Ideas Have Consequences

Eliminating the Sacred Secular Divide: with Christian Overman

• Disciple Nations Alliance • Season 1 • Episode 35

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Tragically, much of the evangelical church is beset by a false and destructive way of thinking called “the sacred-secular divide,” which sees reality as divided between two realms: The sacred and secular. The “sacred” deals with topics like church, salvation, heaven, and personal holiness. The “secular” covers basically everything else. According to this way of thinking, Jesus is Lord over the sacred realm, but not the secular realm, which is fallen, satanic, and destined for destruction. Likewise, the Bible applies to sacred topics but not to secular topics. In this episode, Christian Overman, author of Eliminating the Sacred/Secular Divide, joins us to discuss the tragic consequences of this false belief system for the church and the broader society. Most importantly, we discuss how to break down this false divide and honor Jesus as Lord over all! 



Christian Overman:

I soaked in this idea that there were certain things, tasks, work that was spiritual and therefore important to God, such as being a pastor or a missionary. And then there are other things that just weren't all that important, like what you did Monday through Friday to make ends meet.

Luke:

Hi, friends, welcome back to another episode, or if this is your first time joining us, welcome to Ideas Have Consequences. On this podcast, we talk about how as Christians our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. But our mission also includes transforming the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of her mission and today, Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.

Scott:

Welcome again to Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast at the Disciple Nations Alliance. I'm Scott Allen, president of the Disciple Nations Alliance. And I'm here today with Darrow Miller, Dwight Vogt, and we have a really special guest today, Christian Overman. Christian, great to have you back again. We're so honored that you would join us

Christian Overman:

And it's my honor to be here. Thank you, Scott. I really appreciate it. here today.

Scott:

Yeah, well, Christian is more than a friend, we really are brothers in a common calling and common ministry. And today we're going to talk with Christian about a new work that he has published and released in June. It's basically an online book. Is that how you describe it, Christian?

Christian Overman:

Yep.

Scott:

Yeah. And I will give you a chance to talk, not just about the book itself, which we're going to get into, but how people can access, it's kind of a creative access type of thing. But the the book title is,"Eliminating the Sacred/Secular Divide, Biblical Worldview Approach for Pastors, CEOs, Employees, Teachers, Parents, and Students," I think you've pretty much covered everybody there, Christian, which is pretty much

Christian Overman:

It's short of saying this book is for everybody,

Scott:

Everybody, if you're Christian, this book is for you.

Christian Overman:

Exactly. Yeah.

Scott:

Christian, for those who don't know, I'm just going to give a quick little bio and feel free again, as we go along to add a little bit more on this, but Christian is—he's got a background in education. He's got his master's degree in education from Seattle Pacific, and then went on and got a doctorate in ministry from Bakke Graduate University. He's from the Pacific Northwest. Most of his ministry has been focused on the Pacific Northwest as well as around the world. And Christian, you were a principal at a Christian school right in in the Seattle area for 14 years?

Christian Overman:

Yes. 14 great years. Appreciate that experience I had.

Scott:

Yeah. So really a deep background in education, but also in biblical worldview. He was a pioneer in helping the church to recover biblical worldview thinking, founder of a ministry that the DNA has been partnered with for many years called Worldview Matters, which has recently kind of joined forces with another wonderful Christian worldview ministry called Renewanation. And I don't know Christian, you wanna talk anything about that change, that transition for you?

Christian Overman:

Well, before I turned 70, I said to my board, I said, you know, I'd really like to give this material over to a younger organization that has a focus on education, Christian education, and we searched around and long story short, we had a relationship with Jeff Keaton at Renewanation, so I contacted them. And through a lot of discussions and whatnot, we literally gave Worldview Matters, the name "Worldview Matters", the trademark, and about 90% of our materials to Renewanation and so they're trying to figure out exactly what to do with that material. But we are making progress in that area and excited about the future. My focus has been on training Christian school teachers on how to teach Christian-ly or how to put academics into the context of the bigger picture, the bigger picture of a biblical worldview. Hey, by the way, I wanted to tell you that just this morning, about a half an hour before this interview, I was talking to Kathy, my wife. And I said, you know, Kathy, the word worldview? I'm not sure... isn't there a different word that could be used to kind of communicate that idea? And long story short, I thought, Well, I think I'm gonna call it a Uniview. Uniview. Because the word "world" is just too small. It's more than a world. It's a view of the universe. So I'm into biblical Uniview now. Come down to earth here, so to speak. But it's a way of thinking, a way of viewing a way of putting everything into that context of the bigger picture of reality, which, by the way, is bigger than the universe itself actually.

Scott:

Encompasses everything Heaven and Earth now, yeah, all of it. Christian, I just wanted to give you... your name came up recently, in our podcast, we had John Beckett on as a guest and John Beckett, he's a real leader in the evangelical church in the United States. He's on the board of directors with crew, and he's just, he's an incredible guy as far as just leadership in the church, in Christian parachurch ministries and admissions. He's also, as you well know, he's very famous for a book that he wrote many years ago called"Loving Monday." And we talked to him about his journey, in terms of his own discovery of how he had a sacred/secular divide kind of framework in his mind. And he pointed to you, he said, "I really became aware of that through the teachings of Christian Overman." And, you know, we were so excited to hear that and grateful to hear that. Told him about our relationship. You know this, but I wanted our audience to know this, because you're a ministry, Christian, has had such incredible impact. This is just one example of it, you've impacted John Beckett. He wrote the book, "Loving Mondays" many years before there was this kind of movement in evangelical circles to integrate biblical truth and vocation. There is a movement now, he helped to kickstart that movement by God's grace, and you were at the headwaters of all of that again, by God's grace. And so just the impact that you've had, Christian, in bringing awareness to the Church of the sacred/secular divide, kind of raising that alarm bell and saying, "This is wrong, we've got to repent, we've got to return to a biblical worldview," has had profound impact. And you know, I know a lot of our audience and others, you know, you're not a household name like a Tim Keller, but boy, the impact that you've had, and I'm so grateful for your faithful, hard steady work over many years. And now here you are in your 70s with yet another book on the same subject. And so thank you, thank you for your ministry, Christian.

