Ideas Have Consequences
Worldviews shape communities, influence politics, steer economics, set social norms, and ultimately affect the well-being of both your life and your nation. Obedience to the Great Commission involves replacing false ideas with biblical truth. Together with the help of friends, our mission is to demonstrate that only biblical truth leads to flourishing lives, families, societies, and nations. This show explores the intersection of faith and culture, aiming to address pressing societal issues through a biblical lens. Ideas Have Consequences is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.
Ideas Have Consequences
Zero Hour America pt. 1 with Os Guinness
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Today's guest, Dr. Os Guinness, is a deeply respected and prophetic author, teacher, and cultural critic. We are honored to have him join us again as a guest on the podcast. In this two-part interview, we glean Dr. Guinness’s wisdom on a variety of pressing cultural issues, ranging from “Christian nationalism” to “globalism” to transhumanism and the sexual revolution. We also get his take on the recently released “Twitter files,” revealing widespread government and social media efforts to censor free speech. How should the church faithfully respond to these urgent issues? Os offers his wisdom on this as well.
The scandal of the church is the we're the most significant majority in the country, and yet we're culturally uninfluential, and that's a scandal before the
Luke:Hi friends, welcome back to Ideas Have Consequences Lord. brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance. Today's episode is part one of a two part series with the one and only Os Guinness. Ideas Have Consequences is a podcast where we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world to all the nations, but to also seek to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness, and beauty, of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of our 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:Well, welcome again to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences. This is the podcast at the Disciple Nations Alliance. I am Scott Allen, and I'm the president of the DNA, and I'm joined today by Dwight Vogt and Luke Allen, and our very special guest, Os Guinness. Os, It's great to have you back on the podcast.
Os Guinness:Wel,, it's always my pleasure. Thank you.
Scott:Oh, it's just really an honor for us Os, we are true fans to say the least. Let me just offer a brief introduction for those who don't know who Os is, which I don't know who would not know who you are Os, but there probably is somebody out there.
Dwight:I met someone this morning.
Scott:Oh, okay.
Luke:One person.
Os Guinness:There are many.
Scott:Well, Os is an author and a social critic. He is a deep, deep thinker on the subject of biblical worldview and Christian engagement and culture in society. And personally, I know Os, you're for me, a source of incredible wisdom and a go to person for just any number of topics. I'm always asking myself and wonder what Os would think about that. Os is the great, great, great grandson of Arthur Guinness, and some of you might be familiar with a Guinness beer. So Oz is connected to that family. And that's a very Christian family. There's a book that came out several years ago called God and Guinness that talks about that legacy. And it's a powerful book of Christian faithfulness in the vocation of brewing. Anyways, Os was born in China during World War Two, and his parents there were medical missionaries. He earned his doctorate in philosophy and social science from Oxford University. And he is the author or the editor of more than 30 books. And that just amazes me Os. Os' most recent book is "Zero Hour
America:History's Ultimatum Over Freedom And The Answer That We Must Give", which was just released last fall. We know Os here at the DNA through Darrow, Darrow Miller, one of our co founders. And I believe Darrow and Os spent time, did you guys spend time together at L'Abri Os?
Os Guinness:Yes indeed.
Scott:Okay. Yeah. So I know Darrow, that was such a formative time for his life being mentored by Francis Schaeffer, and then obviously, being able to meet people like you Os. I think today, there's so many topics, just really pressing issues in the culture. And really, this sense of urgency that comes from the title of your most recent books, we also feel that urgency, and often are wondering, uh, how do we respond? Are we doing what we need to do in this hour? Will history judge us as having stood up and responded correctly to the hour or not? So given that, I would love to just hear your thoughts, we would like to hear your thoughts on a variety of topics that are being discussed within the church in the west and in the culture at large. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Luke to guide us in these questions. I know these are things that Luke and I often talk about, and Dwight as well, but Luke, why don't you go ahead and get us started here?
