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
Fighting for Truth in Dark Times: Reflections on Charlie Kirk's Legacy
Episode Summary:
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a sobering reminder of how dark our cultural moment has become. Is there still room for civil discourse about what is good and true? What has led to such a loss of respect for human life?
Charlie modeled courage and moral clarity. True Christian love means speaking truth against lies that dehumanize, even when it costs us. Our battle is not against people but against destructive worldviews. Bad ideas have real victims, but the gospel equips us to tear down systems built on lies with persistent truth-telling.
The church needs to engage today’s cultural battles like Christ, with clarity, compassion, and courage, aiming to set the captives free, no matter the personal cost. Join us as we explore how Christians can confront false ideologies while still loving those imprisoned by them.
Who is Disciple Nations Alliance (DNA)? Since 1997, DNA’s mission has been to equip followers of Jesus around the globe with a biblical worldview, empowering them to build flourishing families, communities, and nations. 👉 https://disciplenations.org/
📌 Recommended Links
👉 TPUSA Faith: America Needs A Strong Church
👉 Oxford Debate: https://youtu.be/mlh_GfHmwts?si=HafQlsDKbKitmLpK
👉 Book: Why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice - Disciple Nations Alliance
👉 Book: A Toxic New Religion
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Verses and Quotes for Reflection:
- “Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” 2 Timothy 2:25-26
- “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” Colossians 2:8
- “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5
- "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14
- "Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." 1 Corinthians 15:58
- “Be angry and do not sin.” Ephesians 4:26a
- "Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- “I attack ideas. I don't attack people." - Antonin Scalia
If it's a message of dehumanization or false human identity or a culture of violence, whatever it might be, we have to speak the truth against that. They are our enemies. I mean they have set themselves against us to the point of picking up a rifle and shooting. I mean they're enemies, but our response isn't to treat them with that same kind of violent hatred. It's to love them, and that means to seek to set them free from these ideas that have captured them and are destroying them. That's our heart and that, by the way, is, I think, what Paul meant when he said overcome evil with good. There's a power there, an incredible power. It's the power of the cross.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. As Christians, we all know our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. However, our mission also involves working to transform our cultures so that they increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission and today many Christians are having little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God. Hi guys, my name is Luke Allen. I am the producer and, I guess now becoming more of the host of this show. I'm joined today by my dad and our host, Scott Scott Allen, as well as Tim Williams, joining as our co-host today for a sobering and impromptu discussion that we thought we should present to you as the Ideas have Consequences podcast. Dad, I'll let you set up this episode for us.
Scott Allen:Yeah, we are all of us here reeling from just the events as everyone is, I think of the past week in the United States and I've seen this ripple around the world the assassination of Charlie Kirk last Wednesday and before that we earlier in the week we were, you know, we were made aware of video from this horrific murder in Charlotte, north Carolina, of a young, innocent refugee from Ukraine Horrific. So just all of us reeling from these events and we wanted to address them on the podcast today, just as a team, and just kind of share what we're seeing and how we're processing this. I guess I'll go ahead and start, guys, with just some kind of initial thoughts. Let me just start by saying, as far as Charlie Kirk is concerned, you know we, the DNA, we have a corporate headquarters as well in Phoenix and so does Charlie Kirk, and so we shared that same connection to the city of Phoenix and the church in Phoenix.
Scott Allen:I personally did not know him. I would have liked to have met him. I had many people that you know, that I knew that did know him. You know we had a lot of mutual friends. I wasn't a regular follower of his, but I did tune into his podcast occasionally and I would listen often to clips of him, mostly, you know, when he was debating on college campuses. Just listening to the way he handled that very difficult environment. I was impressed by him. Of late I watched two clips that I was really impressed by. He had an opportunity to join a debate at Oxford University. They have a world famous maybe the most famous in the world debating club and he was invited and he's you know, charlie Kirk doesn't have a college degree and here he is at Oxford and the way that he I just, if you haven't listened to that, I encourage you to go back and just listen to that debate that he did there. Just the way that he did it, the incredible clarity, moral clarity, the wisdom, the kind of the hopefulness that he had, um, the, yeah, just, I was so impressed. I remember watching that, just thinking wow.