Christian Overman:

Yeah, well, I'm humbled by what you're saying. I have to say that there are many great, influential people who got a hold of my thinking years ago. And Darrow Miller, by the way, it was one of the early people, reading his books on biblical worldview are very, very helpful as well. It's been decades ago. By the way, dare I remember, after reading one of your books, I called you up on the phone. I don't know how I got your number. I mean, this was the day before internet. And you were so kind to actually engage with this stranger over the phone and we had a wonderful talk about biblical worldview. And I've always appreciated that about you, Darrow, that you poured into me, and then you invited me down to your home a couple of decades later, I think I spent a week at your house. But even prior to that, I was blessed in my high school years to go to a high school where the principal, the founder of it, was a friend of Francis Schaeffer. I don't know if I've ever shared this before but there was a dentist in our area who sent his kids to the same school and the dentist, his name was Homer Perkins, he coached wrestling. He was a guy that I So what I'm trying to say is whatever I've done really is learned how to wrestle through. Long story short, he fixed just, you know, nothing new. I mean, it's just, I don't know, Francis Shaffers teeth. And the reason he did is because he came from St. Louis, and he got to know Schaefer back there and maybe putting it in a little different wording. Honestly, when he moved out to Seattle, Schaefer came out to get his teeth done by this guy. And he came to Bellevue Christian Francis Schaeffer was not easy for me to read. I think one of School and actually would spend a week there engaging with the first books I read from Schaefer was—it was a little parents and students. And Francis Schaeffer, his work, this was in the mid 60s, you know, his books were really small book, what was the title of it, one of the shortest books pushed by the principal of the school and others. So I was exposed to Schaefer in those years. And Darrow, I know he ever wrote? Escape from Reason. Okay, that was the first Schaefer had a profound influence on you as well. Schaefer book, I think—I could not understand that book. I mean, it's like it was like Greek to me, this just shows you how far my mind was where his mind was. But I persisted and began to translate it into a little more simple—I'm a simple person to tell you the truth, very simple minded person and but when I have a passion to dive into something and really understand it, somehow, by God's grace, I am able to put it into terms that common people like myself might be able to grab hold of, and that has been a passion of mine for many years. So I I'm very indebted to a lot of others who've gone before me.

Luke:

Hi friends. For those of you who'd like to learn more about our honored guest, Dr. Christian Overman's his newest book, "Eliminating the Sacred/Secular Divide, Biblical Worldview Approach for Pastors, CEOs, Employees, Teachers, Parents, and Students," We've included links and information about that on this episode's landing page on our website. For those of you who have not yet visited our episode landing pages, these are where we individually include everything you need to know about each episode of this show. On the page, you'll find the complete transcript of the episode broken up into timestamp chapters, as well as highlighted quotes, social media posts that you can share with your friends, and all the resources we mentioned in each episode of the show. It's really just the go to page for any Ideas Have Consequences fans to check them out now, tap the link down in the show notes below titled, "episode landing page".

Christian Overman:

But John Beckett, he read a book when my first book was called assumptions that affect our lives, came out in 1989. If my math is right, I think that's over 30 years ago. I wrote that book when I was a school principal. And it took me three years, actually it took longer than that. And amazingly enough Tyndale House published it. I never had a book published before. And I mean, it's just kind of remarkable. So they took it on. And that book opened some doors. And it was through that book, somebody recommended it to John Beckett. He read the book, and by God's grace, it's like scales came off and he got it. He got it big time. He contacted me. Somehow we got together, I went back and met him and did some interviews of him. And he has been passionately on this page for many, many years helping people to eliminate the sacred/secular divide. And he's a great model of that in the way he runs his company—or ran his company, I guess he's still on the board, but he's given it over, I think to one of his sons, I'm not sure but—yeah, it's a great story of practical application of biblical worldview truth in the context of daily life, daily living in his home and his family in his business. It is really profound. Thanks the Lord.

Scott:

Christian. Yeah, Christian, just you know, for our listeners today, we talk a lot about this because we share your—I mean, this is the problem, I think that the DNA is really at its core addressing. Because you've been working on this for more than 30 years. And for our listeners who aren't familiar, when we're talking about sacred/secular divide, could you—just a nutshell, could you describe what we mean by that? What is this problem called the sacred/secular divide?

Christian Overman:

Yeah, okay. Well, we—and I say we—I grew up in a wonderful Christian home. Went to a great Bible believing church, but I imbibed or I soaked in this idea, somehow, that there were certain things, tasks, work that was spiritual, and therefore important to God, such as being a pastor or a missionary. And then there's other things that just weren't all that important, like what you did Monday through Friday to make ends meet to pay your bills. And in my context, I would often hear people say,"I'd really love to quit my secular job and go into the ministry." And, of course, what they meant was I want to quit just doing this stuff that doesn't really matter, and do the stuff that really does So we have this bifurcated view of reality, where we have on the matter. top here, Schaeffer would call it the upper and the lower realms, the higher and the lower realms. The sacred is the higher part of life, when you read your Bible, praying and witnessing, and going to church, and then the "secular", quote, unquote, is this lower part of life that we just have to kind of endure because we're here in this world that really isn't important to God. And just to illustrate how infected I was by SSD, I remember I was about 12 years old. And I vividly recall this, like it just happened yesterday. I looked at my mother, I remember where I was standing in the house, and I said, "Mom, there's only two jobs in life worth doing. One would be to be a pastor, and the other would be to be a missionary." My mom thought that was fantastic. I mean, what Mother wouldn't? But I remember specifically, what was going through my head. I felt that the only thing that mattered to God was eternity and after death. I mean, that's the only thing that was really important to him, was eternity. And anything that was temporal was not worth a hill of beans. I mean, and that was my split there, the temporal versus the eternal. It was years later when I realized, and it's very clear in Scripture, that Jesus is the Lord of the temporal and the eternal, that he made all things the visible and the invisible. And, furthermore, that he made Planet Earth with a purpose. And it was material. It was matter. I mean, you could touch it, you know, trees and other things. And he puts Adam, who was a real material person into this real garden and says, "Hey, tend and keep it." And even before He created Adam, and when they had the triune meeting, you know, and they sit down, they're talking, they said, Hey, let's create man in our likeness and image and let them rule over all this stuff that we've created, this material world. That is our job description. And I do not remember a single sermon on that, growing up. But that is what God had in mind when he created human beings. He says let them rule over the fish, the birds. So he makes Adam and he becomes a gardener and a zooologists. So we have a job description. And that job description for lack of a better term has to do with earth tending. Now, to some people listening that might sound like heresy, but I've come to believe that God has Planet Earth in mind for the duration. In fact, if you look at the Scripture carefully, he's gonna make a new heaven and a new earth. A new earth. I don't fully, you know, we don't have a real detailed picture of that, but it has trees, and it has water in it. It has stuff that we engage in. And wow, when I realized that I thought, wow, that is really fantastic here, and that my job now and for eternity has to do with governing over God's stuff. Whether it's temporal or eternal, doesn't matter. It's God's stuff, he owns it all. He's holding it together, he is the Lord of all. And yes, this current world is broken, that's for sure. It's suffering, it's groaning, moaning until the day of redemption. But wow, his mind is, is to redeem it, to restore it. And so I took on a whole It was largely through Dr. Al Green, this principal of the different look. school I mentioned that helped me to see this, and he just did brain surgery on me. I remember a message Al gave on the sacred/secular divide. And when he was basically telling us that that the secular world is a misnomer. And when you think about it, if Jesus is Lord of all, and he owns it all, he owns it all. And he's holding it together by the Word of His power. You know, where exactly is the center of the world? And after this lecture, I came up to Al and I said, Dr. Green, or Al—this is when I was a graduate student at the university. SBU. He was an adjunct professor there—and I said, Oh, are you saying the secular world doesn't exist? I'll never forget it. He said to me, Well, it really doesn't. I remember the room I was in, when he said that—to me it's like, where were you when JFK was assassinated? Well, you're not old enough to remember that. But I remember where I was when I heard JFK was a assassinated. I remember where I was standing. When Al Green told me the the secular world really doesn't exist. He could have blown me over with a feather. But I began to realize, wow, if Jesus is Lord of all, he's the sustainer. He's the sovereign. He's literally holding the molecules of of my fingers together. Where's the secular world? So, to answer your question, the sacred/secular split has this bifurcated view of reality. And I came to the realize that this whole thing, upper and lower needs to be twisted to the side here. If you can imagine instead of an upper and lower have, you know, a right and a left where any thing of human endeavor or anything in creation can either be pulled one way or the other. We can either do our work, whether we're selling cars, or being a mechanic, or we can do that, either in a way that brings honor to God, to the will of God to the purposes of God, and glorifies Him in the way we sell cars, or work on cars. Or we can do it in a way that ignores him and brings lack of credit to him and an evil way. The real split in Scripture is good and evil. It's not higher, you know, it's not sacred/secular, it is good and evil. So when I began to get all that straight, in my own head, it changed everything and caused the trajectory of my life to be what it is.