Luke:Yeah, well, yeah, first off, Dr. Guinness, do you mind if I call you Os?
Os Guinness:Oh, by all means!
Luke:Okay, thank you. Yeah, it's such an honor to have you on the show today and to talk to you. I'm a big fan I would say. I listened to every podcast I can find out there where you the guest on the show, and especially the ones about your books, and really anything that whenever you're talking about the current state of affairs in the world, I really enjoy hearing your thoughts and wisdom on those. So, so happy to be talking to you today and get to ask you some of these questions that I've been thinking about. Anyways, with that, as a young Christian who's passionate about claiming the truth and being salt and light in the world, I've compiled a list with Dwight and Scott of these issues, key issues and topics that I think a lot of Christians are curious about, worried about, or confused about right now. And we would like to hear your thoughts or kind of hot takes on these issues. So starting out with a with a softball question. Do you like Guinness? Is that your favorite beer out there?
Os Guinness:I do like it very much. It's coming up to St. Patrick's Day pretty soon.
Luke:All right, just wanted to make sure. Anyways, I'll start asking the real questions now. And one topic that I've been curious about recently, we all have, and I feel like is increasingly being brought up in the media and just in discussions is this topic of Christian nationalism. I'm sure you're familiar with it. What are your thoughts on that? Some people call it white Christian nationalism.
Os Guinness:Well, I think it's largely a strawman. In other words, it's used by critics of the church, particularly evangelicalism to attack them. And I think there are two errors
behind it:One is there's a conflation of patriotism, which is good, with nationalism, which is bad. Every human wants meaning and belonging. And patriotism is a natural expression of belonging. Now we shouldn't be uncritical, we should be grateful and appreciative of where we come from, but never uncritical. Patriotism is good. George Orwell always defended patriotism, over against nationalism, in other words, the idolatry, the elevation of one's country to the place of an idol, where it's right or wrong, you still defend it. No. We are patriots, we shouldn't be nationalists under the Lord. No nation is our idol. But the second error is that there's a conflation of nationalism is a problem because of the elevation of globalism. If you think in the old days, a national, say the federal, was a threat to the local. So Washington DC, overshadowed the town halls in New England, wherever. The national was a threat to the local and the word federal meant covenantal agreement, you should have had a balance between the national and the local, because democracy means self government, personal rule, self government at the local level. But that's all changed because now the challenge is global. And when you look to the Club of Rome or the Devos Recetas, they so stress globalism, the philosophy of the global at the expense of both the national and the local, that everyone is a patriot is called a nationalist. So I think we've got to unravel what people are saying, I read last week, a 20 page survey of white nationalists. I've never met one. I think that it's a false straw man that they've created. And we need to fight back against it. We as followers of Jesus are patriots. We are not nationalists.
Luke:In that paper, how are they defining it? You say you've never met one um, I personally have heard it as a broad term, mostly, that lumps a lot of people into that category.
Os Guinness:Hugely broad. And basically everyone who likes America was a nationalist.
Scott:Right.
Os Guinness:I've been accused to being an American nationalist, and I'm not even American. I admire this country and I do stand up the the best of what I've seen.
Scott:Yeah, I agree Os. I believe the critics are the enemies of the church right now, particularly on the far left, have kind of created this category, it seems like fairly recently, to raise up, like a you said, a straw man. I mean, I read an article in The Guardian recently and it talked in really alarming terms about this group. I mean, they're quite dangerous if you read these articles and so that bothers me, because if you gin up that kind of talk, who knows exactly where that leads, if these people are so dangerous, where's that gonna go?
Os Guinness:What does the Guardian know about faith at all?
Scott:Yeah.
Os Guinness:What concerns me far more are the blue leaning Evangelical scholars who go along with the same critique. They should know better.