Scott Allen:And then later I watched a clip of him, um, on a, um, uh, a mainstream news broadcast I think it was MSNBC, um, business or you know and he was sitting at a table with journalists who were not you know, they were not conservatives or Christians maybe, and yet he was just engaging with them in such a winsome way, speaking truth, not afraid to bring up truth, marshalling facts in such an impressive way. And I thought, you know, for a young guy he's just so talented. And I think I observed too the organization that he built, turning Point, usa, at a distance. You know, being the president of an organization like D&I, I have some idea of what it means to build an organization and movement. I mean, obviously it's all God, but you have to work and he seemed like just he had a voracious work ethic and God obviously was blessing that ministry in a powerful way. So, all that to say, I was an admirer, I was impressed and I think the shock then that came when he was assassinated. For me the initial thought was oh no, you know, he's gone, that voice is gone that I, at kind of a distance so appreciated, was out there and just grieving over that. And a couple things since then I think I want to share just here. To kind of kick things off, guys, is I think we some of the things I admired about Charlie Kirk and we can, I think, learn from him.
Scott Allen:Just a few thoughts. Number one is one of the things that he said in terms of describing his calling or his ministry. He used Psalm 9710 to describe his calling and he said that verse reads let those who love the Lord hate evil. And he basically said to be a Christian, to love the Lord, you have to hate what is evil and you have to speak against it. And so I think that I really appreciated that, because I think for a lot of Christians, we think, you know, we just have this little kind of it's vital, it's foundational, but this gospel message of personal salvation that we share and we don't really need to share anything else. You know, anything else becomes kind of a distraction. But Charlie Kirk said wherever there's evil, if there's an evil ideology, you know and there is an evil ideology abroad in our land today that's taken deep root in the culture there is an evil ideology abroad in our land today that's taken deep root in the culture. Wherever you see evil, if you love the Lord, you demonstrate your love for the Lord, not by just being passive, ignoring that, pretending it doesn't exist or worse.
Scott Allen:I think, and this is a lot of what I think the church has failed in, evangelical church. I'm speaking specifically of kind of almost accepting the ideology and papering over it with kind of a Christian, christianese veneer, you know, in the hopes of being liked or seen as acceptable to elites and hopefully that opens a door to the gospel. I think we've done that. Charlie Kirk was one who said no these ideas whether it's transgenderism or you know whether it's just this kind of woke ideology that you know, this kind of miscarriage of justice Anyways, it's evil. It needs to be combated on the basis of truth, and he was willing to go out in a courageous way into the public square, not just into the public square to defend the truth, but right into the universities which are the seedbed of so much of this destructive ideology in the West. I think that's something that we all can admire and learn from that.
Scott Allen:Our message as Christians needs to be the gospel, and Charlie Kirk modeled that. Our message as Christians needs to be the gospel, and Charlie Kirk modeled that. But it has to be a speaking of truth against the lies and against the evil that exists in our time, wherever we see it. It's got to be a bigger message. If it's a message of dehumanization or false human identity or a culture of violence, whatever it might be, we have to speak the truth against that, and he did it.
Scott Allen:This is another lesson is, in a way, that was hopeful. He wasn't despairing, he wasn't mean-spirited, he wasn't cutting in the way that. He did it in terms of trying to kind of diminish or own the libs or put down people or whatever it was. He was winsome. He did it in terms of trying to kind of diminish or own the libs or put down people or whatever it was. He was winsome. He did it in a winsome, engaging way and you sensed behind it a concern for the people themselves and I just think that models what Christian public engagement needs to look like.
Scott Allen:Right, we need to be clear, as clear as we can in terms of our attack on the ideology. At the same time, we need to recognize that people behind it are ensnared by the evil one and we want to see them set free. We don't want to destroy them. I thought he modeled that really well. So again, I think, at a time when so many of our Christian institutions Christian universities, big ministries, intervarsity, you name it have kind of gone along with this stream of woke ideology and papered over it with kind of Christian veneer, he went in a different direction and he said no, this is wrong, this is evil, and he spoke with moral clarity against it.
Scott Allen:He didn't just have a narrow gospel message let's just preach the gospel. He certainly did preach the gospel. That was central to his message, especially later in, you know, I think his ministry that became very central, so did family and so he. You know this public willingness to engage in the truth with the gospel, not separating these things or not saying this is only the thing we have to do and nothing else. He modeled something that's so important for us, taken away. When he was taken away, the amazing reaction has been that's been really breathtaking to me just to see the outpouring of grief and of resolve, and not just here in the United States, I mean all over the world. I just really I'm amazed by the impact that a what is he? 31-year-old young man can have. So just a few thoughts to kind of get things kick-started. I would love to hear, tim and Luke, your thoughts and reactions as well.