Scott:

Christian, that's really helpful. And I love the way you say, hey, there is an important divide. The divide that the Christian should have is the divide between good and evil, between the kingdom of God and Satan's counterfeit kingdom. Right? So that's a real divide, but we've created a false divide between sacred and secular right? So anyways, I really appreciate the way you've explained that. For a lot of people when they listen to this, though, it can be it seems kind of theological and philosophical. But as you well know, and this drives our passion, this has got huge practical impact for the church. Really negative consequences. What do you see as the major negative consequences for the church in the society of this, oh, sacred/secular divide, Christian? Why is this such a huge problem?

Christian Overman:

Well, I think one of the main things, it's a huge problem is because good, mature, godly people have divorced themselves, so to speak, from the mainstream of culture. And this goes way back. But that's what I wanted to do as a young person. I mean, I never dreamed, you know, that I could actually go into the field of banking, or politics, or any other field other than church related stuff and serve the Lord. So we have mature people who want to serve God. And that's a wonderful thing. But they think, Well, the way I'm going to do that best is by divorcing myself from this secular realm, quitting my secular job. And so we've created this huge vacuum here, where like John Beckett, he's a guy that began to see his work as a calling, making widgets, you know, he makes oven—not ovens.

Darrow:

Burners.

Scott:

For stoves, basically, yeah.

Christian Overman:

Furnaces and air conditioners, I think, Now, by the way, this is not new. The Puritans got this. In And it's all about holistic thinking. It's all about anyway, I've toured his factory, by the way, but anyway, yeah. And he sees that to the glory of God, he's actually serving fact, if you go—just a little deep dive here into history people and serving God by making good pieces of equipment that actually work and keep people warm in the winter and cool in here, you well know who Luther was, and he really got theology holistic application of the biblical Uniview, to our whole the summer. And he saw that as the work of God, and he embraced that and sees that as his calling. Well, boy, what would of work going, you know, basically. He said to the happen if a whole bunch of mature Christians saw work in the field of the arts, education, politics, mechanical effect, Hey, the milkmaid who's milking the cow by faith to the lives as a whole. And that's why I'm hoping that eliminating the stuff, trades and everything, as the work of God? glory of God is doing just as good at work as the monk in the monastery. That's a paraphrase you know, but that was radical, sacred/sacred divide material can be helpful to the body of you know what, you gotta be kidding me. And people carry that on. Like Comenius, for example, who I never heard of till I was through graduate school, but John Amos Comenius, he's the Christ, in any way possible to become free from that way of father of modern education. And he's called that, believe it or not, by non-Christian educators. In fact, he is honored, Comenius is honored by the United Nations, they give an award, I think it's every three years called the Comenius Award to thinking. It's like a virus. I still at times struggle with it. people who are innovative in the field of education. But Comenius was a strong, strong Christian, who saw education in the proper light. And he was driven to see education in light of the kingdom of God. Of course, the non-Christians won't be anxious to tell you that, but he was very Biblio-centric, he was It was so embedded into me, but it's taken years of rethinking actually a bishop in the Moravian Church. And he, as well as other educators in the 1600s, develop this thing called the circle of knowledge. And the Puritans grabbed ahold of this, where they saw that God was the initiator of all things, human beings discovered what God this stuff, reading material by Darrow Miller and others who had made through education. Then they took what they discovered and they made secondary creations, like a shoemaker doesn't create shoes out of nothing, but he takes leather and other things and makes it into a secondary creation. But that shoemaker is making that secondary creation to the glory of God so that God can be glorified through the shoes. have written about Vishal Mangalwadi, and of course, That was the fourth step. So number one, God initiates. Number two, humans discovered. Number three, humans take what they've discovered to recreate a secondary creations whether it's shoes or computers or glue or whatever it is. George Washington Carver was great at this, he took plants Francis Schaeffer, even today, his books are as fresh as ever. and he made them into secondary creations from all. 318 or so from the soybean or the sweet potato and but anyway, I'm off subject there a little bit but he glorified God through that. Carver glorified God through all these creations. Plastic, he made out in soybeans. But he was, whether he knew it or not, he was living out that period and circle of knowledge which But yeah, it takes time. It takes thinking takes repeated grew out of the post reformational view of work. John Melton, same sort of thing, the end of education is to take what God has made and in the whole of life, and glorify him application. And I think too, it takes a community of people, through it. Well, we lost that when we got into to the privatization of Christianity. And that privatization of Christianity, which really took off in the 1800s was one of the worst things that ever happened to us, in this nation and Europe as well. When Christianity was privatized, it was a personal whether it's a small group, others that say "Yeah, let's thing, but you didn't connect it to the public square. And that's all part of the sacred/secular divide as well. And we really got off track there. So we have to break down that sacred/sacred grab a hold of this. And let's take this seriously. And let's divide, if we're going to ever have a rule, I think in the culture as a whole. think differently about it." And it doesn't happen—you're not

Scott:

