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
HUMAN (10 Words to Heal Our Broken World Series)
Humans are not merely animals or radically autonomous agents, and identity groups do not simply define us. It's time Christians challenge our modern culture's false understanding of human dignity and worth by contrasting it with the beautiful biblical definition of humanity. Imagine the impact if Christians could champion what it means to be humans as image bearers of God. This one change could flip our culture of death on its head.
Discover the profound implications of what it means to be human as we discuss insights from Scott Allen's forthcoming book, "10 Words to Heal Our Broken World." As with each discussion on the ten words from Scott's book, we’ll walk step by step through the true biblical definition, discuss the false redefined understanding, and conclude by giving you practical ways you can restore the true meaning of this word in your life, community, and nations. Together, let's celebrate our shared dignity as image-bearers of God and foster a more just and compassionate society for the glory of God and the blessing of nations.
- View the transcript, leave comments, and check out recommended resources on the Episode Landing Page! Updated details about the book will be posted on the Episode Landing Page as soon as they are available!
When you ask the question, who am I? You look to God for the answer to that question, because we are made. You are made in his image, so you look to him. That's what it means to be human.
Scott Allen:Hi friends, this is Scott Allen, president of the Disciple Nations Alliance, and I want to welcome you to another episode of Ideas have Consequences, the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. As we prepare to launch my newest book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World Restoring the True Meaning of Our Most Important Words, we wanted to go through each one of these 10 foundational words that are highlighted in the book, discussing their true meaning as well as how they've been fundamentally redefined in our contemporary culture. Now you might be asking why do words matter? Well, it's because words and definitions shape the way we think and feel, and that, in turn, determines our choices and our actions, and that shapes the kind of culture that we live in, for better or for worse. And so if you want to work for a positive change in culture in society, it has to begin by restoring the true meaning of our most important words.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, thanks again for joining us today. Back on, ideas have Consequences, and this is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. This is episode three of our mini series that we are doing as we are introducing my dad, scott Allen's newest book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World, restoring the true meanings of our 10 most important words. Like I said, this is episode three in this series. On episode one, we introduced the book to you guys, so if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I would recommend going back and starting there, as it will just give you a really clear picture of what to expect during this series.
Luke Allen:Like I said, this book is called 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World. For those of you who forgot, these 10 words are truth, human sex, marriage, freedom, authority, justice, faith, beauty and love. A couple weeks ago, we talked about truth, the first word, and today we are launching into the important word of human. We are launching into the important word of human. So yeah, dad, just to get us started, if you wouldn't mind reading us the two definitions as you presented them in the book. Before we do that, though, today I am joined by my dad, scott Allen, and Darrell Miller, who's also going to be joining for this discussion as our co-host and is going to be providing color commentary, and yeah, I'm excited for this discussion, guys, thanks for joining. So yeah, dad, if you wouldn't mind just reading those two definitions for us to get us going, that'd be great.
Scott Allen:Sure Thanks, luke. You know this is, all of these words are so vitally important. But it's hard to you know, it's hard to kind of underestimate just how important this word human is. Everything kind of flows from it. We said that about truth, but it applies equally to this word, and this has to do with who we are. What does it mean to be human? It has to do with this all-important question of identity who am I, what's my purpose? Question of identity, who am I, what's my purpose? And there's probably no more profound, powerful definition, true definition, reality definition than what we read in the Scriptures and understand in the Bible about the answer to that question. And I'd also say that there's probably not any of these words, these ten words, that has been more dramatically redefined than this word. And so let me just, with that, let me just go ahead and kind of put those both out there.
Scott Allen:Here's my attempt at, you know, very concisely defining what the Bible presents in terms of what this word means. Human, a Human pertaining to man, male and female, mankind, humans are physical and spiritual beings created by God in his image, with intrinsic dignity and incalculable worth and unalienable rights to life and to liberty. Humans are created by God for an intimate relationship with him, as well as relationships with one another and with the rest of God's created world. God created humans to wisely steward and to govern the created world, to rule over it, and they are accountable to him for how they carry out this task. There's a whole lot in that we're going to unpack that. It's incredibly rich and deep, and that's because we're made in God's image. It's hard to define God in a single sentence and it's hard to define what it means to be human in that way too.
Scott Allen:So let me, before we go on to kind of unpacking that, I want to just talk about how this word, this all-important word, has been redefined in our modern Western culture, and it's really been redefined in kind of three related ways. So there's you know it's hard to say here's the one redefinition there's really kind of three. The first is human, a form of animal life, the product of a purposeless process of material evolution, a biological machine. Biological machine. Secondly, human is a radically autonomous, willing creature, an independent, self-determining agent.
Scott Allen:These two definitions the first one comes out of modernism and the Enlightenment, obviously Darwin and the second one comes out of post-modernism, which is really where we're at now they're related, we can talk about that, but they're also different. And then, third, this one is really becoming quite dominant in the West today, and this comes out of Marxism, again related to the other two, but human is a socially and historically determined being a representative of a particular culture or identity group. This one emphasizes humans as kind of defined by their sociology, not their biology. So they're socially determined creatures. I can tell everything that I need to know about you based on groups that you belong to, based on things like skin color, and so you hear so much of that today. So those are the two and yeah, let's dive in.
Darrow Miller:Scott, maybe you could unpack for us some of the key aspects of the true definition when you gave it a few minutes ago there were a lot of parts to that and it'd be helpful to hear.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, darrell. There's a number of aspects and I think you have to kind of look at them one by one. They're each so vitally important. In terms of what does it mean to be human? I think the first thing I just want to emphasize is that what it means to be human is that we're created. We are created by God. That means that we are created by God. That means that we are dependent beings. You know, we're not autonomous, we are dependent and we are answerable to God. We're not our own, we, in a sense, are owned by God. We're his creatures. So I think that just is really really important as a foundation. So I think that just is really really important as a foundation.
