Ideas Have Consequences

Application Discussion: The Consequences of Killing God

• Disciple Nations Alliance

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Following this week's discussion with author, writer, and speaker John Stonestreet, we wanted to leave you with some practical application steps you can take away from the episode. Join us for this post-show discussion as we try to get practical.

Scott Allen:

Well, welcome again. This is the after show of Ideas have Consequences the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. We just finished up a terrific conversation with John Stonestreet. If you haven't listened to that, I encourage you to go back and listen to that first. It was one of those conversations that we thought, wow, that was so rich and so powerful. John is such a thoughtful person, such a deep, like-minded kind of spirit that we have with him.

Scott Allen:

And yet we also felt that we were talking about broad movements of history and that perhaps that left people kind of wondering what do I do with that? How do I live, you know, in this particular moment, given these broad sweeps of history that we were talking about? And so we wanted to just keep the discussion going with Luke and Darrell and I to talk about that. How do we begin to put feet to some of the things that we were talking about today?

Scott Allen:

And one of the things that I think of often is that God is, you know, he is sovereign over history, right, and the times and the seasons. We talk a lot about Kairos and there's chronology time and there's Kairos time. You know there's a fullness of time and God's you know he's sovereign over all of that. And, yes, we do live at a time when these horrible ideas of people like Friedrich Nietzsche and Marx and Darwin, they have trickled all the way down through all of our institutions. They've shaped the curriculum, the government and the policies and now they've shaped the common man and people are living or trying to live with these ideas in all sorts of really—.

Darrow Miller:

In the reality of these ideas, in the reality, the consequences of these ideas.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, they're living out the consequences of them and trying to make a life, and they can't, I mean because these are not livable ideas. You can't live in a world without truth and love, and that's what they're trying to do. But that's the time that we're living in, right, and that's not an accident. That's our time. This is the time that God has raised each one of you that are listening to my voice, right? This is the time that God's put you here. Then the question becomes what do I do? How do I live in this time? What are some things I can do to not just survive or make it through, but to make a difference in this time? So, with that posing Darrell, what are your thoughts? What are some things that people can do? What are my thoughts?

Darrow Miller:

Well, what I was thinking is two things with phrases that John used during the podcast. He referred to Nietzsche's that ideas take time. Nietzsche's saying I've come too early. The ideas are there, but it's going to take time until you see the outworking of these ideas, and then maybe people will hear my message and that phrase ideas take time I really want to reinforce that. You might have been listening to our discussion with John and saying, oh they're, they're talking about all this stuff way up here. Well, yeah, it, it's, was way up here a hundred years ago. Was way up here with darwin.

Darrow Miller:

Uh, it was way up here with, uh, the cultural marxists it was kind of an academic theory and it's been the academic theory, but it's gone from there to the universities, to the teacher colleges, to the schools and now it's down for the common man.

Scott Allen:

The kids are all going through the curriculum. That's right.

Darrow Miller:

Yeah, the kids are going through the curriculum, they're living out within the framework of that curriculum. Parents are wondering what is going on? Where are my kids getting this stuff? And yeah, this stuff is really practical.

Darrow Miller:

The other phrase that he used he referred to Francis Schaeffer, who was my mentor. He referred to Francis Schaeffer, who was my mentor, and he said that Schaeffer kept reminding Christians 50 years ago that we're working off a memory of Christianity. And because ideas take time, it takes time to kill a memory too. Because ideas take time, it takes time to kill a memory too. And the generation that has an understanding of what's going on. They are making conscious decisions based on the truth of Scripture and the reality of what God has made, and they're building, they're creating principles, and from those principles are coming policies that are shaping society. But as the ideas change, at the upper level, the memory, the Christian memory, begins to fade, and so in my generation it was fading, and today we're living at a time where post-modernism is coming in full bloom. At the same time, the Christian memory has faded from the culture and even faded from the church.