Luke Allen:Yeah, this one hit close to home. I think it's probably not my best quality, but, being of Northern European descent, emotions aren't very I'm not a very emotional person, so usually these kind of tragedies roll off way too easily. Uh, this one hit hit close to home, uh, which I thought was interesting. I wasn't exactly sure why I was a follower of his, not a close, close follower, but um you know he's a peer of mine.
Luke Allen:Uh, we're pretty close in age. Very similar life situation. Recently married I think we were married the same year Two kids, a boy and a daughter. A lot, of, a lot of same vocational calling to bring God's truth, goodness and beauty to culture him on a large scale, me on a much smaller scale, but this one hit close to home, you know. So it's been a heavy pill to swallow, but had a lot of reactions, a lot of thought. God's made it pretty clear to me that he wants me to learn some things from this.
Luke Allen:Uh so I'm trying to step back from other things and pay attention to where the spirit's leading me right now. Uh, a couple of reactions, um, some that I thought at first were bad but I'm realizing are fine Uh, reaction number one is anger. What is it? Ephesians four be angry but don't sin. Um, it's fine to be angry when injustice happens, when evil happens. That's a very normal response. Just make sure you're you're, you're directing your anger and your desire to fight in the right directions. Um, but it's not wrong to be angry.
Luke Allen:A lot of clarity, uh, I think. Uh, one thing he did well and one thing that I always noticed I would go to him for was when things seemed pretty crazy in culture, you know, at the height of the pandemic, during COVID or other times. I would go, I would. I would find myself going to listen to him, because he always spoke with very clear, uh conviction when it came to right and wrong. Uh, which is exactly what you want when things seem crazy is you want something that seems firm. He was firm and clear in his convictions, which I really appreciated. That for that quote, dad, that you were sharing of his we put up on our Instagram last week, but I thought that was a perfect representation of what he believed. He was talking about him and his wife actually. But when he said this, he said we don't want to have to be accountable to God when this life passes and God asks why did you not trust me and not fight evil? Because as Christians we're all called to fight evil. And then he quoted in this interview, he quoted Psalm 9710, let those who love the Lord hate evil. And then he went on to say everyone's called to different things in the body of Christ, whether that's being a teacher or a mother or a pastor. And he said my specific calling is to fight evil and to proclaim the truth. And that's it. And just that kind of clarity is is really helpful.
Luke Allen:What he knew, what he knew very well, was the consequences of not following God, and the consequences of not following God. And the consequences of not following God aren't just bad ideas, aren't just laws that are unhelpful for people, aren't just neutral. The consequences of not obeying God is evil. Proverbs 8, 36 says but he who fails to find me injures himself. All who hate me love death.
Luke Allen:And at the end of the day, that's kind of what it comes down to is the battle over worldviews and I think I've had a lot of clarity on that over this last week is a lot of people like to say that we're in a culture war. I would say yes, absolutely. But I think it's more than that. Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims, as we say all the time. John Stone Street said that and just understanding that ideas, worldviews, ideologies have victims if they're not anchored in a biblical worldview, if they're not anchored in God. So we are in a culture war and as such, there's going to be two sides, two competing worldviews, and currently those two worldviews are both utterly convinced that they can create a better culture and they're also almost complete opposites, at least here in the West.
Scott Allen:Luke, if I could, can I jump in?
Scott Allen:I don't want you to lose your train of thought, but I just think I want to add on to what you're saying at this very moment, because you talk about ideas having consequences and bad ideas having victims. You know, we saw earlier in the week we saw that horrific murder of that young Ukrainian, almost the same age as Charlie Kirk, maybe younger. You know, this beautiful young immigrant from Ukraine on the train. You know, just in such shockingly graphic detail, and this is a clear example, I just think, such a clear example of an ideology that has victims. And let me explain that. You know, I think here we see a murderer who is black. Who is black but because of his skin color, he was arrested for, you know, multiple crimes I forget how many, I think it was something like 14, and some of them were violent, but every time he was released from prison, back onto the streets or not even, he wasn't even incarcerated. I believe he just wasn't prosecuted 14 times.
