has lived this life for 10 years of a drug addict. Is love real? And that's what she was looking for, and I realize that in the middle of our discussion, that that's what she really. She wasn't thinking about truth, or maybe she was connecting love and truth, I don't know, but what we were talking about here is this life that was empty, looking for something, and what she was looking for was the real meaning of love.
Scott Allen:I think this is such a great conversation. All of these things that we're talking about truth, love, forgiveness, compassion all of these are fruits of a biblical worldview and they've come to shape a culture because they've been lived out faithfully. But we've reached the point now where enough of our people, and especially powerful elites, have abandoned these ideas, that people are beginning to see what's coming next, whether it's this woke Marxist worldview or there's, of course, there's the threat from radical Islam that's out there, also from an aggressive expansionist China. So they're seeing the threats and I love what you said, dwight.
Scott Allen:Some are seeing it kind of from an intellectual or an ideological standpoint, like, wow, I really value all of these beautiful things we're talking about. I see the threat, I see that they could go away. I don't want to live in that kind of world or that kind of culture. Other people are coming to it not intellectually but experientially. In other words, they're just trying to live their lives in the kind of the new culture that's emerging, when those aren't values love, truth, compassion and they're hitting the wall right.
Darrow Miller:They're just they're like this is breaking me.
Scott Allen:There's an emptiness I can't live this way and they can't so you're right about that I think that's part of the reason Jordan Peterson has such a huge audience amongst young men. They're not coming intellectually. I think they're just hitting the wall in their lives. Like you know, we're just broken here.
Luke Allen:This new cultural reality doesn't work, you know which is so interesting because you could easily look at the US from any time in history and say, wow, they have it all. They're prosperous, they're rich. You know, just young men, specifically, we have, you know, every opportunity you could want. We have all the stuff, all the toys, all the sexual freedom thanks to the sixties, you know, and yet we're just. No, this isn't it. This doesn't. This is not satisfying me. This is not work. You know, this is not real and you're left dry and asking these big questions.
Darrow Miller:We've gone from, we've come from a culture where the words that we're trying to say, that we've been putting out here, have shaped the culture and the culture has birthed the nation.
Scott Allen:But the things you've just, or many nations, many nations. But what you've just described Luke.
Darrow Miller:Well, we have it all. Well, we have all these physical things and external things and sex whenever you want it, but that has not been born out of the Judeo-Christian culture. It's a repudiation of the culture, and so people that are living more in my generation and your generation the culture's not working and we are coming to see that. And why? Because we have rejected the very foundation that created the Judeo-Christian culture.
Scott Allen:And all of these values, and all of these values which there is so much.
Darrow Miller:We mentioned Rodney Starks a few minutes ago and he said at the end of his book he said two things that how did this greatest sociological revolution of all times, what was the foundation of it? And he said it was two things. Christians had a better theology than the Romans.
Scott Allen:And specifically Derrick. He was talking about their belief in the value of human life.
Darrow Miller:That was one thing. But it wasn't just that. They had biblical language, as it were, rooted in their own lives. And he said, the other thing was that the word became flesh in the lives of the Christians. It wasn't just that the word became flesh in Jesus Christ, the word was fleshed out through the Christians, and that is what brought about the most profound sociological change of history.
Dwight Vogt:Well, what does that actually mean? The word became fleshed out, it became the culture.
Scott Allen:It became the individual culture People lived it out, and then family culture and then nation culture.
Darrow Miller:And then that culture created institutions that were a reflection on that culture and created schools and universities, and hospitals and hospices, institutionalizing this culture that was born out of worship of the living God and his character Out of incarnation.
Scott Allen:Yes, I want to say something here, guys, because I think there's a huge opportunity right now because people on either the intellectual level or the experiential level are open and even coming to faith in Jesus Christ through what's happening in the culture right now. So that creates a huge opportunity for the church, I think. But it's the church. Here's my concern. The church isn't ready to capitalize, if you will, on that opportunity because it's gotten itself out of the practice of thinking about Christianity in those terms, cultural terms. We, as you said earlier, darrow, over the last hundred years, evangelicalism has been focused much more personally than culturally. Right, this is a personal faith, yes, amen. This is a personal faith, but it should work its way out into a culture in your family and in your community and in your whole country. That's the mission of the DNA. The mission of the DNA is our faith is to be lived out in ways that create a particular kind of culture, a kingdom of God kind of culture. So I'm excited, as the president of the DNA, for what this opportunity means.
