A Call to Cultivate: Working Towards a Biblical Vision for Engaging Culture | Owen Strachan

Episode Summary:

The culture may feel like it's unraveling, but what if God's call isn't to panic, retreat, or attack, but to cultivate? In this thought-provoking conversation, theologian Owen Strachan joins us to discuss his new book, Call to Cultivate, and why Jeremiah 29 provides a compelling biblical blueprint for faithful Christian cultural engagement.

Together, we explore how followers of Christ can engage today's culture without giving in to fear, political idolatry, or end-times obsession. Owen challenges believers to plant gardens, build strong families, disciple their communities, and pursue the long-term work of cultivating culture rather than simply reacting to it. Along the way, we also have several honest, iron-sharpening-iron moments of disagreement that push the conversation deeper and challenge us all to think more carefully.

If you've felt anxious about the direction of our culture or wondered how Christians should respond to today's challenges, this conversation offers a biblical vision rooted in hope, faithfulness, and the lordship of Christ.

If this episode encouraged you, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs hope and a biblical vision for engaging today's world.

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/

🎙️Featured Guest: 

Owen Strachan is the provost and research professor of theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary and a senior fellow for the Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview. Strachan holds a doctorate in theological studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a master’s degree from Southern Seminary, and a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College. The author of numerous books, including Christianity and Wokeness, Reenchanting Humanity, and Always in God’s Hands, he is married and the father of three children. 

📌 Recommended Resources: 

     👉 Matching Challenge: Donate - Disciple Nations Alliance 

     👉 The Book: Call to Cultivate: Overcome Anxiety by Thriving Where God Plants You: Strachan, Owen 

     👉 Owen’s most popular book: Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel - and the Way to Stop It: Strachan, Owen, MacArthur, John

     👉 Our Book: Discipling Nations - Disciple Nations Alliance | Darrow Miller

     👉 One Gospel website: One Gospel 

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Episode Webpage

Transcript

Owen Strachan 0:02

My hope is staked on the futures market of Jesus Christ. And it will not fail. There will never be a bear market in that market. We tend to say something like, Wow, the COVID years were crazy, weren't they? And we chuckle, and they were. But I I zoom out in my thinking of all this, and I may be wrong. And I think, wow, I think Satan really hit us very hard in the church, and Satan really shook the foundations of civilization and culture in this last decade, roughly. Anchor yourself in God and in what he is doing, and he will use you, perhaps beyond what we can dream of or think of for good. But that itself is not your hope. That is not even your ultimate cause. Our ultimate cause as Christians is the discipling of the nation.

Podcast Mission And Guest Preview

Luke Allen 0:57

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 that our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. However, our mission, the Great Co-mission, also involves working to transform our cultures so that they increasingly reflect the truth, the goodness, and the beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission, and today most 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'm one of the co-hosts here on the podcast, and I am joined by my dad, Scott Allen. Hi dad, how you doing? Hey, Luke. Yeah, great. Yeah. We just hopped off a I know, guys, it's a little bit long, but a long discussion with uh a good friend of ours coming back on the podcast for his third time now, Owen Stron, uh, for just such a rich discussion. I know all of you guys, if you know the Disciple Nations Alliance and if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, are gonna love this episode. It's fascinating, very thought-provoking. I've got a lot of takeaways. Uh so I hope you guys all enjoy it. Dad, would you mind giving people just a brief summary of what we talked about and then also introducing our guest today?

Scott Allen 2:14

Absolutely, yeah. We talked today about just what it what does it look like for the Christian to engage in culture? Um, that was the theme. And um, we came at it from, I would say, a place where there was probably 80% overlap, but about 20% some disagreements, maybe, and and it was a really fruitful discussion in that sense. Uh the uh reason for the discussion is Owen's newest book, Call to Cultivate Overcoming Anxiety by Thriving Where God Plants You. Uh it's a book that I want to encourage all of us to read and to take seriously. Owen's a great thinker. Uh just a little bit about Owen. Uh he has served as associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Uh, he is a prolific author. He's written more than 20 books, including uh his best-selling book, uh Christianity and Wokeness, which is very similar to the book that I wrote on that subject, Why Social Justice is not biblical justice. And um, as far as his own educational background, Owen earned his PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he has his MDiv from Southern Seminary. Uh, and I also just learned that he has his undergraduate from Bowdoin College. Uh, he's a native of Maine, and I'm a fan of Bowdoin College because that's the um that's where uh one of my great heroes of America, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, not only graduated, but he served as the president now. Bowdoin College has changed a lot since then. But uh, anyways, I don't want to go down a sidetrack with that. Anyways, that's Owen. It was a really fruitful and I thought fascinating discussion, especially the places where we, you know, had a little iron sharpening iron. What did you think, Luke?

