Ideas Have Consequences
Everything that we see around us is the product of ideas, of ideologies, of worldviews. That's where everything starts. Worldviews are not all the same, and the differences matter a lot. How do you judge a tree? By its fruits. How do you judge a worldview? By its physical, tangible, observable fruit. The things it produces. Ideas that are noble and true produce beauty, abundance, and human flourishing. Poisonous ideas produce ugliness. They destroy and dehumanize. It really is that simple. Welcome to Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of Disciple Nations Alliance, where we prepare followers of Christ to better understand the true ideas that lead to human flourishing while fighting against poisonous ideas that destroy nations. Join us, and prepare your minds for action!
Ideas Have Consequences
Understand & Embrace a Biblical Worldview with Dr. Jeff Myers
Have you ever pondered the essence of your worldview, its framework, and how it influences your reality? Do you have a biblical worldview? If not, what worldview are you viewing the world through? Our guest, Dr. Jeff Myers, President of Summit Ministries and author of Truth Changes Everything, embodies the journey of discovering and embracing the transformative Biblical worldview. This episode peels back the layers of postmodern thinking, its impact on faith, self-perception, and the role of Summit Ministries in shaping young minds to champion Biblical truth. During the conversation, we challenge misconceptions surrounding worldview, biblical justice, truth, and societal transformation. Join us and Dr. Myers on this enlightening journey to understand and embrace a Biblical worldview.
Go deeper with the transcript and recommended resources on the Episode Landing Page!
If your theology is correct, then it will have something to say about the nature of reality itself, which will then give you some indication of what gives life value. It seems to me that if you can't, if your worldview can't help you grapple intelligently with those questions, then it's either that you don't understand it very well or it's not very well-formed.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of Ideas have Consequences, the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. On this show, we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world to all the nations, but our mission also includes to be the hands and feet of God, to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the Church has largely neglected this second part of her mission and today most Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Scott Allen:Welcome again to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. My name is Scott Allen, I'm the president of the DNA and I'm joined today on our podcast by my team members and friends, dwight Vogt, luke Allen, and our very special guest today is Dr Jeff Meyer. Dr Meyer is the president of Summit Ministries and I trust that many of you have heard of Summit Ministries.
Scott Allen:In this world of biblical worldview and discipleship, summit Ministries is really just one of the most prominent and influential ministries in this space that exists in the United States and around the world, and it's been such a blessing for us to know Dr Meyer. Jeff, I want to call you Dr Meyer because I so admire your work, but I also want to call you Jeff because, anyways, call me Jeff. Thank you, I'll do that. Yeah, jeff. Anyways, it's been great for us as ministries to get to know one another better over the last few years and I know you had Darryl Miller come out a few years ago and he was with you with one of your trainings in Colorado Springs and I know that was a big blessing for him, and so thanks for that and just, we really value that kind of growing collaboration and hope that it can continue, but it's just great to have you on with us today.
Jeff Myers:Well, I hope for a continued collaboration as well. We loved having Darryl Miller here and we love the work that you do. It is connecting truth and relationship which is one of our core passions at Summit Ministries. In fact, we actually I'm looking at it right now a picture of a DNA double helix that I have on my wall on the other side of the camera to constantly remind me that the DNA of influence is two strands. It's truth and relationship, and if we do nothing else in a day, we are to connect truth and relationship for somebody somewhere.
Jeff Myers:And you do that in very practical ways that involve economics and pastoral ministry and worldview. It's really remarkable.
Scott Allen:Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I'm often reminded, and I believe I heard you say this too recently and I thought that's just so good. We're so like-minded on this. But when we think of truth which is the title of your new book, by the way Truth Changes Everything how People of Faith Can Transform the World in Times of Crisis. We're looking forward to talking to you about your new book.
Scott Allen:But the concept of truth it can be so academic, right, and yet as Christians we have to be reminded that it's relational. It's a person, the person of Jesus Christ, who said I am the truth, and so we have to think about it differently, not so much academic as just relational and personal. So it's a great reminder. Yeah, dr Meyer, for our listeners who aren't familiar with yourself or with Summit, I'd like to just start there and I'd like to give you some time just to introduce yourself, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about this as well. Just kind of tell us about your background, where you come from, your kind of your family, educational background, whatever you want to get into there with that. But also I'd love to hear, as a part of that, how God led you to your current ministry in this area of biblical worldview, discipleship and summit ministries.
Jeff Myers:Well, it all ties together, Scott. The central aspect of this is I was born in a pretty tough place in Detroit, michigan, at a time when riots were spreading across our city, more people were killed, more people went to the hospital, more people were arrested, more buildings were destroyed in my hometown, in Detroit, michigan, when I was a small child, then in all of the United States put together in the year 2020. It was a city on fire. It was a terrible place to grow up.
Jeff Myers:I remember being offered hard drugs for the first time at seven years of age. I remember watching the body of a heroin overdose victim be wheeled out of the house across the street. I remember cowering under my bed as gunshots rang out in the street and my parents, who are from Kansas and Oklahoma, decided this wasn't worth the career opportunities they thought it might provide. So we moved back to Kansas, which sounds ideal and it was in many ways, but it's also culture shock for a kid who grew up in Detroit to move from a city of 1.7 million people to a city of 17,000 people, from a church of 2,000 people and this is sort of the important part of it to a church that was so small that our family of four increased attendance by 20% by walking in the door. It was a little country church. I knew the people there loved me. They did things for us. They had us to their home, they fed us. They started a youth group, in fact, for my brother and me.