Scott Allen:We're created being—secondly, I would say, you know, a vital, vital importance is that we're created in God's image. And there's just so much to unpack here. But the fact that we're created in God's image makes us unique in creation, separates us from the rest of creation, the animals and other creatures that God has made. Only humans have the distinction of being created in God's image, and we'll talk about this in a second. Both male and female and, dara, this is something you've emphasized so rightly are created in God's image, and what this means is. It means so many things, but it means that all people are, in a sense, kind of God-like we're not God but we're God-like. And part of what that means is that we have this unbelievable dignity and this inherent worth. And again, only the true biblical definition gives people this kind of dignity and worth. It's one of the most powerful aspects of our faith, of true faith. A third I would say is that God created—oh, go ahead.
Darrow Miller:Darrell, yeah, please. Yeah. May I just say there that that dignity as being made in the image of God is part of what separates us from the rest of creation and we are creatures like we're part of creation. We are creatures like a dog is a creature like a cat is a creature.
Darrow Miller:And in that sense we're all created. We're creatures as human beings, but the important thing is we're made in the image of God and that means we have a dignity. We're separated, as it were, from the rest of creation in that regard, and that's, I think, very significant, because the modern world doesn't need that separation.
Scott Allen:Now, darrell, this is something you've said so well over the years and I've learned from you. You've said so well over the years and I've learned from you. When you ask the question, who am I? You look to God for the answer to that question, because we are made. You are made in His image, so you look to Him. That's what it means to be human, whereas you're right. Today, when people ask the question who am I? They don't look to God, they look to the animal kingdom, because we are just evolved creatures, just like any other creature. We're animals. That's such a dramatic difference. It's hard to overemphasize just how dramatic that is. That just puts us on entirely different tracks.
Darrow Miller:And, as we'll see in a few moments when you move to this area, it has those. Two different things have profound consequences culturally, absolutely Massive, massive. So I'm sorry, I just wanted to throw that in.
Scott Allen:I want you to do that, darrell because so much of what I'm sharing here you know I've learned from my own studies of the Scripture, but I've learned from you too, darrell. You've been such a wise and powerful teacher on this subject of what does it mean to be human. I want to just unpack a few more things that I think are just critical to understand about what the Bible teaches, the true definition of what it means to be human and this really has to do with what it means to be made in God's image and one of the most powerful things is that it means that we humans you and me, all of us have both a unity and a diversity in that there is a unity to what it means to be human. The unity is found in the fact that we are all, all people, regardless of skin color or sex or social status or, you know, any of these other factors. All of us are equal in terms of our dignity and our worth. Okay, there's no one that has greater dignity, no one that has greater worth. We're also equal in terms of our God-given rights to life and to liberty. God created us all to be free. He didn't create some to be free and some to be slaves. All have this God-given right of freedom and of life.
Scott Allen:So there's an equality to what it means to be human, and that's so important because, you know, we can relate to each other regardless of all these other factors because of that equality, that equality of being made in God's image, equal worth, equal dignity. But there's not a uniformity, as you've said, daryl, we're not all the same. So there's an equality, but there's a diversity. There's a diversity in terms of our sexes. There's male and female. There's a diversity in terms of our ethnicity, our personality, our gifts, you know, and you could go on and on. There's a lot of diversity in the human race, and you could go on and on. There's a lot of diversity in the human race.
Darrow Miller:And this diversity is to be celebrated Absolutely, which I think a lot of people forget.
Scott Allen:Absolutely Well, nowadays there's a lot of celebration of diversity. We hear that, but what is not emphasized and we'll talk about this later is kind of the unity right that's being lost. So, yeah, we celebrate the diversity, but we've got to remember there's a unity. All people are image bearers of God, we are all humans and we can relate to each other as humans. So both unity and diversity are—we talk about the social implications of these definitions. This one has profound social implications because you need both unity and diversity for healthy relationships and healthy societies. If you have one unity without the other, it leads to uniformity, kind of conformity. You can't have healthy relationships when you treat everyone as if they're exactly the same and the same, with diversity without a unity, right. If you have that, you have just the fragmentation of society. You have things that think relationships fall apart. So you need both and the.
Scott Allen:Bible provides the basis for both. Yeah, go ahead, Darrell.
Darrow Miller:Something that I would say at this point is that you have unity without uniformity, unity without uniformity, and you have diversity without superiority. Yes, absolutely Darrell so people have different color skins. There's male, female. You have that diversity, but there's not a superiority. Having one color skin is not superior to having another color skin. Yes, to have a certain skill set isn't superior to having a different skill set. Yes, absolutely.
Scott Allen:Darrell.
Darrow Miller:Those are so vital Socially, they're so vital in terms of healthy societies and these are born, when we say we're made in the image of God, which is the core thing. God is community, god is relational. There's one God in three distinct persons. There's unity and diversity in the Godhead. So when he makes us in his image, he makes unity and diversity to reflect that image and this is why we were made for the creation of families. Unity, diversity is a reflection of the family of the Trinity.
Scott Allen:Yeah, that needs to be emphasized too, darrow, that part of what it means to be made in God's image and this is another really vital aspect of that is that, as you were saying, you know God is both one and three. This is the mystery of the Trinity. You know God is both one and three. This is the mystery of the Trinity, and that one and threeness that also carries over to God's creating us in his image. How so? What it means is that there's a unity, a oneness to what it means to be human, and it also means that each individual life really matters Okay, every life matters, but there's a diversity in terms of community. Right, there's the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit living in a relationship of love, and so that carries over to what it means to be human in that we're created for relationships. Yes, we are individuals and that matters. We matter individually, but we're created for relationships, loving relationships. The Bible gives us a basis for loving relationships. No other worldview really does. By the way, you know, darwinian kind of mechanistic worldview, as we'll see in a second, really has no answer to why people love one another, which we do. It doesn't have any explanation for that the Bible does. We're made for relationships, relationships, and really for primary relationships. A relationship, first and foremost, with God himself. We're made for that. That's the most important relationship, because he created us, and he created us in his image, and he loves us. Secondly, relationships with one another, with our fellow human beings. Third, with ourselves. We have a relationship with ourself and then, lastly, with the rest of creation. So that's what it means to be human, to live in all of those relationships and, by the way, in a way that's rightly ordered, you have to have the relationship with God first and foremost, and then the other ones following. So much there as well.
