Ideas Have Consequences

FAITH (10 Words to Heal Our Broken World Series)

• Disciple Nations Alliance • Season 2 • Episode 45

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Can you have faith without the existence of evidence? In this episode, we explore the essence of this often confused word that lies at the heart of the gospel. We discuss the flawed idea that faith is blind and disconnected from reality and facts. Conversely, we argue that faith is to “assent to the weight of evidence.” Faith is to trust in the truthfulness and reliability of something or someone, based on a careful search of available evidence and personal experience.

Join us for another stop on our journey through 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World, a book aimed at restoring the foundational meanings of our culture's most important words. Today, our exploration reveals how differing belief systems and worldviews shape societal trust. We invite you to consider how understanding faith can transform individual choices and the broader social landscapes of our nations.

  • View the transcript, leave comments, and check out recommended resources on the Episode Landing Page! 
  • Find out more about the book by Scott David Allen, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World: Restoring the True Meaning of Our Most Important Words at 10wordsbook.org.
Scott Allen:

Why did Abraham believe? Because, by the time that God had made this promise to him, abraham had walked with God for many years, and that was the evidence, if you will. In other words, god had shown himself to be true to Abraham and Sarah. He had come through in really difficult times of trial, and so, by the time that God makes this promise, abraham really trusts God. He really believes that if God says something, I can trust it. So, as it says here in Romans, he didn't waver in his faith. This is the faith that we're talking about in Hebrews 1, this assurance of things hoped for. I want to have a child, I want to be the father of a great nation. I really hope for that. So it's the assurance of that, but it's based on the object here, which is the reliability of God himself and the promises of God.

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, ten Words to Heal Our Broken World, restoring the True Meaning of Our Most Important Words, we wanted to go through each one of these ten foundational words that are highlighted in the book, 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, welcome, or welcome back to another episode on this mini-series on the new book 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World Restoring the True Meanings of Our Most Important Words. We're so glad that you guys have chosen to join us today. My name is Luke and I am sitting here in our virtual studio with Dwight Vogt and Scott Allen, the author of the new book, which again is called 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World. Just before we jump into today's discussion, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to one of our consistent listeners here on the show. We just connected with you this last week. You are a missionary from the Philippines serving in Vietnam and you reached out to us this last week and now we're working on a project together.

Luke Allen:

So glad to make that connection, like this listener for the rest of you guys out there, if you'd like to connect with us, if you guys have a question or a query or a comment, or if you'd like to recommend a topic for the show or a guest, we would be honored to connect with each and every one of you guys. There's a lot of ways that you guys can do that. You can leave us a comment on the episode page, which we always have those linked in the show notes. You can also reach out to us on social media. We are the Disciple Nations Alliance on Instagram and Facebook, or you can always send us a good old-fashioned email. We are info at disciplenationsorg on email and we check all of those regularly, so please reach out. We always love hearing from you guys here on the show. By the way, if you're wondering what the Disciple Nations Alliance is, that's the ministry behind this podcast. Ideas have Consequences. This is a ministry that has been around for 27 years-ish now. It's a global nonprofit that served in over 90 nations to over a million people.

Luke Allen:

Training on the power of a biblical worldview. Speaking of a biblical worldview, this book, which we are unpacking during this series, again titled 10 Words to Heal a Broken World, begins each chapter by laying out two definitions of each of these important words, one of those definitions being the true definition, which comports with God's view of the world, aka the biblical worldview, and then contrasts that with our contemporary skewed redefinitions of these words and encourages us to point our view back towards God's view of these words, and also points out the devastation of not doing that. So, that said, today's word in focus is faith. So, dad, just to open this up, would you mind giving us those two definitions of this word?

Scott Allen:

Yeah, great, good to be with you, dwight and Luke. I'm super excited to talk about faith today, such an important word and so much to unpack here and get into, just starting with the two definitions. So the true definition of faith, as at least I've, you know, attempted to concisely define it is that faith is affirming the truthfulness of something. Excuse me, I'm starting with the wrong one. Cut, take two Cut. All right, let's start.

Scott Allen:

The true definition of faith is to assent to the weight of evidence, to trust in the truthfulness and the reliability of something or someone, based on a careful search of available evidence and personal experience. So it's very similar to the word trust. Just, trust and faith are synonymous in many ways. So faith as it's been redefined in our culture, however, is very different. So faith as it's been redefined in our culture, however, is very different. My concise definition there is faith is affirming the truthfulness of something without regards to evidence or even despite a lack of evidence. So it's trusting in something even without any evidence for that. So redefined faith is almost entirely thought of as a religious faith. It's the blind leap of faith that we sometimes hear people speak about?

Luke Allen:

Yeah, blind faith. You hear that all the time.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, so those are the two, yeah, and I would say that the redefined faith, this false view of faith, really is dominant now in Western society. It's this idea that faith is personal subjective. It's a personal subjective religious belief that doesn't really have any grounding in facts or evidence. So, yeah, we can get into that.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, you actually speak of blind faith as one of those examples. Maybe you could give examples of the false definition.

Scott Allen:

Scott, yeah, a couple of quotes that kind of get into it. Mark Twain, a famous American writer, once quipped having faith is believing in something you just know ain't true. I thought that was a good way of putting it. Okay, a couple more quotes. Actually, this one comes from the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. This is fascinating. If you open up that dictionary, which is really one of the foundational English dictionaries, it defines faith this way it's faith is a strong belief in God or the doctrines of a religion based on spiritual apprehension rather than on proof.

Dwight Vogt:

Where'd you get that?

Scott Allen:

from. That's actually how faith is defined in the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language.

Scott Allen:

So again, that really has captured our understanding of what faith is and I would say even in the Church largely that people believe that Like. I always think of Darrow. You know our friend Darrow, co-worker Darrow. He often talks about when he went to Labrie as a young man and was confronted by Udo Middleman there and was confronted by Udo Middleman there and Udo, you know they were having some discussion over, you know, a glass of wine late into the evening and Udo kind of said to Darrow at one point Darrow, you know, christianity is true, even if you don't believe it.