Jeff Myers:But as I got into high school I became dissatisfied with what was happening in that little country church. It seemed very important for them to teach on things like women not wearing jeans, things like that. I heard sermons on that. But I was on the debate team in high school, so I'd go to a debate tournament on the weekend and in between debate rounds my friends and I were talking about the ups and downs of the philosophy of Frederick Nietzsche. Well, you know, I'd go to church and ask does anybody know what Christianity has to say about guys like Frederick Nietzsche? And they're like Fred who we never met that guy, you know.
Jeff Myers:And I thought not only do these people not have the answers, they don't even know the questions. That was in my arrogant high school age mind. That's how it went down. So I decided that, without being rude about it, I would just graduate from church when I graduated from high school, which is something that happens to a lot of young adults. We think possibly up to 70% of young people who were significantly involved in church in their high school years are no longer even attending by the time they reach their mid 20s. They have completely lost the plot.
Jeff Myers:But my parents had heard about this program in Colorado called Summit Ministries. They asked if I wanted to go to Colorado for two weeks and that sounded great to me and they said they might have answers for you. So I walked in the front door I met Dr David Noble, the founder of Summit Ministries, and I said to him I hope you have a lot of answers because I have a lot of questions. And I look back at that now and think, oh, that was quite rude. What a way to introduce yourself to this renowned philosopher. But I was desperate and he responded in a completely unexpected way. He didn't say look, just sit and listen, we've got the answers. He said at Summit we aren't afraid of questions.
Jeff Myers:I had never in my life met a Christian who wasn't afraid of big questions.
Jeff Myers:All the Christians I knew were afraid of big questions the Christian teachers in my high school, the Christian students in my high school, even when I went off to college.
Jeff Myers:So to meet a group of people who were interested in exploring the truth and weren't afraid of questions but weren't afraid of the realization that the Bible really does convey the truth to us, especially in the person of Christ, reconciling all of these philosophical ideas that people have worried about for thousands of years. Well, I just knew I found my tribe, so I continued to be involved with the program, came back as a student a second time. In fact, it was in that second trip that I really look back to as the time when I began a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and then, over the years, continued to be involved, helping develop curriculum, speaking on behalf of the ministry and then being on the board, being a speaker at Summit Ministries. And when Dave Noble retired, he very graciously handed the baton to me. So for 12 years it's been my privilege to take the seed that he planted and to grow it in all kinds of new exciting ways.
Scott Allen:Wow, that's great, that's powerful. I didn't realize you grew up kind of in Summit Ministries like that, jeff, that's great. You mentioned the founder, dr Noble. Yes, tell us about him a little bit and just the vision for what caused him to launch the Summit Ministries and just a little bit more about that mission, kind of what was he seeing, what was the need that he was seeing, and how has that changed? Is that pretty much the same today under your leadership, or what's happening today with Summit?
Jeff Myers:Well, I love that question. It actually started with David Noble when he was a college student attending Hope College in Holland, michigan. He heard a chapel talk about communism, went up afterward and said to the speaker that was fascinating, I'd like to know more. And the president of the college, who happened to be there at that moment, said young man, would you like to teach a study group about communism? Now, if you've ever met David Noble, you know that what I'm about to tell you is not hyperbole. He said yes, I would like to teach the study group and to prepare for it. He read the collected works of Marx and Lenin. That's 28 volumes, 500 pages. As a college student, he read them and I know that he read them and I know that he remembered what he read because at many points in time I would ask him I need to find this quote from Lenin or whatever. He would say oh yeah, collected works, volume four read about page 450.
Jeff Myers:You know, he'd be right. Wow, wow. Well, as he read the collected works of Marx and Lenin, he saw that these Marxists were boasting about the fact that they were going to implement their strategy by taking over theology. They were going to take over the seminaries, use people's desire for social justice to convince them that Marxism was true, whereupon they would abandon their belief in God, because belief in God has no place in a Marxist worldview. It's an entirely materialistic view. There's no God, no Jesus, no Holy Spirit, only the physical world exists.
Jeff Myers:And then they were going to take over departments of philosophy, and then they were going to develop a whole new kind of ethics. Then they're going to redefine what makes life valuable. Then they're going to develop a whole different vision of society, of personal psychology, of economics, ultimately of politics, law and history itself. And so David Noble looked at those 10 different areas theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics and history and said the Marxists have a clear plan for how they're going to infiltrate all these institutions and change the world. Do Christians have anything to say about these 10 areas? And you realize that at the time no one had ever compiled this. There were individual thinkers specifically in theology, but not so much in the other areas. I mean, who in the 1950s ever heard of a Christian economist?
Scott Allen:This is the 19, I was going to ask you. This is in the 1950s.
Jeff Myers:This would be the late 1950s yes, so right at the height of the Cold War.
Jeff Myers:in many respects Exactly right. So in 1962, david was able to, through another organization, begin the Summit Ministries program and start inviting students to come out for approximately two weeks at a time and really study a biblical worldview, but also study counterfeit worldviews that are put up against a Christian worldview, trying to take down a Christian worldview, so that they could not only be strong in their faith in what they believe, but strong in identifying and countering the beliefs that propose that a different world exists, a world in which God did not create and a world in which Jesus did not rise from the dead.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, thanks again for joining us today. If you'd like to explore what a biblical worldview is and how you can begin the journey of transforming your mind to start seeing everything through a biblical perspective, we would encourage you to check out our free Biblical worldview training course, the Kingdomizer Training Program, which is available at quorumdaocom and is also linked in the episode landing page. The Kingdomizer Training Program was created to help Christians live out their call to make disciples of all nations, starting with themselves and working out from there. I would recommend this course to any Christian who wants to stop living in a sacred secular divide that limits their faith to only some areas of life, but instead it will help them start seeing everything quorumdao, which means before the face of God, and to start connecting their passions and callings to their faith. This course will help you learn to not only know that the Bible is true, but why it is, and therefore you will gain a whole new confidence to follow 1 Peter 315, which instructs us to always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks us for the reason, for the hope that is within us, yet to do so with gentleness and respect. Begin to have an impact for Christ on your culture, and if it's anything like mine, it is in desperate need of truth and purpose right now.