Scott:Yeah, I agree. You're right. There are certain quarters in evangelicalism that it seems like they buy into that as if it's something very real and alarming. And yeah, I know some of them right here in Phoenix, for example. I'm curious, just on the topic of nationalism, you said patriotism, yes. Nationalism, no. I've read a couple of books recently. And one was a book by Yoram Hazony, called "The Virtue of Nationalism". I'm not sure if you've heard of that book, or are familiar with him.
Os Guinness:But what he is talking about are nation-states and that is very important. I'm not against nation-states. The challenge biblically, we have globalization in our DNA. The promise to Abraham "In you, all have families of the Earth will be blessed" or the great commission. We're not afraid of the global, but the global should never overpower the national, just as the national should never overpower the local. The Catholics call it subsidiarity, that principle of never going higher than you need to, I think the biblical example, and I love this, is the prophets referring to everyone living freely under their own vine and fig tree, a kind of Wendell Berry front porch idea, you've got to have local freedom. And that's why neighborhoods and families and communities are so important. But we should articulate a balanced in the local, the national, and the global. Each in their place, the global reseters are leading towards a one world government or what HG Wells called the Global Republic, because they only focus on global problems and give global answers. And that's very dangerous.
Scott:Os, just on that, what's the foundation or the basis for local control, why is that important? Where does that idea come from biblically in your view? Go ahead, Dwight.
Dwight:And how does it differ from individualism? Because that's the next leap people make.
Os Guinness:Well, Individualism is the individual at the expense of the collective or the corporate or whatever. And I'm talking about a balance in the local, the national, and the global. But just take the idea of democracy, it must mean, or should have meant, self-rule of citizens. Now, if you ask Americans, "What's the most famous saying on democracy?" They would probably rightly quote Lincoln, Democracy is the government of the People by the People. But many Americans don't know Lincoln was quoting. He was actually quoting a 19th century pastor he'd read a few months earlier. But the pastor, this is the more important point, the pastor was quoting John Wycliffe, you read Wycliffe's introduction to his ideas about the English Bible. He's arguing that we can't just have the Bible in the hands of the clergy. If we bring it down to ordinary people, it will make possible "Government of the People by the People for the People." In other words, self rule depends on what the Greeks called virtue. You know, habits of the heart, what the Bible calls the fruits of the Spirit, and so on. In other words, to have local freedom is very, very important. But in the prophets, that idea of living under your own vine and fig tree, it's in Zechariah and in Micah, that's probably what George Washington is quoting. But for me, the wonderful quotation is in 1 Kings, when it's describes the high noon of prosperity under King Solomon. There was such peace and prosperity that everyone was able to live under their own vine and fig tree. Now that's truly magnificent. You've got to have local freedom. And you've got to have the grounds for it, as well as you need faith, as well as national and global freedom.
Scott:I think Os, you're contrasting it with globalism, and it seems to me that part of the core difference, the emphasis on self-government, self-rule, local rule, and kind of a globalist mindset is it seems like the globalists, it has to do with the view of human beings, frankly, and the globalists almost view human beings like animals, they're in a position to know best how to care for all of the animals, I guess.
Dwight:Sheep.
Scott:Sheep, but the biblical view is that we're not animals, right? We're human beings and we have freedom as a gift from God, we have agency, we have dominion, there's this quite high view of the of the human being, that I think is the foundation. Yeah, any thoughts on that?
Os Guinness:No, I couldn't agree with you more, I don't know how deep you want to and go into. I've been very struck recently, by the Jewish view, you think of the way we're created in the image and likeness of God. So that means we are God-like, we're never God, and we're God-like, so we're never animals, we have this unique position. You see in Psalm 8, and then the paradoxes of Shakespeare, and so on. But, and this is where I've understood a lot from the Jews. There's a drive in sin, to break out of that middle level position in two ways. You break upwards through reason and technology. And the symbol in the Old Testament is the Egyptians. With their demigods, and their defiance of mortality, and the pyramids, and so on. You can break upwards and in the Greek world, that's Apollo. And in the modern world, that's all a search for artificial intelligence we'll be like gods, as Harari says. The other drive is to break downwards. That was with God-like and never animals, but if you break that category, and just merge with nature and the way the other animals are and define ourselves downwards, you have the religion of Canaan, or in Greek terms, Dionysian frenzy and worshipping. And in modern terms, things like the hookup culture. I think the Bible is incredibly profound in the way its view of humanity spells out either towards tyranny at the highest level or towards anarchy at the lowest level.