Scott Allen:

And when we say that, darrow too, I think it's just to put that into really practical terms. When we say faded, it means that you've got a whole generation of young people, let's say 30 or under, 20 or under maybe, who've never been exposed to the Bible, never been to church. They couldn't tell you the beginnings of you know what the Bible teaches about, or the principles, the first principles. They just it's completely unknown to them. So that's where you know and it's not being taught through the culture. They're not picking it up through TV shows or books or right you know. That's where people sometimes used to get it right. There was this kind of cultural memory, that kind of filtered through the culture at some level. That's gone now.

Darrow Miller:

Yeah.

Scott Allen:

So they're not getting it at all right.

Darrow Miller:

They're just nothing there, well, and it's not just the culture as a whole it's the church, yes, and of course it's come into the church, right?

Scott Allen:

Yes.

Darrow Miller:

Well, and the church largely sees the Bible as a devotional book. It doesn't recognize any longer that Western society was born out of biblical worldview, out of the Bible. The church doesn't understand these things and that makes it even more of a dilemma. The culture has been lost because the church has failed to disciple the nation, and the church has failed to disciple the nation because the memory of where these things have come from has been lost.

Scott Allen:

So what does this mean for the average person? Listening, because the question that's going to come up what do I do? How do I respond to all that? How do I live? What are your thoughts? I mean, i've've got things I'd like to say too, but go ahead, yeah.

Darrow Miller:

I would say we need to begin to take the Bible more seriously, not just as a devotional, but as the owner's manual. When you buy a car, you get an owner's manual. When you buy a car, you get an owner's manual. And when God created the heavens and the earth and he made human beings and he put us on this planet, made in his image, the image of God, he didn't leave us alone. He gave us an owner's manual, and the owner's manual is the Bible and we can. I often use the illustration that the Bible is like an onion you have the skin and you pull that off and there's another layer and you pull that off, and another layer and another layer. And I think many of our listeners now can say, oh, I've read that passage before, but I've never understood it this way, because we can go deeper into the Word of God than we have.

Darrow Miller:

All of us are at a place in society. We are school teachers, we're nurses, we are engineers, we're homemakers. We're nurses, we are engineers, we're homemakers, we're businessmen and women. We need to start studying the Bible vocationally to see what it has to say about what does it mean to be a godly businessman, not to be a Christian who's a businessman.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, this is what I wanted to. What does it mean to be a?

Darrow Miller:

godly Christian, a godly businessman.

Scott Allen:

And that goes beyond just being a good kind of moral businessman, Darrow.

Darrow Miller:

This is where the owner's manual thing?

Scott Allen:

I think, yes. I think people would say, yeah, the Bible is the owner's manual, but the owner's manual to do what? And they would say on how to live a good spiritual life or to be saved. They wouldn't say it's the owner's manual on how to be an engineer or a businessman, or an educator, and that's the point.

Scott Allen:

That's a false—that's not a false thought, but that's an unknown thought to them. Like, what do you mean? And so this is? Yeah, this is where I think we need to all be learning that the Bible is the owner's manual for how you do those things, and there are principles from the Bible that should lay at the foundation of all of these things. And this is, by the way, this is where you begin to engage in the culture, is where you're at right.

Darrow Miller:

So if you are in the classroom— yeah, it's not somewhere else, it's where you're at.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, if you are a mechanic, start there and get rid of this idea that this is just a place where I earn money, or this has nothing to do with culture or living Christian faithful lives. No, that's where you're at, that's where you begin, but you have to use the Bible as your owner's manual for how you do that. And just to give one illustration of this, you know, one of the most profound biblical principles is you could call it the principle of human dignity that all people, regardless of right, their skin color or their sex or their social status, are made in the image of God. They have dignity, their lives have purpose. God loves them. This only comes from the Bible. No other religion, no other belief system has this kind of principle in it, and this is true. It's not just a principle, this is true.

Scott Allen:

How do you live that one principle out? As an educator, as a mechanic, as a whatever? You know that one, just one. There's hundreds like that. Do you know what they are? And if you don't, you're building your career, your work, on some set of principles. Okay, it's just not the Bibles, they're somebody else's right, and so it has to start there, doesn't it? Darrell, go ahead. I'm just underscoring what you were saying.