Scott Allen:What's behind that? Well, what's behind that is an ideology that I wrote about in the book why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice. That says justice is oppressed groups based on things like skin color or it could be sexual identity, oppressed groups being set free from unjust systems, and in this case they would put the American justice system, all the way from police to prisons, into that category of systemically unjust systems. So the belief is those systems are wrong, evil and unjust. They are used to subjugate victimized groups, blacks and others.
Scott Allen:So the consequence, the upshot of that, the consequence of that set of ideas, is that they're released and they're not prosecuted. They're released and in this case, up to 14 times the victim is the young lady and we saw not prosecuted. They're released and in this case, up to 14 times the victim is the young lady and we saw it just with our own eyes. These people are allowed to go back onto the streets and murder again. So you're absolutely right. You know these ideologies, they have consequences and they have victims. And it was just to me. It was such a crystal clear image of what happens when you follow this wrong, demonic view of justice. It has victims, yeah.
Luke Allen:Yeah, whenever God's original definition for something is skewed, it's not just a bad definition, it's poisonous and it's toxic. And yeah, that's kind of what I was about to get to. Next, these two. So we're in a culture war. That's undeniable. I know a lot of Christians like to say, oh, we shouldn't engage in culture wars, we shouldn't be culture warriors. There was a clip that went around a few months ago about these two worship leaders at some church and they were saying how they were uncomfortable with how many worship songs have a lot of warlike language in them.
Luke Allen:I think they said there's a lot of, you know, worship songs about battles and fighting and war and it's like, yeah, that's because the Bible's full of that kind of verbiage and it's throughout the scriptures and of course the scriptures defines what that looks like. We are in a spiritual warfare. We do not fight against flesh and blood.
Tim Williams:It talks about all of that.
Luke Allen:But you can still have that mindset I'm a warrior, I'm in a fight, I'm in a culture war, I'm in a war for ideas. And again, on one side of this fight, a lot of people also say, well, it's a, it's a, it's a culture war between liberals and conservatives in the U? S. And I'm like no, that's way too broad, that's that you're not getting to the core of this. Like, at the core of what's really going on here in 2025 is a struggle between people who love God's truth, his goodness and his beauty, and then those who deny God and try to construct their own truth, goodness and beauty essentially. But again, if you try to construct your own truth, goodness and beauty, all you're going to end up with is lies, ugliness and death.
Luke Allen:And because a turning away from God again, as Proverbs 8.36 says, all who hate me love death. Or in John 7. 7, jesus says this is a kind of a heavy paraphrase, but I think it's still on point the world hates me because I testify that its works are evil. Jesus saying that, and as Christians, I think we all know this that the world's going to hate us. But we like to avoid it, right, we like to say like, oh it's, you know I didn't sign up for this warfare. It's like, yeah, you did.
Scott Allen:To follow Jesus is to pick up your cross daily and follow him. Pick up your instrument of torture and death daily and follow him. Right, you've been enlisted on a particular side in a battle the side of light against the side of darkness. This is a spiritual war. That is fundamental reality. God exists and so does satan, and there's a contest going on in the heavenlies and it shows up here on earth, in the cultural as well. So you, there's no. Yeah, once you become a christian, you sign up, you put on the uniform, whether you like it or not, yep, so yeah, pick up your cross daily and follow me.
Luke Allen:That's, um, that's what it comes down to. But you know, right now, with with so much anger, so much, um, frustration I can sense in a lot of my peers uh, just a lot of Christians in general what do we do? I want to do something. What can we rally behind? What can we fight? You know, and you got to be very careful about how you're fighting. So, as far as takeaways go, I'd love to talk about that more with you guys, but a few takeaways that I came to is the simple application here is we're in a battle of worldviews, so you need to understand what you're fighting for and you need to understand what you're fighting against. Best place to start is understand what you're fighting for. You're fighting for a biblical worldview. You're fighting for God's definition of how we should live in this world, and then, after that, you want to understand what you're fighting against.
Luke Allen:This is Jeff Myers, friend of the podcast. He often says this in response to Colossians 2.8, a verse that we all know very well. We say all the time here on the show which says see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophies which depend on human traditions and the basic traditions of this world rather than on Christ. Three takeaways from that verse that we can all put into application right now. Step number one take every thought captive. I think as Christians, we all know that. Step two is don't be taken captive. So that means understand the worldviews around you and your culture and don't be taken captive by them. And then, number three set the captives free.