Luke Allen:Again, to sign up for the Kingdomizer Training Program today, just head to quorumdaocom Again, that is quorumdaocom. Or you can learn more about the course on the episode landing page, which is linked in the show notes. Before resuming the episode, if you could do me a quick favor and hop on the podcast app that you're currently listening on and leave this show a rating interview, that would help us as we continue to share this show with more people. Thanks again for joining us here. On. Ideas have Consequences.
Scott Allen:So, yeah, that's so fascinating. So it was really. He was studying Marxism. That's kind of what launched him into this and saw that the Marxists in the 1950s had a vision for discipling nations. They had an all, if I could use that language. They had an all-encompassing kind of worldview that made sense of every aspect of life, from philosophy to theology, to biology, as you said. But then he saw in the church that that wasn't so much the case. There was biblical thinking about theology but not about these other areas. Is that correct? Did I get that correct? Yeah, that's correct.
Scott Allen:And that's what he was seeing as the need, like we've got to kind of recover it's. That, to me, is fascinating, because I mean, that's a huge part of our ministry too. It's, and we talk a lot about the sacred secular divide and how it's. This isn't part of our historic Christian faith, you know there. You know, if you go back 200 years right or all the way back to the early church, everyone thought biblically about everything. You know, there wasn't so much a divide, but in our time there really is a divide. And so Christians think about the Bible as applying to spiritual things salvation, the gospel, you know, personal spiritual growth, holiness. They don't see the Bible as applying to psychology, history, philosophy, and so because of that, they, when they think about those areas, they adopt kind of by default whatever the culture is teaching on those areas, and so there's this double-mindedness.
Scott Allen:It hasn't really changed since the 1950s and some respects has it.
Jeff Myers:Well, it seems to have been even further diminished. So, look, you study church history. They're all of these brilliant philosophers who were believers, scientists, all through time. But you know, you go back to people like Augustine and Aquinas and I think when we got into the 1800s and the 1900s people said, well, those guys are Catholic, we don't want to have Catholic.
Luke Allen:You know we don't have.
Jeff Myers:Catholics telling us what to do. So they kind of moved away from any basis of Christian philosophical tradition. The fundamentalists made a good run at it. They developed the fundamentals, which were essentially the four books of position papers, trying to respond to issues like Darwinian evolution which were dominant in that day. But then they fractured over issues like eschatology, what happens in the end times, and people just started to divide more and more. Well, if you don't believe in the rapture, then you can't be one of us. So, and if you don't believe in the pre-tribulation rapture, then you can't be one of us. And all of a sudden the church found itself becoming more and more fractured. Billy Graham, carl Henry and others tried to develop, you know, redevelop the emphasis on evangelism, and evangelicalism rose and had a very, very long run of it. But the young adults we're working with today have no sense of any of this, no sense that any of these questions really matter. It's as if their plausibility structure has removed the possibility of biblical truth even from consideration.
Scott Allen:Talk a little bit more about that, dr Maher. Just bring it up to our current time. And what's your passion, you know, as the president and the leader of summit ministries? What? Where do you really wanna take the ministry and what do you see as the big need right now? Is that it what you're touching on right now? Just kind of where our young people are at? You mentioned earlier how many of them are leaving the church. Yeah.
Jeff Myers:There is a strong parallel between the number of young people who are leaving the church, the diminishing number of young people who see a biblical worldview as plausible, and a significant rise in anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and aimlessness. Just to put some statistics to it, 75% of the young adults we work with say they do not have a sense of purpose that gives meaning to their lives. More than 50% say they regularly struggle with anxiety and depression. Clearly, technology and social media fits into this significantly. But I think we find a generation of young adults who have decided that you don't turn, you don't try to seek the truth. Instead, it's all about speaking your truth.
Jeff Myers:Your problem is not that you're lost. Your problem is that you can't articulate. So just learn to say what you think, Learn to defend your space, and then your life will get better. But that isn't in fact what's happening. So now we find ourselves in this divide between what I call the capital T truth idea, that truth exists and can be discovered not easily, but again and the small T truth's idea that each one of us has our own truth. Of course, if you are your own truth and you're lost, that's not encouraging. That's discouraging Because you realize we are the answer we are looking for? Oh, no if we're the answer.
Jeff Myers:We're looking for, then we're in double jeopardy.
Scott Allen:Yeah, you're talking about post-modernism and it's interesting to me to see when Daryl teaches on worldviews. He talks about how ideas there's kind of an upside down pyramid and at the top are the kind of the thought leaders, that kind of originate ideas. So for post-modernism to be people like Foucault or even Daryl.
Luke Allen:Daugh, or, yeah, daryl Daugh.
Scott Allen:and some of these folks that were active in the 1950s and 60s. They filter down through art into media and then they become kind of institutionalized in education, curriculum et cetera, and then eventually they affect everyone kind of the common man and we grow up in these ideas. We don't even know where they came from, we don't know Foucault or Daryl Daugh, but we've become essentially functional post-modern folks.
Scott Allen:And that's where we're at now. Right, these young people have, we're really at the bottom of that. This is the world they've grown up in. This is their worldview, if you will.