Darrow Miller:

I didn't mean to rip the mic out of your hand. One of the simple things he said in regard to this, Scott, is you can tell a lot about a person by how they pass somebody in a revolving door. It's that simple.

Scott Allen:

Explain that.

Darrow Miller:

Yeah, if somebody's going through the revolving door when you are, you're there for two seconds. Are you cramming the door forward because you're in a rush and you're trying to get through the door and they're being pushed at the back to get out of the door? Are you being civil as you go through the door, are you acknowledging the presence of another human being who's a foot and a half from you in the revolving door? You can tell a whole lot about a person by how they pass somebody in a revolving door. Person by how they pass somebody in a revolving door. And so it is the application in your vocation. Start studying the Bible to see what it has to say about your vocation. That can be a lifelong process. When you have your devotions, you look through that lens at the scriptures.

Scott Allen:

And you might think well, what difference does that make? But this is where it starts. It starts in your family and it starts with the people that you influence in the place that you're working Right. That's right you can't if you change the whole culture, but that doesn't change. No, it starts in these small places, very locally, so, and that's something that is where you can do something.

Darrow Miller:

you see, and it may be costly. That's part of the thing that we're afraid of.

Darrow Miller:

We don't want to pay a cost. We want our life as a Christian. Our relationship with Christ is the cherry on the cake. We've got a good life, everything's going well, we're doing well, as the way our cultural matrices are, and we're a Christian and we go to church and we have these wonderful times of worship. Have these wonderful times of worship? No, if you begin to think biblically about your vocation and you start living that out, you may create some ripples that the people who are your employers may say now why are you doing that? Or the culture may look at you and say what are you doing that? Or the culture may look at you and say what are you doing that? For? I think of a guy I met here.

Scott Allen:

I mean male, female is a good example, right now that people are rubbing up against. I was just talking to a person that was working in the state government in the state of Oregon, working in the capital in Salem, and everyone in the capital now has to use all of the transgender pronouns. You're required to do it. He's a Christian. The Bible says God made them male and female In his image.

Darrow Miller:

He made them Male and female.

Scott Allen:

That's a principle. Made them male and female. That's a principle. That's a truth. That's the truth. There isn't some giant spectrum that you can kind of decide.

Darrow Miller:

you're made male or female, you know, and how do you live that out as a teacher or this person? You've just mentioned where the policy of the company is.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, and you can say I'm just going to keep my head down. That's one option. I would say it's not the best option. And I go back to that parable Darrell of the green grocer that we talk often about. And this is a story from the Cold War, from Václav Havel, who used to be the prime minister of the Czech Republic and he was a dissident against Soviet totalitarianism and tyranny. And he tells the story of this grocer who kept his head down, you know, and he had to go along to get along or else he would lose his grocery store and his livelihood. And part of the way that he had to go along to get along is he had to put that picture in the window of the store. You know that read the old Marxist slogan, you know workers of the world unite. And if he didn't have that displayed then he wasn't upholding the party line and the dominant narrative and he was a threat and he would be expected to pay if he took the sign down. So he kept it up.

Darrow Miller:

He could lose his business.

Scott Allen:

He kept it up, but he didn't believe it. He knew that it was wrong, that it was causing these huge problems in the culture. And then one day it dawned on him that you know that nothing is going to change. Nothing is going to change unless I start with my own business, with my own life, and I take the sign down. And he called it living in the truth. You make a decision to live in the truth. You're not up there fighting a culture war, yelling at people or screaming, You're just taking the sign down. I'm not going to give my assent to that lie because it destroys people. Yeah, go ahead.