Scott Allen:

Even if nobody believed it, even if nobody believed it, and that created this, even if nobody believed it, even if nobody believed it and that created a crisis of faith for Darrell, because he said I always was taught in the church that it's true because I believe it. In other words, it's just, it's this very personal, subjective belief in something, regardless of proof or evidence. You know so anyways.

Dwight Vogt:

And when I hear you talk about the false definition, I just think of. It's almost like faith has become a pejorative, in the sense that it's the opposite of reason and evidence.

Scott Allen:

It's the opposite of it, exactly, dwight To lack reason.

Dwight Vogt:

to lack evidence is to have faith Exactly. And the other is to have is the idea of blind, mindless faith, and so I just believe and you will be healed. And you know, and you'll have money. And just believe, just believe, just believe, that's right.

Scott Allen:

Well, there's that. You have that in the Church today, this kind of idea of faith, and faith just the power of belief, if I just believe. You know We'll get into this later. But faith, just to make any sense of it at all, has to have an object. In other words, faith is trust in something or somebody. Right, that's the object, just to have faith. And faith is kind of nonsensical, right.

Scott Allen:

But, that's very common today in the Church. If you just believe and miracles will happen, great things will happen. How? Through faith, through faith, right? Well, if you ask faith in what, well, no faith in whatever it is. Faith in faith, faith in faith. Well, if you ask faith in what Well, no faith in you know whatever it is. Faith in faith, faith in faith, faith is the thing.

Dwight Vogt:

yeah, Scott, you know our listeners haven't seen a video yet, but you do have a video on this word faith and you use a really good illustration when you unpack that at the beginning and you talk about the airplane having faith in an airplane.

Scott Allen:

I think that's why don't you share that a bit Sure? Well, yeah, that's getting us back to kind of what faith is, the true definition of faith, and let me jump up here to that a little bit. So, basically, what I'm saying is that, first of all, I think it's important for Christians especially and I know most people that listen to our podcast are Christians we tend to think we Christians tend to think of faith in religious terms. You know, it's saving faith in Jesus Christ or it's sola fide, right, you know the Reformation cry, you know, by faith alone. And so we think of faith in terms of religion and that's reinforced in the culture, right? Just these definitions that we've just looked at.

Scott Allen:

Very often, scientific materialists will say, yeah, I believe in reason, but you Christians, you believe in faith. Right, you know, it's just this blind leap of faith. So we tend to think of—we associate faith with religion really closely, associate faith with religion really closely. But I want us to not do that, because faith isn't, isn't in any way something that is particular to religion. It's something that everyone actually exercises all the time. You have to exercise faith in order to just function in the world. You know, you can't hardly even get up in the morning and start a day without exercising faith. So what do I mean by faith? It's again the true definition is to put your trust in something or someone based on the weight of evidence. So it's synonymous with trust, with trustworthiness. And, yeah, the example that you're alluding to, dwight, is.

Scott Allen:

I give the example of airline travel, something that most people have done, you know, and so, let's say, you want to—if you've never flown before, you might have questions. And all faith, by the way, starts with questions. And the question in this case is will that airline safely get me to where I want to go? Can I trust it to get me there without crashing, or whatever it is? You know. And so, in order to for faith to work, you begin to answer that question in a search for evidence.

Scott Allen:

Do I know people that have flown safely? You know? Can I trust in the reliability of airplanes? You know, can I? Maybe I'll talk to a pilot. You're going to just gather some evidence in your own mind. This can happen kind of quickly too, you know, it doesn't have to be some big research project. You just start gathering evidence and that's the beginning point of an exercise of faith. But faith what makes faith kind of unique is when you—this word assent is really important—when you finally assent to the weight of the evidence, meaning you know. Everything that I see here, everything that I'm looking at, points to the fact that, yeah, this airplane can get me safely to where I want to go, but it's not faith unless you actually get on the plane right and actually take that trip.

Luke Allen:

That's the ascent point right, would you say. That's the little bit of the difference between trust and faith, because they're obviously different words. Is you trust that that plane is going to get you to where you want to go? But then, when you step on the plane.

Scott Allen:

That's the faith, the action yeah, that's the ascent and that is kind of the essence of faith, Luke is you can say, oh, I trust, yeah, I trust that plane, but if you never got on it, people would go doesn't seem like you trust it. You actually haven't flown. But if you actually do get on the plane, you ascent to the weight of the evidence. You get on the plane, you fly and then, by the way, if you get there successfully, that strengthens your faith. Because now that faith is strengthened through your own personal experience with it. And the more you fly, obviously, the stronger your faith grows. You know, again, this is something that we do all the time. It's even—you look at a chair. When you come into a room room and you look at that chair. If it's an older chair, like an antique chair, you might go. Is that going to support me? You know, and you've got some evidence that you bring to that. You know, based on—you look at it, you're going to collect some evidence really quickly. But then you exercise faith by sitting in the chair, right, sitting down in it, you know.

Scott Allen:

So faith always has an object. It's the trust in an object like an airplane, or a chair, or God, by the way, or you're an auto mechanic. You know there's so many examples. You know you come to a new town I'm living in a relatively new town. You know I've got to get my car fixed. You know the question that arises faith always starts with questions Can I trust that mechanic, right, you know. So I'm going to gather some evidence, do some research and ultimately bring my car down. That's the ascent, you know. And if they repair the car in a good way, honestly costly, cost-effective, then you know I can trust that person, I have faith in that person.

Scott Allen:

So this is just so important to think about faith in a very simple, practical way, because we again, this isn't just something that religious people have, all people have faith, we exercise faith all the time. You can't function in this world without that level of trust. And I'm sorry just to ramble a little bit longer, but the biblical word for faith, in the Old Testament anyways, is emet or emeth, which is almost identical to the word truth. And truth in the Old Testament is it's that idea of something that's immovable, that's firm, that's fixed, that's solid, that's trustworthy, right? Okay? So this is the idea, dwight. I've known you for years. I can totally trust you. Why? Because you've proven yourself to be trustworthy over a long set of years and experiences.