Scott Allen:I do want to go on, though, because we could just, you know, every one of these things is so vitally important. You could talk and talk, but I want to just at least get the table set with, I think, other ones that just have to be said. The next one I'd like to talk about is just that we are made as kind of kings and queens of creation. God gave us a role in creation. What it means to be human is to rule, to have authority over creation, but we are under God, right, you know, he's the ultimate ruler, he's the king. So what that makes us is. It makes us kind of stewards under his rule, under his authority. We have positions of responsibility and authority over creation. So to be a human is to be made to govern, to rule, and there's again so many implications to this one as well, darrell. Any thoughts that you wanted to share before we move on on this one, darrell?
Darrow Miller:Bock. Yeah, I think one of the most profound implications of this is when God finished his work in creation, it was perfect, but the potential had not been released yet. It was perfect but not finished. And that's the role of the image bearer of God is to be creative, to take what God has made and to do something with it. Too often we just think, well, we're here to consume and we see in the West today a whole consumer society. No, we're not here as consumers, we're here as creators, and God intends for us to take what he has made and be creative with it, so that there would be music that never existed before, paintings that never existed before, absolutely Cities that didn't exist before, through human imagination and creativity. Yeah, that's part of being made in the image of God.
Scott Allen:A huge, significant part. And you're right, dear, when God created you see this in Genesis, chapter 1, he creates in kind of an orderly way, the days of creation. He creates the heavens and the earth, and then he creates, you know, the animals and the plants. And then it gets to that all-important verse. In fact, let me just read this in Genesis, chapter 1, starting in verse 26. God said let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish of the seas and the birds of the sky and over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God. He created them, male and female. He created them and God blessed them and said be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth, subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky.
Scott Allen:So you see this picture in Genesis, chapter 1, at creation of God, creating all of these magnificent, incredible aspects of creation. But then it culminates, kind of the crescendo is in the creation of man, male and female. And then he says to man, made in God's image, you rule right, you govern this creation under my authority, creation under my authority, and I want you because you bear my image, as you said, darrow, as a creator, to make something of it that's beautiful, that brings honor and glory to me. You're made to do that because that's what God did. He created, so he made us, as you said, darrow, so profound. He made us to create.
Scott Allen:Yes, we do consume, but not just to consume. More fundamentally, we're made to create new innovations, new resources. We're made to create families, cities, cultures. That's who we are and I think this original, if you will purpose that we're made for it never goes away. Right, we're going to talk about the fall here in a second, but the fall doesn't erase it, it distorts it, but it doesn't erase it. This is just who we are. We're made to do this.
Darrow Miller:And when we have worked, the organizations we've worked for Scott have taken us into a world of poverty. And how do you see a child in that world of poverty? Do you reduce them in your mind to an animal like a stray cat or a stray dog, or do you see them as the image of God and that they are? The homeless child on the street is filled with potential. Can we see that? And why are they filled with potential? Because they bear the image of God, not the image of a dog or a cat.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I think of that famous book, something Beautiful for God, that was written by Malcolm Muggeridge, the BBC journalist, communist, who later became a Christian because of the influence of Mother Teresa, and the change in his life came when he visited her. She had become well-known globally this is back in the 80s and so he visited her in Calcutta. And this worldview clash is what kind of ensued. As you said, darrow, they were walking around the streets of Calcutta and if you've been to Calcutta, it was at that time, and remains, a very impoverished city with a lot of homeless people, just people living on the streets. He saw as an atheist, as a communist was. He saw basically something that was worthless, that was akin to refuse, you know, trash. It didn't have value or dignity, it was unsightly. When Mother Teresa looked at the same person, she saw something entirely different. She saw an image bearer of God with intrinsic dignity and worth, and you know it drove everything she did. You know she spent her days rescuing people from the streets because they bear the way she put it was God's distressing disguise, you know. And I visited Calcutta early in my career at Food for the Hungry and got to go to some of these places where Mother Teresa was doing her ministry, and it's a remarkable thing, and you know, she was reflecting the truth about what it means to be human. And when Muggeridge saw it, you know he had a worldview crisis, essentially, and he realized that his view was wrong and hers was right and it was much more humane.
Scott Allen:Well, you know, another thing needs to be said here too, and that is that humans, what does it mean to be human? It means that we are also fallen and rebellious creatures. In other words, we have broken relationships. That happens in Genesis, chapter 3. Part of what it means to be made as an image bearer of God is that we have freedom. God has freedom, right. Nobody compels God to do anything. He's free. And so when he made us in his image, he made us likewise free. We're not free like God. You know his gut is free, but he created us with a degree of this ability to make choices and to live with the consequence of those choices. And one of those choices was this choice to eat from the forbidden tree. And that's what man Adam did, did it with Eve, and they fell. And that's part of what it means to be human right now is that we are rebellious.
Scott Allen:The Bible uses the word sin, sinful creatures. That means that our inclination is to do what is wrong. We, you know, to be selfish to, if we can, you know, to our advantage, to steal, to cheat, to whatever you know, to kill even. And so this, you know, the source of evil in the world comes from this, this human freedom and the choice that we made to rebel against God and to turn our backs on him. But again, that needs to be immediately followed up with something, and that is that God doesn't. You know, he looks at us in our fallen condition. He doesn't hate us, despise us, abandon us. Remarkably, he loves us, even though we're fallen, and he pursues us to reconcile with us. And that really is the story. Much of the story of the Bible is the story of that process of reconciliation. But all of those things have to be said, you know, when you answer the question, what does it mean to be human? It's a deep, deep, rich concept, right, and all of those facets are important.
Luke Allen:The Bible is a story of reconciliation, To bring us back to the people that God created us to be in the garden.
Luke Allen:Just as we try to model out this word of human, In history there's only been one perfect human that was Jesus, but then there's been two also very close to perfect people, and those were Adam and Eve, pre-fall, and they, for us, just paint this beautiful picture of what a human actually is supposed to look like.
Luke Allen:And, as I'm reading, just paint this beautiful picture of what a human actually is supposed to look like. And as I'm reading your definition here, all of these things were modeled just right away in those first two chapters of Genesis by Adam and Eve. So in the process of trying to become more human, it's a simple starting point is just read those first two chapters and just pull out each characteristic that God describes there. Those descriptions are there for a reason and they're meant for us to just to model, to become more of the humans that he is reconciling us to become. So I think that's a yeah. I'm really enjoying just reading, rereading this definition here, and if any of you guys listening want to reread that definition, then make sure to grab a copy of the book and you can see the definition in there.
