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
Winsome Third Wayism & Its Consequences
Episode Summary:
Softening truth to increase Christian cultural influence is simply quiet compromise. In this episode, Luke and Scott Allen discuss Tim Keller, Charlie Kirk, and the critical question: how should Christians actively engage a post-Christian culture without losing their convictions? They dive into the rise of “winsome third wayism” in evangelical circles—why it captured the imagination of Christian elites and why it has faltered when culture demanded moral clarity.
The hosts contrast cautious, approval-seeking engagement with a bolder model that speaks truth in love to every sphere—justice, freedom, sexuality, and policy—because all areas of culture matter to God and should be addressed from a biblical worldview. If you’ve wrestled with how to remain gracious without compromising clarity, this conversation points the way toward faithful, courageous cultural engagement.
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
👉 Article: Life Lessons Charlie Kirk Taught Us - Disciple Nations Alliance
👉 Article: What Caused the Negative World? - by Aaron M. Renn
👉 Book: A Toxic New Religion
👉 Book: 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World by Scott Allen
👉 Bible Study: 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World
👉 Recommended Book: Shepherds for Sale
💻 Follow Us:
📲Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/disciplenations
📸Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/disciplenations
📽️YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DiscipleNationsAlliance/
📩 Ask us anything: info@disciplenations.org
Here's the test. The test is would I support a party or a candidate regardless, even if they went off the rails biblically, right? If that if I did that, then you could you could level that charge against me. It's all about politics, okay? And I would say, no, I would never do that. I would never do that. My Lord is Jesus Christ. I don't mind calling out any politician or political party, but that doesn't mean that I have to be neutral or third way. No, I'm gonna call balls and strikes. And if this party, and like you said earlier, Luke, it's not hard today. These parties are really kind of coalescing around two very different worldviews.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, thanks again for joining us today. If you are not currently driving right now as you're listening to this, I wanted to take a quick minute to encourage you to hop on the podcast app that you're currently listening on and leave us a quick rating and review for this show. A little one to five star rating will only take you a second, and depending on how thoughtful you'd like your review to be, that can probably take you less than 30 seconds. So thank you for taking the time. And yes, I do realize that every podcast out there is asking you to do this, but that's because it's really one of the best ways for us to reach more people like yourself with this show. So if you enjoy this podcast, this will be a super easy way for you guys to give back. So thanks again. Also, I wanted to let you know that according to our numbers, you guys as a whole love to listen to our friend Nancy Pearcy every time that she joins us here on the podcast. So I wanted to let you know that she'll be recording with us next week to talk about how worldview thinkers like you guys who regularly listen to this podcast are uniquely positioned for this particular cultural moment that we live in. And you'll hear Dr. Pearcy explain practical ways that each of us can respond in this time in this season. So we'll do our best to get that episode out to you guys as soon as possible, definitely sometime in the next month. And with that, back to the episode. Hi friends, welcome back to Ideas Have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. As Christians, our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. We all agree on that. However, our mission also involves working to transform our cultures so that they increasingly reflect the truth, goodness, and the beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of her mission, and today many Christians are having little influence on their surrounding cultures, which is what we're going to be talking about on today's show. 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. Hey guys, my name is Luke Allen, and I am one of the co-hosts here on Ideas Have Consequences. And today I'm joined by my dad, Scott Allen, and co-host. Hey Dad, how are you doing today? I'm great, Luke. Thanks. Great, yeah. And we just wanted to bring you guys a kind of impromptu episode today because there's a lot of talk that we're seeing going around in Christian circles right now, at least in the last few weeks, following the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. This discussion in particular is around third wayism, winsome third wayism and that approach. A discussion that has reignited amongst Christian circles. This is not a new discussion, especially for us here at the Disciple Nations Alliance. It's something that we've been actively participating in, uh, not so much myself, but more so you dad for the past couple of decades now. So we just want to share our thoughts with you guys again on this platform and share some of our personal stories uh and what we've been thinking about. Uh, most of this, of course, is going to be you, Dad. Um, you're the one that's been doing a lot more of thinking on this than me. Sure. So I'll just be playing the role today more of providing context and then a little bit of questions and pushback. But I think it's going to be a great discussion that us as Christians really need to be having right now. I'm glad that this discussion is in the news right now. It's extremely practical for all of us. It's really at the core of our mission as Christians, as it's really a question about how each of us disciple the nations and what that looks like for us individually at a tactics level. So, anyways, with that dead, uh, let's get let's get rolling today. Sure, Luke.
Scott Allen:Thanks. Yeah. You know, um, of late, you know, I would say in the last couple of weeks, there's just been a lot of of interest and a lot of discussion um amongst uh, you know, evangelical influencers, uh, people like Ali Beth Stuckey on her podcast and many others, um, on kind of this, it's in the wake of what we, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and especially kind of this just the momentous sense of God really working that came out of his memorial service, that really powerful service. And uh, and and in the wake of that, or kind of before and after that, the sense of of revival that that we're seeing happening in the United States, particularly among the Gen Z crowd. And um, and it's led to this discussion about kind of people stepping back and going, wow, you know, the evangelical church was so deeply shaped uh over the last 20 years or so by an approach to engaging in the culture that many have dubbed windsome third wayism and associated with the gospel coalition, Timothy Keller. Um, and clearly Charlie Kirk um didn't represent that approach to culture, had a very different approach. And so it's led to this kind of really interesting discussion now about uh what some are calling Kellerism versus Kirkism. And here's I just wanted to, I felt like I wanted to weigh in on it just because um uh I just had a lot of thoughts on it. And I'll I'll start with this. I do, I feel like we may be at a time. Let me just put my cards on the table. I'm not a fan of the winsome third-way approach, which I'll explain a little bit more. I am uh, and that's putting it mildly. Um and I do hope that we can turn the page. And I feel like it possibly is a time when that page is being turned. And uh and I think that what we can move on to now, and I'm hopeful again on this, is an approach to church, to missions, and to cultural engagement that really does align with Luke, what we have been championing and promoting in the DNA from the very beginning. Uh a really bold, clear, biblical worldview-based kind of approach to truth and lies. And, you know, obviously we need to speak the truth and love, but we have to prioritize the truth of a biblical worldview. And um, and so I'm I'm really I'm hopeful and excited. Uh, time will tell, but my deep sense is that we may be turning the page on this Winsome Third Way approach, and actually an approach that came before that, you know, there's always these different approaches. And I wanted to step back and just look at a little bit of the timeline, you know, here uh from kind of how Winsome Third Wayism kind of arose in the early part of the 2000s and how it