Darrow Miller:

Okay. Well, when Jesus in John 8, 31 and 32 is speaking to the Jews and he says to them if you continue in my word, you'll be my disciples, indeed. So he's making a distinction between believers people who raise their hand and say I believe in Jesus and disciples. And what makes a disciple? Someone who continues in his word and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So what Christ is teaching is about truth, and that truth is where freedom is born. And so the word if you continue in my word is the word to abide in, to live in my word. And that has two ways of interpreting. One is I continue, I live in God's word, I study his word, but the other is on the application side. Yes, I am acknowledging the truth as I apply it by taking that sign off my window or putting a sign on my window that says something else, and it's that simple. And that's where we have this wonderful discussion with John Stonestreet. But how does that apply to the common person?

Darrow Miller:

Yeah, I really think this is such an important point. It comes to this point.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, and it's a decision that everybody has to make. It's very personal. It's very personal.

Darrow Miller:

And it's often very difficult.

Scott Allen:

Because the direction of the culture it's moving fast in a very destructive, non-christian way and everybody has to decide am I going to just keep the head down, go along with that? I like John's illustration of the undercurrent when you're swimming in the ocean Just keep going along with that pull, hardly, without even being aware of it, you know or am I going to, as part of the reason God's called me here at this time, is to just put my flag down and say no, and no matter what the cost is, I'm going to speak truthfully. I'm going to do it in love, I'm going to do it prayerfully, in the hope that whoever hears and responds would be rescued from these demonic lies. You know, it's really a love-motivated. This is where we were talking about.

Scott Allen:

We can't separate truth and love, but I'm going to I think this is a time, for we do need people to be dissidents, to take the signs down, to stand in front of the tank, as you remember that famous, unknown Chinese man did in Tiananmen Square, and I'm just going to stand here. You know, a very simple act. Yeah, very simple, very personal. It is absolutely profound Tiananmen Square and I'm just going to stand here.

Luke Allen:

You know, Solzhenitsyn— A very simple act.

Darrow Miller:

Yeah, very simple, very personal. It is absolutely profound yeah exactly.

Scott Allen:

If you don't, if nobody does, then we know what's going to happen. It's inevitable, it's going to roll over the entire culture, it's going to wash over us and it's going to lead to just unbelievable destruction. So, what do you do? I think this is a time for knowing what you believe and being willing to stand, and I think we can do that, daryl, partly because we know that our lives are in God's hands and he loves us and nothing's going to separate. I mean, we have a foundation for being—I'm not a courageous person, but we have a basis for being courageous, don't we? And I think of—I mean, you have personal experience with this, darrell. You've taken choices in your life that have landed you in jail, right, you know so.

Luke Allen:

And yet when you told me that story the first time of how you landed in jail, mr Miller is you said you never felt so alive. The truth will set you free. That's really cool, is like there's something about living this out that really does set you free.

Scott Allen:

And that's the story of the green grocer Luke. When he took that sign down, he discovered that same thing that Darrow did and that you will as well, and that is when you live in the truth. There's a good that comes from that. In your own personal life, You're making an announcement to the world.

Darrow Miller:

You're living with integrity. Of what truth is. There's a good that comes from that. In your own personal life, You're making an announcement to the world of what truth is.

Scott Allen:

You're living with integrity and it's like no matter what it costs me, my business or whatever else it is going to cost you, but what I'm gaining is better. Is that kind of what you were saying, darrell, there when you said I've never been so free?

Darrow Miller:

I've never felt so alive. I was standing with my hands behind my back in handcuffs, with policemen standing in front of me with guns, and I was there with probably 100 other people grandparents, single teenagers, myself looking at this. Why were we arrested? Because we had protested an abortion clinic and we stood and said this is wrong, this is evil. And if you read the other day in the paper, a woman who did something similar, a pro-life activist, went to an abortion clinic and she was just sentenced a few days ago to 10 years in prison. She's seen as a terrorist today. Is she a terrorist? No, she's seen as a terrorist today. Is she a terrorist?

Scott Allen:

No, she's a Christian who understands the significance of human life and that we're made in the image of God. That's the principle, and she was willing to stand on it publicly.