Luke Allen 3:53

Oh, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's so fun in these discussions. We were talking about the book, A Call to Cultivate. That word cultivate is one of my favorite words uh that that that we use when we're talking about how Christians should engage in this world. Plant gardens, right? Plant sunflowers, plant an apple tree, as uh Martin Luther said. We're we're here to make a difference in the world, and we should make the world reflect and exemplify in small ways through our lives the Garden of Eden. Uh, and just the imagery that used throughout the Bible is so beautiful and also extremely practical when we live it out in our day-to-day lives. I also just want to mention a new initiative that Owen Straun is working on with our friends down at Redeemer Rival Church in Gilbert, Arizona. It's called the One Gospel Initiative. You can find out more about it at onegospel.net. Uh, the goal with this whole thing is Christian unity in a time of uh a lot of Christian division. Uh so just unifying over the the gospel that we all share in common. So I'm excited to learn more about that and just wanted to mention that as well. So, anyways, the book and the uh the one gospel initiative here are gonna be both uh linked down in the description below. I also wanted to share with y'all about our $50,000 matching challenge that we are running this summer at the Disciple Nations Alliance. The goal is to help us here at the DNA continue to equip more believers with a biblical worldview. One of our generous regular listeners uh to the show recently shared how the DNA has impacted her, and I just want to share her little testimony with you guys. She said that the DNA has helped me know and love God and people better. The good news is much more than a safe ticket to heaven. I now understand why I'm here, to know God, enjoy him, and partner with him in his work here on earth. She went on to say that Scott Allen and the DNA, through books, podcasts, studies, have brought in my understanding of the Bible and its application to all of life. Not just for the future, but for the here and now. I only wish I had learned these things sooner. If you resonate with that testimony, we'd like to invite you to join us in this matching challenge. Our ministry here at the DNA is supported by faithful individuals just like yourself. So to join us, just tap on the link in the show notes that says matching challenge, or you can learn more about it on our website, discipleNations.org, and right there on the homepage you'll see the blue button that says donate. Thank you guys so much for considering that. Now, without further ado, let's hop into the discussion with Dr. Owenstrom.

Why Owen Wrote Call To Cultivate

Scott Allen 6:23

Well, Owen, it's so good to have you back on the podcast again. It's been a while, and I think for me, when I think of you, I I I feel a sense of kindred spirit because um Owen's best-selling book, Christianity and Wokeness, came out uh uh just right around the same time as a book that I wrote on the same subject that uh um that we had a chance to talk about on previous podcasts, why social justice is not biblical justice, and and just the the current um kind of I don't even like this word woke, but but that's what people understand now. But just this kind of neo-Marxist revolution that has been sweeping over the United States and then coming into the churches and um uh you know, anyways, it was a time w when we both wrote our books on one on that that uh um it was uncomfortable for a lot of Christians to talk about that, many didn't, and then of course there was a lot of Christians that were accommodating themselves to that. So I so appreciated your courage and your willingness to stand up and and address that forcefully and clearly. And um, anyways, just I've always felt such a a kindred spirit with you from that. But uh today we're gonna talk about your newest book, uh Call to Cultivate, Overcoming Anxiety by Thriving Where God Plants You. So you are just incredibly uh prolific. More than 20 books, is that correct?

Owen Strachan 7:44

I think so.

Scott Allen 7:46

Yeah, it's hard to keep track. Well, good for you. I just I really uh admire that um discipline and thank you for this new book, uh Call to Cultivate. Um I would like to hear a little bit just as we begin about what was behind you writing this book in the same way that uh obviously um Christianity and wokeness, you know, I I know what was behind that, what was driving that. Well, what what was driving this uh for you? What we what were you looking at and wanting to respond to?