Scott Allen:But we've got to help the church get caught up because again, I just feel like it's not. You know, I remember after writing my book on social justice there was still a lot of Christians that said Scott, you're talking about culture issues. That's a distraction we shouldn't deal with culture. Culture's fallen. It's the work of the devil. Just, we've got to focus on the priority of getting people saved and getting them into our church buildings. That's it, job done. No, guys, we have to remember our faith is to work its way out into a culture, and it's this culture that everyone's hungry for right now. Go ahead, darryl.
Darrow Miller:Well, this is where we need to have this shift in our own minds as the church, because of people who are unchurched and even coming from atheistic perspectives come to see the power of the biblical worldview and the culture that that created, and now they're hungry for Christ. Wonderful, but then where do they go? If they go to a church that is based on a sacred secular divide, where everything is separated, they're not going to find the depth and the wonder that they've they're looking for.
Scott Allen:And right if they go to a church that doesn't address issues of culture in terms of its faith right that disconnects those things yeah.
Dwight Vogt:You know, yesterday I knew we were going to have this conversation today, and so yesterday I was in church listening to our pastor preach from Titus to. Basically, in Titus to, paul is saying here is how you are supposed to live Husbands, you live this way. Wives, you live this way. Children, you live this way. Slave owners you live this way. And he just goes on and on about how you're supposed to live and what that's supposed to mean in your life, and I'm going. He is talking about making culture. That's right.
Dwight Vogt:But at no point did our pastor go by the way. We're making culture here and this is called Kingdom culture. He never made that connection, but but but that's what it was all about.
Scott Allen:That's where you need to know the funny thing is that if we talk about creating a Christian, you know our Christianity lived out in a way that shapes an entire culture. We're going to be labeled, you know, by the enemies of our dominionists, Christian nationalists and dominionists.
Luke Allen:Yeah, and even a lot of.
Scott Allen:Christians will get on our case for that, like, oh, we shouldn't be doing that. That's kind of dominionism, christian nationalism.
Luke Allen:But here's the irony of that.
Scott Allen:It's like if it's not Christian beliefs that are shaping the culture, it's going to be these Wokenia, marxist beliefs. Somebody's beliefs are going to shape the culture. Somebody is a nationalist, right. I mean, in that sense somebody is shaping the culture of the nation, it's just.
Darrow Miller:You know so it's not you know, it's just where you have to have nothing to be ashamed of, to say no.
Scott Allen:We want to see the nation shaped by these, these true beliefs that lead to these good things that everyone's hungry for because they're under threat right now.
Darrow Miller:And where you have to look at that point of history where the Reformation came. They were protesting what was going on in the culture of their day and they wanted to reform the culture and out of that came whole nations, nations that had been reformed because of biblical faith. Wesley said the same thing. You come to the cross of Christ and it has personal significance and it has cultural significance. You can't just come for the personal significance without impacting the cultural significance.
Scott Allen:Let me tie what you said there really quick. I want to get to you, dwight, but I just want to tie what Daryl said to back to Ayan or Hirsial Ali, because that became an issue after she wrote her article and kind of confessed that she was now claiming to be a Christian. In other words, she said you know, I am a Christian because Christianity as a system of belief supports these values that I cherish. But she never got to the point of saying I love the person of Jesus Christ and I have surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. There wasn't a personal aspect to it and people some Christians read that and thought, oh, she's not really a Christian. They kind of got down on her and they had a point right. In other words, christian. This is where the evangelical church gets it right. Like you know, ultimately this isn't just some academic set of propositions and beliefs about things. This is a living, vital, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the living Jesus Christ who rose from the dead and that's the wellspring, right, that vital living relationship is the wellspring from.
Scott Allen:Which those civilizations grow. If it's cut off from that, it's not going to really sustain, and I think that's correct.
Darrow Miller:Well, the church is right when, if it asks where's the relationship with Christ? Yes, that's the next real thing, the next logical thing. But the problem is the church starts and stops with that, stops with that. That's the problem. And if somebody's comes to Christ, what are the implications of that? Back in the other direction, towards culture and civilization.
Scott Allen:So I'd like to say to people that challenged Ayan Hursi Ali you're right, but we want Ayan Hursi Ali to have it. But listen, she's also right. Listen to her. She's saying your faith has to live its way out in a way that shapes a culture. Do you get?
Darrow Miller:that Do you, get that Do you?
Scott Allen:get that? Because if we don't, if we don't champion that meaning those of us who name the name of Jesus Christ, who believe in Him, who love Him if we don't champion a culture that is, shaped by that belief who's going to do it Right, like we have to sit and wait for the Jordan Peterson's eye and Hursi Ali's to do it. Fine, praise God for that. There's just an irony that those of us who you know sorry, I'm kind of rambling here, dwight- I want to get back to you because I cut you off.