Just on that, Christian, Jordan Peterson recently said going to change a congregation by preaching one sermon on it. And it takes rethinking, and that's not easy. something that struck me, he said, "We don't have ideas, ideas have us." And he's referring to the power of ideas. And this sacred/secular divide is such a powerful idea. And it's really grabbed ahold of the consciousness of the evangelical church, for like you say, now it's been more than a century. So it has us. This idea has us and we're not even aware of it. So because of that, it takes a while to see it. It's like we're fish in a fishbowl. We don't even see it, you got to see it. And then you've got to think differently. It's not a simple thing. And I think the sacred/secular divide is a huge part of that And if I could just add my own two cents, and I'd love to bring in Darrow and Dwight on this too. You know, when I think about the consequences of this sacred/secular divide, you know, it's heartbreaking, and probably a lot of listeners are wondering, often this question—why is it that the because it essentially put Christians and the Bible on the church, you know, we have a lot of churches in the United States, and we used to have a lot of influence in this country, but increasingly we don't, we're on the margins. Evangelicals, Christians aren't in leadership, in the culture, in the society in almost any area, education, business, you name it. I mean, we're there, we're functioning, but we're not exactly leading with Christian ideas in any of these areas. They become very secular. Well, why is that? Why has the society become so secularized? sidelines. We're just out of the game now. Well, if we're not in all of these areas, business, education, every area, as Christians with the Scriptures, shaping the way we think about these things. If we're not doing that, it's not that somebody's not doing that. They just are functioning from a Darwinian secular postmodern woke, whatever it is, worldview, and they're going to shape it. Darrow you've often said this all the time. Somebody's always shaping society, right? And our job as Christians is as to be honoring Christ, to be salt and light, to be shaping a society for the glory of God and for the good of our neighbors. If we're not doing that, somebody's going to do it. So that to me is one of the greatest tragic consequences of the sacred/secular divide is it's just demonic, frankly. It's Satan's way of just getting Christians completely disengaged from the everyday work of the culture.

Christian Overman:

I just need to jump on what you're saying, because you're sparking something very, very important is that, people don't often realize that in this country in the 1800s, the populace of this country saw Christianity as the worldview of choice, shall we say, that culture was to be shaped by Christianity, I came across—

Scott:

Basic Christian assumptions about reality. Exactly. Yeah. Biblical assumptions. Yeah.

Christian Overman:

But in 1892. Now, this is from the Supreme Court, in the Church of the Holy Trinity versus the United States, 1892, quote, "Our laws, and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teaching of the redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. And in this sense, and to this extent, our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian." That's the US Supreme Court. And one more thing when I came across, I was reading de Tocqueville's book,"Democracy in America." He came to visit this country in 1831, he wanted to find out what made us—here's a French guy, okay, he's a French historian of note, he comes over—wants to find out what makes us tick. He said this, "I do not know whether all the Americans have sincere faith in their religion, for who can search the human heart, but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of Republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, it belongs to the whole nation, and to every rank of society." Get this, "The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, it's impossible to make them conceive of one without the other." end of quote. Now, you share those things with people today. And, it's shocking. And the way I like to put it is that we have confused the separation of church and state, with the separation of Christianity and state, those two ideas are radically different. The founders did not want a state church as England had, and thank God, they didn't, okay, no state church. But they did assume, I believe, and many of them were vocal about this, that they wanted Christianity to influence the entire culture. And Webster, who was one of the founding fathers, he was very clear on this, I won't bore you with the quote, basically, he said, it's the central that we have Christianity affecting the character of our citizens, and we have to do this through our schools. So yeah, it's different to—we need a separation of church and state in the sense that we don't want the church to be using the state to control people or vice versa. But the founders did want Christianity to definitely permeate and affect our culture. But in the late 1800s and early 1900s, we got way off track and here we are.

Scott:

Yeah, yeah, that's it today, History's interesting.

Darrow:

Christian, were born of a biblical world and life view. When we turned our back on God, jettisoned that worldview, something replaced it. And for the church, what replaced it was the sacred/secular divide. So those words that you just read would have been an anathema to atheistic thinkers and are an anathema to atheistic thinkers. But Christians are shocked by it. Because they don't think in those terms, you know, and that's the power of this sacred/secular divide. We don't even recognize what our heritage is.

Scott:

And as Christian said, not just our US heritage, it goes back to the Reformation. The Reformation leaders, starting with Luther and Comenius. I mean, they were experts at taking the Bible and mining it for principles that they then applied in every area because this was God's Holy Word of reality, you know, it wasn't just a book of spiritual principles about salvation and living holy lives, as we assume today. It was God's textbook for everything. And they were able to come out of the Bible with principles and apply them to agriculture and education in ways that were revolutionary and transformational. And literally, like you said, Christian, in the case of Comenius, founded whole new ways of doing things. We don't do that anymore because of the sacred/secular divide. And again, it's not that nobody's doing that. It's just that right now, in the West, it's people that have this woke, postmodern social justice worldview, and we are on the sidelines.

Darrow:

Just emphasize what you said there, Scott, for the listeners. Christianity, as we're talking about, it is revolutionary. It is revolutionary, turns the world upside down.

Scott:

Right side up, if you will.

Darrow:

Right side up. It gives you a whole new framework for seeing your life, but a whole new framework for understanding reality. And it is absolutely revolutionary. And that's a good word to use. But we don't think of it in that way any longer because of the sacred secular divide.

Scott:

It's something that's, like you say, Christian, the word of God is personal. It's about my relationship to Christ. It's about eternity. It's about heaven. And it's about personal holiness. Now, all of those things are super important. We're not in any way saying those things aren't essential to the Christian faith. But what it's doing is it's making that everything and eliminating a whole bunch of other things that are also super important to the Christian faith. That's the real danger of this way of thinking.

Darrow:

Well, I often have said that atheists have eliminated half of reality. They only see half the universe, the natural universe. And it's like Christians have eliminated the other half. What we see is the spiritual reality, and have virtually eliminated anything that's not spiritual. We are being like atheists at that point. We've eliminated half the universe.

Christian Overman:

And you know, this tendency or this problem, as you know goes way back to even Paul's day, where there were people who were devaluing the material world, which I believe is rooted in Plato and Platonism, which was really quite strong at the time of Paul and where Plato actually bifurcated reality into what he called form and matter. The form was the eternal ideals, you know, and the matter was the part of life that kept on breaking down and deteriorating.

Darrow:

The dirty stuff.

Christian Overman:

Yeah, the dirty stuff, you know, it wasn't a value because it wasn't eternal. But the ideals, you know, were—in fact, Plato, I read once he participated in meditative exercises, where he actually sought to divorce himself from the material world. And this is where Gnosticism came from, this idea that the material world actually wasn't even created by God, it was created by a demonic spirit and it was bad. The material world is bad, you know, so to be really spiritual, you had to divorce yourself from the material world. Later on, it became you know, become a monk, you know, go off and separate yourself, you know, go on the top of a pole and do a vow of silence for as many days as you could or abstain from food. And so we've been struggling with this crazy thing since the days of Plato, and we're still struggling with Platonic dualism is what some people call it. That's what it is.

Scott:

It's rooted in, you're right Christian, it's rooted in Greek thinking, ancient Greek thinking, not biblical thinking. But it's come back. And so the church now is shaped in—again, it doesn't see this—it's shaped by this ancient Greek way of thinking, and not a biblical way of thinking.

Darrow:

This is a discussion for another time, but Plato's ideas were very similar to ideas coming out of India with Hinduism.

Christian Overman:

And interesting. Wow.

Darrow:

And it'd be worth at some point doing some research and having a discussion about that.

Scott:

They both downplay the importance of the material world, the physical world, right?

Darrow:

They do.

Scott:

Yeah, exactly. Any theology that downplays the importance...