Owen Strachan 8:17

That's a great question, and thank you for your kind words, Scott. I really appreciate them. Um I I think uh coming out of the crazy years that we had in evangelicalism and in America and in the West from roughly 2015 to 2022, which felt like World War III. I think uh, you know, there weren't a lot of shots fired or something like that in military terms, but I really do think we lived through we lived through many things, but we lived through uh a war, uh an ideological war in that period. And certainly the psychological experience of roughly 2015 to 2022 was equivalent to that of wartime experience, from what I understand of war. Uh just so many crises and social movements and attacks on reality and God's design sweeping over us at the same time. These these threats in a kind of um kind of a metastorm, uh, really like seven different storms swelling together over the ocean somewhere and hitting us as one almost apocalyptic storm. I think that's what we lived through. You don't hear many Christians talk about uh that period of time like I just did. We tend to say something like, wow, COVID years were crazy, weren't they? And we chuckle, and they were. But I I zoom out in my thinking of all this, and I may be wrong, and I think, wow, I think Satan really hit us very hard uh in the church, and Satan really shook the foundations of civilization and culture in this last decade, roughly. All of that to say, I had read Jeremiah 29 um 4 to 7 in particular in my devotions some years ago. Um, this was after uh I had published my book on wokeness that you kindly mentioned, and I found in Jeremiah 29 this beautiful shimmering passage of God speaking to the Babylonian exiles, the people of Judah, now deported to Babylon, and telling them not just that uh he would raise them up as on eagle's wings with plans they they couldn't conceivably dream of, Jeremiah 29, 11 paraphrasing, but also before that in Jeremiah 29, God called his exiles to plant gardens. And when I read that, something jumped up from the Bible and grabbed me, and it has not stopped grabbing me since. Um we can talk about why, but basically, uh that that picture of the garden, garden imagery throughout the Bible is so evocative, of course, in terms of the original Eden and then the garden mountain city we're headed to in the New Eden, that I realized I think there's something more to this passage than just God helping the exiles settle in for their seven decades. I think this is something of a blueprint, not that we're in the old covenant or something, but something of a blueprint for how we think of being in a very hard place, being in wartime conditions or exilic conditions. Um, the era we're in would be akin to enduring a very hard exile, something I talk about in the book. And so what does God say to his people in those hard conditions? He basically says, in so many words, do simple things, do normal things, cultivate uh a God-centered life that is full of good rhythms and the small delights that God has filled this world with, worship me, keep your eyes on me, build families, settle in where you are. And last thing I'll say is that spoke to me because uh I had several moves over the last 15 years with my family for my vocation. And so, as I have reflected on our journey, I've thought, man, stability has been hard to come by for my little family as I have led us. And I think I've underrated stability in my own walk. I think many of us have in this liquid modern age where nothing is settled and nothing is fixed, and you can talk more broadly about that. And so I think this book is me grasping for stability as found in the pages of scripture.

Jeremiah 29 And The Garden Blueprint

Scott Allen 12:27

Gotcha. Well, that that helps, yeah. So there's a couple of things. You've got turmoil in the culture, especially since the COVID era and uh the woke revolution that kind of coincided with that. And then your own, you know, just uh I guess I don't know, turmoil may not be the right word, but just a lot of a lot of uh moving. And yeah, that there is I haven't moved as much as you, but that those that's not easy. That you know, so I can I can understand your your desire to kind of find some verses that kind of ground you in this way. Um I really appreciate um what you're saying about the garden. Uh that theme is um, yeah, from from the very beginning to the very end. Uh and at the DNA, the ministry that uh Luke and I work for, we make a big deal out of um out of Genesis chapter one and two um as kind of the blueprint for you know God's design, you know, that uh that was disrupted of course of the fall, but but we should be working to get back to and will by you know with God's uh in God's providence and strength, we'll we'll get back to at the very end. But um but we make a big deal out of the the the cultural commission, um uh this idea that God has put us here on earth um as image bearers of God um to have dominion over creation, to cause it to flourish, to uh take what he has made, um the beauty and the goodness that he has made and to do something with it, um, to have children, to raise families, to create cultures in our homes, in our churches, in our communities, and even in nations that honor God, that are rooted in the worship of the living God, and that um even to leave this world, you know, better than we found it, which is a kind of an amazing thing, I think, to that that that is possible, that is possible in in this world that God made based on who he is and who we are, who he has made us to be. Um but yeah, is could speak to speak a little bit to that. Do you do you feel like uh there's a tie, uh a link uh uh between uh the Jeremiah passage, the exile passage, and the cultural commission in Genesis 128?

Cultivate Culture Without Capitulating

Owen Strachan 14:42

Yeah, I think it is in some ways God reissuing uh a form of that charge that you you mentioned. Um wherever God's people go, God does not want them to be uh taken dominion of, to use clumsy English. God wants them to take dominion. He always is calling us to play offense and not defense. Uh and we don't mean by that, as I spell out in a call to cultivate, that God's people are called to literally take up weapons against Babylon and overtake it, because they in no sense are. In fact, some of the exiles want to do that and want to escape Babylon alternately, and God calls them to do neither of those things. Christians are tempted, as old covenant followers of God were, to do one of three things, to accommodate culture, uh, to attack culture, or to abandon culture and society. And God wants us to do a fourth thing, uh, which I call in the book aerate culture, or a better term, a sharper term, is cultivate culture. So you think of the overlap there of those two terms, cultivate and culture. There's such a close linkage there. And um, when we are living as God intends, at least in a lot of different contexts, a lot of different eras of biblical history, including the New Covenant era, we are we are in the world, but not of it. We are making a positive difference. Uh in Jeremiah 29, 7, Yahweh says to his people to seek the good of Babylon, actually, which of course doesn't mean do what Babylon wants. It means to be a living, vital presence, um, intentionally uh walking in God's ways in Babylon, and that will have this powerful effect. So, yes, I believe that God is reissuing a form of that original dominion mandate, cultural mandate, call it what you want. And um, Jeremiah 29, as Phil Riken talks about in his commentary on Jeremiah, very helpful commentary, represents a shift in biblical history that Jonah also is going to embody in his ministry somewhat unwillfully. And that shift is the people of God aren't warring against Babylon as Joshua was called to do, for example. They're now planted, they themselves are planted like a little garden in Babylon to bless it and be salvific light to it. And that's the shift that obtains for the rest of this era of history as well.