started kind of declining, coming into a crisis, leading to this sense that we all have now that maybe with people like Charlie Kirk and others, it's certainly not, you know, he's not, it's not limited to that at all, but but that we are maybe turning turning a page. So I want to go way back, you know, if I could, just to start by by looking at the early days of the DNA. You know, we when we began our ministry, um, again, our primary focus was on equipping churches and church leaders in the developing world, Africa, Asia, Latin America, because they were in contexts of severe poverty, corruption, and injustice. The church was there, but the church wasn't being relevant in the culture. It had a theology that kind of was a theology of disengagement. We want to get people saved out of this fallen world, get them into the church, get them to heaven. But beyond that, we don't have any role to play in culture and society. We often talk about it as Christian kind of evangelical dualism or not evangelical Gnosticism. It's this division uh in our minds uh where we take all of reality, God's reality, and we divide it into kind of upper and lower stories. The upper story is where God's interested in and where the Bible applies, has to do with spiritual things, church life, personal salvation, evangelism, faith. And then the lower story is the quote-unquote non-biblical, non-Christian world that's fallen, that's destined for destruction, and um that really we don't want to even bother ourselves engaging in. It would be a waste of time. Some people talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. You know, it's a it's a distraction. That lower story includes everything else. It includes politics, government, any education, um uh economics, uh, you know, uh just even family life. So all of these other areas of life, we kind of say that's God's not really interested in that. With that kind of theology of cultural disengagement, the problem is, as we saw when we were working in places like Africa, is it's not that people don't act in those spheres. They do, of course, none of us spend all of our time in a church building. Uh, we all go out and we're involved in business, education, economics, and different areas, family. But if we if we have this dualism in our head, we think, oh, you know, the Bible doesn't apply, and then we end up doing, we end up living in those areas, acting, working, functioning in a way that's really no different from the culture. And if that dominant culture is animistic, we we tend to be kind of functionally animistic, but you know, we have saved souls. If that culture is dominantly secular and postmodern or Marxist, that those ideas drive us, and yet we have saved souls and go to church on Sunday. We don't cuss, chew, and spit and things like that. So, anyways, for almost uh all of our ministry, um, that was really the um problem, if you will, in the church that we were seeking to correct. We wanted to call the church back to uh away from this dualism to a comprehensive understanding of faith where Christ is the Lord over all areas. There isn't a higher or lower of sacred secular. And the Bible isn't just a message of personal salvation, it's a message of, you know, it's God's story of reality. It describes reality and the principles of the scripture apply to everything, not just to spiritual things, but to everything, every area. And nations then are discipled, we're the Disciple Nations Alliance. Nations are discipled as Christians faithfully, courageously, lovingly apply biblical truth and live it out in every area of culture and society and life. And so that's really been our mission, our calling is to help Christians see that, have that paradigm shift, and do that. Now, um, so let me shift then to this discussion on winsome third wayism. I first became aware of this movement, if you will, or this move, this change. Um, it wasn't nobody called it winsome third wayism. I'm not exactly sure when that kind of label got affixed to this. Um, I first became aware of this around 2005. In fact, I was working at Food for the Hungry, and I distinctly remember there was a new generation of young leaders that were coming into the organization, and they were um uh deeply shaped by the ministry of Tim Keller. He was new to me at that time. I was just learning about him and his ministry in New York City. Um, the gospel coalition was just launching around that time, I believe. And they were very influenced by those changes. And I remember a conversation I had with one of those young leaders. He wanted to know what, you know, what I was teaching, what Darrow and I and others were teaching, and we talked about biblical worldview. And I remember him saying, biblical worldview isn't important. Um, what's important is the gospel, the gospel. That's everything is centered around the gospel. And I thought it was an odd conversation. I and I it went something like this. I said, Well, you're certainly right. The gospel is it's like it's super important. It's the centerpiece of our faith. But the gospel actually makes no sense, this message of personal salvation through faith in Christ and the death, resurrection of Christ without understanding the bigger story, right? That's biblical worldview. You know, it's it's who is God? What does it mean to be human? Why does evil exist in the world? I mean, you have to understand that bigger story for the gospel to make sense. And that young guy and others, they didn't get that. They just felt like that was, I don't know what their negative reaction was towards that. I think they felt it was kind of a culture-warring type of stance, but they they wanted to focus on the gospel. And of course, the gospel coalition, right, is all about the gospel. So, but at the same time, there was, I was excited about what I was hearing from him because unlike the problem that we existed to address, where Christians separated themselves from the culture, these young folks wanted to engage in the culture. And I thought, oh, wonderful. They didn't want to see that separation. And you saw that with Tim Keller. You know, his whole ministry was a ministry to the young leaders, the young urban leaders in the city. And he didn't have a separation. You know, he talked a lot about the importance of Christians in vocation. And so all of that I was at the time really excited about. I thought, oh, wow, this is wonderful. Again, I felt like we were turning a page. Here we're turning a page away from this kind of Christian approach to culture that was reactionary and uh, you know, wanting to kind of distance itself and disengage to one that wanted to engage. And um still puzzled about, you know, this whole emphasis on the gospel, but not the biblical worldview, but still liking the engaging part of it. Yeah. Yeah, getting to know these these uh young, this new generation of young leaders at Food for the Hungry, again, this was around 2005, 2006, in those in that time period. Um, yeah, they they one of the things I noticed about them is they didn't they didn't like kind of the earlier generation of Christian leaders that had tried to engage in the culture, people like James Dobson or um the moral majority. I'm trying to remember the name of the gentleman there in Virginia who was behind that. They they felt like they were kind of culture warriors. And um they they didn't like the idea of kind of cozying up too much to America, kind of this Christian patriotism. That that also was um something that I noticed they didn't like. They they they talked always, when I talked about the American dream, for example, it was always in disparaging terms, like that's just people that want to get rich. And I thought I was there's a little bit more to it than that, you know. But uh but but I noticed that. And and even then you could see the seeds of what would later become kind of this um, you know, they would often disparage their opponents as Christian nationalists, you know, and it was just kind of wanting to distance themselves. And I always thought that was I didn't like this idea that that they were kind of setting themselves up and apart, although this happens a lot, you know. You know, I I think what it was is at the time they were wanting to be, and this is something that became much clearer later for me, they were wanting to be seen as acceptable and liked by people in culture positions of cultural power and authority in different spheres of a society. So when it came to engaging in culture, that became kind of a priority for them. How am I being viewed by people that hold positions of power and authority at the New York Times or in government offices, government, you know, positions of authority in the government or in education? Um, am I being