Dwight Vogt:

It's a very strong word. I'm thinking of your chair analogy, and I've sat in some chairs and I hoped they would hold me up, but I didn't necessarily have faith in them and I sat down on them anyway. But, you're saying faith is. I know that chair is strong and I know it will hold me.

Scott Allen:

Well, you're assenting to the weight of the evidence, right? So there's never.

Scott Allen:

This is where faith becomes kind of important, because there's very few things we can actually know for certain in this world, right, and this is where we actually all have to kind of exercise some faith, you know, based on but faith. And again, the New Testament word for faith is very helpful. Here the word is pistis, which means evidence. Isn't that interesting. It means it's a search based on available evidence. So, for example, the Apostle Paul says that unless Jesus actually—I don't have the verse in front of me— but unless he actually rose from the dead, you know, your faith is in vain, right?

Scott Allen:

So it has to be based on actual evidence of something that really happened in history. And if that didn't really happen, if Jesus wasn't a real person, didn't die on a cross, didn't rise from the dead, then we don't have any basis for our Christian faith. It's a fable, it's a myth, but the basis is no, this was an actual historical event, it actually happened. We can know something about it through the same way that we study history and the reliability of anything that happened in history, you know. So it just means evidence.

Scott Allen:

It means you know there's real evidence for this, and so yeah, go ahead.

Dwight Vogt:

And right there, you just pivoted from a definition of the word faith to. You qualified it, and so now we're talking Christian faith. So what does it mean to have Christian faith? And it's to have confidence in the evidence of God, of a good God, of Christ, that Christ lived, died, rose again. Anyway, that's how I see you tying those two together.

Scott Allen:

That's right. Christian faith is just faith. Again, faith starts with questions, and so the questions that Christian faith start with are questions, really big questions. Does God exist? Is God revealed in the Bible, you know? Has the Bible been passed down reliably? Can I trust it, you know, as a truthful source of reality? Is Jesus who he claimed to be, you know? So Christian faith starts with these kinds of questions, and then it's looking for evidence for their truthfulness.

Scott Allen:

Now, so this is the whole realm of, you know, apologetics, and you know there's a degree to which all of our faith needs to be based on this. Is, you know this stuff isn't a fable, this isn't a myth, this, actually, you know, jesus lived, he was who he said he was. There's real evidence for that, and you can make a case for that. Faith, though, does go beyond that, in the sense that you know that, in our fallen condition, we're so blinded to the truth that we need God's help in order to see things truly truthfully. To answer those questions about Jesus affirmatively, the New Testament especially says you need the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. In other words, we don't come to this just through some exercise of reason and we have got spiritual blinders on.

Scott Allen:

But, yeah, I think one of the most famous verses when we're talking about Christian faith, one of the most famous verses in the Bible is you know, faith is—I think it's in Hebrews right Faith is the confidence in what we hope for, the assurance of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. That's Hebrews chapter 11, the beginning of that right Faith—this is the great faith passage right in the New Testament. And you know, sometimes that passage has always struck me as being a little bit unclear. You know, faith is the confidence in what we hope for, the assurance about what we do not see. So I ask myself the question what's the object of the faith that we're talking about in this verse? And the object of the faith that we're talking about, the confidence in that which we hope for, is it's God himself, and I think we're specifically talking about the promises of God. In the Scripture, god makes all these promises and faith, essentially speaking of this passage, is faith. It's confidence in the promises of God, it's assurance that those promises are reliable and that they'll come true. So that chapter goes on and talks about the hall of faith, all these people that put their trust in the promises of God and were able to face all sorts of hardships as a result. And one of those people is Abraham.

Scott Allen:

Abraham is talked about in the Bible as the great man of faith, right, and so you know. And Abraham exercises faith in a lot of different ways. Right, it talks about this in Romans 4, 19-22. It says that, without weakening in his faith, abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, since he was about 100 years old, and that Sarah's womb, his wife, was also dead because they were so old. And then it goes on. It says Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God.

Scott Allen:

What's the promise here? God says you will be the father of a great nation. Right, he made a promise to Abraham. You know, you will be the father of a great nation. When he made that promise, abraham was old, he was beyond childbearing age, and so was Sarah. So it was.

Scott Allen:

You know it was hard to believe, right, this one. But Abraham did believe. Why did Abraham believe? Because, by the time that God had made this promise to him, abraham had walked with God for many years, and that was the evidence, if you will. In other words, it was that—that was the evidence, if you will. In other words, god had shown himself to be true to Abraham and Sarah.

Scott Allen:

He had come through in really difficult times of trial, and so, by the time that God makes this promise, abraham really trusts God. He really believes that if God says something, you know I can trust it, that's going to be completely reliable. So, as it says here in Romans, he didn't waver in his faith. This is the faith that we're talking about in Hebrews 1, this assurance of things hoped for. I want to have a child. I want to be the father of a great nation. I really hope for that. Have a child, I want to be the father of a great nation. I really hope for that. So it's the assurance of that, but it's based on the object here, which is the reliability of God himself and the promises of God. Right.

Dwight Vogt:

I think that's a really important distinction. Yeah, that that verse doesn't reflect mindless faith.

Scott Allen:

No.

Dwight Vogt:

Just your point that he believed in the object of God because he'd heard from God Right when he said leave your land and go to a new one. Yes, and he had those years of experience with God.

Scott Allen:

And it comes out later too in the really famous story of God comes to Abraham and Sarah later and says sacrifice your sacrifice your son Isaac. And Abraham takes Isaac and goes to Mount Moriah and, you know, goes all the way through with it, to the point of raising the knife over him. And my contention is that Abraham, even at that moment, knew that he could have utter trust in God's promise that his son Isaac would be the forefather of this great nation and that God would provide a way even then. In fact I think it says that much. Where is that? I've got that verse here in front of me here too.

Scott Allen:

But yeah, he doesn't waver in his faith, he has utter trust in God. You know, and it's really no different—Paul says this in the New Testament. This is no different than faith in the New Testament. It's just trust in God, trust in the fact that he exists, that he's true, that he's solid, immovable, you know, firm. He doesn't change his mind. He's not the same—he's not different yesterday than he is today. He doesn't change his mind, he's not the same, he's not different yesterday than he is today. And it's just complete trust in him. But it's not a blind thing, it's based on historical reality, scientific reality, all sorts of evidence that we have, and then of course we assent to that. We trust in God, we put our full faith in Him and then we bring to that personal experience right, like God's been really faithful in my life.