Jeff Myers:Yeah, it's almost as if post-modernism sort of diminished humanity's immune system to false ideas and then we all caught the cold of radical autonomy and it's been deadly for these young adults because they don't believe their answers out there to be found anyplace else. They don't believe they have the answers but they're skeptical when someone says you know, as they people should be skeptical if somebody comes up and says I have an idea that will solve all of your problems. It's the theory of everything and I promise you know this is really the thing. You should be skeptical of that. But then to respond to that by saying I am my own God and I don't believe anything that anybody says about anything actually doesn't position you to be stronger against those attacks. It significantly weakens you.
Dwight Vogt:I have a question about the Summit Ministries program. How do you, how has it evolved because of the movement you're describing right now towards strong post-modernism? What do? You do different to get people's attention, or what's your key, and just on that, too, is the ministry focusing specifically on young people.
Scott Allen:Is that kind of the specific audience that you're working with? Yeah, we are focusing on young people and those who train them.
Jeff Myers:Our goal is to equip and support the rising generation to embrace God's truth and to champion a biblical worldview. So how do we do that differently than, say, in the early 1960s? One of the ways I help my team understand it is just ABCD A stands for answers. We encourage students to bring all of their questions like I did when I was a student Summit Ministries, but just make a list solely by you. Have doubts? Write them out, just bring it with you. So we begin by engaging students where they are. We can also bring up the fact. Look, three fourths of you say you don't have a sense of purpose that gives meaning to your life. Are you willing to explore the possibility not just that truth exists and can be discovered, but that Jesus is the truth? Are you actually willing to consider the possibility that there might be barriers that prevent you not only from living a life that's fully committed to Jesus, but to living a life of blessing and flourishing and abundance? Are you willing to acknowledge that that's possible and that it might actually be possible to tear those barriers down? So we begin with that. Then we say, here's, let's build up a system here for you. So B stands for Biblical worldview. We want students to understand that a Biblical worldview, one in which we live in a world that God has created and in which Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, is the most plausible explanation for all of the phenomena, not only of the physical world, but of our mental world and our spiritual world. And then C is counterfeits. We say here are some worldviews that are out there, like secularism, marxism, postmodernism, new spirituality, that attempt to overturn a Biblical worldview to propose that a different world exists. And how will you know? How will you identify these? It's not if someone wants to lie to you. They don't come up and say, hey, I'm going to tell you a lie, but I hope you believe me. They actually say what you believed before is a lie and what I'm telling you now is the truth. That's what Satan did in the garden with the woman, and it's happened ever since. So we have to look at those counterfeit worldviews. And then, finally, d is dialogue. So we actually look back and ask well, how did Jesus do it? Because in three years of earthly ministry he equipped 12 ordinary men to turn the world upside down. And they did it. We get them for 12 years in Sunday school and then they go to college and they walk away from everything that they've learned. What's going on? What did Jesus do differently?
Jeff Myers:And there are several things about the hebraic mode of instruction and critical thinking that we could talk about here, but the most significant of them is just asking questions, using questions as a teaching tool. So we teach students how to ask questions of themselves and of other people, how to dialogue with people who have a significantly different worldview, people who might even think hatefully about you because you embrace a biblical, christian worldview. What do you do? How do you dialogue? So we help them build up their immune system to bad ideas, but then also help them learn how to engage. There's the old story of the counterfeiter. Well, you just teach people to identify the counterfeit bill. That's all you have to do, and the way you do that is by making them so familiar with the real bill that they can instantly see a counterfeit when they sense one. And we say, sure, but that's not what the Secret Service exists to do. They exist to stop the counterfeiters from polluting the currency, right?
Luke Allen:So it's not just about identifying the counterfeit bill.
Jeff Myers:It's about identifying the techniques the counterfeiters use to pollute the currency and destroy the nation, and then stopping them.
Scott Allen:Wow, just on that, it's interesting to me that your ministry began with kind of looking at Marxism and the influence that it was having in the 1950s.
Scott Allen:And when we teach on biblical worldview and the Disciple Nations Alliance, we also do kind of biblical truth over and against the counterfeits and specifically we kind of emphasize because a lot of our audience are in Latin America, asia, africa and we're animism kind of traditional animistic beliefs are still very prevalent fatalism and whatnot, and they're so destructive.
Scott Allen:So we talk about animism, we talk about the Western worldview of just secularism, kind of Darwinian evolution secularism. We haven't talked a lot about Marxism historically and I think the reason it's just speaking personally it's because I went to a university in Oregon that was very secular and liberal and got a heavy dose of Marxist kind of thinking back in the 1980s. But then of course we watched the Berlin Wall Fall and we saw the end of the USSR and I think in my mind I thought, oh, marxism is kind of on the dustbin of history, so to speak. It's lost its plausibility, it's not really that relevant, except for a few places like Cuba and whatnot, and I was so wrong Like I just realized that recently just that the most dangerous worldview that we're still battling is this kind of Marxist worldview. Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Myers:And it's come back.
Scott Allen:It never went away. I think that I thought, like a lot of people yes, it is percolating in our universities, where a lot of the professors identify openly as Marxists, and they have ever since the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. I mean, they didn't stop after the Berlin Wall Fall. I think I thought, oh well, but as soon as these this is just kind of limited to the universities in the West and as soon as students get out, then they kind of leave that Marxist kind of thinking behind, which is what I did. But I was wrong, right, so it didn't happen that way. They've been so effective at discipling our nation with Marxist ideas and it's really had a huge impact in our culture over the last, even five years, you know, yeah.
Jeff Myers:With the social justice movement. Yeah.