Luke Allen:And I think this is the most important step and one of the hardest steps for us to do is set the captives free. Again, we do not fight against flesh and blood. So our enemy in this culture war is not people. Our enemy is ideologies, lies and worldviews. Culture war is not people. Our enemy is ideologies, lies and worldviews. People are captive in those right.
Luke Allen:The scripture talks about this all the time. Sin captures you, it imprisons you, it puts you in bondage. What we're trying to do is we are trying to fight a culture war to set the captives free. So we're trying to find all those people that are taken captive by these ideologies and set them free, because we love them and because we recognize that when they are accepting these lies, that they are denying their own humanity, because to deny god is to deny your own humanity, because we are made in the image of god. So we want them to come into the fullness of who they're meant to be and set them free, and that's something that that's a good thing to fight for, right, that's a that's a good, not an evil, to fight for.
Luke Allen:And a lot of times we want to fight out of evil, revenge, hatred, it's like. No, you need to fight towards the good. You need to fight towards love, and I think the response that we're seeing all over the world right now kind of shows that there was an act of evil done and then normally in our fleshly nature we think, oh, there's going to be a backlash of evil. You know there needs to be burning buildings, rioting, destroying things. And instead we're seeing a lot of prayer, a lot of people coming together and just praying tons of that all over the world. A lot of people coming together and just praying Tons all over the world.
Luke Allen:Yesterday, sunday, churches all over the country were hitting record numbers because people wanted to seek light in a dark time, and I think that's encouraging. I sense a lot of at least amongst Christian circles unity right now around a hatred of evil, which I think is good. I don't see much unity broader than that. I think there's a lot of division right now in the world, very clearly, but at least in Christian circles a lot of unity, and I think with that it's good to recognize that we need leaders to rise up and to rally the people essentially to fight, but to fight in a certain manner. So that's some of my thoughts. Sorry, tim, I took too long, I'll hand it over to you.
Tim Williams:I enjoyed everything, so much for a short podcast, right, yeah, yeah absolutely Absolutely.
Tim Williams:You guys are sharing so many good things and some of the things that I was going to ask you to share, so I'm happy about that, things that I was going to ask you to share, so, um, I'm happy about that.
Tim Williams:Um, you know, one of the things that, uh, during a staff prayer call earlier, we were talking about was just kind of like the uh, the sanctification of, uh, someone who's kind of a public figure, you know, and how, yeah, I think for myself, if, if somebody were to, if I were a public figure and you know my life was just documented for the world to see how easy it would be to to replay all the bad moments, um, and yet, increasingly so, people saw Charlie, um, you know, over the years, develop a humility and a way to, you know, not be defensive and a way to respond in really loving ways, and so that was something that was really impressive about him.
Tim Williams:Another thing that impressed me about him you know, in Christianity, you know, in DNA, we work with people across denominational lines and that can be kind of we call it a unicorn right. A lot of times, people, they can get segmented Okay, they're part of this denomination and they don't really cross over. But Charlie Kirk was yet another person who said I'm going to focus on the majors, no-transcript. But how do we get into a world who has been taken captive? I put a little heart on that third point and I wrote it down as you were writing Luke set the captives free, like that's.
Scott Allen:That's our heart, Like that's. It's our heart.
Tim Williams:Yeah, that is. I just I don't even know how to emphasize that enough, but you know, I mean, the Scripture talks about people being taken captive by the devil you know, and so we want to pray for them, we want to fight for them, and the way we do that is humility love standing for truth.
Scott Allen:Yeah, Tim, this is love. This is the essence of what Jesus commands us when he says love your enemies. It's to seek their good. It's to seek that they would be set free from their lies and be saved and come into the kingdom of light. They are our enemies. I mean they have set themselves against us to the point of picking up a rifle and shooting. I mean they're enemies, but our response isn't to treat them with that same kind of violent hatred. It's to love them, and that means to seek to set them free from these ideas that have captured them and are destroying them. That's our heart and that, by the way, is, I think, what Paul meant when he said overcome evil with good. There's a power there, an incredible power. It's the power of the cross.