Scott Allen:

Right. You know and so my faith grows in that sense.

Luke Allen:

yeah, Let me see if I'm keeping up with you here. This word for me has been really helpful to learn about during this project because, growing up in the church, I think I just kind of accidentally did not do a good job defining this word. Well, I just kind of absorb the definitions from people I heard around me.

Luke Allen:

I think it's so easy to do that with a lot of these words as Christians because, we just in our church bubbles and our Christian bubbles, we hear truth all the time, we hear faith all the time, we hear love and we just kind of think we know the definitions well enough, but they're actually just the churchy answers and if anyone pushes back on them, especially a non-Christian, we kind of crumble and we don't have a good way of defending them, which, by the way, knowing the true definitions of these words is a really helpful apologetic tool for.

Luke Allen:

Christians. If you can just know the simple, true definitions of a word like truth, truth is extremely similar with reality and just knowing that helps a lot when explaining these words to critics. And with faith, knowing that it's the ascent to the weight of evidence and it's not blind, the weight of evidence and it's not blind, just if you can say that much and then and then back it up a little bit, we'll give you a much firmer understanding in what you believe and why you believe it. Anyways, I had a pretty bad definition of this Um, I would say, you know, even up to six months ago, just not really well defined Um. So this has been helpful. Uh, anyways, to see if I can stay on track with you guys, here we were talking about faith in general, how everyone needs faith.

Luke Allen:

Pretty much everything we do in life requires faith. Eating a sandwich, hoping it's not poisoned, like you guys said. Sitting in a chair, hopping in a car, whatever that looks, anything historical you?

Luke Allen:

know, we have to have faith that someone was actually accurate in writing down that Alexander the Great was a real person that actually existed. When it comes to our belief in God, unlike sitting in a chair, we can't exactly use math, and you know, sitting in a chair I can just grab some weights and throw them on the chair and see if it holds the same weight as me.

Luke Allen:

We have perfect data in a way to support the fact that that chair is going to hold me. So there's not much faith there. But with God, he gives us a lot of evidence. Like you were saying Dad through science and through creation, through history and through lived experience from other people. There's tons of evidence there, the whole Bible.

Luke Allen:

His Word but there's not full, perfect evidence. You know, sometimes you hear that from skeptical atheists. If you guys could prove perfectly that God existed, then I would believe. And to that I would say that's where faith comes in. And he's given us plenty, but he hasn't given us the perfect amount of evidence. He's not going to show up to every single person and say, hi, I'm Jesus you know, like some people wish he would.

Luke Allen:

He actually did that and still people at that time didn't believe him. That's right. And he performed miracles. He did everything you would expect God to do and yet people still didn't believe in him. But today we say I just want perfect amount of evidence and data and facts that he is real. But he doesn't do that on purpose, right, and it's because he wants loving relationship. And we all know that you need faith in order to have loving relationship. And see if this, see if this analogy works for you guys here. I think of faith a lot of times in human relationship as being a helpful example for a relationship with God. Before I got married I knew a lot of evidence that my wife was a great person and loved me and was headed in the right direction and yeah, I didn't know fully that in 20 years she wouldn't be some crazy person.

Luke Allen:

I didn't know that. But I had to have faith and commit, take that step, say the vows, we're married now. But I didn't know perfectly.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, the marriage is such a good example here of faith, Luke, because the—.

Luke Allen:

Oh, I haven't got to my analogy yet.

Scott Allen:

Oh sorry.

Luke Allen:

Yeah. So God wants a loving relationship with us, right? So with that he wants to see us have some faith in him, in the same way that if I didn't have faith in my wife and I made it and I had to have perfect evidence always that she's being faithful to me. Let's say, I track her phone, I follow her everywhere I go, I read all of her texts, I look at her Google search. I have perfect evidence to support my confidence in our marriage. But there's not faith there that I'm not trusting her you know, and it's that trust, that amount of trust that shows that I love her as well.

Luke Allen:

And God wants to see us. He doesn't give us perfect evidence, in a way full, perfect evidence that he exists, so that we can take that step of faith and trust in Him. And that's a loving step of trust I may be getting off track here. That's just where my brain was going as you guys were talking.

Dwight Vogt:

Well, what I hear you saying is just that relationship is a great example of faith. Every relationship is an example of faith because we're trusting that that person will be who they were last time we talked to them, they'll be honest.

Scott Allen:

They'll be straightforward yeah.

Dwight Vogt:

We have to have faith to have a relationship.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, and the depth of the relationship. You're going to reveal more about yourself, as you know that that person can be trusted with what you're. You know if you're sharing something that's vulnerable, makes you weak and vulnerable, you have to. You know that person needs to be trustworthy, you know, with that, so they don't harm you or damage you with what you're entrusting to them. And yeah, so yeah, and I think another thing you're saying, luke, here that I want to just comment on is people want perfect—you used that word several times—perfect evidence complete, completely buttoned down. That doesn't exist anywhere.

Scott Allen:

I would say, guys, do you agree with me? We often think, well, science, right, trust the science, science has really proven it. But even scientists will tell you that that's not real right. Every hypothesis you know is open to being disproven. Right, you know, it's never completely buttoned down. You know, science just wouldn't exist in that way. Now you can know things. You know the laws of gravity, you know there's a lot of evidence for that, you know, so we can know some of those things with a lot of confidence, let's say, but even, yeah, I just think that we just—that's not the kind of world we live in where you can know anything completely or perfectly, so in that respect, you do have to exercise faith. Everyone does. Science is based on faith, in a sense, faith that you know I'm going to make a hypothesis, I'm going to test it, and you know.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, and scientists exercise faith continuously because no scientist can do all the research on a project. They have to have some other people helping them out, lean on the law of gravity and just have faith that that actually is real, not test it for themselves, because that would take way too long. So, okay, I believe that guy and I listen to this guy and I believe him and you can pile a lot of faith in order to exercise upon your hypothesis.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, so yeah and just one last comment about Luke's marriage analogy. I think it's really good because we all—right this is—to get married is an act of faith, because you don't know everything about a person that you're marrying, you can't there's such depth to who someone is. I mean, I've been married now for more than 30 years and I still don't know everything about my wife, kim. So it's a step of faith. But the actual ascent, the essence of faith is, you know, standing up and saying I do. You know You're committing yourself, then, fully, based on weight of evidence, that I can trust this person. You know what I'm saying.