Scott Allen:Respond to that? I'd love your thoughts on that. Did you, were you blinded like I was? Or you probably weren't, I imagine, coming from some ministries. But just, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Well, I had a good head start.
Jeff Myers:When I was a kid, I read the Communist Manifesto. Yeah, I just remember thinking I countered it up. This guy uses the word abolish 33 times. It's just an extended rant. This is a statement of faith. Yeah, it's a theology. Yeah, it is a theology. So I knew that when I was still in high school. When I got to college, I was assigned to read Das Kapital by Karl Marx. I don't think I would have read it it's so boring if I hadn't been assigned it. But I'm so glad that my professor it was economics professor who assigned it to read, because we realized very quickly that if, in order for Marxism to work, there must only be the physical universe, no immaterial reality can exist. That's right. There's no God, no Jesus, no Holy Spirit, but no ideas.
Jeff Myers:It's the opiate of the masses, that's right.
Jeff Myers:There's no such thing as an idea ultimately. There's no such thing as innovation, there's no such thing as inspiration. Information is not what matters, so nothing immaterial exists. If you take away that assumption, if you question or prove that it's not true, everything else about the Marxist worldview falls.
Jeff Myers:So, knowing that they're in a precarious position, what do Marxists do? Well, they go back to their roots. One of the roots is in the I don't want to be too technical about it because I'm not actually sure who's listening to this but the Hegelian dialectic. So Karl Marx said you know the idea that history is a conflict between an idea and that it's opposite. And then they clash and they come up with some kind of a compromise and that becomes the new dominant idea. Karl Marx said I like all of that, but it's not moving us toward the world spirit, because no world spirit exists, it's just moving us toward a physical utopia. So he developed dialectical materialism. Well, what does dialectical materialism require? That you take every single idea that's out there, take all the complexity in the world, organize it into two opposing forces and have them fight each other. I don't think anything better explains the battles over social justice than that one principle and the second thing is economic determinism.
Jeff Myers:Marx taught from the beginning. Lenin perpetuated this. It's been taught by every Marxist economist from that time in the 1800s until now, that everything is about economics. You scratch every problem, it bleeds economics.
Jeff Myers:I asked my students here is the battle between the owners of the means of production and the workers? Is that an economic battle? They say yes, of course. Is the battle between the rich and the poor? Is that an economic battle? Yes, of course. And then I'll ask them what about the battle between straights and gays? They're like oh, I'm not really sure. What about the battle between red states and blue states? Oh, I don't know. What about the battle between hip hop and country music? Oh, no, but every battle, every battle is over economics. That was the Marxist principle. So you know, I put theology at the top of my worldview chart. The Marxist will put economics at the top of the worldview chart and say that everything is about economics, ultimately. And so you identify the key groups, you galvanize them, simplify them and then get them to clash with one another, because that's the only way society advances. If you take those two principles, I think you're explaining a whole lot of what happens in the social conflicts of our own day.
Scott Allen:That's right. Yeah, that's really good. Well, I wouldn't mind backing up just a little bit. Jeff and you know, since we share a common kind of passion for worldview and biblical worldview, I would love to have you just how do you define that concept of worldview, kind of for people that are unfamiliar with it, in a simple way, and then even going beyond that to biblical worldview?
Jeff Myers:Yeah Well, so I define a worldview as a pattern.
Jeff Myers:That's the key word a pattern of ideas, of beliefs, of convictions and habits that help us make sense of God and the world and our relationship to God in the world. So an idea is a thought or conception about reality, A belief is an idea that you hold to be true, A conviction is a belief you're willing to sacrifice for, and the habit is how you live based on your convictions. So those things flow in patterns. What you believe about God will determine what you believe about reality itself, which then determines what you believe about society, mental health, economics, law, everything else. Hmm.
Luke Allen:I love that definition. I know that's from a book you wrote a while a Baki co authored or something. What's the name of that book?
Jeff Myers:Yeah, I wrote a book called Understanding the Times. So David Noble, the president and founder of some initial president and the founder of some of the ministries, wrote a book called Understanding the Times. It was my great privilege, when I came to be the president of the ministry, to take that book, to literally take it apart and rewrite it sentence by sentence and update it to current times. But that's when we so David, david Noble defined a worldview as a bundle of ideas, but that I couldn't quite get my mind around that, so I decided to change it and he loved the new definition.
Jeff Myers:But I do think that ideas flow in patterns and I recognize I've been in a lot of different areas. I've been in business, I've been in academia If you want to be successful in any given endeavor in athletics you have to identify the patterns that are at play. So people are used to pattern recognition as a means of achieving success, but I hadn't really seen people apply it to the world of ideas. So a biblical worldview, then, would be a pattern of ideas based on scripture we call a biblical Christian worldview would be sort of a pattern of ideas based on Scripture, plus all of the interesting thinking that Christians have done over the last 2000 years to apply biblical principles to a variety of situations.
Scott Allen:Would you say that everyone has a worldview? I was.
Jeff Myers:Yeah, okay, yep, yeah, I can't think of any exceptions. I tried to actually think of the opposite.
Luke Allen:What if you?
Jeff Myers:say well, I don't believe anything. Then you're actually saying that belief is not important, and that's a belief that's a belief right. Everybody operates as if some explanation exists for the cause and nature and purpose of the universe. Yeah, even if we say nothing means there's no meaning in the world. Then we live based on a pattern of ideas that identify. A belief flows from that conviction.
Scott Allen:Right. So there's no exceptions. We all are operating from some set of ideas that you know, a pattern of ideas in your words, and those ideas drive actions and behaviors. Is that correct? Yes, yes.