Darrow:

Is the non material reality.

Scott:

Yes. Yeah.

Darrow:

And this world, Hindus say, is "Maya." It's an illusion.

Scott:

Just doesn't matter.

Darrow:

Yeah, doesn't matter. And that's where we are with woke-ism today. All of this, what do you mean, male, female? That's an illusion.

Luke:

Yeah.

Scott:

You know, I go back to the reformers. And they were so good at bringing, they didn't have this sacred/secular way of thinking, this Greek way of thinking, they saw God as Lord of all of life and his word applies to all of life. And the principles, the truths of His word shaped the way we think about all of life. And they were really good at doing that. Whereas today, if you ask your average Christian in the pew, what does it look like to be a business person or an educator, as a Christian, not just motivated, but to really do it in a Christian way, a biblical way? You would just get blank stares, like people would go, I don't even know what you're talking about. My Christian faith has to do with my personal salvation, personal holiness, heaven, it doesn't have anything to do with education. You know?

Christian Overman:

Well, what I wanted to say is the link between dualism or Platonic dualism, sacred/second—oh, we didn't even mention Decartes. You know, he's the father of modern thought. And let me just say this real carefully here, quickly that in the 1600s, Descartes, he got the dualism going as well in his division between the metaphysical and the physical. And he said, Okay, church, you handle the metaphysical stuff, like what's moral and what's immoral, and how many angels can dance on the head of a pen, you know, and you let the scientists quote unquote, who are dealing with the material world, you let us alone, basically. What happened was Galileo, when he did his studies, and he wasn't the first to conclude this, that the earth was not the center of the universe, but that we were spinning around the sun. And he writes this book that and he was very, very insulting to the pope in this book, because the church at that time insisted that the earth was the center of the universe. Well, when he came out and said, No, the Earth is not the center, and they brought him before the tribunal, and they put him under house arrest for 10 years. Last 10 years of his life, and he had to recant Decartes saw that happening, it happened, right in his purview this stuff. there. And he wrote a book about the earth being the center. He proved it through mathematics. He was a genius mathematician, Decartes was, and he said, in his note to his publisher he says, "Don't publish my book." He says, because he saw what happened to Galileo. He didn't want to go through that. But long story short, he ended up instigating what historians have called the cartesian compromise, from Decartes, the cartesian compromise, which basically said, Hey, we need to think of reality in two spheres, the metaphysical sphere, and then the physical sphere. And the physical sphere, empirical evidence, reason rules and in the metaphysical sphere, that's where revelation rules and never the two shall meet. And so he caused this huge gulf between reason in his realm of mathematics, and science and revelation. And that only perpetuated the problem and from that came the modern dualism. He took Plato and just revved it up to the modern age. But how did I get off into that—I was going to talk about education? Okay, so what happens here in this country, in the early years, education and de Tocqueville noticed this, almost all the education was governed by the clergy in this country from day one, all the way up to the latter part of the 1800s, the 19th century. And the church maintained control of education, almost all of the universities prior to the revolutionary were started by some branch of the church, including Yale and Harvard. Okay. Now, in the later 1800s, through Horace Mann, public education started to take root. And before too long, there was this idea, even though for many, many years, because the church had controlled education, they still had Bible reading and prayer for many, many years, eventually, what happened was, there was this split in school, that public school dealt with reality as a separate entity, apart from what the church dealt with. So if you want to learn about Jesus and the Church and all that stuff, you go to church and you have Sunday school. Sunday school, divorced from Monday through Friday school. Huge problem. Okay? So in Monday through Friday school, they weren't talking anymore, about how all of this stuff connected to the biblical worldview. They said, look, okay, we, in the schools now, we're going to be quote, unquote, "neutral" when it comes to Christianity in the Bible. You want to learn about that? Go to Sunday school, okay? And the Christian said, Okay, no problem. We'll teach him in Sunday school and you teach the facts, we'll teach the values. And that fact/value split just really took off when the public schools did their thing. And John Dewey, the father of progressive education, came out—he was one of the thinkers behind humanism. In 1933 when the first Humanist Manifesto came out, John Dewey is one of the original signers. He wrote a book called "Our Common Faith." He called humanism, which is atheistic secularism, he called that in the beginning, he called it "religious humanism." Religious humanism. "Religious" was later dropped, it was just"humanism," or "secular humanism." So the school dealt with the material world and things that have to do with this life. The church dealt with the next life and all of that. Well imagine this, okay, if you start having kids that go through 13 years, 13 years of learning, reading, writing, with the math, you name it, and never once does a single teacher, draw any connecting lines between math and biology and history, and the bigger picture of a biblical worldview. Never once in 13 years, what happens when they come out the other end is their dyed in the wool dualists. They may be quote, unquote, good Christians who read their Bible every day, go to church, pray, sing, worship songs, okay, fine, have their private devotions at home. But they come out of public school or any school, private or public that has a dualistic view of education, and they do not connect the dots in a holistic way, which most Americans now have been taught that way for three generations or more. You're gonna come out with people who are dyed in the wool dualists and they're taking the sacred/secular divide as natural and normal. The fact/value split, as Nancy Pearcey deals with her book"Total Truth"—gotta read it, okay. But anyway, she's another voice that we need to listen to. But you guys know all about her—but the point here is, when people come through that system, they're going to come out with a bifurcated mind, just by the very fact that they never integrated it at all from preschool through 12th grade. So why, if you don't connect it through preschool through 12th grade, how are you going to connect it with your job for Boeing? Or whatever you do? You know, you're a carpenter, you're a banker, you're a mechanic, but because it never connected with the geometry history, and writing and reading, it was all split. So now, of course, we have split lines, because we were trained to have split lines from preschool on. And that's what makes it so hard to deal with. We don't know we've got the problem.

Scott:

I think, Christian, and one thing I'm hearing you say in all of this is that there was two sides to this, you had secular people on one side saying we are going to try to take over all of that ground. And on the other side, you had Christians that kind of were willing to relinquish it and say, Go right ahead, go right ahead. We'll go along with this sacred/secular divide, this cartesian way of thinking where we'll just be content to teach the Bible in church, you know, and you teach everything else, right?

Christian Overman:

Because we had Sunday schools—by the way, we don't have so many now today—but anyway, that I think it was a bad idea to begin with, we needed to integrate truth to the subject matter. Right from the get go, which the Comenius

Darrow:

The other thing that happens here, Christian, folk of the world did. They didn't have this split thing in their education, nor did Webster, okay? It was all integrated. But when we split and the Christians went along with it, I don't think they fully realized what was happening. I don't think they fully thought through it. But hindsight is 20/20. I hope they're thinking through it now, I hope. But that's why you exist, DNA exists, because you're trying to alert people to not only in this country, but around the world, to these problems. And you've got these podcasts like this, where you're trying to get the word out. Renewanation is trying to get the word out and others. So you know, we just need to be faithful and do what God calls us to do and let him handle the results. But my, we sure need a miracle, don't we? Christians react to this atheistic education, instead of going to a biblical worldview and developing schools that are integrated, they create religious schools. And so they've separated themselves from the secular atheistic public institutions. But they haven't created a framework going back to a biblical worldview. Or, as you say, a Uniview. And starting from that, to create alternatives to education, they simply have created religious education.