Scott Allen:

So it's a really good—it's a good analogy and it's the same thing we do with God. You know it requires—saving faith requires that you know full commitment. Right, you could say I believe, I believe I—you know, I've done all the research and looked at all the evidence and I believe Jesus is who he said he was and that we can trust him completely. But unless you do actually fully put your trust in him and surrender your life to him, you haven't reached that point of true faith I would say. So just a couple of clarifications. Dwight, you were going to say something.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, Scott, usually at this point, you talk about the cultural implications of the false definition. How has it impacted? What's happened in our world since faith has been changed in terms of its definition?

Scott Allen:

Absolutely Well. Before I answer that, I wanted to just add one more, because we're talking about true definition of faith here and I think this is important. I just want to, if you don't mind me, just going a little bit of a detour. I think the Church has been quite affected by this false definition of faith, this idea that you've just got to believe. Right, it's just belief and belief and as a result of that, you know, sometimes young people especially are told you know, don't ask questions, you know, just believe, don't think too hard. Right, that's kind of you know you might lose your faith. I think is kind of what's behind some of that Like you don't want to think— Don't look for evidence.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, don't think too hard, just believe. You just believe. This is kind of what Darrell was taught as a young man, and I think it's still very much true in the Church. But this is not good or healthy, and I think there's a real place to—it's important. Actually, faith begins with questions, and so you have to ask these questions, and you know this is something that Darrell learned at LaBrie, again with Francis Schaeffer, who famously said there's no such thing as a bad question. You know, just ask your questions.

Scott Allen:

So we have to be really—it's a great thing to have this questioning inquiring mind. Is it true? Can I trust it? All Christians have to—to have a genuine faith. They should, you know, they should answer—they should be free to ask those questions. Let's just say so. I think that's—I just think that's really important. Now, you know, there is a point at which asking questions becomes counterproductive if you've got all of the evidence but you still keep doubting. I think that doubt then is kind of like the doubt that James talks about. You know this wave that tosses you to and fro. It's like at some point you've got to ascent, you've got to take that step, and if you just keep doubting, there's something kind of unhealthy and destructive about that, but asking hard questions to build a foundation for your faith is really, really important.

Luke Allen:

That's interesting. Yeah, you can have all the evidence, all the right answers. Read the Bible 10 times through. Yeah. I mean Satan knows all the evidence for Christ. Yeah, he doesn't believe.

Scott Allen:

He's got perfect theology in a way, and he doesn't believe yeah.

Luke Allen:

So yeah, there's that point at which you need to stop. You need to ascend.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, I'd like you to ascend to it, put your full trust. You know, essentially, surrender is what it looks like. I surrender my entire life, all that I am, to you. Jesus, you know, do with me what you will. You know, not my will, but yours. Be done that idea, you know. That's the call right when we're talking about faith exercised in that airplane analogy, it's getting on the plane. That's the ascent. The ascent when we're asking about is Jesus really who he said he was? If the answer is yes, based on the weight of evidence, then that means he's God, he's your creator, he's you know. And if that's true, the only proper assent response is total surrender on your part. Right so? But, dwight, back to your question about cultures. You know again Darrow's bond of saying oh, go ahead, I think what you just said is one example.

Dwight Vogt:

It's the idea that, because we bought into the idea that faith and reason are disconnected, there's the idea that if you do reason yourself to faith, it's not real. It's this idea that I can't actually have faith and reason working together.

Scott Allen:

Yes, right, yeah, they go together. This idea that the redefined faith that separates faith and reason or faith and science is false. That just has to be understood really clearly. That is a false distinction that came out of the Enlightenment. You know, they go together. There is no war between faith and science, you know, or Christianity and science, you know there is no.

Luke Allen:

Could you explain that to people? You said the Enlightenment is where this lie probably started. I agree with that. Yeah, lay that out for people.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, so I'm talking about this period of Western history that kind of happened at the early 1700s, late 1600s, early 1700s, right after the Renaissance Reformation period, where there was this explosion of knowledge through science. And I think we've talked about this Science itself, the practice of science, is something that was birthed out of a biblical worldview. There's certain presuppositions that you need biblically in order even to do science. You know, and we could talk about those maybe at a different time. But science, my point here science isn't bad at all. It's great. It's a study for what's true, you know what is true.

Scott Allen:

But science at this time in history was picking up a lot of momentum. You know, it was just uncovering lots of mysteries. You know things that weren't known, you know, like, think about the thunder. You know lightning and thunder. Well, you know, in the past maybe that was the voice of the gods. Well, now we know that it's electrons, and you know, you know and it's, you know.

Scott Allen:

So it was that idea that, because these great mysteries of the natural world were being kind of uncovered one by one, that this idea kind of crept in, that this kind of human hubris, right of that. Well, we don't really need to appeal to God anymore as an explanation for things. That's what they did during the quote-unquote dark ages. Now we've got this powerful tool of science and human reason. This is the Enlightenment period and through science and human reason alone we can know all of reality. So that was kind of the basis of the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment secularism. We no longer need to appeal to God. God is a myth, a fairy tale, right, and now we trust the science. Right, and we still hear this today.

Scott Allen:

So during that time, the Enlightenment myth says that faith, and religious faith and belief in God is this blind leap, right, that we talked about. Right, it's not based on any science, any evidence, it's just you believe it because you want to believe it, because it makes you feel good, right, you know, gives you some hope or whatever it is, but it's just pure, you know, it's just this belief without any kind of foundation in it, you know. So, yeah, it put forward this idea of a war. Right, there's this war between science and religion, you know, because religion is illogical and science is logical. So all of that is false, right, and we have to go back to that and say you know, no science was born out of a Judeo-Christian or biblical worldview. There is no war between science and faith.