Darrow Miller:Well, if I can follow up something Scott said a minute ago first and then, when you were talking, scott, about, we as human beings are made to be free to make real choices. I want people to understand who are listening to this that that is so significant and the freedom is so real that we can choose to turn our back on God.
Scott Allen:And he knew that when he made us and he made us that way.
Darrow Miller:He made us that way Because that's how free the very depth of the nature of freedom.
Scott Allen:Yes, yeah, it's very profound. Darrell, when God created Adam and Eve in the garden, one of the very first things he said to them is you are free. You are free to eat of any tree in the garden, except, right, except the one you know. And so, even there, you know he created us with that capacity to make a choice. But just the profound words you are free. I think just needs to be underlined.
Darrow Miller:And it's one of the things that, as human beings, we so appreciate and even abuse. We abuse it, that's right, but we can abuse it and we can so appreciate it because it is real.
Scott Allen:And when we fell, we, you know, we lost in a sense. We lost that freedom. We became the Bible says we became enslaved to Satan. And we could go on on this. But he promised Satan's lie was to promise us freedom freedom from God. You can be like God, you don't need to be under his authority, you can be completely free. But that was a lie. And then, when Adam and Eve believed the lie and they ate the forbidden fruit, they didn't become free and independent of God, they just became slaves of Satan and they lost their freedom. And then Christ came to set us free again Again.
Scott Allen:We could just go into great depth on this, but you're right, darrell, that's so—what it means practically is that you know nobody, no single person that exists is created to be a slave, and that's so counter to the way that fallen people think. You know, if I have more power and it's to my advantage to enslave you, why wouldn't I do that? Of course I would do that, and we're seeing slavery in our own day, increasing sex slavery and whatnot around the world. But that's not the way we're created.
Luke Allen:There's only one way that God designed humans to live. Yes, and there's no alternate. Like Satan lied, there's no other way to live in freedom. There's either God's design or pushing against God's design.
Darrow Miller:Yes, Well, we all have the image of God. Yes, we're all fallen creatures and, at the same time, we still bear the image of.
Darrow Miller:God, yes, but that can be distorted by the way we live. We can live as something less than that and that will have consequences in our lives and in our families and in our nation, absolutely so I'd like to hear you talk a little bit more, scott. We are the Ideas have Consequences podcast. We Are the Ideas have Consequences podcast. And the word human, the biblical definition, has consequences in a culture and a society. And the counterfeit definitions have consequences. Can you talk a little bit about those?
Scott Allen:Well, there's so much here, Darrell. In fact, I don't know anyone that doesn't, at some level, really value the true biblical understanding of what it means to be human, because we all want to at some level believe that people are valuable and important, and you hear people, even if they're not Christians, say they believe in things like human rights and the value and the dignity of all human beings. The problem for them, though, is, if you're not a Christian, if you don't have the Bible undergirding that, then it's just floating in thin air. There really is no basis for it. Only the true biblical definition of human provides a basis for that. This human dignity and the dignity of human beings in the Bible is really powerfully underscored in the fact that God himself, in the incarnation, became a human being. Right, jesus took on human flesh. It's just incredible that he did that. And not only did he take on human flesh, but, as it says in Philippians 2, he became a servant, and he even went to the cross and died for this rebellious race. Now, the social implications of that are just. They're astronomical.
Scott Allen:When the early church lived out. The implications of that are just astronomical. When the early church lived out the implications of that, dara, and we teach this in our teaching around the world. Rodney Stark really underscored this in his book the Rise of Christianity. When the early church understood this in the Roman Empire, when things like these horrible pandemics would sweep through the Roman Empire, christians acted in this powerful way that nobody else did. Everyone else would flee from their relatives that were sick because they didn't want to die. But Christians actually went to those sick people and they cared for them and they loved them and they nursed them. Why? Because they bore the image of God and they were valuable and precious and in many cases they caught the disease and then they died on their behalf. And if you would wonder why would they do such a thing, it's because that's what God did for them in the person of Jesus Christ. So it created—the social implications of that were just astronomical.
Scott Allen:Again, that word isn't great, but it's—you know, if there's a hospital, a hospice, any kind of thing that cares for vulnerable people that exists in the world today comes out of this and really nowhere else. You don't find it in other worldviews, other cultures. It comes out of the Bible and Christians and Jews, for that matter living faithfully to the scriptures. Daryl, you know the story, too, of Ana Santos, our dear friend from Bolivia, you know, with her daughters, is another very powerful one. In a slightly different way, this story isn't related to the value so much as it is the purpose of human life. Do you want to tell that story? Because I think that's just another powerful story that illustrates the social implications.
Darrow Miller:I would just continue, because I don't know which story about Anna you're going to tell. Why don't you continue, yeah?
Scott Allen:I wish every one of you could meet her. She's an amazing woman and we've had her on the podcast. I think we'll have her back on. She's a missionary, came out of YWAM Missionary from Brazil and served initially in the Middle East, in Mauritania, and one day, as she was there, she came across an abandoned child in the streets dying a little girl in the streets dying a little girl. And she again kind of like the story of Mother Teresa. When she saw this little girl she saw an image of God and you know. But it was treated like a piece of trash to be thrown out and that was so wrong.
Scott Allen:So she picked up the child and kind of desperately went around looking for her mother, right, and eventually found her mother, a Muslim lady who herself was sick and dying and struggling. And you could see immediately she didn't have the capacity or the wherewithal, at least in her own mind, to care for this child, so she abandoned it. This is something that happens all over the world, even in our day, tragically. And when Anna talked to the woman she tried to give the child back, but the woman said something very profound. She said it's Allah's will that the child die. You know this kind of idea. It's Allah's will, you know, inshallah. And on it. To that she responded no, it's God's will that this child live. In other words, god didn't just create this child as an accident. This child has a purpose. All people have a purpose in life and this child has to live to fulfill that purpose. So what she did was something incredibly heroic. She, essentially as a single woman, decided to care for the child, as her own child eventually adopted. Her, did the same with another one later, and today, if you see Ana, you'll see her two beautiful daughters who are both now adults. If you see Anna, you'll see her two beautiful daughters who are both now adults.