Christian Overman:

You are bringing up a point here that we need to look at realistically and honestly, and the reason I'm sensitive to this is because I've spent many years consulting Christian schools and the bad news is that not every Christian School teacher has a well framed Christian biblical worldview or Uniview, and secondly, they've never been trained on how to put their subject matter into the context of that bigger picture and what all that means and how to do that. I was consulting once with a school years ago and trying to give them some practical tools on how to do this. And by the way, I don't mean to push my book here, but there are six tools in that book for contextual—I call it"contextualizing"—for contextualizing any subject matter at any grade level. Six of them, they're very user friendly, and anyone can use them but that's...

Scott:

And that book is"Eliminating the Sacred/Secular Divide." You need to go online and you put this into the Google search, "Eliminating the Sacred/Secular Divide Christian Overman." It's free, right Christian? It's a free resource, you need to do this because this is not just going to help you understand what this is, as Christian just said, it's going to give you tools, practical ways for you to begin to overcome this and function biblically in every area of life.

Christian Overman:

Yeah, let me just add, if you put in the publishers, Issuu, I'm not even sure how you pronounce it. But it's an online publisher that allows people to publish things at no cost. And we wanted it to be electronic because it's full of video clips. There's well over 50 video clips, and maybe 60 or 70. And if you don't like to read, if you just go through the book and look at the video clips, you'll get it. But I was consulting in this school, and I was giving them ways to contextualize their material at any grade level. I was at the high school level, there was a math teacher there who really understood math and his students got tremendous high scores on standardized tests. And he had taught in the public schools for 30 years, and he retired and came to the Christian School. And when he was exposed to this way of contextualizing, he pushed back pretty hard. Not only privately, but with other staff members as well. He's pushing back really hard. And his comment was, I was hired to teach math, not theology. Well, well, that's SSD right there. When you separate math from theology, that's it. And when you teach math for 30 years in then public schooling, and you've never integrated it, you've never contextualized it, well, of course, the goal is to get high scores on the SAT test. But there's a difference between knowledge and understanding. You need knowledge to get understanding, that's true. But without understanding, you don't know what you need to know and seeing things holistically is what it's all about. So there are many Christian, good, wonderful, mature Christian teachers, who are teaching and Christian schools that have never been trained or even exposed to how to design a single lesson that puts their subject matter into the context of that Uniview. So that's what this book is about how to contextualize and it's not just for classroom teachers, it's for parents, it's for anybody that wants to learn how to do this. It isn't rocket science. It just takes practice. And there are tools you can use to get your brain thinking differently about it. So"Eliminating the Sacred/Secular Divide" is an attempt to give people practical ways to get rid of the divide. It's one thing to know that it exists and to understand the theory behind the problem. But it's another thing to say, well, here's a way you can get out of this. Here's a way you can get free from this way of thinking that has grabbed our culture for 100 years now. And that's what this is attempting to do. So...

Scott:

Christian, I want to bring Dwight in and he's back there, I'm sure, with questions he's wanting to ask, but we've been just steamrolling over him. So Dwight, what questions do you have or thoughts to share with Christian today in this discussion?

Dwight:

Now you're expecting something deep and profound, but

Scott:

I am. I am.

Dwight:

No, Christian. I read your stuff. And it's great. And I particularly like the contextualization processes that you put into this material, and I've seen that and it's just excellent. I highly recommend it. So now I'm going to put you to the test Christian. I was in church yesterday. And we were sending off someone to be a missionary for a year. And we commissioned the and there was an urging that everybody would follow in missions and do this high and noble thing, which it is. But then I left that service, and me and 99% of the others left that not to become missionaries but to go back to our jobs. In my case yesterday, I had to do some painting in a counseling office, and I usually don't paint on Sunday, but the ox was in the ditch and it had to be done before those counselors showed up this morning. And so I did that. I painted yesterday. Now you've talked about, well, it's to the glory that—you said that the shoemaker needs to not have a sacred/secular divide, but do his job to the glory of God. And he has to have this mindset, okay, let's assume I don't know what the glory of God means, but what does it mean for me? What was the mindset that I should have taken into that job yesterday? You have five minutes, okay?

Christian Overman:

I'll throw this out. Do you know who—this is your test here, Dwight—do you know who in the Bible, what is the very first mention of a human being being filled with the Holy Spirit? Now, I'm not going to embarrass you. I'm sure you know this, Dwight but I'm going to tell our listeners the answer. The first recorded instance in the scripture of a human being filled with the Holy Spirit was Bezalel. Who was Bezalel?

Dwight:

Artist. A craftsmen.

Christian Overman:

Artist. He was an artist, craftsman. God had given Bezalel gifts in the area of shaping, like making things out of gold, I think he did, He made the instruments of the tabernacle. And if you read that carefully, you know it says God gave him wisdom in craftsmanship, that's my paraphrase, but I think he uses the word wisdom. So here's the first instance of a human being filled spirit, not to go prophesy, although I'm sure that happened beforehand, but to actually be anointed, if I can use that word in the area of craftsmanship. I would love to see churches bring up the painters, house painters, and maybe in another day, the fine arts painters and anoint them with oil, to do their craftsmanship to the glory of God. Which means that in that craft, there's the kind of excellence that is beyond the craftsman himself. And I'm not saying that you have to put a sign there that says "Glory to God"—although Bach did that, you know, at the bottom of all his stuff, he says "To the glory of God." By the way, Bach is a great example to me of a craftsman, a musical craftsman who understood this. He's post reformation or reformation musician, who saw himself writing music to the glory of God. And he actually wrote it down at the end of every piece. Okay, great example. But in your case, I would say, first of all, that you are serving these people, I don't know who they were. And I don't know why they had to get it done by Monday, but you know, all of that. First of all, you're laying down your nice Sunday rest here to work up a sweat for these people. Now, that's love. Is that not love? That you gave of yourself for their well being or their comfort. You are loving God and you're loving people through that act of painting those walls, whatever it was you were doing. I also trust that after you got through painting, there was some greater sense of beauty there, I hope. And that has to do with the theology of aesthetics. Say that 10 times, the theology of aesthetics. Schaeffer was great on this one, you know, Edith as well, on on beauty. And the fact that God likes beauty and I think was Schaeffer that pointed out these robes or stuff that the the priests wore had a pomegranates on them that were blue. I think he asked, well, have you ever seen a blue pomegranate? No. But God said, Yeah, I want you to put blue pomegranates on the robes of these people as well as the normal color of pomegranates. But beauty is obviously very important to God and pleasure to the eyes. You know why God made trees? The Bible tells us why God made trees. I think it's in the second chapter of Genesis, I don't know the exact verse. But if you look it up, there's two reasons God made trees. Two stated reasons. One was for food to eat. And the other was, for pleasure to the eye. To give pleasure to the eye. What? Pleasure to the eye—I thought I thought pleasure was a sin. God made trees to give us pleasure. And He made them all different. But it gives us pleasure and there's something aesthetic there that tells us about the nature of God. So Dwight, you're there, you're working up a sweat on your day of rest. You're loving those guys or gals, you're also beautifying that office, you're doing the work of God, man.