Luke Allen 17:20

Yeah, when I um when I first heard about this book, I I think it was a tweet or something you posted online, Owen, and it was it was that kind of breakdown. We're not called to accommodate, we're not called to attack, we're not called to abandon, but then you use this word cultivate, and I love that word. Um I I I think of uh that that famous story of Martin Luther and someone said if you were gonna die tomorrow, what would you do today? Just plant a garden or plant an apple tree. I forget what the exact wording is, uh cultivate, you know. And I got to write the questions for this interview, so uh I thought I was like, hey, if we're sitting down with a theologian, I might as well ask him as many Bible questions as I can. And and and and the word cultivate to me, I love it. Uh, but I work at the Disciple Nations Alliance, so we use disciple a lot. Um would you say that, uh and you just mentioned it in in Jeremiah 29, 7 when it says seek the the welfare of the city um of Babylon. Would you say that's that's fair to say that's a similar type of language that we see in Matthew 28 of go and make disciples of the nations, so c go and cultivate the nations? Would you say that's fair uh to to connect those like that?

Speaker 1 18:28

Yeah, I think so. Be a cultivating presence in the nation might be technically how I would word it.

Speaker 3 18:34

Okay.

Speaker 1 18:35

Um I I don't think I don't think in my eschatology that um our cultivation efforts are are going to actually help to usher in the eschatological kingdom, the last age, so to speak. But I do think while we are here, we are called to be, in Matthew 5 terms, uh a salt and light presence. Um and I think that um that means that we approach our setting uh not as if we're trying to conquer it, um, neither as if we are trying to withdraw from it. Both of those are strongly Christian instincts in church history, for example. You see Christians taking up the sword to air quotes advance the kingdom. You definitely see Christians just backing away. Um in the last hundred years or so, there have been all sorts of different movements, but one prominent movement in the evangelical world has been to effectively say politics doesn't matter, um, it's all going to burn, we don't really need to engage our surroundings. Uh what all we really need to do are form local churches, disciple our kids, and that's about it. And I would be one, a very small voice, who would try to say, no, we've got this mandate, this call to press into our world, not triumphalistically as if, you know, Louisville, Kentucky, if I just cultivate it with fellow Christians, is now going to be once and forever one to Christ, but because this is the work God would have us do. We are a people of life, wherever God calls us to be. Literally, you're you're a person of Judah, man or woman of Judah. You're living in this pagan city, um, you you've got pagan temples all around you, and God says to you, plant a garden. And so you plant a four by four garden in the backyard, and and that is a little picture of life, and you participate in the project of bringing life in a culture of death. And even that little four by four plot matters tremendously. I think we have we carry that kind of a mindset wherever we are.

Luke Allen 20:44

I'd love to run an analogy by you. It's it's uh it in these discussions, I always think it's interesting how people bring in eschatology, um, which I think is fair. Uh, but uh for me it's it's more practical than that. It's more hands-on right now than that, like you were just saying. And uh here's the analogy, hear me out. I know last time we had you on the show, we talked a little bit about basketball. I think it was like March Madness when we had you on. Uh I played basketball, so I'm always thinking basketball in allergy terms. And uh, you know, uh a good coach before a game is gonna tell his players to not do two things, which in all sports players tend to do over and over again. One is have that defeatist mentality. They're way better than us, coach, we're not gonna win, we're gonna get stomped on today. Like, what's the point in even trying? You know? There's no chance. They just have the all-star lineup, what what what are we doing here? Or on the opposite side is that kind of like overconfident cocky mentality. Oh, we got this one in the bag, you know, we can we can we can smoke these guys today. And that mentality obviously almost always comes back to bite you. Playing overconfident really makes people play sloppy. I would say both of those mentalities make people play sloppy. So a coach is gonna tell his team in the locker room before the game, hey, don't think about the entire game. Don't think about that last second. Break it down minute by minute, be in the moment, play consistently. Take that next step, next play, you know. And I love that mentality as Christians. It's like the end times is the end times, and w you know, people have different views on that. I personally am still confused on what's going on there in Revelations, trying to figure it out as best as I can. But what I do know is that I've been called to cultivate where I'm at, and I've been called a disciple. And if God wants to use me like a William Wilberforce and do some big things in the world, awesome. I'm all for it. If he wants me to plant the four by four garden in the backyard, awesome. I'm all for it. I can't really I I the winning and losing is not really my responsibility. My responsibility is faithfulness. So is that a fair analogy?