Scott Allen:

Everyone exercises faith. Faith is—even scientists exercise faith. So we just have to—we have to reject this kind of hypothesis that they put forward, that you know faith is a blind leap and you know it's not in the realm of science. None of that is true. That has to be rejected. So sorry, kind of a long answer.

Luke Allen:

So what happens when we fall for the Enlightenment myth to us and our cultures?

Scott Allen:

Well, I mean, I think you get all sorts of dysfunctions both in science and in the Church. Let's just take science, for example, here. First, you know, we have this irony today where you have some big names in science, like, oh, richard Dawkins, for example, the famous British biologist, atheist biologist, you know, and he's kind of got this quote that he's famous for saying that biology is the study of things that have the appearance of being designed but actually aren't. So he's looking at biological organisms, animals, people, plants, and he's saying, wow, they display all sorts of evidence of design. There's purpose, there's intricacy, there's this, you know, complexity, there's all this information within the DNA molecule, like it looks, like it's designed, like this didn't just happen by accident. You know that's what he's saying. But then he goes on and he says he makes this, he kind of asserts that they actually aren't designed, that actually, even though there's all this evidence of design, you know these things weren't actually designed, they just happened, you know, by blind chance. So you've got this weird irony where this great man of science is actually, what's he doing? He's exercising faith as a blind leap. Why? Because he wants to. He doesn't want to believe in God. So so you get you, you, you, you get.

Scott Allen:

You know a lot of that happening in science today. You know, in they're doing it's it's scientism. You know that words, it's, it's this, it's it's, it's almost this religious belief in science. But what it's striving for is to say there's no room in the universe for God or any kind of spiritual reality. That's what they want to believe and they use science. So it's almost up to Christians and a recovery of faith, true faith, to say no, we really do care about science. We want to save science. Science is following the evidence wherever it leads with that you know, and then assent. Like if he truly assented to the evidence, he would believe in God, because the evidence overwhelmingly points to a designer, right? I mean, there's just no question about that at this point a designer right?

Luke Allen:

I mean, there's just no question about that at this point. Yeah, true, scientists are humble enough to recognize this. There's a famous neuroscientist right now named Andrew Huberman Most of our listeners probably know who that is and he's studied the brain his whole life and he's at a point now when recently he was asked do you believe in God? And he's like I know too much to not believe in him yes. That's honest, and I've studied science well enough to realize this has to come from an intelligent designer. Way too much evidence right.

Scott Allen:

None of this could have happened through some kind of this idea that you just you know, these particles and material building blocks are just kind of, if you just give them enough time, they'll all kind of assemble themselves into these highly complex organisms and things like eyes and brains. That requires way too much blind faith. Let's say.

Dwight Vogt:

As I'm listening to you. When I hear the word faith, I'm going back to the beginning. You mentioned scientism, and then there's spiritualism. When I think of faith.

Scott Allen:

I was talking about how faith today, this wrong definition of faith. It distorts science and it distorts true Christian faith.

Dwight Vogt:

If I have to create categories, I put faith in the area of spiritualism. It's the idea that there's something beyond material world that is real and active. And you know what is that? And it could be animistic belief, it could be pantheism, it could be. Hinduism, Buddhism, whatever.

Dwight Vogt:

You know, but there's voodoo, black magic, I don't, you know, I don't know, but faith fits in that world. And so where am I going with this? Um, it's interesting because I I think even the material world is. You mentioned the neuropsychologist or the neurobiologist. Even the material world is up against the question of isn't there something beyond matter? And it's the mind, it's design, it's your quote with Dawkins, and we're constantly confronted with this idea yes, there is something beyond matter.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, that's right.

Dwight Vogt:

Even in, I love reading intelligent design stuff and increasingly Darwinianism is losing ground because, even now they're saying cells have cognition. Yes. Well, as soon as you say that a cell has cognition, you're going. A cell thinks, it has something that isn't material, it's not consciousness per se, but it's something. And now you're into that spiritual realm, that non-material realm. But anyway, I just think it's interesting that there I don't know what this has to do with faith, but the idea that there's evidence for this realm beyond what we see and feel and touch.

Scott Allen:

Oh yeah, no, absolutely. I think for me, dwight, where I saw this really clearly was there's a whole new field of science called information, the study of information complex information and we think about these things that are really the basic building blocks of reality.

Scott Allen:

We can think of material building blocks electrons and protons and neutrons and quarks, and as small as you can get. There's these basic building blocks, these fundamental building blocks. And science now is saying there's another one too, that's immaterial, it's information, and they often point to the DNA molecule and they say the DNA molecule contains more information complex, specified instructions, if you will, that more information is contained in the DNA molecule than the entire Encyclopedia Britannica 10 times over, or something like that. There's so much information and then the question becomes where does that come from? Where does this complex, specified information come from? And the answer is there's only one place that we know of where that comes from.

Scott Allen:

That's from a mind. Right, we can create information by writing some—I can write a book or a paragraph. That's complex, specified information, something that you can read. It's information. It's not just random characters on a piece of paper that make no sense. So it comes from my mind. My mind isn't a material thing, right you know? Or the mind of God mind of god, right you know? This is powerful evidence for god. Now, these guys that are saying you know, information comes from the cells. You know again they're.

Dwight Vogt:

They're just so reluctant to point to anything beyond well, they're saying that, yeah, they're saying that cells have information, but even it's kind of like to me.

Scott Allen:

They're saying like a table has in, you know, like that's the source of it, something inanimate, you know, doesn't Right. I'm sorry, but even to say things have information is to say that there's a mind.

Dwight Vogt:

And as soon as you say there's a mind, then you have to say well, what's the evidence? And you have to start weighing the evidence for that mind and you can go to animism, you can go to pantheism, but ultimately you will end up with the Creator.