Tim Williams:Yeah, yeah. So recently I was at a Bible study with some friends and we were talking about how. Recently I was at a Bible study with some friends and we were talking about how, you know, this might have even been confusing for the disciples Like because Jesus it's, you know, he's getting ready to go to the cross and he's like everybody needs a sword. And they're like, well, we've got two swords. And he's like that's enough, you know so. And then they get to you know where Jesus is being betrayed and Peter slicing off an ear, and he's like hey, put away the swords. And so, you know, like it feels like even the disciples, even as they're writing the Gospels, are like what's going on with Jesus and like how do we respond? You know, I think he was saying, you know the times are changing, you know like we're going to be facing violence, but he, you know so clearly says, hey, put away the sword.
Scott Allen:My kingdom isn't going to advance at the tip of a sword or at the barrel of a gun. That would be Mao's kingdom, but not Jesus's right. That would be kind of the radical form of Islam that is going to expand violently, or Marxism. Marxism, I mean, that's what we saw right. This was behind this young man was a set of Marxist ideologies that he picked up in university. There's a lot more to be said about that. We're all learning. But yeah, they all believe in the power of violence, but not Christ.
Tim Williams:I think it would be, you know, hard to even. You know figure out where I've got two kind of differing ideas that I feel like would be useful to highlight such. I feel like this just shows us how far we are from our ability to respect individuals in the sense of a freedom is. You know, increasingly people who speak, especially you know biblical truths, are threatened and silenced by institutions and by individuals and by cultural pressures.
Scott Allen:If I could just add on to that, tim. I mean again, that's the set of ideas that we're up against. They often speak of speech as violence. You know, we've heard that over and over again in recent years speech as violence. So if you, for example, as a Christian, talk about marriage between a man and a woman, that becomes a violent statement and because it's violent, I am justified in using violence, literal violence, against you. That's an ideology, that's a belief that's out there. You may not believe that A lot of people do. Speech is violence and that's behind so much of just. We have to shut you down, we have to silence you and if we have to use a gun to do it, we'll do it. You know that's not that's not the Christian way.
Luke Allen:That's not the Christian way, but that is the way of this false ideology.
Scott Allen:Yeah, that's abroad in the land right now.
Tim Williams:Yeah, Just a little while ago one of our coworkers was talking and she talked about how you know this kind of draws attention to man. It can be kind of a fearful thing to speak the truth.
Scott Allen:Yes.
Tim Williams:And I've experienced that.
Tim Williams:You know I'm a little embarrassed to say, but you know I like to be a people pleaser, like to make people happy, you know, but I'm in, you know, just getting to know neighbors.
Tim Williams:You know people that I love, people that I care about, and we, we think differently and it's been hard for me and I've really grown a lot in this past year to have what I understand to be just like a self-concept of of here's what I understand to be true, and you, our co-founder earlier, uh, bob Moffitt, was talking about just really listening to people. Well and uh, I think that when we grow and have a depth of our own self-concept, that gives us freedom to listen to people well, with differing perspectives. You know, um, you know, tell me, tell me more about what you're experiencing. You know, would you like to hear? You know how I, how I understand that? Um and uh. So I hope that that we can, um, have more of those conversations and more influence through deep care and deep relationship, but that the relationship doesn't mean compromise for us in our own thoughts or compromise in what we offer, to communicate, to set people free in the flourishing that God has designed for us through the Bible and through truth.
Scott Allen:I think, tim, a lot of times Christians, you know, when they get into those confrontations not confrontations, but situations where they're with a nonbeliever who's verbalizing you know something that's part and parcel of this very false ideology. You know, it's good to listen. Like you say, it's good to listen. I think Charlie Kirk modeled that but you can't just also then end that by affirming it, either by going, oh, that's interesting, or you know, just to push back a little bit, even to say let me tell you what I believe. There's a truth regardless of what I believe, or you believe there's a truth, and to have the confidence in that and to say and I think this is what he modeled well is to say let me share the truth with you. It takes a boldness to do that and a confidence. But I was really touched by if I could just read something that I read this morning from columnist Rod Dreher, you know, who reminded me of just something that we've been speaking so much to on our podcast and at the DNA in general, in terms of us speaking truthfully when confronting a culture of lies, and he came back to the great dissidents during the USSR, the Soviet Union, alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel. Here's what he said. He said. They both said that people who are willing to live not by lies. In other words, there's a whole edifice now. These lies, these ideologies, have become institutionalized in government, in media, in social media, in educational curriculum. They're all over. But people who are willing to not live by lies and are willing to suffer for their convictions will attract more and more people to their cause by their courage, such that eventually, a system that is built on lies will collapse. I believe that with all my heart. I believe that the times that we're living in are similar. There's this ideology, this edifice in the West that is built on lies, destructive lies, and we have to be willing this is this own personal conviction to not live by lies and we have to be willing to speak in a way, in a winsome way, but we have to be willing to speak against them. And that's where the courage comes in. And maybe the suffering, maybe even the death, but that will attract more people because we're willing to speak.