Jeff Myers:Now you know, our ministry is located in Manitou Springs, Colorado, which is a little hippie town right at the Foot of Pikes Peak. Yeah, beautiful, it's a beautiful little town, very weird and very very hippie and people at our town.
Jeff Myers:You wouldn't find very many animus. Here you would find people who kind of take in some things about ancestral worship and previous lives and things like that and have kind of put an entrepreneurial spin on it. I call it new spirituality. You got to make it attractive to Americans. You know, if they say nothing matters anymore, so there's no point in doing anything. That's just that a lot of people you know that won't consider that for more than 48 hours until they get real hungry. But but you see, you see, even here, even in the inconsistency, consistency is not a characteristic of most worldviews. It's what people feel compelled by at that moment in time.
Scott Allen:Yeah, you know, one of the things I've been wanting to talk to you about, this, to Jeff is you know, in terms of ministries that are trying to help, let's say, young Christians to put on a biblical worldview, they, I've noticed that they tend to kind of take an approach that's kind of cognitive in the sense that and it's hard to differentiate either what they're talking about from basic biblical theology.
Scott Allen:They'll say, if you, you know, if you memorize these basic points of kind of biblical theology, then you, you know, and you can regurgitate that on a test or whatever it is or a quiz, then you have a biblical worldview right. And I've often struggled with that because I think it's not so much what you know. There we can have quite a gap between what we can, we can, you know, say in our heads and pass a test with, and what actually motivates us. And you know what's driving our lives right, you know, and it's, it's, it's the worldview is really the thing that's driving you. It's, it's not seen. It's seen by what you do, not not so much by what you say, if you know.
Scott Allen:I mean ideally we should have, we should be people of intent, we should be people of integrity, and there's not really a gap there. But but for most of us there, you know there's a gap, you know. So what are your thoughts on that?
Jeff Myers:Well, I have. I have a lot of different thoughts on it. I have a. I have a tough time sometimes with theologians, because you know you can understand, you can you know, you can actually define and put on a test what it means, that of what the hypostatic union is. You know that God and the Jesus is God and fully man at the same time, and still have no sense what a breakthrough it is in terms of world history to say that truth does exist and it's not just a mathematical proposition, it's not just a logical proposition, it's a person, it's Jesus. It seems to me that Jesus didn't teach that way. Jesus wasn't giving theology exams.
Luke Allen:Now.
Jeff Myers:I'm not saying seminarians shouldn't take call, shouldn't take theology exams. I'm a former professor. I know the value of certain kinds of exams anyway for assessing students, learning and and getting beefed up in areas where they might be weak. But but Jesus, he lit people up. I mean he just he set them on fire. He just piled up kindling and then lit it. Piled up kindling and lit it all the way through his entire ministry, larger, through questions.
Jeff Myers:Jesus asked, as far as I can tell, right around 300 questions, as recorded in the Gospels. He was asked 180 some questions. By the way, you only really answered three of them. So you know he he was interested in making people think, not just in telling them what to think. So I don't know that, even as I say it, I thought, oh, that sounded kind of trite, that sounded cliche. But I really think we have to, we have to consider that, we have to realize that if your theology is correct, then it will have something to say about the nature of reality itself, which will then give you some indication of what gives life value. It seems to me that if you you can't, if your worldview can't help you grapple intelligently with those questions, then it's either that you don't understand it very well or it's not very well formed. Okay, yeah, that's great.
Scott Allen:I'd like to and forgive me, dwight and Luke, for kind of dominating discussion. I invite you to just but elbow me out of the way if you want to get your questions in here too. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about your most recent book, jeff, which is titled A Truth Changes Everything how People of Faith Can Transform the World in Times of Christ. Tell us a little bit about that book. I love that title, but why did you write it? Kind of what, what? What prompted you at this time to say, hey, we need a book with this subject, with this focus?
Jeff Myers:Well, scott, there have been a lot of books written on truth and I could have written that book that defined what absolute truth is and gave a defense of it, or the opposite. I've seen this book a lot tear down all of the arguments about relativism, but I thought, yeah, that'd be fine, my mother would read it.
Jeff Myers:My wife would read it because they love me, not because they care about the topic. What's really important about truth? And a couple of things happened. Number one I became very concerned about people around me being fatalistic or apathetic because they believe the times of crises in which we live are irresolvable, that we live in the worst time ever in the history of humanity. There's no disputing in this and there's nothing we can do about it. Please come quickly, lord Jesus.
Jeff Myers:The second thing is I was diagnosed with cancer. Now, that's like setting a countdown clock on your life. I know I have a countdown clock on my life. I know I'm not going to live forever. I know that one out of every one person dies, but I didn't expect it to come that soon, and so I began to ask the question.
Jeff Myers:Well, just in the same way that if you think this might be your last day on earth, there are certain phone calls you would make and you would talk to certain people and say certain things.
Jeff Myers:In the same way, as an author, because I had this book contract hanging in front of me, I asked if this is the last book I ever get to write, what do I want to say? Now? That's kind of a dangerous question, because any book that attempts to be too big can't really adequately cover anything. But I decided that this if we were to just take a book and ask the question, what difference did it make in history that people believed that Jesus is the truth, and see if that might help us in our own times of crises, would that be an interesting book? And I thought it would be. Fortunately, a lot of people have agreed and this book shows how Jesus followers who believe that Jesus is the truth changed the course of history and the value of human life, and science and medical care and art, education, law, politics and even how we understand everyday work.