Scott Allen:

You will. And Paul makes this really clear in Romans, chapter 1. He says you know, just looking at God's creation, you know, looking at a human eye, for example, and the complexity and the beauty of that and the fact that it's designed for a purpose right, and the beauty of that and the fact that it's designed for a purpose, right it's, you know. Paul says, you know, just the creation itself points to God in a way that you know is undeniable. And to deny God as a creator when you see the evidence in creation is to be kind of willingly suppressing the truth Like you want to suppress it. You see it clearly and I think we all know this at some level. It's funny, children often have this kind of faith. They know right away as they grow up, this didn't all just happen by chance. You have to almost be kind of overly educated. But I wanted to get back to your question on the culture and what difference this makes in shaping cultures to Dwight, because I think that's a really important question. You know, we these words, words are building blocks of culture. So what kind of cultures do high faith culture? You know what does that look like? A culture is built on a true understanding of faith. And when I was thinking about that, I thought of Darrow's famous quote. You know, we all build societies in the image of the God that we worship, right, the god that we worship, right. So if you believe in a, let's say, you know, an animistic kind of a worldview where the world is governed by these pagan gods who are erratic, they're unpredictable, you know, you're always trying to kind of do these spells and incantations or whatever it is, to kind of control the gods. They're not trustworthy. And so when you have that as the basis of a culture, you have a low-trust society and that tends to lead to a lot of dysfunction, corruption, brokenness. You can't trust each other because you can't, ultimately, trust the gods, if you will. So that's an animistic kind of a culture.

Scott Allen:

What about a culture that's, you know, like our Western cultures that are materialistic, they don't believe in any spiritual reality, right? Well then, what do you have? You have this kind of Darwinian idea of you know everything was formed through blind chance, and you know there's only kind of one immutable law the survival of the fittest. Well, if that's the only immutable law, right? You know, we're all just kind of in this battle to survive and pass on our genes, then we also can't trust each other, right, because you're always going to be trying to take advantage of me for your benefit, right? So, and nor can—yeah, I mean, if everything is just a blind chance, you know we can't even trust our own thinking about it, right? How can I trust my brain to know the truth about anything if it just happened through this unguided process of evolution?

Scott Allen:

So you have low trust there as well, right, and Marxism too low trust, because the Marxist idea is that everyone's out to seek advantage, to seek power over other people for their own benefit right, and so you can't trust people there either. So it's really fascinating. If you want to have a high-trust society where you can trust other people, you can trust the institutions of society, you can trust that the next election is going to be free and fair we all need—society kind of functions on this trust. It's super important. You have to ask the question where does that trust come from? And I think ultimately it has to come from the worship of the living God, who is true and trustworthy, and real and doesn't change, and we can fully trust in Him. So then, if we trust in Him, we can become people that are like him, kind of trustworthy people, and then we can build institutions that are trustworthy right, you know, that are reliable. Does that?

Scott Allen:

make sense. I know I'm getting— no, no, it turns out that this word, faith, is kind of super important for building healthy cultures.

Dwight Vogt:

No, you touched on something there. Because to trust in a trustworthy God also, then we realize that, okay, god exists. He created us. We are made in his image. So at every man's core is the desire to be a trustworthy person. That's right, because that's who God is. That's who God is, and we fall short and we're fallen creatures, but that's you know.

Scott Allen:

And the more that I grow in my faith, the more trustworthy I become, the more honest and the more I have integrity. Yeah, my wife can trust me. My kids can trust me. That means my family's stronger, you know, and so it's such a basic building block. We just trust and faith, you know. So you know these things really matter at the end of the day.

Dwight Vogt:

And it's everywhere Business, and it's everywhere Businesses, sports everywhere.

Scott Allen:

That's right. Food production Yep, food production yeah, the one that I'm struggling with right now is post-COVID. Is the Food and Drug Administration right? I mean, 15 years ago I'd like complete trust in that, you know. Oh yeah, whatever they say, you know any vaccine, whatever it is, I'm completely going to get that because they're completely trustworthy. Then comes COVID and this COVID vaccine and I'm like, well, maybe we should give that a little more time. You know, it's brand new, let's see what the evidence is for that.

Dwight Vogt:

And now it's like I wouldn't trust them at all for that, and now it's like I wouldn't trust them at all. Sorry to say that, but they've lost my trust. They've lost my trust. Back to faith. You've lost faith, yeah right.

Luke Allen:

There's definitely a huge wave of skepticism right now when it comes to all that thanks to COVID. Hopefully we don't overreact and have no trust in it.

Dwight Vogt:

So you're tying that to the false definition of this word faith and have no trust. So you're tying that to the false definition of this word, faith.

Scott Allen:

Well, you have societies where trust is eroded because people. Can I trust that you truly have my best interests at mind in these agencies, or are you really just looking to make a whole lot of money? And that's what it appears like? Because there's this revolving door, in that case, between these huge pharmaceutical companies that make billions of dollars and these people that are, between these huge pharmaceutical companies that make billions of dollars and these people that are, you know, on these fda approval boards that are approving the drugs right like so too many conflicts of interest there. I'm sorry, you know you're gonna have to show me another, a better I. I need better evidence that I can trust you right now is what what it boils down to? So, um, trust, once it's lost, by the way way, it's hard to rebuild, isn't it? I mean, we all know that in our experience. Absolutely yeah. Well, this is yeah. What else, guys? I think we're kind of coming to the end. I think of this.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, I'm just. I have never realized how much we need faith in a society for it to work. Yeah, that's pretty eye-opening, how necessary that is. I mean, yeah, it makes sense. I, I like that show, survivor, like that tv or game show, and they always say the one thing you need on the island is trust yes you can't get anywhere in the game without trust, and it's a mini society, it's a little case study of the broader society. But humans cannot work in community without trust.

Luke Allen:

It's such a basic building block, acting upon it in faith.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, and again it just begs the question where does trust come from? How can I exercise faith in you and trust you? Where do you become trustworthy? Or the institution that you build, where does that become trustworthy? And you just keep pushing back? And it has to have its source in a God who is utterly trustworthy. If you don't have that at the foundation of it all, you're going to have low trust societies. You know, and I think that's the great news, that's the great contribution of God and of you, know true biblical faith, if you will, you know, for a culture.