Speaker 1 22:42

No, I think I think what you said is spot on, and I'm a basketball coach as of these days of my son's high school team, so I love it. Um and you have to have that kind of mentality on the court. Next play mentality are exactly right. Um I think Christians have swung between those two extremes that we're talking through, even forget the last hundred years, even the last 10 years or so, where we watched America slide toward paganism, America embraced and endorsed formally gay marriage, and air quotes, of course, there is no such thing as gay marriage, but um we we are currently pretending as if there is. And um that disheartened a lot of believers, and Christians went different ways, even in that period of discouragement. A lot of Christians said, This is done. This is over, we lost. We have lost America, we lost the West. Um just draw a line through it, draw a line through America. There's nothing good to salvage here. I saw I saw a good bit of that. In recent days, we've seen a very strong kickback against that defeatist impulse. And now, especially young men are getting very riled up over um triumphalism, so over taking everything back, over overthrowing the Constitution and this constitutional order that the constitution has created, and now we're going to have a Christian nation and all sorts of discussions like this. And so you have those two extremes represented in real time uh in the last few years. And I understand both impulses. So let me repeat that. I understand and even empathize with both impulses. I understand why evangelicals have been deeply disheartened, even to the point of withdrawing, in the last 10 to 20 years of American and Western public life. I understand why young men, who are the ones along with young women who need to live in the world, have said, forget this stuff. I need someone to sell me some hope. I need something to live for. What am I supposed to do? Just, you know, tear my clothes to pieces and lay out by the roadside and wither and die? I mean, what am I supposed to do? So along comes a bunch of voices on the nationalist side of things, let's use that term, and they say, hold up. No, we're this isn't, this isn't the dark ages. These are the glory days. We're actually going to build into the the New Jerusalem starting now. And if you build a good business or you start a new venture or you join this church, you are actually part of that whole deal. I very much understand why, again, young people and young men in particular would be drawn to that. I think that actually what the New Testament teaches, and here good-hearted believers can disagree. Okay, we need to disagree well. We don't always do that. I don't always do that, but we want to do it well. I I think that the New Testament teaches neither defeatism nor triumphalism. I think it teaches faithfulness. I think it teaches God-centered optimism. By which I mean we don't put any stake in any nation. There is no biblical guarantee of any modern nation's future fate. We stake all our optimism on Christ and the Great Commission and the project of disciple making, of, which is primarily taking Bob or Sally to coffee, um, training them as best we can, introducing them to the Christian faith, praying for their salvation, seeing them one, encouraging them to join a church, the church growing as God moves and works in that way, and then they live out their faith just like the rest of us do. In that sense, I think we have tremendous God-centered optimism. But that optimism, and I'll I'll turn the tap off of my answer here, that optimism is not staked on America, the West, the world itself, any other nation. Um we we want to be salt and light in our nation. We want to build, we want to be Wilbur Forcian in our nation, but we don't have any biblical summons to put our hope in any percentage in any nation. It's all about Christ and his project of disciple making.

Matching Challenge And Sponsor Message

Luke Allen 26:58

Hi, friends, I wanted to invite you to help the Disciple Nations Alliance meet our $50,000 summer matching challenge. Many of you are listening to this podcast because you care about a biblical worldview, about discipling the nations, and helping Christians live faithfully in every area of life. And that's exactly what the DNA exists to do. Last year, an independent impact study confirmed what we have been hearing again and again from people around the world. The DNA's training is helping Christians break free from a compartmentalized faith to applying biblical truths to their family, work, church, community, and culture. When Christians embrace a biblical worldview, they live differently. And when believers live differently, that transformation ripples outward. Now through August 15th, your gift can help us meet this $50,000 challenge and multiply this impact. To give, just tap the link in the show notes that says matching challenge. And thank you so much for standing with us here at the Disciple Nations Alliance. And now for a word from our friends over at the Center for Biblical Unity.

Speaker 28:08

Can one person really make a difference and push back against the darkness? At the Center for Biblical Unity, we're passionate about equipping Christians to tackle today's cultural challenges through a distinctly biblical worldview. That is why we are launching the Ambassadors for Biblical Justice Cohort. This nine-month mentoring program will walk you through the vital and practical tools you need to make a real difference in your community. Maybe you're a mother of a special needs child who has a heart to reach out to other special needs children in your local church. Or maybe you're a pastor who wants to more effectively address poverty in your community. Or maybe you're a businessman who wants to connect the dots between your vocation and your worldview. Whoever you are, if you have a heart for justice and want to explore how it aligns with the historic Christian faith, this program is for you. We are now accepting applications for our inaugural 2026 cohort. You will be mentored by seasoned Christian leaders who will help you apply biblical principles to real-world issues of justice, poverty, and cultural renewal. For more information, please visit Center for Biblical Unity.com backslash ambassador. Come be a part of our effort to change the world one life at a time.