Scott Allen:Oh man, I love that so much. You know that you're really talking about our particular passion for worldview and biblical worldviews, that it creates, it results in things, it changes things, it changes cultures, it changes lives, and it does so in a way that causes them to have meaning and purpose and begin to flourish. This is not an abstract, academic thing. This is something that's life giving. So I really love that you took that approach. I wonder if you could. You know, as you looked at, some of these individuals were there. Was there one or two that really for you stood out as, wow, that was really powerful, that example.
Jeff Myers:I look at dozens and dozens of different stories and I try to tell them in a way that I thought was fascinating, that I hope the reader will find to be fascinating as well. But here's a story that I used as an example on a podcast with a historian who has written dozens of books, who and I thought, okay, there's nothing I could say on this podcast that this person won't have already heard. And as soon as I finished telling this story, this individual said I have never heard that story before. So here you go. This is one about John Wickliffe.
Jeff Myers:He was a professor at Oxford University. He believed the Bible needed to be printed into English. Nobody else thought much of it at the time. Latin was thought to be a far superior language and English was, in fact, very rudimentary. To translate the Bible from Latin into English would be to vulgarize it. All right that it'd be like adding curse words in every third or fourth word. It would be an offense to God. In fact, it was outlawed. But John Wickliffe decided he should do it. Why? Because he said Moses spoke to God. God spoke to Moses in his own language. Jesus spoke to the disciples in their own language. People today need to hear from God in their own language. So, in order to do it, he completed the English language. There are 1,100 words that are used in the Wickliffe translation of the Bible, which was not from Greek and Hebrew, by the way, it's from Latin. There are more than 1,000 words in the Wickliffe translation of the Bible that are used in English for the first time in the Wickliffe translation of the Bible.
Scott Allen:Say that again, say that again.
Jeff Myers:There are 1,100 words in the Wickliffe translation of the Bible, the English translation, that are used for the first time in English. In other words.
Scott Allen:These are Hebrew words or Greek words that came into the English language through the Bible. They weren't indigenous to the English language at that time.
Jeff Myers:No, they were not indigenous. He invented them or brought them into English, and it's words we use every day like persuasion, mystery, treasure. Those words did not exist in the English language, so he brought them into the English language, essentially completed the English language, and we know the historical impact of that. English is the number one trade language in the world and, if I could just interject, and it literally changed the whole world economy.
Scott Allen:Yeah, but it's not just true of English, it's true of Spanish and French and German and every language that exists. Where the Bible has been translated, new words come into that language. And this is the book I'm working on now is on words and the power of words and biblical words. They open up space that didn't exist before. Take a word like compassion, which is a very biblical word. It's not indigenous in native languages Because we're in our fallen world, we're not compassionate people, we're cruel people. But then this word comes in and it creates a space. You know compassion to suffer together with another, you know it. Just it begins to transform culture. So I'm sorry, I'm just kind of I love it.
Scott Allen:I think we take for granted that's this happened, that you know.
Scott Allen:The Bible got translated into all these languages, including English, and that changed things in a profound way. Yeah, so sorry.
Jeff Myers:No, I love it. I love it. I'm a word nerd. A lot of the students that I have at some ministries tell me oh, I'm so excited to go home and learn the Hebrew alphabet and I'm going to. You know that and it's, but you can, you can you can actually do it. It's. You know these are not. It's not impossible to learn enough about Hebrew or enough about Greek to be able to really significantly grow in your fascination with the intentional nature of Scripture. Yeah, yeah.
Scott Allen:Wow, I just a quick question on the subtitle. We as a team we're talking about this. Before the podcast. You use the word transform how people of faith can transform the world, and we've noticed in the DNA that's a controversial word now because there's a group of Christians that feel like when you use this word like transform culture, that sounds very triumphalistic. Right, you know? Oh, you think you, you know this and that we're not.
Scott Allen:And then they would even go further and say our job really isn't to transform this broken culture, it's to win people for Christ, save them out of the broken culture, get them into church, get them into heaven. But the world's going to hell. So what's the point? It's kind of like the you know you're, you're trying to, you know, paint the deck on the sinking Titanic. That idea, you know when.
Scott Allen:I, when my book came out on social justice is not biblical justice, I got quite a bit of pushback from those Christians because I was challenging Christians to define justice biblically and not according to how it's been redefined in the culture along Marxist lines, and to live that out and to live in a way in their families and communities and cultures that aligned with biblical justice. And I just a number of Christians took exception to this idea that we should be doing kind of anything other than evangelism, basic discipleship, church planting. That was a distraction and I thought I thought we'd kind of gotten beyond that a little bit but I realized, oh no, we haven't, we're still kind of stuck in that. Any thoughts on on that? I love that you use the word frankly, so I'd love to hear your thoughts. How do you respond to Christians that that's that when you talk about biblical worldview and transformation they kind of push back. What do you say to that?
Jeff Myers:Well, when I we did that subtitle and it was, it was controversial even to put the subtitle of the book. So it's true, changes everything, how people of faith can transform the world at times of crisis. It was actually the people of faith question that was bigger because people are like well, what faith you know? So that was a big question. But then the word transform I use just as a word nerd. You go back to the Greek, romans 12, two, for example, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Jeff Myers:The word transform, the Greek word metamorphah. Oh, from which we get our word metamorphosis. It's such a it's such a straightforward word in Greek that even if you didn't know how to read a word of Greek, you could look at that word and figure out that it is the root word for the word metamorphosis. Well what is a metamorphosis means a complete and permanent change into something you were designed to be all along. It is an unfolding.
Jeff Myers:I love that it's not a controlling, it's an unfolding. I am not interested as a Christian in getting control of the world and turning back the clock to the 1950s.