viewed kind of like those kind of redneck reactionary Christians, uh James Dobson and whatnot, you know? Or or am I, can I put on a can I be somebody kind of different from them? So it was always, you know, hey, you know, speaking towards the elites, uh, hey, listen to me. You can listen to me, you can trust me. I'm not like those other Christians. There was always that sense in it. I'm not like those other Christians. And I always found that to be kind of very distasteful. I um, you know, like what we're on the same team here. Yeah. Yeah, we're on the same team here exactly. A couple of other things. I I I was never a I I in the early days when I started exploring the ministry of Tim Keller, I liked a lot of what I was seeing and hearing um from his church. And at that time I picked up uh one of his books, the first book of his that I read called The Reason for God. Yeah. Um, the subtitles Belief in an age of skepticism. I have it right here on my desk. Uh found that book to be really a terrific book. Great book of Christian apologetics, well reasoned. And um I I did try to get into some of his other books on marriage and whatnot. I didn't find them as as compelling. Um found them a bit academic and a bit heady. So I I would I would say personally I was never a huge fan of Tim Keller, um, even though some of his early stuff I thought was was helpful and was good. Um there was another book, though, that came out in 2010 that had a lot of influence on this movement. Um that was a book by James Davidson Hunter, the professor from the University of Virginia, famous professor and author, Christian author. Uh, he wrote a book called To Change the World. Uh, the subtitle was The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. And that had a huge influence. And that became really a kind of a key book for this winsome third-way crowd. Because what uh Hunter argued in that book was that if you want to change the culture, it has to be done by the this kind of top-down process. It's you've got to get positions in cult you know, you know, he basically made the case that culture changes from the top down, from the elites down. It's not from the bottom up, you know, and he he made that very clear. And I just on that, I I have I'd heard him say that before. That wasn't new with this book. He had been arguing that for some time. And part of it is true, right? You know, um, but I also felt I've always been uncomfortable with that because I thought it's too narrow, it's too small. I think culture, you do need people in positions of elite power and institutional leadership to change a culture. But it it can't just be those people. And I mean, you know, as case in point, you just look at the beginnings of the early church and the people that Jesus himself chose as his disciples to change the world, right? I mean, they were not elites at all. Uh, he himself, Jesus himself, was a carpenter, a blue-collar worker. He wasn't one of the elite. Um, elites did play a role. Paul, the Apostle Paul, was an elite. He was one of the great teachers of the law, one of the Pharisees, the Pharisee of the Pharisees, he called himself. And he played obviously a huge role. But that was what I always saw that you needed both. You needed kind of bottom up and top down. It was always both. And then I, you know, am a big fan of William Wilberforce and um the whole move that he did to um abolish the slave trade in England in the 1700s. And I saw the same thing there. You know, Wilberforce himself was uh an elite. He was highly educated, I think it was Oxford or Cambridge, and then went on and served in Parliament. So he was certainly an elite leader of the culture. But that movement wasn't just driven by him. He, in fact, gave credit to Wesley because Wesley was out and uh Whitfield uh leading a revival in the country. And it was people's hearts and minds, just average everyday people whose hearts and minds had changed that became the backbone of the abolition of slavery movement. So it was both and. Well, anyways, back to Hunter in this book, he basically was saying, no, it's, you know, it wasn't very nuanced. It was, it was, it's top down. And that uh I think really appealed to this winsome third-way crowd. They wanted to be seen as acceptable. They wanted positions in elite cultural power, I think. And they would always say um, for the sake of being able to share the gospel. Again, the gospel is very important to them. We want to be able to have an open hearing for the gospel, so we have to be seen as winsome. Uh we, you know, and and the third wayism there is this uh their approach to political engagement. Um, we cannot take sides. We should be engaged in politics. That's the that's the pro-engage and culture uh side of it, but not partisan in any way in the sense that we can't take sides. We and we have to always find some kind of middle ground where we affirm people on the left and on the right. So and again, we can't offend, we can't offend, especially people on the left, because most of the people with cultural and institutional power in the United States now are on the left. And so they they they they could not offend those people like you were gonna say something there, yeah.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I mean I'm I'm just trying to learn about this right now, or at least catch up is this third-way approach. I believe the way it started was more as as kind of uh a way to understand the Bible as like a hermeneutical tool of understanding grace and truth, justice and mercy. But then where it went wrong is they started to try to apply it to things outside the Bible, like into politics, the same approach, the same tactic. So it it it's almost Is that is that the way you understand that, or uh did I make that up? Did I just hear that from a wrong source?
Scott Allen:Yeah, no, I mean there there's the third-way kind of idea is not a just at in and of itself isn't a bad idea, right? Because often, you know, when we think about things like, you know, theologically, like you're saying, like um, the paradoxes of the Bible. Yeah, the paradoxes, you know, free will versus predestination. You know, landing firmly on any either one of those, it's this, not this, it's this, not this, is gonna get you into trouble because the Bible says there's kind of a third way, if you will. There's something that's between those things, right? Both of them, I don't even know if that's the right way to say it, but but both of them have to be affirmed, right? You know, you have to affirm human freedom and choice and agency and accountability, and you have to affirm God's sovereignty. Um, he's not asleep up in heaven waiting to see what we do, right? Um, so yeah, so but I don't think so, Luke. I think in terms of what was driving them here, I don't think it was a hermeneutic or a biblical approach. I think it was more an approach to culture, which said, again, like Hunter was saying, we, you know, if you want to change culture, if you want to engage successfully, you have to do it kind of from the top down. Most of the people in positions of power in the culture are on the left. We cannot offend them. We have to kind of accommodate our message in a way that would be non-offensive to people on the left. Again, and they would say, in order to have a platform for proclaiming the gospel. Again, and the and the downplaying of biblical worldview becomes kind of important here, right? Yeah, because they did sense, yeah. Because yeah, they they weren't so concerned about the lies there on the left. That just wasn't the grid that they saw things through. It was being seen again as nice, kind, winsome, um, and attractive to people in power so that they could share the gospel. I think they you know they probably genuinely believe if I can share the gospel and these people come to faith in Christ, then the culture's gonna change, right? You know? Yeah, I'm tracking with them.
Luke Allen:You know, like it makes sense as far when it makes sense.
Scott Allen:It makes sense, except if they're trafficking and all sorts of really horrific lies, and you don't have the courage to kind of confront those lies, and then what happens is those lies then you begin to kind of imbibe them yourself with a kind of a Christian veneer, and that's of course what we ended up seeing so much of the time.
Luke Allen:There was a naivety to how powerful those worldviews are, how evil they were, exactly, and how contagious they are too. Like exactly they're they're they're they're they're so widely accepted for a reason, it's because they're compelling to our to our fleshy sinful nature, and if you're not careful to protect yourself against those, then you'll be taken captive by them. It's a You know, Colossians 2.8. Yeah.