Scott Allen:This idea that we keep our heads down, we try to stay safe, or we even justify that by saying, oh, we shouldn't be involved in cultural issues or whatever it is, or people pleasing or whatever it is. We have to have the conviction to speak the truth. People will see that and they'll be drawn because of the courage and eventually the lies will collapse. And, luke, you said earlier today that we have to have full confidence in the truth. God exists, he created this world, what he speaks and who he is is true and it has a force to it. It says in Romans, chapter 1, you know that the truth is evident to everyone. We suppress it because we're fallen sinful people. We suppress it, we try to push it down, but there's a force pushing back and we have to have that confidence. That truth is there, it's real, it's got a force to it and we need to give ourselves over to that, to speak it out. And I think Charlie Kirk did a great job of modeling that.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I mean lies really only flourish where there's a lack of truth, and at least they can grow a lot quicker.
Scott Allen:Or the people that know the truth are too scared to speak it.
Luke Allen:Yeah, is what we saw in the soviet union? Right, and it's it's. It's a good example, using alexander solzhenitsyn or baklav hovel here, because it's the same world view that we're talking about right now, like the predominant world view in the us right now, is the same world view that killed 100 million people in the 21st century yeah, it's a variant, a variant of it.
Scott Allen:It's a variant of the same virus exactly.
Luke Allen:Yeah, it's, yeah, exactly variant of the same virus. But again, yeah, speak the truth. It's a very famous quote, but I just love it. Charles Spurgeon once said, quote the word of God is like a lion. You don't have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose and the lion will defend itself. Amen, amen, yeah, Let let the lion loose, let the truth out. And uh, charlie Kirk did a lot of that.
Scott Allen:And I think that's why people are so moved by his death. You know, there there's something, that there was something, there was a bright light there that people are attracted to, and you know the the, the overwhelming response, I think, is because of that, don't you guys?
Scott Allen:oh yeah, and and and and. The opposite of it is the darkness too. I do think this is something for us all to recognize about the times we live in. The darkness is getting darker and that creates um, people are seeing it, they're seeing the evil. They're even non-christians talk about demonic things now and evil things. They use this kind of biblical language because they see it. It's obvious and that creates a real opportunity for us. The light's going to shine brighter, but we have to be willing to let that light shine right. Put it on the lampstand so that it can shine for the whole room to see. That's what it means to be a Christian.
Tim Williams:I pulled up the verse I was quoting earlier 2 Timothy 2, verses 25 and 26. It's a great section. Opponents must be gently instructed in the hope that God will grant them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.
Scott Allen:This just speaks so powerfully to our times, tim, doesn't it? Yeah yeah, taken captive by the devil to do his will, yeah, yeah.
Luke Allen:It's a good place to wrap it up. We will continue to talk about this subject I'm sure a lot over the next coming months. This is the mission of the podcast. Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims, and this is Ideas have Consequences. The fight we're in right now is a fight over worldviews, and this podcast is all about presenting the truth, goodness and beauty of a biblical worldview. So if you guys have the time to join us over the next few months, we hope that these discussions will be helpful for you and we will definitely continue this one. These are just some of our first reactions to the tragedy of last week, but we will continue to talk about this. I hope that all of you guys will continue to spend some time learning from this and listening to the Holy Spirit's guiding in this time.
Scott Allen:Yeah, if I could just add one last thought, luke, you know there's going to be a lot. There's going to be a lot of prayers and memorial services in the in the days and the weeks ahead. Um, uh, to remember the bravery and the courage of charlotte, I want to encourage people to go to those to be to, to, to actually participate in this movement right now. Okay, do what you can to participate in the movement and, you know, I would even say you know, make donations or contribute to Turning Point USA. Now's a good time to show your support for what they stood for. So, you know, take advantage of this opportunity and put your feet to it.