Darrow Miller:And it's just a powerful picture of the social implications of what it truly Anna's view of the child, and they had two totally different outcomes and, I think, something that's very critical today it's an issue around the world, but it's a particular issue in our country. And when you begin with God, you see that human beings are made in the image of God and they have intrinsic value and that leads to a certain way of relating to people. If you begin with an atheistic framework, people are not the image of God. They are animals or machines, depending on the framework. Depending on the framework and in the Darwinian world that you mentioned earlier, it is survival of the fittest, is the principle. Instead of the protection of human life from conception to natural death, you have the principle of survival of the fittest and that leads to certain.
Darrow Miller:Each of these leads to different government policies, radically different government policies, and each of those policies leads to totally different programs on the ground where people live. And in the United States today we are in a very our nation is divided almost down the middle and we do not know what direction our country is going to go in. But that divide in my mind begins with the divide in paradigms universe to an atheistic universe, without God, without a moral framework. On the one hand, you have a human being as made in the image of God, as we've been talking about. On the other hand, you have a very different definition of what a human being is, and those two different concepts lead to two totally different principles A principle of right to life and the principle of a person's right to choose and those lead to totally different consequences on policy level and programmatic level.
Darrow Miller:And this is dividing our country in a horrendous way.
Scott Allen:To radically different kinds of societies, laws, policies. As you said, it all starts with the paradigm, the world view, a true view of what it means to be human, or a lie. So you're absolutely right One produces a culture of life, that all life is valuable.
Darrow Miller:The other and the other. A culture of death.
Scott Allen:A culture of death that sees humans as disposable trash, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But there's others, darrell, too, and you know one. Is that the biblical view? Because it has this unity that all people are created in the image of God? It moves beyond the kind of clans right, we can have relationships that go beyond our immediate family, that go beyond our immediate family. All people are valuable, regardless of whether I'm related to them. And, even more powerful than that, it provides a basis for loving even our enemies, because our enemies are loved by God and God pursues them in his redeeming love and they're objects of his—yeah, they're image-bearers of God as well. There's no other worldview that has any kind of basis for something as radical as loving your enemies. Every other worldview is going to destroy your enemy, right, you're going to dominate them and destroy them. The Bible says no, you're going to love them, because your enemy, the person who sets themselves against you for your harm, still bears God's image.
Luke Allen:We talk a lot about the culture of death, as you guys just mentioned here in the US today. And Dad, would you say that this wrong definition here of human is at the root of that debate? It seems like it is.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I would for sure, yeah, absolutely. Before we get into the counterfeit definitions, Luke, I just want to add one more kind of social implication for the true definition, and this has to do with the fact that human beings are sinful and fallen, and, yes, they're objects of God's redeeming love. They're not as fallen as they can be right, and not every person that you meet is utterly and completely evil. There's good and evil in every human heart, but there's that evil side, there's that selfish side, and one of the ways that that's reflected itself socially in societies where the Bible, the true definition of human, has really taken a root is that we have to be very cautious of human power. We can't give people too much power because there's that selfish tendency that they have, as fallen human beings, to abuse the power.
Scott Allen:So the founding fathers of the United States, for example, made a big deal out of the fact that when they established our government they had to have kind of separate, competing centers of power. The alternative to that is to give one person kind of ultimate power, and they just wouldn't do that because they were aware of that fallen, sinful nature that man has. You've got to diffuse power, as you know, as much as you can Separate it. And that's part of the reason you see in the Garden not the Garden of Eden, but at the Tower of Babel that's why God separated. You know, man confused the languages and spread them out across the earth because he knew that if there was power kind of consolidated in one place human power great evil was going to come of that. So I just wanted to mention that I think there's a really powerful kind of social implication of this true view of what it means to be human as well.
Luke Allen:That's so interesting. I was listening to a social scientist recently who said that exact same thing, but essentially stated it as almost a scientific law at this point is that when, um, when, you leave humans to their own devices, uh, they will devolve to chaos and disorder and despair. Is there's something about a lack of community and just doing what your own, your own, whatever you want to do, which?
Luke Allen:is part of the false definition here becoming the sovereign, autonomous self, as Nietzsche said, said that will eventually destroy you because of the sinful heart that we all have.
Scott Allen:Yeah, and you know the false definitions that we're going to look at. They deny this. By the way, they see human beings as somehow well, they wouldn't say evil. You know there is no evil there. You know they could be perfected or whatever it is, but that's not what the Bible says. No, there's no. You know there's this root of sinful evil that is a consequence of our having our relationship with our Creator broken and the only solution to that is to have that relationship restored through faith in Christ, through believing in what God has done himself to restore that relationship in the person of Christ.
Luke Allen:So yeah, that struck me this last weekend, as this podcast will come out in a couple weeks, but we were just watching the Olympics opening ceremonies, which is all over the news right now, I'm sure all of you guys have seen the clips of that in some form or another, but it was this concept it struck me when they were. You know the mockery of the Last Supper, as you guys all saw with the drag show Last Supper or whatever.
Luke Allen:it was Very weird Is when you don't follow God's design for humans and you choose your alternate route. You know you try to have your perfect freedom apart from God, as Satan promised, is because that is an unlivable reality. People have to feel like they have to stomp on God for them to feel validated. There's this idea of unless I squash this thing inside of me that tells me that God is the one who actually made me human, unless I can stomp on that, mock it, you know, make fun of it whatever it looks like, I can't feel justified in my choice of what it means to be human, and you saw that displayed there. It just proves that there is no other way to live as human apart from God.
Scott Allen:Yeah.
Luke Allen:That is satisfying to us. It actually fills that God-sized hole inside of us.
Scott Allen:Yeah, no, it's a good point, luke, when you know this mocking of the Last Supper really, in some ways is just. You see, it's just a display of this fallen human heart that wants to turn its fist to God and just shake it at God and say I want nothing to do with you, I'm going to mock you, I'm going to spit on you Same thing we saw at the cross, right, so nothing's new. This is just the fallen, rebellious human heart. And these people would say and they did say afterwards in defending what they did oh, we weren't trying to be offensive and this and that, but clearly underneath of it there was this kind of hard rebellion against God. That's part of what it means to be human. We all have that at some level, you know, and that's the source of all that's wrong in this world.