Scott Allen:Let me give an example back to this really important book, To Change the World, by James Davidson Hunter. I really think this was one of the key books that drove kind of the Winsome Third Way approach. And don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Hunter. He's written many really good books. I recommend people really read and pay attention to what he has to say. But anyways, he ended that book. Again, his approach was top-down to change the world. And then once you're in positions of elite power, he advocated for what he called quote-unquote faithful presence. That was how he ended the book. We need to be Christians that live out faithful presence. That was this term that he coined. Now, faithful presence, it was always vague, you know, like what exactly is faithful presence? And even after reading that chapter and listening to it, I thought I still don't quite understand what faithful presence means. But then I saw kind of a concrete example in the person of the director of the National Institute of Health, Francis Collins. And both, well, I don't know about Hunter, but certainly Tim Keller was very close friends with Francis Collins and a big advocate of him. And he kind of put him up as the model or the exemplar of what living out this faithful presence of James Davidson Hunter looks like in practice. So let's look at that briefly. Collins was an outspoken Christian. He always talked about his faith. You know, he was an elite. He came, you know, he was uh he's I think he's one or two PhDs. He's a scientist. Um and then, of course, he was elevated uh to this incredibly powerful position in the government, the head of the National Institute of Health, one of the biggest bureaucracies in Washington, D.C. So he had that position of elite power. And for the Winsome Third Way crowd, that was like, man, perfect. We got our guy right where we want him, right up there in the seat of power. Um now, uh, but let's look at what Collins, how he functioned in that role. And even before that, I uh I was a skeptic about Francis Collins because he was well known prior to taking that role for his role with an organization called Biologos, which essentially is an organization that was committed to helping Christians accept the Darwinian paradigm as factual and true. Um, we are evolved basically according to the Darwinian paradigm, but then he added a Christian veneer on it, you know, somehow saying that God controlled it all. Um, you know, we we know this is um biblical or theistic evolution. He's a huge advocate of that. And I think in hindsight, it makes sense to me because in science, the the powerful leaders, the gatekeepers of the scientific, you know, realm, whether it's chemistry, biology, or whatever it is, they all believe in Darwinian evolution, or you know, let's say the vast majority of them do. And so once again, you know, we have to kind of compromise the truth here in order to, you know, to be accepted by the powerful people and seen as acceptable. And um, so even then I was thinking, you know, do you really believe this? Or is it just, are you trying to ingratiate yourself to people that have powerful positions in the scientific realm? But when he got into the NIH, um, then it became very clear, you know, uh, for example, there's many examples I could give, but um he was um uh you know, he was a supporter, let's say, of gay pride events uh by employees of the National Institute of Health. Uh never spoke out against it, um, but supported those things in that agency. And then, even worse and much darker, um, you know, he didn't take a strong pro-life position advocating for the value and the dignity and the worth of every human being from the moment of conception, and actually got involved in funding um some really dark research using aborted baby fetal tissue as a part of his tenure. And then, of course, COVID came along, and we learned uh that he and Anthony Fauci, who was very close with, worked closely with, were actually involved in this gain of function research and funding that and working kind of in a kind of a covert way with the Chinese and others, apparently, to do that kind of research that led to the rise of the COVID virus. And then once all of that kind of came out, and people were asking, you know, there was all the questions about how did this originate, you know, what was this man-made? Was it just did it arise out of nature naturally? Um, you know, he was really kind of working hard to make sure truth did not come out on that. Um, it's interesting, Jay Bodhtacharya, the current director of the National Institute of Health, uh, at that time was was really skeptical and said, I really think that this is a man-made virus that came about through gain of function, and um, you know, wrote that great Barrington Declaration uh that challenged kind of the traditional orthodoxy and the line that was coming out of Francis Collins and Fauci. And they did everything they could, Fauci and Collins, to silence him, to censor him, you know, to keep his voice from being heard. Now, again, back to Keller. Keller always said this is the exemplar of what faithful presence looks like. And I thought this is a disaster. You know, if faithful presence just means getting into these positions of power as a as a somebody who proclaims to be a Christian, and I'm sure is a very nice guy, like probably doesn't lie and steal and things like that. But you never rock the boat in terms of these horrific lies, the whether it's LGBTQ or pro-life or anything. You just go along to get along in order to quote unquote receive a you know a hearing for the gospel. That is a disaster.
Luke Allen:Yeah. I mean, this is this is what we were talking about yesterday, Dad. I mean, when we're talking about, you know, Kellerism, uh, I don't I don't love how much he's getting raked through the dirt right now, you know, because he passed away recently. And it feels like a little bit of a cheap shot um condemning this guy in in a way, you know, which I don't think we're trying to do, we're not trying to do. And um we you know, he's we'll meet him in heaven, and uh hopefully we won't have to feel bad when we shake his hand. But um he's not here anymore, and he was a proponent of this this this way of engaging in culture, and he promoted it to some very powerful, influential people, and those people are still here. And you know, ideas have consequences, and if you know, Dad, we were talking about that that quote from Xiong yesterday the if you can't understand why someone did something, look at the consequences and then infer the motives, or inversely, if you can't understand why someone did something, look at the followers and then infer the motives. And Francis Collin is the follower of of Keller and uh was a close friend of his, and like as the exemplar, just living such a despicable life, it's like, well, I don't know if that approach works. Like at first, when you heard it on paper explained, as I did many times in college, it was a very popular um stance on how to engage in culture uh when I was in school. Uh it sounds nice at first, but then when you see it played out, it just doesn't work. And we've seen that enough now that it's like, all right, this this clearly is not working. This is you can't get into these positions of power. I mean, how do you even get there if you're not willing to bend over backwards to the will of you know people that don't believe at all what you believe? So just to even get there is is you you've already kind of started caving, and then when you get there, what do you expect? They're gonna cave more. No surprise. You know, there's not a backbone built into this. So anyway, so back to you.
Scott Allen:No, no, no, it's it's it's it's prioritizing acceptance by cultural elites never should be what we try to do, really, as Christians. You know, we gotta be saying at the end of the day, I want to please and honor God. Kind of let the consequences fall where they may, you know. But this is, you know, so of course, there's nothing wrong with being winsome and kind. As an approach, Christians, all of us should be that way. But we also have to be, we have to defend the truth when there's such horrific lies in the culture. And this is really where I think the winsome third way approach kind of hit its crisis. It was right around 2022 when this Great Awokening happened, if you will. This just everyone kind of woke up one day and saw this massive influence with the George Floyd death and the riots that followed, and then all of a sudden, just this push, this hard push, you have to post the BLM, I support BLM on your social media, or we'll call you a racist. And if you don't take the shot, you'll be fired from your job. And if you challenge the 2020 election, you will be censored. And it was just this we were seeing just really dark and dramatic things happen around that time. And this is where I, many of my friends who were deeply caught up in the Winsome Third Way approach, followers of Keller, um, I started seeing them not challenge this woke social justice and neo-Marxist set of ideas, but really embrace it and asking other Christians to join with them, supporting groups like Black Lives Matter. And I was shocked. I will just be honest, I was shocked because I thought, and again, I remember way back to that early discussion with that young man at Food for the Hungry who didn't unhe didn't want to talk about biblical worldview, and I thought, here's the fruit of that. Because he's not thinking in terms of worldview, he doesn't, he's allowing this counterfeit, this Trojan horse of justice to come right inside the church, right inside the camp. And he doesn't see it. He doesn't see it. Why? Because he doesn't know biblical justice well enough. He doesn't know the authentic thing in order to spot the counterfeit. And why? Because it wasn't important to him. The gospel was important, the gospel. Well, I think this is the again, you the Bible applies to everything, including justice, freedom, all these ten words that I wrote about in my book. You have to understand them biblically. And I noticed that they didn't, and they were being taken captive by this really damaging ideology. And so, and it wasn't, I mean, the the influence of Keller, Third Wayism was massive on the evangelical church. I uh