Scott Allen:You're not a Christian Taliban. I am. No, let's just make that clear.
Jeff Myers:I am interested in preserving the core principles that make blessing and flourishing and abundance possible. So I do. I take to heart when somebody says don't forget, people need to know the Lord. They need to. They need to acknowledge that he exists and that he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him, that he, they need to be saved. Don't forget that. Don't just think that by doing good works you can't absolve people of the need for salvation. I take that to heart. I understand that if that's people's motivation.
Jeff Myers:But I also warn against kind of a regrowing new sort of Gnosticism that this world was created by the bad God and then the good God is the one who controls everything else and so our goal is to escape this planet and reunite with the good God. That's not a core principle of a biblical worldview. It never has been. The early church fathers saw this as a problem and they acknowledged it specifically, which, by the way, is why we have the Apostles Creed. It is a line by line refutation of the Gnostic worldview.
Jeff Myers:So I turn people back to the Apostles Creed. That's actually our statement of faith at some ministries. Believe it or not, it's the Apostles Creed. I know a lot of people have a lot of different statements of faith, but we've decided to stick with that. We also outline our convictions and clarify them and all agree to them. What results from that? But if you look at the Apostles Creed and you can still conclude that the only thing people need is to know Jesus personally so they go to heaven instead of hell when they die, then you've missed a big, big chunk of the whole point of church history.
Scott Allen:Yeah, and missions. You know the mission of the church as well, Right, yes, yeah, I mean you're discipling people, True, but what are you?
Jeff Myers:you're discipling them with what and to go where? Those are really two significant questions to me.
Scott Allen:Absolutely Well, listen, we're running up against our time here. I'm sad. There's more that I'd love to discuss. I know Luke and Dwight, I'm sure that's why Cut you guys up completely?
Luke Allen:We'll have another show. We'll have a Luke and Dwight show when we're going to have to. Yeah, I would like that. Yeah, well, let's do that.
Scott Allen:In fact I would love to reschedule again with you, jeff. This has been so rich and just. It just helps me so much and I'm sure Luke and Dwight would agree just to have another great thinker like you just kind of sharpen our thinking. But I want to just encourage people to learn more about Summit Ministries and especially if you have young people that you know of in your home perhaps and this is a great ministry, jeff how can people learn more about what opportunities are available through Summit Ministries?
Jeff Myers:The best way, scott, is to go to summitorg. You'll find out about curriculum resources that we offer. You'll also find out about that 11-day student experience that I described, the one that had such a transformative impact on my life there. I'm using that word again Love, that word. It was very powerful and it's still powerful today. So by the time students finish that 11-day program, 94% say they embrace a biblical worldview 85% one year out, five years out and 10 years out. 85% so as compared to 1% of their peers. So if you knew that kind of program could have that kind of impact, wouldn't you move heaven and earth to make it possible for every young person? You know that's my passion and you can go to summitorg and register young people starting for next summer.
Scott Allen:Yeah, do you do things for adults as well? Are there opportunities for adults, or is it again? Is it just? And when you say young people, we're talking about college age.
Jeff Myers:Yes, I would say our main audience for those courses is to be 16 to 22 year olds, but we do have a program for adults. It's called Summit Base Camp. Okay, notice how we keep using all of the words related to mountains. But Summit Base Camp is a three hour virtual training that we do twice a year to address a biblical worldview of some culturally significant topic. Okay, so we've done them on mental health, deconstruction, life, all kinds of big issues. That's what we have for adults primarily. Right now. We do have a small group course called Now we Live, okay, that a lot of people have probably used in their churches. Already. Hundreds of thousands of people have used that.
Scott Allen:Awesome. Thank you so much for that powerful ministry and for your new book as well. I want to encourage everyone to check out Dr Myers-Jeff's book Truth Changes Everything how People of Faith Can Transform their World in Times of Crisis, which is the times that we are living in right now. You mentioned your battle with cancer. Would you mind just sharing a little bit about where you're at with that right now and how can people pray for you?
Jeff Myers:I thank you for tying that up, because I know there are probably listeners thinking, oh my, what happened? Are you okay? I am now, as of last month, two years in remission from cancer. Oh, praise God, and every day is a gift.
Scott Allen:Wow, yeah, I can't imagine that Must have been just life changing in so many ways. Well, jeff, thank you so much for taking time to be with us today, for what you're doing for God's kingdom, and just for being a kingdom-minded person, just your heart, for just let's walk in relationship with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and see God's name glorified. I really appreciate your spirit. So may God just bless your ministry. Amen, thank you all, and thank you for listening to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nation's Lives.
Luke Allen:Thank you for listening to this interview with Dr Jeff Meyers. If you'd like to learn more about Dr Meyers and Summit Ministries, just head to this episode's landing page on our website, which is also linked down in the show notes. On that page, you can find out more about Dr Meyers' book Truth Changes Everything, his podcast, the Dr Jeff Show and, again, all the amazing opportunities available through Summit Ministries. So, again, all that and more is available on this episode's landing page, which you'll see linked in the show notes.
Luke Allen:Ideas have Consequences is brought to you by the Disciple Nation's Alliance. To learn more about our ministry, you can find us on Instagram, facebook, twitter and YouTube, or on our website, which is DiscipleNationsorg. Again, that is DiscipleNationsorg. Thanks again for listening, and if you'd like to be notified every time we have a new episode come out, just make sure to follow us on the podcast platform that you are listening on right now, and that way you won't miss our upcoming interviews with the likes of Wayne Grudem, the author of Systematic Theology, or George Barnum from the Cultural Research Center. Thanks again for listening to another episode here on Ideas have Consequences.