Luke Allen:So yeah, yeah, why don't we transition real quick to talk about the false definition, the contemporary hijacked definition? Of human and just talk about a little bit more. We've already been talking about this a little bit more about the culture that that creates, which is not hard to talk about because it's all around us. But let me just read both definitions actually one more time.
Scott Allen:There's three. I kind of allude there a little bit, but go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Luke Allen:Just to close the chapter on portion one, where we talked about the true definition, and open up into this next section, I'll just read the both definitions, starting with the biblical definition, one more time, just as a wrap up Human, according to the Bible, pertaining to man, male and female, mankind. Humans are physical and spiritual beings created by God in his image, with intrinsic dignity and calculable worth and unalienable rights to life and liberty. Humans are created for an intimate relationship with their creator, as well as a relationship with one another. God created humans to wisely steward and govern the created world, and they are accountable to him for how they carry out his tasks. So for any of you, note takers enjoy pausing and trying to catch up with us, but now we're going to move on to the false contemporary definition. This is again three parts, so I'll just do, yeah, part one. First, a form of animal life. A human is a form of animal life, the product of a purposeless process of material evolution, a biological machine.
Scott Allen:Yeah, this is really the contemporary definition of what it means to be human that is dominant in the West today. It has its roots back to the mid-1800s Charles Darwin, his theory of evolution. There was a profound worldview shift that happened at that time. Up to that point, in the West humans were defined more or less according to that true definition, but Darwin introduced an entirely new definition of what it means to be human.
Scott Allen:And basically, he said, humans are animals and they're just evolved in different ways. And there is no creator. You're not created and therefore human life does not have an inherent dignity or an inherent worth. We're just biological machines. We're material machines. This is such a dark idea and yet this is taught as truth. This is what I learned in my public school. It's what people around the world are taught. This is what it means to be human.
Luke Allen:Yeah, it's incredibly dark, we passively say survival of the fittest. But when? You think about that I just picture hunger games. You know, king of the hill, just whoever's.
Scott Allen:It's incredibly bloody, really bloody yeah, and that's why the 20th century was the bloodiest century in human history. It's because you had people like the Nazis who took this idea seriously. They just lived it out and they said essentially we, the German Aryan race, are, you know, we are more fit, you know we are more highly evolved than Jews and so you know the law that pertains here is survival of the fittest. They just took that seriously. We need the Aryan race to dominate and you know we have this kind of permission, through this worldview, to dominate other races and to destroy them.
Luke Allen:Yeah, and that lie hasn't gone away. Yeah, we always freak out over the Holocaust, which rightfully so the death of six million Jews. But that six million number reminds me of a very modern number, which is since Roe versus Wade was passed. There's been six million abortions in the US since then Absolutely Equally Right here in our own country.
Scott Allen:Yeah, that's right.
Luke Allen:Equally devastating Again Zach's same misdefinition, yeah the root of that is similar.
Scott Allen:This is an inconvenience. It doesn't have intrinsic worth or dignity. It's just a piece of it's, a clump of cells. It's a piece of it's, a material machine. I can dispose of it, I can destroy it through abortion without any kind of moral consequence. So, yeah, it's behind all of these murders. As we said earlier, luke, this produces a culture of death, just in a dramatic way, because humans lose their inherent dignity and worth and the powerful then can do really whatever they want with the weak in order to survive and to flourish. And you see this.
Luke Allen:And then another side of this is if humans are animals, just animals without a soul, then you get to a lot of the modern science today of if we don't have a soul and we're just animals, then can't we just treat ourselves like lab rats and just use our bodies as test animals, essentially to test out all these crazy technologies that we're trying to do right now, like head transplants you know they tried that in Russia a few years ago, things like that. It's, why not? Why not? We're just animals.
Scott Allen:Or just machines right, you can swap out the parts of a machine and tinker around with the machine all you want. So these are just people living out the ramifications of these profound ideas, false ideas of what it means to be human. Don't be surprised by it when you see it. Another social implication of this, luke, is just the whole eugenics movement. You think of people like Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and it's basically just animal husbandry applied to human beings. Sanger was a racist and so she viewed white people as more highly evolved than black people and so she wanted to set up programs which would kind of cull the population of these black people who are less highly evolved.
Scott Allen:I know this sounds super dark, but it's just again a person living out the actual implications of this false view of human beings. Human beings are animals. Some are more highly evolved, some are more fit than others, and so you get into these really deadly ideas. And transhumanism comes from that today too, where you've got this whole class of people saying, hey, we can create machines and machinery, technological machinery that will make us more advanced than other people and you know therefore more fit and we can dominate, right. So this transhumanism that we're seeing Totally, I think you know, know, you see a lot of this too, luke, in the environmental, radical environmental movement, where people are viewed as animal.
Scott Allen:When you're viewing people as animals, you tend to view them as, as darrow said earlier, kind of consumers of resources. Right, they're just out there eating uh scarce resources that are going away and they're a threat therefore to the environment. They're destroyers of the environment. And when you think that way, because of this false view of human beings, then your thought is we need to eliminate people, we need to cull the herd. We've got to kind of and you hear many people today talk this way and I take them at their word. You know, no, they're not going to kind of come forward with some kind of nuclear bomb or a bunch of guns lining people up against walls and killing them, but they're going to do something to figure out ways of culling the herd, if you will, yeah.
Luke Allen:Well, the first time I heard that, though, I was like okay, that's conspiratorial. They wouldn't actually do that. But then you read this definition, which is held by a lot of people today, and it's like why not? Why wouldn't they? You're just living it out.
Scott Allen:I take people really. Ideas are very powerful, and this idea of what it means to be human, people will live it out, and it will lead to the destruction of human lives in so many ways, and not just a few, we're talking about on scale, millions. So anyways, let's go on, though, luke, you know this is the basis of modern man's view of human life, though, and it and it doesn't go away. Everyone still kind of adheres to this Darwinian view that we're just purposeless animals, material, biological machines, but in the postmodern world we get these other two that have kind of cropped up, yeah, the second one that I put forward is that what does it mean to be human? A human is a radically autonomous, willing creature, an independent, self-determining agent.