almost all of our leading organizations, institutions, publishing companies, universities, Christianity today, you name it, they followed in the wake of that approach. And so when this big challenge came, this real test in 2020, they all kind of went down the wrong road, I think. Again, in many of our megachurch pastors, so that even a guy like me, who's a nobody, relatively speaking, I felt kind of compelled to write a book, Why Social Justice is not biblical justice, to remind Christians that this is wrong. You know, I had felt like I had to speak the truth about justice. And I was always wondering at why isn't Tim Keller writing this book? Why are where's our leaders? Where's the leaders that are leading our big institutions, publishing houses, universities? And they just weren't, they just weren't. Even Keller himself at that time, I looked carefully at him. What are you going to say? We're in a crisis right now. And he was, he kind of took that winsome third-way approach. Sometimes he would speak a little bit critically of the woke social justice ideology. Other times he would speak affirmatively of it. He he kind of had a foot in both of these camps, biblical and non-biblical. And it was, to me, deeply disappointing. I I I I just remember thinking, oh, this is horrible. This is a failure of our leadership right now. We need our our leaders right now. So I think that the crisis came in 2020 and it found many of our leaders, you know, wanting. And I can't, I I want to be careful here. I don't, we are all weak, and I'm just as prone to anyone to temptation and failure. I've had my share of it. But but that was a time we really needed to be clear and bold. So I think that crisis, because a lot of our leaders began to fail in it, many others began to speak out. And I think in some ways this culminated in 2024 with Megan Basham's book, Shepherds for Sale. And there really became quite a movement of Christians saying, we need to we do need to shift. We this third-way approach is leading us into a ditch. And um, and so many voices, um, oh, some of the biggest voices right now in evangelicalism. Again, I mentioned Ali Beth Stuckey or uh people that we've had on this podcast. Um Os Guinness, Nancy Pearcy, yeah, Os Guinness, Nancy Pearcy, uh Lisa Childers is the name I was trying to think of exactly. So a lot of people, unfortunately, and a lot of people left churches, joined other churches, left schools, joined other schools. There was a big kind of shift that happened in evangelical uh evangelicalism around the failure of this crisis moment, I think. And then that kind of sets the stage, and I'm gonna wrap up here, but it sets the stage for you know, here's Charlie Kirk and TPUSA, and they're kind of beginning to build their movement through all of these changes, taking a very different approach. A couple things about it. And again, I was an admirer of Charlie Kirk's at a distance. Um, I think I'm much more of an admirer following his assassination as I look at his ministry. But a couple of things. Number one, uh he didn't take this approach of we that culture changes only from the top down. We need to kind of ingratiate ourselves to cultural elites. You know, he went, he spent most of his time going to college campuses and young people who didn't have any political power or institutional power. But that's where he wanted to spend his time. He wanted to go right into the universities and spend time with young people. That being said, he was also highly political involved, had a huge amount of influence at elite levels of government. So it wasn't like he was only, you know, working at the grassroots, if you will. He was also working at the grass tops. But it wasn't at all an exclusively grass tops approach. He certainly wasn't trying to ingratiate himself. He was bold and courageous in defending the truth. But the biggest thing I think that I give him credit for is that while he prioritized the gospel and always tried to bring people into a saving faith with Christ, he always used every opportunity, you know, that he could to, especially later in his, you know, in his work, uh, he was out there addressing every eat each and every topic and question that students had from a biblical or a true vantage point. In other words, he thought and functioned from a biblical worldview. That set him apart from both of these previous um these previous approaches that I had talked about, the sacred secular approach, the early one, and then this winsome third way asm one. He was approaching culture from the vantage point of a biblical worldview where the Bible speaks to every subject business, economics, politics. And we don't need to shy away from politics. We don't want to be partisan in the sense that politics becomes our God. We stand for truth, we stand for Christ. But given that, you know, we have to make judgments politically, right? You know, we have to favor, support whatever party is most on the side of the truth, with the understanding that no political party is going to be perfect. Uh, that's what it means to, you know, be salt and light, you know, is not to kind of act like we have to somehow split the difference, especially now when there the the difference between the parties is so dramatic. Yeah, it's never been easier. It's never been easier. So he really took a different approach, and I think um it uh it was seen because it was so powerful, he did, he was moving the ball like young people were listening. Not all. There's a lot of people that hated what he said, hated him, but he was moving the ball, and people appreciated the fact that he was willing to talk. He did uh have a gracious kind of approach. Uh he did go right into the heart of darkness, so to speak. He had a missionary kind of approach. I'm gonna go right into the fallen world, uh, right into the center of it, in the universities, and I'm gonna shine a light for Jesus right there. So he had that missionary approach. And um, you know, he he was yeah, just much more I could say about that. And, you know, we've written about that, Luke, here uh at the Disciple Nations Alliance. But I think what really attracted my attention was just the overwhelming response to his passing and how many people came forward and said they were deeply influenced by his ministry, how many people came forward and said that they accepted Christ as a result of you know something that came out of his work or his ministry's work. And I thought you know this is this is, you know, what he's doing is so powerful. Um and it it really aligns well with I think our priorities and what we believe so deeply here at the DNA, something we've been advocating for. So all that to say, just to wrap this up, I do hope we can turn the page. I think as we do, um, you know, there's gonna be we we are going to have to be a lot more intentional about training ourselves to think biblically about all of these areas. I think we need to understand again what does it mean to to fight a spiritual war and a culture war uh in the weapons and with the ways of Christ. There's going to be a strong temptation to worldly ways and you know to to treating our enemies as uh people that we want to destroy. Uh that cannot happen. Um that that must not happen. These are people that God loves and wants to save. And um so there's some there's some things that that could derail this current movement. I hope don't, and we'll certainly do our part to see that that these things don't get derailed or move in a wrong direction. But uh but I do I do feel again hopeful that we can maybe turn the page. I do think this winsome third way approach again, I love that it prioritized the gospel just in the same way that its predecessor movement prioritized the gospel, wanted to see people saved. The problem was they neglected a biblical worldview in doing that, the comprehensive story. And in doing that, both both of these previous movements ended up compromising themselves to the culture. And and consequently, they weren't seen as a threat by the culture either. You know. But but Kirk's ministry was it's a threat, and I think that's ultimately why he was uh assassinated. You know, there was a sense that this is making a difference. This is a threat to the forces of darkness. Um so um you know, we'll see where this goes, but uh I just wanted to kind of uh share those thoughts with you, our listeners, on on kind of my own personal journey with this and my my vantage point on kind of what this was, this winsome through. It still is. I mean, it's still quite strong. Oh, yeah. But I do see it, I see it waning. It's definitely waning. And I think there is this new kind of resurgence or not resurgence, surge, surge of interest in this bold, courageous, truth-centric, but also winsome and biblical worldview-centric approach um of if you would call it Kirkism. I I think it it he didn't use. He didn't create it, that's right, but he did exemplify it in a great way as a model. And uh so credit to him. Luke, love to hear any pushback or thoughts that you have as we as we wrap this up.
Luke Allen:I have so many thoughts. I wish we could go for a long time. That's the problem. You know, I'm I'm I'm pretty familiar with this approach. Um, I mean, we live up here in Oregon. It's a popular approach for Christians here in Oregon to kind of keep their friends but also be Christians, you know, which everyone wants to do. No one wants to ruffle feathers, no one wants to lose those old high school friends over, you know, something you believe. Um, no one wants to go beat up, get beat up by some protesters. Um, so it's uh it's a it's a compelling approach. It sounds nice, it hides behind words like loving and justice and uh care for the marginalized and the vulnerable, all things that all of us as Christians need to be absolute champions of. Um but when you bifurcate the gospel as it has from the rest of the story of the Bible, then what you end up with is the gospel story and then this other stuff. And what you sometimes hear them even, I mean, who's that pastor? Andy Stanley. He likes to say the um the uh the oh the clobber passages, you know, oh, those clobber passages like Romans 1 that talks about sexuality, you know, and this kind of disdain for certain parts of the Bible. No, it all goes together, it's one story, it's all it's all one inclusive.