Dwight:

You pass. Or I pass. One of two. Thank you, that was

Christian Overman:

It would be great if churches had craftsmen great. and craftswomen come up, say, Well, this Sunday, if you're a painter, house painter, we're gonna pray for God's annointing on you and give a little message on that. Or if you're a banker, you know, you're working with money, wow. Well, actually, we do this sometimes now for firemen and policemen in some churches. So that's a step in the right direction. And, and I think we do it sometimes for teachers, but we got to expand this a little bit to the ditch diggers of the world who need to see that they can dig that ditch to the glory of God. Where Paul said, "Whatever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord." And by the way, when he said that, he was talking to slaves. Paul is addressing slaves, who didn't have a choice over what they did on a daily basis. They did with the master told them to do. Paul says, Look, recognize this, that whatever you do, if you're digging ditches or whatever, do it as unto the Lord. In other words, if you're fixing your master's chariot, fix that chariot as though it belongs to Christ. And so if you're a car mechanic, and you're coming in on Monday morning to fix more cars, every car that comes in, you think in your head, I am going to fix this car as though it belongs to Christ. I think that's what it means as do your work heartily as unto the Lord. So, yeah, anything that's legitimate. Obviously, we can't sell drugs to the glory of God. And here again, the division is between good and evil, okay? But if it's a legitimate service to humanity, it can be done as unto the Lord. And if a person is thinking I'm going to sand this floor as though this house belongs to Christ. Whoa, hey, there's something fulfilling there.

Scott:

Yeah, I really appreciate Dwight's question, because we've been picking on education a bit here today, because that's your background, Christian. But this sacred/secular divide has affected every area and Dwight's pushing to get really practical with what does that mean, even just for painting? And I think it's really good this discussion that we've had just in the last couple of minutes your answer was great, Christian, and just focusing on this aspect of it in some different areas. What are those biblical principles that we can apply to whatever this area is that we're going to discuss? I think that kind of practice is going to help people a little bit. Guys, we need to wrap up and I would love to—this discussion is really rich and powerful. I have one question I'm burning to ask you, though, Christian, you know, and it's this, so you wrote "Assumptions that Matter," really on the same subject in some ways as your new book,"Eliminating the Sacred/Secular Divide." You wrote that 30 years ago. And here you are writing another book, trying to help Christians to see the sacred/secular divide, to repent, change their way of thinking, to get rid of that and think biblically about everything. Just stepping and back and looking at—you know, you mentioned earlier, Christian, this has been a problem that goes all the way back to the early church. So it's not new, but it's come back over the last 100 years in a pretty significant way. And we touched briefly on why that's the case. Where are we at? Are you hopeful that we're turning a corner again? Or are we still as bogged down now, 30 years later, after you wrote "Assumptions that Matter" such that you felt like you needed to write a new book? What are your thoughts on where we're at, let's just say, the church in the United States or the West more broadly, in terms of its recognition of this, and it's turning away from this? Do you feel encouraged or discouraged? Where are you at?

Christian Overman:

Well, those are two different questions. I don't know where we're at. God knows where we're at but honestly, I just see a sliver of it. And I can't honestly say I know where we're at. I do believe that we're in deep trouble. I believe that we're in far worse condition now than we were 30 years ago. I mean, I didn't even think about writing about the idea of men being pregnant, quote, unquote, or telling children to decide for themselves what gender they're going to be. I mean, this stuff is so bizarre that when I wrote"Assumptions" that I mean, it wasn't even on my radar. I couldn't look 30 years into the future and say, "Here's where we got," obviously, no, no. Even 30 years ago, nobody would have even thought about legitimizing same sex marriage. I mean, that would have been unthinkable. Unthinkable. So in a sense, where we are today is beyond my 1989 imagination. I could not believe that we are where we are today in "woke world." This is maybe a conversation for another day. But I tend to believe that we are under the judgment of God. Right now, severe judgment of God, where God at some point, I don't know exactly where but I think he said, look, okay, you don't want me in your schools. Get out, no Bible reading, no prayer. You know, you've pushed me out of this and this and everything. You've marginalize me into this corner. I think I'm just going to let you go your own way for a while. I'm going to let you go your own way for a while. And I think that's what's happening right now. He's giving us over to depravity, not that he wants it to happen. You know, I'm not in that camp. And it doesn't need to happen. But my tendency is to think he's pulled back here so that we can get a good dose of dog vomit, so to speak. Now, at some point, my hope is that the culture as a whole will get so much dose of dog vomit that they say, "Look," even the heathen will say, "I'm not going to take this anymore. This is insanity." I don't think we're quite there yet. But I do think we might be getting closer to that. I don't know.

Scott:

Christian, you're talking to me about the culture as a whole and where the culture is that I was asking more specifically about the church and about progress or lack thereof in terms of the church seeing and overcoming the sacred/secular divide. You know, what's your sense of that in over the span of the last 30 years let's say?

Christian Overman:

Well, 30 years ago, we had a lot of movement towards the Moral Majority, you know, and it was quite popular in those days. In my state, I know of very, very few pastors who are actually standing up and giving sermons that I would call culturally relevant. The majority of the pastors that I'm aware of are laying low, so to speak. I don't want to fault them. I think there's fear. I think there's fear of having their churches picketed or somehow being canceled or that church is guilty of hate speech. Ah, you know, all the stuff that can happen today. I think it takes a lot more courage for pastors to speak up now than it was in 1989. One pastor who is speaking up, I talked with him personally last year, and I commended him. He's speaking up boldly about what's going on in our culture and woke us and trying to wake his church up. And when he started doing that, he had several elders that left, and he's had other people and left his church. But in the long run, I think he's got more church people that are coming. But I said, are you getting any support from other pastors? And he said, No, not in this area, not in western Washington. He is getting some support from eastern Washington, but not a lot of support from—I live in one of the most liberal bastions of the entire country, King County, Seattle area, Washington, and it is very dark here. And when you have pastors that are speaking up, that's not an easy road for them, of course. Now you can say, well, persecution is part of the ballgame. But to answer your question, right now in my world, my geographic area, I don't see a lot of pastors that are jumping, chomping at the bit here to to push against what we're seeing it right now. There's an organization I have some contact with a Washington Family Institute—anyway, they're going around the whole state trying to find pastors that are speaking up. And last count ahead, they found 40 of them in all of Washington State, that are really what they call champions. Well, 40, I don't know how many pastors there are here. But it's not a gigantic number. But I have to remind myself that we serve a God who's the God of small numbers. He seems to relish small numbers. So it's not a numbers game here. But he's looking for that 300, you know, Gideons army. And I think he's definitely getting small numbers. So in that sense, I think we have to rejoice and say that something is happening. And these pastors that are waking up right now are strong, and they are bold. And so I'm encouraged in that respect. I'm not encouraged by the numbers. But like I said, it doesn't need to be big numbers. So does that answer your question?