Luke:Yeah, the hookup culture is a great example of breaking downwards. I also think of the hyper-environmentalism that we see going on right now where it's this atheistic view of humans, we're just really evolved animals. On the other side, the breaking upwards, I think of all the thinking right now and the momentum behind transhumanism, and perfection of the self kind of thing. What are your thoughts on both of those, but mainly transhumanism? I'm really curious. What do you think about that? Because I see that as a rising momentum or just issue right now.
Os Guinness:Well, there are issues across the board on that one. But basically, I think we got to remember, not only are we made in the image of God, but that our Lord became incarnate. In other words, his highest expression and coming down to us was in bodily form, like us. And so everything in our modern world with artificial intelligence and so on is leading towards an artificial world, a God-like world through technology. And we got to be very, very careful. I mean, in the last month using of ChatGPT, you know, I first came across this, someone said, "Look, this is how it works." And I was down with Jordan Peterson. And someone just opened their ChatGPT and said, "What would Os Guinness and Jordan Peterson think about x?" And in five seconds, a whole essay came back.
Scott:Wow.
Os Guinness:Now it was stunning. And you can see a number of Jewish rabbis who rely on it for sermons. Christians start to do that, and it's only a very simple and early form of it. You can see we're getting away from the bodily and from the natural and the reliance on the Holy Spirit. And technologies can become a huge trap. Your remember C.S. Lewis on the abolition of man, we are moving into uncharted waters, humanly speaking. And we need to be thoroughly aware of all this happening.
Scott:Os, are there any helpful speakers or teachers or guides or books that are thinking theologically about the issue of transhumanism or what some called the fourth industrial revolution that you're aware of?
Os Guinness:John Lennox has written a book on that.
Scott:Okay. Yeah, John Lennox is a really famous Oxford mathematician and he's Christian apologist I guess. He's outstanding. Yeah. Okay, that's helpful. I've been looking for some myself, just to get my own head around on these issues. But I feel like, it seems very alarming to me. I think in our lifetime, we're going to see, in my lifetime, and Luke's lifetime surely, you're going to see the merger of machine and human in a way that we've never seen before. And, of course, the whole genetic manipulation and things like that.
Dwight:Could you say more on your first point just on the incarnation. I mean, just as you're speaking, I'm thinking about what happens if we all rely on ChatGB.
Scott:ChatGPT.
Dwight:Eventually you become that and so it's actually quoting you in that, but then, if there is no original thinking anywhere, you end up with nothing.
Os Guinness:It's a challenging application. I haven't got the exact numbers. But sociologists say that we can have good face to face relationships up till about 250 people, I may be wrong, or the exact number, let's say it's somewhere around that. Now, that means that when you have churches, Mormons limit the size of their churches. So you have that incarnate relationships. Now, here's the point: To the degree that you go wider, say, multivenues, and hypertechnology, or 500 750,000, mega churches in Korea, whatever it is that allows you to go wider might be the super celebrity preaching, or it might be the genius of technology, you will probably live and die by that. Because we're going beyond our human naturalness. We got to think through these things. What do you gain? And what do you lose? Of course, there are times to go beyond that. Thank God for Billy Graham, who didn't need to speak. You know, my great grandfather spoke in the Irish Revival of 1859. And we have newspaper accounts of him speaking to 25 or 30,000, people from the top of a carriage, no microphone, and all that many people heard and many people came to faith, wow, thank God for modern technology, the radio, the television, the Internet, and so on. But we've got to realize that to the degree we go beyond the face to face and the human, to that degree, we're relying on certain things which have their own costs, and we better be aware of them and lean against them. So the mega-churches, they could grow like that, but only if they brought in genuine cell groups of fellowship, that made up for the enormous size of the other, and so on. So we got to keep that discussion, that conversation going all the time. Otherwise, we will be suckered by our own technology.