Scott Allen:But it's just going to be offensive. You just have to accept that. You're not gonna be loved for speaking it. You're gonna be called a hater. Exactly.
Luke Allen:I mean, truth requires confrontation, loving confrontation, but confrontation nonetheless. I'm just quoting that's Francis Schaefer. That's nothing I came up with. Um, but I mean it's it's it's the passage on love um in Corinthians 13, right? Love is patient, love is kind, we all know that. But it it ends with love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. Love and truth go hand in hand. And that's what a lot of these people from this window through the coin.
Scott Allen:Two sides of the same thing.
Luke Allen:They have to be connected. If they're separated, then they both go away. They can't they can't exist separately. And to me, I was just so surprised after uh uh an extremely historic day in American history, the memorial of Charlie Kirk, which was uh, you know, we had the whole episode on it. It was the largest proclamation of the gospel probably in human history. It was hours of worship music followed by the leaders of the free world getting up and preaching as if they're pastors on a Sunday morning to millions of people, possibly way more. And yet there was Christians who looked at that and said, Ugh, that's white Christian nationalism. And I'm like, What are you doing? You know, if you uh can't stand up and applaud to that, then I uh your worldview has been twisted, you know. Like, where where are you coming from?
Scott Allen:If you can't applaud to that, it's a third way approach, and this is a kind of you know, this is a direct, uh kind of a not assault, but it's it's it's a it's a it's a repudiation, essentially, of that whole approach that they've given themselves to so deeply. So I think that's where that offense is coming from. Luke, you were talking about truth and love, and I I just came across this quote this week. I loved it from the great economist Thomas Sowell. He said, When you want to help someone, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. I just thought that was so good.
Luke Allen:That's exactly it. Yeah. I mean, that's totally it's it's a temptation we all face. Again, back to our friends. You don't want to offend anyone. Why? Because you love yourself. Because you don't want to feel uncomfortable. But if they're about to walk off the edge of the cliff, you better tell them they're gonna walk off the edge of the cliff. That's the most loving thing you can possibly do to them. But people are like, uh, but that would be judging to tell someone to change the direction of their life. Okay, but they're gonna walk off a cliff. You know, the most loving thing I can do for them is stop them. But again, the most loving thing I can do is just stay quiet, sit back, relax, watch them walk off a cliff. Whoops, you know.
Scott Allen:And you can always justify that kind of passive, non-engaging approach by saying, I just want them to be open to hearing what I have to say about the gospel. That's all. Yeah. You can always you can always justify it.
Luke Allen:Which again makes sense on paper, but it just doesn't work when it's actually lived out. Like, uh I mean, who wants a friend that never disagrees with them, that never tells them what they really think? That never has the backbone to challenge you. I don't want that kind of friend. That kind of friend's a pushover, that's a yes man. I I ask my wife all the time, can you please disagree with me? Like, tell me when I'm wrong. I really want to know when I'm wrong. Why? Because I want to know the truth, and the truth requires confrontation. I want you to push me towards that. It's the whole Proverbs, iron sharpens iron thing. Like, it's uh the analogy there is iron sharpens iron and it requires friction to make something sharp. Like there needs to be disagreement, and it's great. What makes us sharper, what makes us better pe people. And you know, even people I don't agree with, when they have backbone and they can stand for something and have some courage of their convictions, I respect that. And especially in leaders, I respect leaders that know what they believe.
Scott Allen:Pay a price for it. 100%.
Luke Allen:Um that though, you know, you'll garner an audience by is people respect people with opinions. People respect people that can stand for something. And it's I think I always think of that the you know the the Broadway um Hamilton that we watch every once in a while, and it's that uh repeated line between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Alexander Hamilton's like, Burr, and apparently this is historically accurate too. Burr, if you stand for nothing, what will you fall for? And it's that kind of person that just can't stand for something. Like, can you please stand for the truth? Because if you don't, then you're gonna fall for anything, man.
Scott Allen:And honestly, I think Aaron Burr in that in that musical and probably in real life really did kind of typify the instinct behind this third-way approach. Keep your way down, don't be controversial and try to kind of ingratiate yourself to people in power, you know. And um it, you know, at the end of the day, that approach just doesn't work. The other thing that doesn't work about it is again, it separates truth. It says the gospel truth is all that's important, really, at the end of the day. But I'm going to not focus on truth telling when it comes to controversial issues in the culture. Uh, or if I'm going to say anything at all, it'll be to kind of side up with whatever the cultural, you know, acceptable cultural position is on that subject. That doesn't work. Charlie Kirk was out there talking about everything, whether it was marriage or gender or sex truthfully. And people, you know, when they heard that, you you know, we a lot of Christians would say, it's a waste of your time. You just need to be preaching the gospel. Don't talk about sex or marriage or economy. But the problem with with don't you know that approach is that when you start speaking truthfully from the basis of true principles on those subjects and you gain a hearing, it puts people on the road to where that road ends up, which is Jesus Himself. In other words, all of this truth connects. It's not, you cannot separate it. It's all part of the same fabric, the same cloth. It doesn't matter if you start over here or over here, if you're talking about truth, it will at the end of the day lead to Christ. That's a very different approach than saying, forget all these truths that are that are controversial. Let's just talk about the gospel. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. And you look like a hypocrite because people look like a hypocrite.
Luke Allen:Because people know, I mean, especially now in America, like people know real Bible believing Christians cannot endorse homosexuality. Marriage. And because of that, it's usually people's first question when they meet a Christian, like, oh, I haven't met a Christian before, or not for a while. What do you believe about homosexual marriage and lead with that? And what they expect you to do is to answer them with the truth that you believe. This just happened to Doug Wilson when he went on a famous liberal YouTube page last week, YouTube channel, The Young Turks. First question: What do you believe about homosexual marriage? And he's like, Well, I'll answer. Boop. You know, but if if if you come at from this kind of winsome third way, oh, that's not as important. That's that's an uncomfortable truth of the Bible. Let's stick to the gospel. I'm just gonna sidestep that, hide that behind my back real quick and go over here. You look like a hypocrite when you say that, because they know what you believe, maybe better than you know what you believe, and they're expecting you to say it.
Scott Allen:Absolutely. Absolutely.
Luke Allen:Tell me why you believe that.
Scott Allen:Yeah, you know, I know what you believe in. And then defend it.
Luke Allen:And then show them that grace and truth are tied. Or truth and love are tied. And you can show them that.
Scott Allen:You can start there, start on that issue of sex, gender, whatever, move them towards Christ, you know. Yeah. Um, that's the way to do it. And I think that's this new approach. It's not new. Again, this is, I think, this is the old biblical orthodox approach that we lost for a couple hundred years, maybe a long time. And I was so hopeful again when the third way approach, the winsome third way approach, was kind of emerging in the early 2000s. I thought, oh, finally, finally. And again, maybe, maybe I'm having a false hope now. We'll find out, time will tell. That's one of the things about being 60 some years old is you've lived long enough to watch things kind of rise and fall, ebb and flow. But I do feel like this is different. This feels different. And I think it's because I think at the root of it, it's this we you know, we stand for truth. I love that, just truth comprehensively. Okay, not just uh uh in terms of personal spiritual salvation, as central and important as that is, and again, I love the way that Charlie Kirk always tried to bring people to that point of uh, you know, personal faith in Christ. But but start wherever people are at with whatever questions they have. That by the way was the approach of Francis Schaefer, too.