Dwight Vogt:I apologize, oh you guys are running way past my slow thinking brain here, so no, I'm just caught up thinking, yeah, what happened and why do we have this issue with culture in the church? Christian church.
Dwight Vogt:And somehow it goes back to the Reformation Daryl, where they were actually rejecting a Christian culture that was corrupted in the Catholic church, that had taken Christianity culture in the bad direction, had taken away from Biblical truth, so that that I can. Okay, that's why you reject cultural Christianity, because it's a wrong form of it. It's a broken, a corrupted form. So, but why do we reject engagement in culture or this idea of pursuing culture? It's this idea that I don't think that we grasp the significance of God being engaged both with heaven and earth. That that's right come.
Darrow Miller:I will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Dwight Vogt:God really loves this earth and he, he died for this earth. He died for culture. He died for culture.
Darrow Miller:He didn't just die for my soul and I think, when he created us, he created us to create culture, to be culture. Genesis once.
Dwight Vogt:Exactly so that's. That's so interwoven into what it means to be a follower of Christ, a Christian, and we don't. We don't make that connection.
Scott Allen:In our legacy. We we have understood this right. You have to go back to the time of Wesley and others, or the Puritans that landed on the shores of America.
Luke Allen:They understood this.
Scott Allen:They founded universities, they did all sorts of things to shape a Christian culture and I know people you know when I say that, I'm sure a lot of people they just cringe oh no, you can't do that Again. If we're not shaping a Christian culture in our family's communities and nations, you are essentially walking off the field of culture creation and leaving it to somebody else to shape. And, believe me, you do not want to live in that kind of culture. That's what we're seeing now and the IA and her see. I'll leave her seeing it more clearly than we are?
Darrow Miller:I think so, and you've missed her calling. There's something that I think is very helpful here, but it may be shocking to some of the people listening to this. There is a relationship between culture and worship. Culture is derived from cult worship. What is the nature and character of the God that is worshiped, that should lead, that should be incarnated? His nature and character should be incarnated into culture because there's a relationship between worship and the creation of culture. If the church understood that, she wouldn't be so put offish by this kind of discussion.
Scott Allen:Oh, I get it now. See, there's a quote, john Paul. I'm going to paraphrase it. Pope John Paul said that I loved.
Scott Allen:He's talked about how our Christianity, our faith, doesn't work its way out as a culture, then it's not truly faithfully believed. In other words, a belief, a worship that's lived out faithfully will result in a culture, a particular culture, and you might think well, what are you talking about? Just boil it down to your own family. If you really believe these things, if you have a fundamental, living, vital relationship with Jesus Christ, that's going to work its way out in terms of the way you live as a family. Your kids are going to know it. It's going to shape things. That's what he's talking about.
Scott Allen:If it's just this personal, individual belief and the way that we live and do things is, it never takes on the form of our Christian faith but instead is informed by the non-Christian culture around us, let's say the way that it does things and materialism, entertainment, whatever it is then Pope John Paul and I would agree with him is like you don't really believe it, You're not really living it out. You don't really believe it. You're worshiping something else. Darrow, to get back to your words, you're fooling yourself.
Luke Allen:There's a couple truisms that we're saying here that I don't feel like I hear very often. Like you were just saying, mr Miller, darrow, I always call you. Thank you, luke, by the way. The reason I always call you Mr Miller, as you know, but for the audience's sake, is because I've known you since I was one minute old. And for the first 20 years of my life you were Mr Miller. And for the last, you know 70 years.
Scott Allen:All of a sudden I have to call you Darrow.
Luke Allen:But my brain is stuck on Mr Miller from you know the time when my worldview was shaped. Anyways, back to my point. There's a couple truisms that we're saying that you guys are sharing here. We all worship someone. I don't know if everyone understands that. We all have a worldview. We all have a God. You know these are things that every single human shares. We all create culture.
Luke Allen:The way you live creates culture, because culture is just the way you do things around here. That's the easy definition. So the way you live is creating a culture. And then I mean, in the words of Bob Dylan, we all serve someone, right? That's kind of to your point. We all worship someone, we all have that idol that we are worshiping or serving, and if we understand that, then it gives such a comprehensive view on how to live life as a Christian, because we all are religious, because we all create culture, then why don't we make you know? Then why don't we promote Christianity? Then why don't we create a culture of Christianity? Because if we don't, someone else is like you just said twice, dad, which I totally agree with.