Political Action Without Putting Hope in Politics

Scott Allen 29:51

Or, you know, and helping her to come to faith and disciple her. And anything beyond that kind of individual level of engagement that, you know, moves into the culture, you know, is not something, you know, that's indicative that I'm putting my hope in something national or cultural. So I shouldn't do that. And I I I don't I don't and I'm I don't think you're saying that, but it's I think it's easy sometimes to to to maybe hear that in what you're saying. Is that fair?

Speaker 1 30:18

That's a fair, fair response. And I do think some people mean what you just said. I do think that is a uh a stance that is taken by some Christians. Politics is a distraction from the mission, for example. Uh we're to be neither left nor right and and just go to local church and and do our stuff at home and be faithful and work, and that's it. And I would disagree. I I talk about this in a call to cultivate, but we are very much supposed to be in the midst of Babylon. We are supposed to, I think, by extension, run for office where we're called, seek good laws, support the best possible candidate we can in elections. Speaking of a modern Western nation like ours, um, we're we're to do all the good we can do in the context we have. Um so examples that I would look to along those lines would be a Wilberforce, would be a Kuiper, um, would be a Francis Schaefer, who didn't hold office, of course, but very much supported those who did. So I'm in a middle position between the uh the withdrawing party and the triumphalist party. Uh Wilberforce didn't succeed in saving Britain in a kind of long-term ultimate sense. But Wilberforce uh did incredible work that uh has continued to ripple through the generations, and I think we're supposed to be inspired by that and called into the public square in that way. But that's different than saying um we should we should tie our hope or our understanding of the status of the work of God on earth to how things are faring at any nation's level.

Scott Allen 32:10

Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. Well, but uh to Wilberforce, you uh you know, the I think in the um uh in the book's description you write, seek Christ, not the tantalizing promise of political power to fulfill our longing for Eden. And and that that brings up a guy like Wilberforce. I remember the famous scene from the movie Amazing Grace or in the book of the same title. It tells the story of Wilberforce. And after he becomes a Christian as an adult, you know, he goes to church, his pastor's John Newton, and says, Yeah, I need to leave. I uh you know, he's a politician, he's a member of parliament, I need to leave politics and I need to uh come into the church because that's kind of the holy kind of calling that God wants for me, right, as a Christian. Yes. And um, you know, famously uh Newton says to him, you know, basically stay where you are, right? You know, God God's called you into parliament, right? You know, because because he felt that strong sense of calling from God to overth to um abolish the slave trade. And um that required him to function politically uh in a very canny way, in a way of amassing power. Talk to me. I I hear two things that I'm a little confused on like here you're saying we shouldn't be seeking political power, the tantalizing promise of political power, but then in order to do things like um, let's say I live in Oregon, you know, uh Luke and I both, uh, there's some real evil here. I mean, real evil, dark stuff, like for example, paid uh taxpayer funded abortion all the way up to the nine months. Yeah, that means I'm complicit in it because I'm a taxpayer here in Oregon. Um it it grieves my heart, it it infuriates me. I feel uh it's in the word I use is intolerable. This is intolerable, you know. Uh and and not just to add to the intolerableness of it, uh you have Oregon trying to attract people from states like Idaho that have banned abortion across the border into Ontario and border cities to get abortions on my dime. The only way I can see that that's gonna be overcome in a state like Oregon, and a lot of people, like you say, the withdrawal people say, Hey, I'm moving, I'm leaving, I'm just gonna go to Texas or wherever, Tennessee. Uh we we Luke and I felt called to stay. Um but but if we're gonna stay, we've got to do something that's gonna be political, because you know, we're not gonna pick up weapons and do anything with, you know, it's it's gonna have to be in the political realm, and it's gonna have to be uh uh uh uh you know at that level. I yeah, I'll stop right there, but talk to me a little bit about that. I'm I'm my little bit of confusion here.