Luke Allen:You know, and uh a couple quick Q ⁇ A questions as we're wrapping up here. Um you know, uh in some of these are kind of plain devil's advocate, but uh but some people say, well, oh you guys, you guys, um you conservative Christians, you guys just idolize politics and you're just you're just uh you know, you're addicted to the high of changing policies and whatnot, and you're you're a Republican Party and you can just trample over people. How do you respond to that? Is that a true accusation? Is it sometimes true, never true?
Scott Allen:Well, I think that the problem with that kind of a charge is that it it's a failure to understand the importance of politics, you know. Politics is policy, and uh behind any policy, you could take a policy like we have here in Oregon. Uh you can abort your unborn baby all the way up till the moment of birth with no limits at taxpayer expense. That's policy. Behind that policy, there's a paradigm, right? There's a there's a there's a paradigm. The human life is just worthless matter. It can be tossed into the trash can uh just as if it's a piece of you know rubbish. Um okay, the now we're talking not about politics, we're talking about fundamental core truths that Christians can't just dismiss as politics. We have to go, no, human life is sacred from the moment of conception to natural death and deserves protection. Um so uh this is where I think this, oh, it's just politics. So if I'm gonna favor a party, it's gonna be a party, and I'm gonna favor them strongly and outspok in an outspoken way, if they stand, you know, if they're moving the ball in the right direction on some of these really important truth claims, okay? So no, it's not here's the test. The test is would I support a party or a candidate regardless, even if they went off the rails biblically, right? If that if I did that, then you could you could level that charge against me. It's all about politics, okay? And I would say, no, I would never do that. I would never do that. My Lord is Jesus Christ. I don't mind calling out any politician or political party, but that doesn't mean that I have to be neutral or third way. No, I'm gonna call balls and strikes. And if this party, and like you said earlier, Luke, it's not hard today. These parties are really kind of coalescing around two very different worldviews. One is very dark, very destructive, and uh the other less so, let's say. Okay. Yeah.
Luke Allen:I mean, it's hard though, because the political landscape has changed so much in the last 50 years where both parties have but just dramatically shifted to the left, so much so that the Democrat of the 1960s would totally be conservative today. And many of those middle line people are now clearly in the conservative camp. And I feel like Yeah, RFK is the unlike example. Where do I fit in now? Things are getting so left, and when you when you go and read the um what are those called before the elections, they're uh the platforms of the party. The platforms. Yeah, when you read the platforms, the democratic platform, there is all law legislates morality, right? That's just a basic principle of politics that every Christian needs to understand. I don't see any morality that I can support legislating in that platform. On the opposite side, there's a lot of things that I can't see legislating morality either. I totally disagree with them. So I don't really fit perfectly into either camp. However, one is much closer. One one is nothing I can stand behind, the other one has some things I can stand behind. So that makes it pretty easy. So another another point that we hear sometimes is well, you know, you can't really choose a side, you know, there's pros and cons on both sides of the political aisle. Um however, you know, who does a lot better job of taking care of the poor and the widow, which the Bible clearly says we should do, that's the left. How do you respond to that, Dad?
Scott Allen:Uh, it's wrong. They don't. They they've gained a lot of mileage and traction in saying that they do. But in fact, when you look at it, their policies actually enable uh poverty, you know. Um like look at the Great Society, for example. Uh even somebody like Tim Killer, I think, was in favor of continuing these Great Society programs, uh, these the welfare state programs, because it was quote unquote more Christian to help the poor. It doesn't. It just it it it enables the poor to become dependent on the state. You know, it actually leads to greater poverty. One of the dark things I've seen in many years of Christian relief and development is that people that get into poverty fighting without kind of a real strong root in Christianity, they actually don't want poverty to go away because they lose their job security. So they'll actually end up end up in this deeply, darkly ironic way working to kind of enable poverty, all in the name of ending it. Uh so yeah, it's uh you know it's we could go on, no. I mean, that's where we could go on and on on that one. That's our main thing. So we could go on and on about that. I just think that's a funny accusation. And you're right, they they've really branded themselves with that. But hey, Jesus said you'll know them by their fruit. Are these policies that they're advocating for supposedly in the name of reducing poverty actually doing that? The fruit is clear. The answer is no, it is not.
Luke Allen:And I mean, yeah, I mean, the other one is um the people that are trapped in the LGBTQ lifestyle. Um you know, people will point at the third way as crowd says, Oh, we're much more loving to them, we care about them more. We're the first line of defense, we're the ones that reach out to them first, we care about them, you know, we're looking out for them, at least we're building friendships with them. You guys are doing nothing except, you know, giving them trauma. How do you respond to that?
Scott Allen:Well, again, this is going back to our separation of truth and love. So the most loving thing that you can do is to speak truthfully and do it in a loving way, you know. So to you know, to to for people that are caught in the the web of that lie, it's destructive to them. And you just have to believe that and know that. And then to hide the truth from them that that's not what God intends, that's not, as Charlie Kirk would say, that's not what God wants for your life, what you know, what's best for you. Uh to hide that in any way, uh, supposedly in the name of loving them, is not actually loving them. So yeah, you you you know this is a parent, right? Luke, I'm talking to my son here, but when you guys were younger, right? I mean, you have to set clear boundaries. And it's not loving to just let your kids run right over those boundaries, run right out into the street and get hit by the car. You know, there's real consequences for these things. And God has established boundaries around things like sex. It's not loving to say, hey, just ignore the boundaries because I love you. You know, no, that's definitely not loving. So Yeah.
Luke Allen:That becomes very clear when you have a you're a parent of young kids. Um I guess I guess last question is uh Hebrews 12, right? It says, make every effort to live at peace with all men and be holy. Without holiness no one will see the Lord. Uh how do we how do we retain friendships with people even when we disagree on this level of these approaches? Because it's a pretty it's a pretty heated disagreement inside the church. Like how how can we go about retaining friendships even when we disagree on, you know, how to treat someone who's uh homosexual or how to, you know, work or how to vote, you know, those questions.
Scott Allen:Well, I think you you don't you don't compromise on on truth telling or truth speaking. That's important. Um doing that may rec may make a friend of yours um want you know may deeply offend them and they may want to break off the relationship. Um my approach is to never be the one to break off a relationship, to consent to continue to pursue the relationship. Um never break it off but don't compromise the truth in that either. And sometimes, you know, I'll I'll be honest. I mean, there you sometimes you come up with somebody who you love, very close friend, family member, and you you fundamentally disagree. It's not that you're hiding the truth, you've spoken it. You have a fundamental disagreement, but for a time you just r kind of agree that you're not going to bring that up again because the relationship itself is is actually more important. Um I think there's a room for that, that kind of approach as well. Never shying away, if it ever came up again, yeah, I will speak, you know, truthfully about that, what you know I believe is true, what the Bible's teaching on that. Um but don't be the first one to break off a relationship. Continue to pursue relationship, pursue the Bible says pursue peace with all men. That doesn't mean don't tell the truth or kind of water down differences. It means don't be the first to break off relationships, you know. I think is what that means.