Luke Allen:I know that's a mouthful, but it sounds great, doesn't it? It sounds really nice when you say it just without thinking about the implications.
Scott Allen:Yeah, it takes us back to the Garden of Eden and the lie that Satan told to Adam and Eve you can be like gods. And so postmodern man says you know, then let's dispose of God. There is no God. If there is no God, I'm God right.
Scott Allen:And I can do whatever I want, whatever I feel like. I create reality, so to speak. If I'm male and I want to be female, what's to stop me? I can get the surgery. I can do whatever I want, whatever I feel like. So this is the dominant view in our postmodern West today. Yeah, luke, your thoughts on that?
Luke Allen:West today. Yeah, yeah, luke, your thoughts on that, well, it's been a it's. This view is postmodern, but you can, you can drive it straight back to, you know, jean-jacques Rousseau or someone like that.
Scott Allen:Yeah, or all the way back to the Garden of Eden. You're right, right, of course.
Luke Allen:Rousseau was so interesting though he. He seemed like the mentor to some of these postmodern thinkers like, um, derrida Foucault, um, all these these French guys. You know no wonder the French Olympics is so weird. But yeah, my, my thought with this is these ideas, they have been around for a while, but we are reaching the point now where they're actually being lived out. They're being legislated, they're being normalized. Kids are hearing these at five years old in preschool. Kids are hearing these at five years old in preschool.
Darrow Miller:So the craziness is the ideas are embedded.
Luke Allen:As we talk about how ideas change culture, they start as paradigms, so that you can drive that back to someone like Rousseau, and then they become principles.
Luke Allen:You could say the postmodernists created these as principles and then policies, creating policies where kids can transition without asking their parents we see policies like that in a lot of states here in the US and then into the practice level, which is back to the Paris Olympics. Again, we had that bridge, just covered in people who were very confused and just living this out, perfectly living out this definition of I can be whoever I want to be, whatever that looks like. No one can tell me what to do.
Scott Allen:Nobody can tell me what to do. Yeah, a couple of quotes, I think, are powerful in describing this Cultural critic, Rod Dreher. He says that this view is the way he describes it is. We think that we are autonomous, willing creatures who owe nothing to nature, to God, to the past or the future. Again, we are gods. Nancy Peercy puts it this way what does it mean to be human? The sovereign self, in this view, will not tolerate having its options limited by anything that it did not choose, not even its own body, and I think that's again that's the nature, right?
Scott Allen:Even nature doesn't limit my view here. I can be anything and anyone that I want to be and do anything that I want. There is no—I'm not a created being, I'm not an image-bearer of God. There is no morality other than what I choose. Again, yeah, that opening ceremony of the French Olympics. You know I can do whatever I want to with my body and you can't tell me otherwise.
Luke Allen:So perfect picture of that. But just to make this more on a personal level, I see this wrong definition played out in myself in a lot of other Christians, and just an overemphasis on our feelings. We let our feelings lead the train a little bit too much. Feelings are important, but they're not the engine at the front of the train. You know so this definition a radically autonomous, willing creature and independent self-determining agent, someone who follows their feelings and lets those determine the big decisions in their life.
Scott Allen:Yes.
Luke Allen:That's, that's sticky, that's a little dangerous. We should be careful when we let our feelings determine too much about who we are and what we're doing and the decisions we make. Um yeah, we should always line that up with God and his will for us. The Bible calls that the flesh right Following the flesh, and there's a lot of warnings against that.
Scott Allen:Yeah, you know, this is elevating human to the status of God. It's an idolatry. It's a human idolatry and it's not livable because we can't all be our own little gods, right? I mean, it just doesn't work because what I want to do is going to conflict, maybe, with what you want to do and somebody at the end of the day is going to have the final say. So it devolves into just a power game, right? And if I can get the power to impose my will, then you know. So this one, just this idea that we can all be our own little gods, is just completely unworkable, if you wouldn't mind me nerding out before we move on to the next point here.
Luke Allen:I'm just thinking about France again. So you have the French Revolution, right, that was. The thrust of the French Revolution is we can all be whoever we want to be, with no authority over us.
Scott Allen:We all can run our own directions and follow our hearts.
Darrow Miller:Yeah all little gods.
Luke Allen:That doesn't work because, like you just said, your interests come into conflict with one another. And amongst that chaos, napoleon rose up the power figure, and he just whipped everyone into shape.
Scott Allen:You know, he imposed his view on everyone else, and that's where it always goes. It goes to tyranny.
Luke Allen:And then, not long after that, karl Marx rose up and he recognized that. Maybe he even used that case study as an example to back up his theory of how we cannot live in this chaos. Ultimately it comes down to power. And since God wasn't in his worldview, then his final landing point was it's all power. And that's where I come to this third definition. Here, Humans are a socially and historically determined beings, a representative of a particular culture or identity group. So it's yeah, I'll let you explain this.
Scott Allen:Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah, Mark's basically put forward two views that come right out of these first two, but the two views that he put forward were number one, you know, we're all. Yeah, there is no God. We are animals, but we're social animals, right? And so what defines you isn't you as an individual, but it's you in the context of a group, and the groups that he was interested in himself were economic groups. You know classes, social classes. You're either part of the wealthy kind of property-owning class or the working class, and that defined you.
Scott Allen:Nothing else really mattered. And the second thing he said is that those classes are all pitted against one another in a power struggle and so some are dominant and some are victims. And so in his framing, you know, the property owners were the dominant class, the oppressive class, and therefore you know he kind of brought in some morality. The evil group and the workers were the victims and therefore they were morally good. So when this idea took root and it still is with us today in a big way, the way that you are defined has to do with your group status.
Scott Allen:And today those groups, by the way, are defined by, particularly by, skin color. You know you hear so many people talk about white. You know they're white people, for you know Kamala Harris, or white women or whatever it is, or black, I mean, that's what defines you. And in fact I've even heard people say, I've heard some black people say to white people there's no way you can even begin to understand me because you're not black. Right, that's what defines me. Or you could say the same thing about being Chinese versus being Jewish or whatever it is. You can't understand me. Well, the Bible says, yeah, those things matter. There are differences. And those cultural things matter, those historic things matter, but they don't define us right.