Speaker 1 34:55

Yeah. Well, you're it's not even just a confusion, it's a tension, I would say, in the Christian faith, where I would argue, rightly understood, we are in the world, but we are not of it. We are John the Baptist-like speaking truth to political leaders, uh, even assuming political office, and yet we never go to the end step of putting our hope or our identity in politics. So I share absolutely your um your sadness and despisal even of the culture of death, if I can use that broad term. I want it struck down root and branch. I'm not like up here saying, man, I hope we can get rid of 37% of abortion culture in America. And that'll be enough because we don't we don't want to get sucked into the tantalizing promise of political power. I want us, I want us to use as much political agency as we can. I think the distinction comes in this. Even as we seek carefully, prayerfully, political agency, um, we never make the mistake of tying our hope to it. We never go one-to-one in our vision of the state and the kingdom of God. Meaning, we never say, uh, whatever is happening in a nation, that is where our hope is. And Babylon is so helpful for that in five, in the 580s when God speaks this, 580s BC, I mean, uh, to his exiles, because if ever there is a context for political despair, it is to be placed in Babylon. You have the Tower of Babel probably being in Babylon, the temple of Marduk, it appears, uh, in that city. So, in human terms, the world's most historic monument to paganism is, you know, 300 feet from where the people of God are. As I talk about in this book, A Call to Cultivate, if you're just a normal person of Judah, man or woman of Judah, walking the streets of Babylon where God has had you deported and where you now live, you are awash in paganism. So what it looks like, all this to say, is you have lost. It looks like the cause of God is done. And there's just you living your little old life there. But we know never to equate what what we see with what God Himself is doing. All this to say, I want to, I don't want to just uh say it's okay for Christians to be involved in the public square. I want to charge up their battery and wind up their engine and send them out with rocket fuel in their wings to be in the public square and to then be consequential in it. But if I am Wilberforce's pastor, or if I am a senator's pastor today, uh of a Wilberforce-like character, I am always in his ear and I am always saying uh whatever goods you accomplish, you cannot put your identity in them, and you cannot tie your hope to what happens in America. Anchor yourself in God and in what he is doing, and he will use you, perhaps beyond what we can dream of or think of for good. But that itself is not your hope. That is not even your ultimate cause. Our ultimate cause as Christians is the discipling of the nations, is the discipling of men and women from across the world, uh, to to see them saved in one to Christ.

Scott Allen 38:47

Yeah. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Uh, you know, we are not uh that you put our hope. I the the biblical, you know, language from Genesis chapter 12 is is uh you know, God raising up Abraham and a nation to bless the nations, you know. Uh I'm you know, uh you know, all nations will be blessed through you. And I think that that is God's heart and call for his people, Old and New Testament, to be a blessing to the nations, not to put our hope in the nation, but to seek to be a blessing to the nation. And we've seen, I think, in the West and the United States included a lot of good fruit over many centuries of people that have uh worked hard to cultivate that kind of culture that respects individual rights and that has uh lots of uh hallmarks of biblical law and uh respect for uh human life, and you know, we could go on and on. Uh there's some great books that have come out here in the last few years, Dominion by Tom Holland, that he uses the word saturate. You know, the West has been saturated with biblical thinking and biblical um principles and practices in a way that Western people don't even know because we just live in the fishbowl, right? You know, we don't we we don't we you know we have taken it fully for granted at this point. Oh, and I'd like to come back to uh something you said. I uh I you you were stressing that you would take a middle position between um the the kind of conquer and withdrawal or defeat uh kind of positions. And I I have thought the same thing for for myself, that neither of those fit and feel right. Uh it's certainly not withdrawal. And I I don't like the conqueror one either. Uh this like as you were using the word triumphalistic kind of conquering, this idea that somehow the fulfillment of God's kingdom will come on this side of his return in Louisville or Bend, Oregon or wherever. You know, it's you know no, we're not going to see that. Um and yet it seems to me when I have discussions with people, there's kind of a prevailing mindset that I'm not comfortable with either. One is, and this gets to the eschatology, things are gonna get worse and worse and worse. So yes, we should be salt and light, yes, we should be faithful, but expect that it's not really gonna really matter that much, because things expect things to get worse and worse. And when they get really bad, you know, kind of then it all comes to an end. That's on one side. On the other side is I think a much smaller group, at least in the United States, that says no, in fact, things are gonna get better and better and better, and then you know, this is the triumphalist kind of mindset that um, you know, when Christ's kingdom is fully consummated, then he returns, or something along I I don't fully know that position.

Speaker 41:30

Yeah.

Wheat And Weeds In Real Time

Scott Allen 41:31

But um But I I and let me ask you that I really would love your thoughts on this, because uh the way that I have made sense of this has been the uh I've I've really leaned into Jesus' parable of the wheat and the weeds. And and I've said, you know, this is a kind of a picture. You he he likens the field to the world that we live in. And you have two things happening in that field. You have two things growing side by side simultaneously. You have wheat and weeds. And to me, that's a picture that in other words, the the side that says things are getting worse and worse and worse, it's like they're focusing only on the weeds. Look at these weeds, they're growing, they're growing, they're growing, but they're ignoring the wheat. And the other side is focusing on the wheat. Look at this weed, it's growing and growing, but they don't see the weeds. And Jesus is painting a picture here of both of them growing side by side. The reason I like that so much is that it fits to me with the world that we live in. Um that, yeah, there is evil out there, it is growing. You know, you wrote about that in Christianity and wokeness. I mean, look at that, look at the headway that this woke cultural revolution made in the West. Unbelievable. Look at that. That's weeds growing in the garden. Yes. Um at the same time, you know, weed is growing. Things that, you know, people are coming to Christ, churches are getting planted, the kingdom is expanding around the world in that sense, and and not only are people coming to Christ, but cultures are being impacted, cultures are being shaped and influenced along the lines of biblical truth and biblical principles. And we can see that, we can see the goodness of that. And um all that to say, I feel like what God wants us to focus on is uh just uh well, first of all, uh progress is possible. I think sometimes people feel like, well, I'm supposed to be salt and light and work for the good, but but it doesn't it's kind of futile, right? It's you know it's not gonna really matter because it's all gonna get worse. And I'm like, no, there is pro there is possibility for, let's say, the slave trade to be uh you know to be uh abolished. Right? Yeah, we can have positive change. It's not right, it it may not be eternal or forever, but it can be there can be real positive change. You know, there's hope. There's some hope for, you know, your work isn't futile, I guess. The weed the wheat is growing. And at the same time, you know, God in when he comes back, he's gonna do the separation of these two things, right? He's gonna burn the wheat uh weeds and he's going to rest he's going to um preserve the wheat. But that what are your thoughts on that? Because I've always leaned into that. I know that's one parable and it's dangerous to build any big theology around one parable, but I love that picture as opposed to worse and worse or better and better. Any thoughts on that?