Luke Allen:Yeah, you can only you can only do an education you can do, not the way they respond. Exactly.
Scott Allen:Yeah, you can't re you can't you cannot control how other people respond. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Luke Allen:I think that's good. I um I was thinking about this earlier today, and I was just thinking about this kind of like we were saying, one of them's a a fear of man type of approach where you care about what what people are gonna think of you, and the other one's a uh caring more about what other other people and their good and their best. It's really fear of God, because God loves people and we love God and love your neighbors. Two greatest commands upon this, there is no law. And I was thinking of people in the Bible, you know, you we think of Jonah and poor guy. All we remember about Jonah is he feared man and he ended up in a fish. And then he changed his mind, which is great, good job. But uh it was fear of man over fear of God. But we do remember people like Daniel because he feared God and he did not fear man, and he ended up in lions. And we do we do remember people like Radchak, Meshach, and Abednego, that if they had bowed down to the golden statue, we wouldn't remember them. But they they stood up and they ended up in the human barbecue. You know, when we look back at Paul or uh the early martyrs, Saint Valentine's Jesus Christ himself, you know. Yeah, Jesus. The people and a lot of these people, what's interesting too is it was in a political climate that they had to stand up and speak the truth. Not always, you know, sometimes it's to other religions, or sometimes it's in other environments, but a lot of times it's in a political environment, like we already talked about uh with uh Willie Milberforce or with the people that worked with him, like Hannah Moore. And I don't think that if they were third way, they would have had the uh the ability to overthrow the slave trade in England. Or, yeah, again, St. Valentine's, you know, he stood up for uh God's view of marriage in the face of the Roman Empire, had his head chopped off, people like Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation at the you know, risk of his own death. Uh if William Tyndale was third way, he might have not been burnt at the stake. You know, before the podcast we were talking about, some of the early Americans uh before the Revolutionary War, Patrick Henry, John Adams, people that if they were loyalists and weren't separatists took the easy route, uh, they might have not started the most distinctly Christian nation in history. People like um your guy, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, or Frederick Douglass, you know, the the abolitionists in America before the re the Civil War. If they had this kind of third-way approach, they might have not had the guts to overthrow the the slave trade in America as well. Or I mean a lot of people we've we've mentioned this on the podcast before. A lot of people don't know that Germany in the 1920s and the 1930s was a predominantly Christian nation as far as uh the population goes, same as in America today. And yet in a very short amount of time the Nazi Party was able to take over Germany uh and take over the church, uh, which makes us question, you know, what was the German church's understanding of its role in cultural engagement and political engagement. And we don't remember any of those Germans. The only one we remember is, well, there's a few we remember, but we especially remember Bonhoeffer, right? The pastor who attempted to assassinate Hitler, one of the most famous martyrs of the 20th century. Those kind of people we remember. So when I think about like what is the what is the if if if the world lasts for a few more hundred years and the Christian history books are written, what are they gonna think about the Christians that live today? Are they gonna remember the third way crowd? I don't know. Or are they gonna remember people that stood up in the face of some of the most evil things we've seen in history? You know, like the most evil thing happening in the world today is abortion. And if Christians aren't standing up for that, who knows what the Christians of the future are gonna look back and think about us? You know, I think they're gonna think we're despicable. You know, uh in the face of the transgender surgeries, people sterilizing themselves for life. You know, where is a church standing up to stop that? The history books are not gonna look back on us well if we don't stand up to this. So I I think when you just take that that bigger context of how am I gonna be faithful now? You know, sure it's gonna maybe cost me a few relationships, sure some people aren't gonna like me. But in the bigger face of, you know, my call as a Christian and my short, my short sprint of a life here on earth, am I gonna stand up for the truth? May I stand up with courage? Am I gonna you know be obedient to what's that passage? I was just reading it earlier today. Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 16, 13. Be on your guard, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong. Like, is that gonna be what I'm known for? I hope so. So I think when it comes to just cultural tactics, it can be really simple. Stand for the truth. You know, you have a short life, just stand for the truth, promote God at every opportunity you can, and that's uh that's how you're gonna engage in culture. And um, yeah, yeah, I think we can overcomplicate it sometimes. So, anyways, there's my rant dad.
Scott Allen:So well said, Luke. Oh, thank you. Amen. I'm so proud of you, son. It's fun to talk about these things. It's very practical. Really well said.
Luke Allen:Amen. All right. Well, with that, guys, um, we hope you uh enjoyed the episode. We definitely did. Um, I think this discussion is something we need to continue inside of the church. I do think uh at a time where it's a very exciting time for Christians, where we're we're seeing these sparks of revival around our country, around the world, there is such a temptation for infighting in the church. I hope we aren't feeding into that today. I hope we're just uh pointing out the importance of the truth and uh a rallying call for all of us as Christians. Um I yeah, I just don't want the church to be known for infighting. I I I uh I feel I feel convicted of that sometimes um when we're picking on each other too much. And I think we do that on this podcast sometimes, and I don't, and I we try not to do that, but I hope I hope you guys aren't hearing that. Um as a church, we're unified, we're the we're the body of Christ. Uh we're a family. Um, we are all adopted in God's family, and uh as such, we're called to sharpen each other. Iron sharpens iron, and yes, that's gonna take some friction, but uh hopefully we can all stand in linked arms as best as possible and have uh a lot of grace with each other as we uh work together uh in our generations to honor God. Anyways, yeah, thanks again for listening to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences. A couple of resources that I would like to point you guys towards. Um, there's a bunch of resources that we could mention today, but uh as as you mentioned, Dad, the book Shepherds for Sale, I think is very helpful uh when kind of outlying the history of um the mini.
Scott Allen:Compromise of the winds in third way, yeah.
Luke Allen:Yeah, yeah, it's it's an interesting book. It's very well researched. Um The Toxic New Religion, the book Dad you wrote with uh Darrell Miller a few years ago, um is also a good outline of the uh cultural Marxist secularism that is the predominant worldview in the West right now, uh why social justice is not biblical justice, which I forgot about this, but was actually the Amazon bestseller for a little bit when it first came out, which just kind of shows again the the the the desire people have to just hear the a clear exegesis of the of the Bible when it comes to when it comes to justice. And then Dad, your most recent book, uh 10 words to heal our broken world. Personally, I'm I'm obviously biased because I'm your son, but this is my favorite book that you've written. I just think it's so help super helpful for Christians right now to kind of get this base locked in. Uh 10 important words that we need to all know and champion in a world where all of these world words are being um uh hijacked and redefined. Uh words like sex, marriage, freedom, justice, human authority, truth, love, faith, beauty. Every one of those words, all of us as Christians need to understand, uh understand their their biblical definitions right now. That's extremely important. That book also has a Bible study, which is actually available for free on our website. I've linked all of those resources in the description. We'll also add some more, and hopefully those can be a helpful resource for you guys. So, again, thanks again for listening, and we'll catch you next week here on Ideas Have Consequences.