Scott:Os I wonder if, again, we want to do some things popcorn style, just because there's so many issues that we've been, wrestling with and talking about, one of the issues that has come up a lot in evangelical circles is this divide between those who on one side tend to be kind of politically engaged, typically on a partisan basis. And on the other side, those who criticize them and say, the higher calling is to not be engaged as partisans, but to love our neighbors. And their approach is one that some people call winsome, or nice are loving, we need to be kind of taking this nonpolitical, nonpartisan and loving, nice approach. And so there's quite a divide on that right now in the church. I'm sure you're aware of that. What are your thoughts on that?
Os Guinness:I'm certainly aware of it. I think that grows out of the history of evangelicalism. I first came here in '68. I was stunned to meet so few people who are aware of what's going on in the counterculture. The one great exception, Carl Henry, and that was right up till the early 70s. After being asleep through much of the 60s. Most Evangelical were privatized. They had wonderful, warm hearted pioutism, which was truly wonderful, and not attacking it. But you remember the criticism, it was privately engaging, publicly irrelevant. Now then the wake up years, somewhere around the mid 70s. Birth of the Moral Majority in '75, Roe v. Wade waking people up and so on. Many then swung to the opposite extreme from the privatized to the politicized and not having a developed Christian worldview like you're advocating, they plunged into politics as other people did politics. And you can see that's dogged us ever since. So there's no American-style revulsion against the church, as you had in France, say before the revolution. But increasingly has evangelicalism become politicized, mostly on the right sometimes not left, we're now considered as you know, people of the bad news, not the good news, and we've become toxic. But I think that polarization is wrong. I meet people who quote what you said at the beginning. I just keep my head down. I want to be faithful, like the early church. Well, that's entirely wrong, because the early church were faithful under a dictatorship, an Imperial dictatorship, that gave them no room to move at all! We are free citizens, and therefore, as citizens in a republic that came out of the Hebrew Republic. So if you understand the Hebrew Republic, Exodus, Deuteronomy, every Jew responsible for every Jew, there was a collective solidarity. So Christians who don't vote, Christians who think they're just faithful and keep their heads down. That's a failure of discipleship. They're not following Christ's lordship in the whole of life. And it's a terrible failure of citizenship. So the Christian position has to be thought through much, much more carefully today. The scandal of the church is the we're the most significant majority in the country, and yet we're culturally uninfluential, and that's a scandal before the Lord.
Scott:Yeah, I agree, it's such an odd thing. It really is, just how little influence. Our mutual friend Vishal Mangalwadi was commenting on this to me recently, we were talking about the Supreme Court, and he was talking about how the Supreme Court, there's Jews, there's Catholics, they're secularists, there's no Bible-believing Christians or Protestants. Which given the numbers of those people in the country, you would think, there shouldn't be some representation there, and kind of why is that? And that's just one example of what you're talking about Os. doesn't that go back though, to what you were talking about, I feel like there was such a divide in the Church in the late 1800s, early 1900s, over fundamentalism and the social gospel. And I feel like we still haven't quite got over that, even though you're right, there was efforts out of that by people like Carl Henry, and others. But it still feels like we're in the midst of that to me a little bit. And not fully coming out of that yet.
Os Guinness:We've got to add one more factor. And that's the growth of an oligarchy in this country, in other words, the gap between the elites and the populace, because most ordinary believers are on the side of the populace. And the populace, by and large, are the ones Trump leaning, and so on. That's what's given a bad reputation by the more thinking people. And that adds to it. So we're divided politically, we're divided educationally. We're divided socially. And now sadly, after Trump, we're divided theologically, and that is absolutely tragic. And you have something, that's a milder version of what happened in the 19th century, when the church and the North and the South split along the lines of slavery, that was exceedingly sad and disastrous, and we must not let that happen again.