Scott:

I just was curious what your perspective on this was, because I've had to go through some rethinking on this in my own life and ministry. I thought we were further along in terms of Christians understanding and turning away from the sacred/secular divide than we are of late and especially with the publication of my most recent book, "Why Social Justice is not Biblical Justice," I continued to get a—I was surprised, I got pushback from very respected Christian leaders, both in the church and in seminary and Bible school. And they would say things to me, like, you know, Scott, a book on cultural engagement, like your writing here is a distraction. We should just get out of the culture, it's a mess. It's a woke mess, just get out of it and focus—we should be focusing Christians on the eternal things. And when I heard that I was I was like, Oh, my goodness, I thought we were further along, after all of your wonderful teaching, and many other people, going back to Francis Schaeffer and others, I thought we were further along. So I've been rethinking my assumptions about where at, I guess a little bit, there's still a lot of work to do. And that brings me back to your book, "Eliminating the Sacred/Secular Divide" Christian, and why I'm so thankful that you're still at it, and still publishing and helping Christians.

Christian Overman:

Well, thank you for the conversation. And I'm sorry, very sorry to hear that you did receive that kind of pushback. That is not encouraging. But on the other hand, I'm not shocked by it. But it's sad. So...

Scott:

Yeah I know, it's always my heart because I always think if we're not out there defining words, like "justice" biblically. Yeah, somebody's going to define that word, and all these other words. So to me, it's just a "Come on!" You talked about the culture and just how shocked you are at where we're at. Well, there's two ways to look at that, one has to be boy, look at the secular people, they've pushed it way beyond what I thought they would. The other way of looking at it is, the church has just completely allowed that to happen without a whimper, you know, and so who's to blame? Is it the church or the culture? Yeah, you could make an argument, it's the church because we have not been shaping the culture, by design, by intention, because of this faulty theology.

Darrow:

This is where one of the things we say all the time at

Christian Overman:

I am in that camp. I'm loathe to lay blame. But I would have to say that, that we have a problem in the church. And that has been reflected in the broader the DNA. "If the church is not discipling the nation, the culture. So yeah, unfortunately, I think that's the reality of the situation. nation will disciple the church." And that is what we are observing right now. Well, Darrow and Scott, what do you have hope? Or where are you at in all of this?

Scott:

Yeah, I do.

Darrow:

I have hope.

Scott:

Yeah. I have hoped too, go ahead, Darrow, you respond, and maybe I'll respond. And Dwight, if you want to jump in. And final word here as we wrap up. Yeah, go ahead.

Darrow:

I have hope because I know how the story ends. Yeah. And that is reality. Yeah. So do I look at things happening day to day and is it discouraging? Yes. Wwe are in deep trouble as a nation. I think the church is in trouble. But I know how the story ends. And like you, Christian, I think the DNA, we continue to do what God has laid in front of us to do. Because we have a big God, and he can take small contributions and multiply those for His glory. So yeah.

Scott:

I think I have hoped too, Christian, precisely because the culture is in such a dark place right now. And I agree with you. I think, in some ways, God, it seems like he's just saying, I'm going to let you try to go forward as a culture without me and see exactly what that looks like. And we've not really had that experience in the United States or the West, because

Darrow:

Well, again, ideas have consequences. And we are seeing we've been so deeply shaped by biblical ideas for hundreds of years. But now for the first time, we're kind of seeing pretty clearly what that looks like. And it is not pretty. And I think the fact that it's so ugly and violent, and it's just unraveling the society in so many ways tearing the family apart, you name it. I think it's causing the church to go, Oh, okay. You know, we've taken a lot of things for granted here, and we've really been disengaged, and we can't continue. So I do think there's some hope right now. I think we're living through some really exciting times. Let's just say, to be a Christian. the consequences of some godless ideas. And I liked the way you phrased it, Christian, that God has an okay, I'm going to pull back and let you feel the weight of the ideas that you hold. I want you to feel the weight of what it means to live in a godless universe.

Christian Overman:

Yeah, yeah.

Scott:

We're feeling that and I think that's shaking the church in a healthy way.

Christian Overman:

Yes, it's heavy.

Scott:

It is. Well, Dwight, final thoughts from you.

Dwight:

I have hope because I'm memorizing Ezekiel 47, verses 1 to 12 right now, which which talks about the flow of the river of God's Spirit over humanity and over the world, and how it continues to grow and grow and grow and grow, and we may not see that around us. But I want to believe that for the global south, and I want to believe that for the persecuted church in China, that millions of people are being impacted by the Spirit of God and their lives, in very small ways, are influencing the painting of that room and this school and this child and I just believe that's what's not in the news, but the Bible says that the Church will grow. And I believe that happening.

Scott:

Yeah, amen, Dwight. I think that's a great final word. It ties into Christian's comment on Gideon's army. And I think right now there is an army that God is raising up. But it's not big people. It's not necessarily the big Christian names that are in the news. It's just small Christians who are getting it, and changing the way they live, bringing the Bible into every area of their lives. And God is honored by that. And he's using it, we see it around the world. So it's happening. Just, as you do, I wish it was happening faster, maybe, but it's happening.

Christian Overman:

Well I think too, that I tend to see things as an American, you guys are more international by far, than than I am. And from what I've heard, I've had a little experience overseas, but from what I've heard, the global south is very open and growing in things that that are diminishing, or have been diminishing in the United States of America. So I need to constantly remember that the United States of America is not the world. I mean, it's just one country. But I do have to say, because I live here, and I'm aware of what's going on here, I'm just saddened by where we're at. But I am encouraged to know that God is very much aware of what's going on and he can, by His Spirit, turn things around. So let's trust that that happens.

Scott:

Well, thanks for your work, Christian, on this. God's called you to do it, you've done it faithful, it's impacted lots of lives. I want to encourage our listeners once again, to go out and look at "Eliminating the Sacred/Secular Divide". It's by Christian Overman on Issuu issue if that's how you pronounce it, it's an online book publishing company. It's free, you can go there right now. And you can scroll through this book, you can see the quality with which Christian has presented his material here, the video links, the tools, the principles, it's powerful. I really urge you if you're a pastor, if you've got a small group ministry, discipleship ministry, consider using this as curriculum. This is such an important area of learning. There really is hardly anything more important for the church right now than getting their heads around this and understanding it turning from it. So Christian, thanks for your hard work. Thanks for joining us today. It's been great to have you.

Christian Overman:

Thank you very much Scott.

Scott:

Yep, you too. God bless. Thanks for listening everyone.

Luke:

Ideas Have Consequences is brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance. For more information about our ministry, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube or on our website, which is disciplenations.org. Again, thank you for listening.