Scott Allen:Well, it's exciting. It's both. On one hand, we're living in really challenging and dark times, and I do, as we were talking about this before the podcast guys I think 2020 in some ways was kind of an inflection point. I feel like, you know, this non-Christian culture in the West kind of became ascendant and all of a sudden, we started seeing the loss of truth and just lies and narratives and spin and you started seeing a devaluing of human life and you started seeing censorship and started seeing propaganda and you name it. I mean, I just feel like there was kind of an inflection point. So that's the dark side.
Scott Allen:The exciting side, the hopeful side, is God's. You know he's on the throne, he's at work and you have very sensitive people, either intellectually or experientially, that are going. The culture is really broken. It's causing them to see the things that they valued in the culture that are under threat and being lost, and it's leading them to the Bible, to Christ himself, and so that's a huge and so we're seeing it. You can purse after purse, a huge opportunity. It's very exciting. How will we respond? What will we do so?
Luke Allen:in that article from Ayanna. She she pointed out something that I think it just makes so much sense of the US specifically, and she said you know, if you do not follow a coherent, you know well formed worldview like Christianity, that gives you a structure for how to live life, if you don't stand for something like that, you can fall for anything. You know, if you don't stand for something, what will you fall for? And you see that so much today in our world where we've rejected God or rejected Christianity and because of that the next thing. You know, it's like that meme I'm sure you guys have seen that like I stand for the next thing or I stand for the thing right now is that's our world today.
Luke Allen:The. You know, when BLM comes along, here I am, I'm marching for that. You know COVID mandates yep, I'm all here for that. And people, the mob follows that in this kind of religious fervor. Right now, with Palestine, you know, out in the streets, here we are marching for that and it's just makes so much sense of the reason that we see people, so you know, vigorously following the next thing. And then you know, once it's done, you drop it. Here you go out marching for the next thing. But because of that, I think there's an opportunity there, because those things don't last, those things don't work, they're not comprehensive worldviews and bouncing from one to the next, it just that does not seem satisfying to me, and I think if we offer that alternative that's rooted and grounded in reality and truth, that will, you know, prove itself to make more sense.
Dwight Vogt:I think of. I think I'm building on what you just said. I think of something you said so many times, darrell, and you use different words. You say the universe is moral, but but I want to phrase that the universe is biblical. We live in a biblical universe. So if you really want to know what's the ultimate comprehensive, full blown reality, based, true worldview, it's the biblical universe that you, we, live in. And understand what that is.
Darrow Miller:That's right.
Scott Allen:Well, listen, that's a good place to segment into a wrap up, dwight, because if you're interested in learning more about that comprehensive biblical worldview that one that has created a powerful and beautiful culture because it's been lived out faithfully and it's given rise to human dignity and freedom freedom of thought and truth and compassion, forgiveness If you want to understand that worldview and you want to begin to put this into practice in a way that creates culture and starting again starts right in your own family, your own sports team, if you're a coach or wherever you're creating culture, we want to encourage you. That's, that's why we exist. That's why the DNA is here. It's to help you understand that and to begin to live that out. And I just want to encourage people that aren't familiar with our core training.
Scott Allen:You want to hear Darrell Miller talk about this in a life changing way. It changed my life and other people, other trainers. You can go to our website, disciple nationsorg and sign up for our free online training program, our Kingdomizer's basic course. Guys, what a pleasure to talk with you today. These are really. It's just. You've helped me clarify my own thinking on this and it's been great, and we'll be praying for people like Ion, hersey, ali and others, as they are on their journey, moving towards the light, moving towards the truth.
Scott Allen:So, yeah, and I'm sure many will come to faith through them as well. So have a great, great rest of your day, guys. Take care, and thank you all for listening to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alarm.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, thanks for listening to episode 100 of Ideas have Consequences. That's a wrap on season one of this podcast, but, don't worry, season two will be launched next Tuesday on the dot For any of you who have joined us throughout season one of the podcast. We just want to reiterate how humbled and honored we are to have you joining us as we continue to learn and grow in our understanding of our Heavenly Father and his framework that he has given us to live in. Ideas do have consequences, and let us be a people who promote the good, true and beautiful ideas. Our world needs more of those, and it needs people who can not only recognize the harmful consequences around them, but can also recognize the destructive ideas that birth those consequences, because if we can't understand the rotten ideas that are manifesting around us, then we can't replace those with better ones. And again, those are those good, true and beautiful ideas that lead to good consequences on our communities, our nations and, hopefully, for generations to come.
Luke Allen: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, and again, if you'd like to sign up for our core training here at the DNA, just head over to quorumdayocom where you can sign up for the Kingdomizer training program today. And, by the way, that course and all of our other courses are completely free, no strings attached, thanks to our generous donors. Thanks again for listening. We're hoping to be able to tune in next week as we launch season two of Ideas have Consequences.