Darrow Miller:

She was willing to stand on it at an abortion clinic and in our climate today, she was arrested and given like a 10-year sentence in prison. I was released after a few hours when I was doing that, but that shows where our culture is today and it's going to continue to go tighter and tighter, greater and greater tyranny, until we, the people, individual people, individual Christians, stand and say no, I'm not going there.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I think that's a big part of the time that we live in, and so, when it comes down to practical, how do I put this into practice? Two things, I think, as we wrap up this little after show. One is you just have to know the truth about what you believe. You have to make that Bible your owner's manual, and not just for certain subjects that seem spiritual, like personal holiness or salvation. Yes, it's the owner's manual for those things.

Scott Allen:

It's also the owner's manual for everything, everything else. Do you know what you believe about these things? If you don't, if you haven't thought about it, you're being shaped by non-Christian thinking in these areas. You just are, it's going to be one or the other, okay, and we can't go along with. If you're being shaped as a teacher by non-Christian thinking coming from a guy like Palo Freire or wherever, you can't keep going along with that. You have to say what are the biblical principles that I build education on? And, by the way, that's just. I'll put another plug in for what John's doing there at the Colson Center, where that's what they're doing there with that program to educate teachers in.

Darrow Miller:

Educators yeah.

Scott Allen:

Educators in biblical worldview, principles, so that they know. If you're a pastor, by the way, and you're listening to this, that's part of your job is to equip your flock so that they can live out these true principles of the Bible, these true definitions, in their places of work. And if you're not doing that, they're working out there in those areas, largely probably according to secular, postmodern or whatever it is. Principles, whatever it is, principles you know. So there's that. And then having the courage, as we talked about, the courage to live those out, regardless of the cost. I think you know.

Scott Allen:

And just be that person who says I love that quote from Solzhenitsyn so much. Let the lie come, let it come, but not through me. Right, like, nope, it's not good, I'm going to draw the line right here and I'm going to make a commitment. It's not going to come through me, and I think that's the call in many ways for all of us right now. Are you willing to make that call? Not through me, because there's going to be a cost with that, but there's a gain too with that. You live in truth. You live in truth, you live in freedom. Luke, final thoughts from you on this?

Luke Allen:

Yeah, I mean, I just want to echo everything you guys are saying. I mean, who are you trying to please? I think a lot of like John was saying at the beginning, it feels like we're playing whack-a-mole. Sometimes Culture's getting chaotic, it's all over the place. It's Pride Month, and then it's all over the place. You know, when it's it's pride month, and then it's the, the protest down the street, and then it's the abortion argument, and then it's, you know, ukraine, and you can't keep up. Uh, it feels like. So what that often leads to is, um, lead it to passivity just shrug your shoulders and say it's just overwhelming, I can't yeah yeah or um yeah, fear.

Luke Allen:

Fear is definitely a fallback. And yet yet who do you fear? Who are we called to fear Fear?

Scott Allen:

God, key question right there.

Luke Allen:

All other fear is not on the table. We're called to only fear God, amen. And if you fear anything else, you're fearing man most likely.

Scott Allen:

Who do you fear?

Luke Allen:

So, yeah, fear God and walk in that and if you can do that, yeah, you live for the audience of one and therefore honor him and please him and speak the truth, and that shows a true fear of the Lord.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, well, that's hard times, but in many ways it's exciting times too, you know, because it's an opportunity for us to really live, you know, and because it's an opportunity for us to really live, you know, to receive that joy that comes from really living, you know, out our deepest beliefs and really honoring Christ in that way. And I hope we can all do that and I hope that what we say here can just encourage you in a small way to do that. Darrell, any final words?

Darrow Miller:

Yeah, yeah, know, if you're alive and listening to this. I just think of the phrase in Esther. You have been born for a time such as this. It's not an accident that you are living at this moment in history and that God has made you a unique human being for this time, and how does he want to use you at this moment of time?

Scott Allen:

Amen, it's all so true. So thanks for listening, guys, and we look forward to having John back on and picking up the discussion again. Thanks, luke, thanks Daryl it's great to be with you guys today, and thank you for listening all to another after show of the Ideas have Consequences podcast you.