Luke Allen:

Wow, Anything else you guys want to share before we wrap up. That was that was. That was pretty good ending, though.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, I just that last comment, scott. I was even thinking of life as a human being, as a person. It's like. Ultimately, the more I trust in God, the more confidence I have as a human being. That's right, because without that you're always worried about failure. You're worried about harm, you're worried about loss, you're worried about everything, and then you don't function well. Then you can't be a giving loving.

Scott Allen:

No, that's right. Trust in.

Dwight Vogt:

God as a good creator who loves us and cares for us. It just builds everything You're right, it does, it does.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, back to marriage. I think of how a healthy marriage requires faith, and when there's a breakdown in faithfulness, there's a breakdown in faithfulness. A common response to that is jealousy, and jealousy once that's introduced into a marriage, it just causes cracks to spread everywhere and all of a sudden there's no trust and there's a complete lack of faith.

Scott Allen:

Connect that a little bit more for me, Luke. How do you see jealousy brought in here? I'm not quite sure I'm following that.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, I mean this is more for relationships specifically, but once there's a lack of faith, you know, I no longer trust that you're faithful.

Luke Allen:

Okay, now I'm jealous of something or someone out there that is causing this lack of faithfulness, and it might be real, it might be not, but now jealousy has creeped in and once jealousy enters a marriage, it starts affecting everything because it's so contagious or so contaminating and all of a sudden I don't trust what you're saying and I don't trust where you're at and I don't trust what you're doing and our't trust where you're at and I don't trust what you're doing and our kids don't trust us and they don't know whose side to take and it breaks everything down really quickly. So I you know that's just an example of once. Once it's broken, it's hard to restore and it causes just turmoil in all different directions.

Scott Allen:

There's an interesting other side. While we're talking about the importance of trust in our human relationships, there's another side to it that I've always found kind of fascinating, and that is you see this, for example, with God, you know, in the story of Gideon, that Old Testament story. You know where Gideon is, this kind of flaky guy who is very fearful. And yet God comes to him and he's got a plan. He's going to do something powerful through Gideon, he's going to use him to overthrow the Midianites. But he comes to him and he says you know what does he say? Courageous man of God, or great man of God, or something like that, something that's not true really he was hiding at the time.

Dwight Vogt:

He's hiding.

Scott Allen:

Yeah exactly he's hiding in fear and God looks beyond what he is to what he can be, and that faith in him, even though it's unwarranted, actually helps him become that. And I've seen that with Luke, you and the other kids that you—and I've seen it with myself Like. In other words, if somebody has faith in who I can become, not what I am, it actually helps me to become more trustworthy Does that make sense. Oh yeah.

Scott Allen:

So that's kind of a blind leap of faith. Faith breeds faith, maybe that's it. Maybe that's it, faith blind leap of faith. Faith breeds faith. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's it Faith breeds. Yeah, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Dwight Vogt:

Yeah, we want to start with that. You give trust and then you hope people to live into it.

Scott Allen:

To live into it.

Luke Allen:

yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't doubt someone else. You hope for the best in them. I think of that with a running coach I used to have, and before a race he would always say Luke, I think you can run this time and I would want to rise to the occasion because he had faith that I could do it. And I'm like, I don't know what you see in me, coach, but I I'm way more motivated now to try extra hard to you know, prove that your faith wasn't void.

Scott Allen:

It requires some more thought on my part. I just find that very, very powerful, though, and very you know. So anyways, probably drifting off a little bit here, Okay, yeah, let's wrap things up.

Luke Allen:

Yeah, this was fun though, guys, and thank you guys, to all of our listeners for tuning in as well. I hope that was helpful for you guys. To all of our listeners for tuning in as well. I hope that was helpful for you guys. I hope that you can walk away from this being able to push back next time you hear that faith is nearly blind, and you'll have a response to that, and I also hope that all of us, as Christians, can always be pushing for evidence, asking questions, searching for the heart of God. We have full permission to do that as Christians, which is amazing, and we can do that for the rest of our lives. And when we come up face-to-face with the decision to assent to the weight of evidence or not, don't be a postmodernist or deconstructionist, but actually, you know, have some faith and continue to lean into God and test other worldviews as well. There's only one worldview that comports with reality, but if you want to see if Buddhism does, go and ask questions, search for evidence.

Luke Allen:

As far as I can tell, it does not comport with reality but, as Christians, we should be always looking for truth and being confident in the evidence that leads to the biblical worldview. We definitely are, and this book lays out the biblical worldview definitions of these 10 important words. Again, those words are or I don't think I've read them yet today but those words in this book that we're unpacking are truth, human sex, marriage, freedom, authority, justice, faith, beauty and love. So in this mini-series we only have two more episodes, which is kind of sad beauty and love, but those are going to be power-packed episodes. We're excited to bring those to you guys. If you have not listened to the other words in this series, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to those. We also have an introduction episode, which is a great one for you guys to share with any friends who you think would benefit from this series, to get them going on the project.

Luke Allen:

Also, for all things, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World the book that we are unpacking here. We have a website for you guys that has all the information you can need about the book. That website is 10wordsbookorg. Again, that is 10wordsbookorg. On there you'll see the endorsements about the book, you'll see the introduction, the trailer for the book and we also have more information about how to access the Bible study course once.

Luke Allen:

That comes out in November, at the same time as the book comes out. Hopefully, by the way, the book will be out on November 19th, which is coming up very soon. If you would like to be notified for when the book comes out hopefully, by the way, the book will be out on November 19th, which is coming up very soon If you would like to be notified for when that book comes out, you can join our newsletter at disciplenationsorg. There's an obvious place on our homepage to sign up for our newsletter and we're going to send out a reminder that the book is out on November 19th, so you can feel free to sign up for the newsletter there. Again, all things 10 Words Book go to 10wordsbookorg. So, yeah, that's it for today, guys. Dad, dwight, thank you for your time.

Luke Allen:

I enjoyed the discussion and yeah we'll catch all of you guys next week for another episode here on Ideas have Consequences the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.