Luke Allen:We're defined by the fact that we're— Not more than our humanness.
Scott Allen:Yeah, we're humans, we're made in God's image. We all have that in common, and so we can relate to each other as humans. But this view says no, we don't actually have anything in common, we can't even begin to talk with each other. It's really radically divisive. I would say this view, A couple of quotes on it It— yeah, go ahead.
Darrow Miller:Well, yeah—.
Luke Allen:No, no, no. Go ahead and read this?
Scott Allen:Yeah, jordan Peterson has a good quote. He describes this understanding of human as one that reduces individuals to puppets of social forces and they're powerless to rise above the communities to which they belong. So this is another thing you see, is that if you're let's say, you're black, you're expected to think and act like every other black person, right? You can't have your own individual views. You've got to be black or white or whatever it is you know. So these crazy things like skin color defining everything about you doesn't matter.
Scott Allen:I don't need to know anything about you. I don't need to know anything about you. I don't need to know your history, what you believe, your religion, your experiences in life whether they were good or bad, rough, hard, you know. None of that matters. All that matters is sex, skin color, gender identity, these group kind of characteristics that defines you. That's all I need to know, right? So it's radically dehumanizing. This one is, and it's radically divisive, and that's what we're seeing today. That's why you get a sense that the society as this worldview takes root, this understanding of human takes root in the culture. You see a lot more division and a lot more suspicion, a lot more hatred and conflict. There's nothing that can hold it together.
Darrow Miller:There's just a lot of suspicion.
Scott Allen:Your group's trying to put my group down right, or whatever it is. So this isn't going to go well. If this view of human nature, this socially kind of determined, individual kind of Marxist view of human nature, human beings, if it continues to dominate in our culture, the culture will fall apart, it just we will fall apart, which there'll be nothing to hold us together. So we can hope and pray and work for that not to be the case.
Luke Allen:Yeah, Marxism has a track record of that working 0% of the time. It's funny because these last two we talked about. One, you're a solid individual and you can do whatever you want. The next one is no, no, no, you're just your class, you're just your group.
Scott Allen:They're totally pitted against each other, which is funny yeah they are, and I think that's also going to lead to a lot of conflict here soon, and there's a tension between those two, because they both exist and they actually both exist in some cases, right within a person themselves. They both have these same ideas. So we're very confused right now about what is it that it means to be human? This question of identity is, in some ways, the most important question, especially that young people have today, because they're growing up in a culture that doesn't have any kind of coherent answer to that question. You're an animal? You're God? No, you're defined by your skin color. You know, well, what is it. Well, it's all of these things, but they don't work together.
Luke Allen:It doesn't matter so much confusion, so yeah, Well, on that terrible note, we might need to start wrapping up.
Scott Allen:Yeah, the good news is that none of these are all false. These are all lies, these are not true, and the good news is that you know the truth does exist. There is a true understanding of what it means to be human, and you know, and how can Christians recover that in this time?
Scott Allen:Yeah, we have to know it, just like we have to know the true definition. Again, it's something that is deep, it's profound, it's rich. We have to not just know it kind of in our heads. It has to actually shape who we are. We have to make, we have to build our entire identity around that, and then we've got to live out the implications of that in our relationships, first and foremost with God and then with other people.
Scott Allen:And so we will not treat other people as animals. We will not treat other peoples as just representatives of some kind of group. We will other people as animals. We will not treat other peoples as just representatives of some kind of group. We will treat people as human beings, made in God's image, with dignity and worth and God-given rights to freedom and life. So, yeah, we just have to make a conviction and a practice of living that out. There's probably nothing actually you can do that's going to improve the world around you, your family, your community and the world around you more than just this one Just knowing this and living this out. And this is something you can do.
Luke Allen:And you'll be definitely pushing upstream if you do that, which is not bad because you'll stick out and people will wonder where that?
Scott Allen:beauty comes from.
Luke Allen:Yeah, that's a great final note. These definitions are so handy, dad. I'm excited to get the book and I just want to post these definitions on my wall. Try to memorize them, because I've already been using them so much as we've been working through the drafts of this book. Mr Miller, do you want to have a conclusion thought before you head out.
Darrow Miller:Yeah, I would just like to say that this book, I think that Scott has written on to speak words, and the words that we speak are powerful. They shape our own lives and they shape the lives of others. They shape history, and we really need to think carefully about the words that we speak and the ones that we are losing, because we have a culture that understands that if you want to change a nation, you have to change the vocabulary, and so the contrast between a biblical concept of what it means to be human and an atheistic or postmodern concept of humanity creates totally different cultures, totally different worlds, and we need to realize this, and Scott's book does a great service to us today. So that's where I would end.
Luke Allen:Yeah, thanks, mr Miller, for all of you listening. This book is coming out very soon, in the next two months. It is called Ten Words to Heal Our Broken World, restoring the True Meanings of Our Most Important Words. And one last time those words are truth, human sex important words. And one last time those words are truth, human sex, marriage, freedom, authority, justice, faith, beauty and love. These are such important words.
Luke Allen:Dad, this has been just really fun unpacking these. We've only unpacked two of them. We have eight to go, but I'm really enjoying this little series. I hope all of our listeners, you guys, are enjoying this as well, finding it helpful. If you have anyone that you think would appreciate these discussions, please consider sharing these with them and inviting them to listen to this mini-series as we prep for the book launch.
Luke Allen:About that book launch, like I said, it will be coming out in less than two months we are going to have a webpage up very soon that is going to have all the information you need about the book, including the book trailer, including mini-v, mini videos that we made on each one of these words, where my dad really well-made videos, where my dad just unpacks these two definitions and concise 10-minute or less videos. Those are going to be also used for a Bible study course that we're going to have coming out soon which you guys can use along with the book. So a lot of fun content coming your way. So we'll continue to give you guys updates on all of that in the next few weeks To learn more about this book and the Disciple Nations Alliance. In the meantime, the Disciple Nations Alliance's website is called disciplenationsorg. We're also on Instagram, facebook and YouTube, and this podcast is called Ideas have Consequences. So thanks again for listening. Dad, thank you for your time and we'll catch you next week.