Scott:Os you talking about the divide, I've heard you speak recently on this divide in America and here you're saying it again, it's at a point where it's as deep and as significance it was during the time before the Civil War. What do you see as the fundamental or the foundational cause of the divide? Where's that stemming from Os?
Os Guinness:Well I argue there are all sorts of factors you could say, social media or reactions to Trump himself, or so called "coastals" against the heartlanders in the Midwest and so on, and the nationalists against the globalist, all of those play a part. But as I analyze it, the deepest division is between those who understand America and freedom from the perspective of the American Revolution, which was largely, sadly not fully, think of slavery, Biblical, and those who understand American freedom from the perspective of ideas coming down from the French Revolution. So postmodernism, the sexual revolution, identity, going down the line, they are all the heirs of ideas coming from the French Revolution. Now you put that in biblical terms, the apostle Paul says, to the Galatians, "Who's bewitched you? You started with the gospel of grace. And now you're following another gospel." And I'm saying, essentially to America, who's bewitched you? You came to freedom through one revolution. And now you're following another revolution. But the big difference is, where is the leader who's saying all this? We have people fighting CRT, or this, that, and the other, and there was all the separate scandals, outbreaks and so on. But there's no one Lincoln-like, or Churchill-like, whatever, who's putting the whole issue in terms of the national contest. And that really disturbs me living here and watching, I said it once to table full of Congressmen, they all looked at each other. Which of you will be the Lincoln? There isn't one. There isn't one in the church.
Scott:Yeah. Os, you talk about the two revolutions. And it seems to me that even beyond that the deeper divide is that the American Revolution was heavily influenced by the Bible, and by Christianity. It wasn't seeking to abolish it in any ways. And the French Revolution was quite secular, it was not just an overthrow of the king, but it was also an overthrow of the church, which had been seen to become corrupt and things like that.
Dwight:Are you saying that theological division is in the evangelical church?
Os Guinness:What do you mean by that?
Dwight:The French Revolution, a theology that would, if there is a theology that would support the French Revolution and the American Revolution, the roots of those two things, you're saying that's the difference? And then you're saying there's a theological difference in the church? Unpack that for us.
Os Guinness:yeah, absolutely. You can look at differences all over the place. I mean, Scott has started with the most important the two different sources, one, the Bible, the other, Enlightment. You can look at their different views of
humanity:Biblical revolution, heavily realistic. That's why you have checks and balances, separation of powers and medicine. But the issue today, and this is to answer your
question, Dwight:Justice, both the radical left, and we as followers of Jesus, fight injustice, but in entirely different ways. And I've been on calls with pastors and I said to him, at the end of the call, you brothers have drunk the Kool Aid. They heard the word justice, leaped to their feet and saluted, not realizing that the word means nothing unless you put content into it. So you can unpack the differences. I mean, the radical left analyzes discourse, speech, looking for the oppressor and the victim. You weaponize the victim, not as an individual but as a group. And then remember, God is dead and truth is dead in postmodernism. So all you have is a conflict of powers, power against power. What's the outcome? The Romans were very clear on that. If you look for peace, the only way you'll have it is when you have a power that can put down every other power. That's what the Romans called"The peace of despotism", which is why radical left has never succeeded in its revolutions and never ended in is oppressions. Now, we are followers of Jesus and therefore of the prophets and our Lord, they address truth to power, call for repentance and an about turn on the issues and forgiveness and reconciliation. Now you unpack all the deep Biblical words, You know, one of the mysteries of history historians say, why didn't humans object to power and the abuse of power more? And the answer is probably very simple: Power is a spectacle. It is spectacular, a great general or a great intellectual or a great sportsman are so amazing and beyond most of us, we bow to it. But the first great voices against power are the Hebrew prophets. And their approach is quite different from the left. So yes, all too often call it wokism, that's a nice term for the Cultural Marxism, is they're in many churches.
Scott:Yes. And the other side of it Os is you're right, back to that, you're speaking of"Who's the leader who will passionately and wholeheartedly defend the American Revolution and the founding issue of the American Revolution?" Which again is the Bible. You're right, who is that? Which of the two political parties does that? You might say, well, the Republican Party, but I don't see it doing that. I mean, it's talking about business and taxes and things like that. But it doesn't even seem to have this issue on its radar, it should be somebody in the church. But of course, if the church speaks this way, they're going to be labeled, as we talked earlier, they're gonna be labeled a Christian nationalist, and kind of silenced in different ways. So you're right, like, who are the champions? I'm think I'm wondering that myself, Os right now.
Dwight:But the essence is who has a truly biblical worldview that's expansive and deep?
Scott:And just believes that, God isn't my truth, but it is the truth. And if you're gonna have a free society, you've got to build it on that foundation and nothing else.
Dwight:Because we talk about it all the time, but do you do really hold to that?
Scott:Right.
Os Guinness:A lot of people have a good biblical worldview, but they don't speak out.
Dwight:Why not?
Os Guinness:Well, many reasons. Speak out today, you'll be mercilessly assaulted. My wife and I had lunch with one of the most magnificent Senators, who is a deep follower of Jesus. He said, The worst thing of being up here is the unrelenting, 24/7 vicious negativity you get every day of the year. Where's your down?
Luke:So, as a young person listening to you, this all makes this all makes sense. I'm following you. But what are the application steps? And I think there's definitely that fear of that relentless assault that'll come from the canceled culture. How do we approach that fear while also applying this in applying a biblical worldview into our day to day lives as believers?
Os Guinness:Luke, you mentioned that your generation, the younger generation, and they're many people younger than you, but if you look at America, one of the things that's needed in a constitutional or covenantal Republic is transmission, passing faith down, passing freedom down. And that is broken down with the younger generation. So you look at say, people going into seminaries, the illiteracy of even people trying to go to seminaries, let alone other areas, is quite appalling. We have broken down in terms of handing on the faith and handing on freedom. So your generation has got to reexplore and rediscover these things. Now, I'm excited, I'm not just negative. If the West declines, and the current book on writing is on the crisis in the West, not all up for the church. As you all know, the church is global, very, very strong in many parts of the world. We've got to think of the future of humanity. And as you look at the things that work for a free and a just and humane society, they're all there in the Scripture. We should be the most excited people around, with our views of human dignity, truth, words, freedom, justice, peace, going down the line, we should be popping out of our skins with excitement about the gifts of the Gospel we have to share with the future of the world!
Luke:With that encouraging call to action, I think that is a good place to wrap up the first half of this discussion with Dr. Os Guinness. As I mentioned in the introduction, we had the split this interview up into two parts because as you'd probably expect, we had a hard time wrapping up the discussion and we went well over time. I guess time flies when you're having fun, or in my case when your mind is being blown with every new topic. If you'd like to listen to the second half of the discussion, tune in next Tuesday right here on Ideas Have Consequences at 5pm Mountain Standard Time or for the global audience. That would be 5pm UTC-7. Sorry again for cutting off the discussion a little bit abruptly. I hope you're able to listen to the second half next week when it comes out though. For those of you who'd like to learn more about Os's new book Zero Hour America, please visit this episode's landing page, where we have included links to all of the resources we mentioned in this episode, as well as many of Os's other books that apply to today's discussion on the current cultural topics that many American Christians are seeking answers to and asking, as well as for the global audience issues that will if they're not already affecting you as well, as always the landing pages linked in the description below this episode. Thank you so much for listening to the first half of this discussion with Dr. Os Guinness. We'll see you next week on Tuesday. Ideas Have Consequences is a podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance to learn more about our ministry you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, On YouTube, or on our website which is disciple nations.org