Speaker 1 44:15

I think that's a nice, nice place to go. I think even in political terms, uh, so this isn't more high-mindedly spiritual stuff, you think about what happened with the Trump election, the two Trump victories now, um, that have not been boring. And I don't know of anyone in my circles who would say everything President Trump stands for or has done is, you know, perfect. He's not messianic, anything like that. Nonetheless, in terms of the direction of American politics, in terms of things like the rise and spread of transgenderism and wokeness and these kind of attendant ideologies, all of that has received a massive brush cutting uh because of President Trump. I'm not taking a position on conflicts like Iran or something like that. There's I I don't I don't exactly know what effect tariffs are going to have. So I'm not meaning because I've an evangelical and I would agree with his administration on, for example, the policy towards transgenderism, I automatically have to agree with every last particular of his policy work elsewhere. That is not true for me, and I don't think it's true of anyone. You just cannot help, though, but notice that it was in, in a very kind of uh Judah and Babylon way, it was when America seemed lost and truly like four inches from the outer rim of the abyss to which we are sliding that we have experienced stratospheric political change, head spinning change. We don't know what's coming in two years, we don't know what's coming in six years, we don't know if Christ is coming back next year, we don't know anything in terms of the future. We literally know nothing in terms of the day-to-day outworking of God's plan. But God seems very pleased to confound expectations and prognostications in the political realm and the spiritual realm, at a much smaller level, with your own kid on a day-to-day basis. You're riding super high, they came back from summer camp and professed faith. A month later, there's some issues to sort out, and you're thinking, what on earth happened? You know, so God has ordered life so that little dust molecules like us are in the business of being stunned by what is happening in the broader world and even the smaller world of our day-to-day lives. And I don't have any clue where we are on the clock, but I know that what you said is true, Scott. Absolutely right. There is tremendous evil being done in the world that may well eclipse the political good that has been done of these administrations over the last few years. Um, there's tremendous evil in our world. All we can do is fight it in the power of God, and there's tremendous good in the world. In A Call to Cultivate, in chapter six, I spend some time talking about what's happening among young people, for example. How, despite, again, all the predictions about how bad young people were doing 10, 15 years ago, well, now young people are flocking to Charlie Kirk's funeral a year ago or so, streaming on Spotify worship music to higher levels than they ever have done, buying Bibles, print Bibles, more than they have in the last 20 years, and on the metrics go. And so I don't treat history or the future in a linear fashion. To put it slightly differently, but complementarily the way you did, I think it's a lot of ups and downs, zigs and zags. I don't know where we are, but but I I don't like when I hear people telling me it's all lost.

Speaker 5 48:01

Right.

Speaker 1 48:02

That's it. Just abandon the Constitution. I say, hold up. Uh-uh. No, stay at your posts. Stay at your posts. And and to people who say, This is it, we've got it. You know, Trump isn't the Messiah, but you know, this is the this is the forerunner, this is it, this is the golden dawn. I say, really? I don't know that to be true from any text. So I'm somewhere in the in the uneasy middle, but but again, the optimistic middle, because my hope is not staked in the futures market of America or any other country. My hope is staked on the futures market of Jesus Christ, and it will not fail. There will never be a bear market in that market.

Luke Allen 48:44

Good conclusion. Amen. I love that. Um, I mean, this is so good. And we could go around and around and around all day on this discussion. You think about this a lot, Christian engagement culture. We think about this a lot. We're always getting put into camps by people who are looking at us from the outside. Oh, Disciple Nations Alliance, clearly triumphalistic, you know? Or oh, you guys aren't doing enough. You guys need to be more on the attack, you know. So we we definitely understand these tensions, but um why is this such a hard conversation for us as Christians? We just for the last 2,000 years we've been arguing this one. You know, the again, the accommodate attack, abandon. Is that our is that our sinful fallen nature mostly coming out through that? Is that just the New Testament and different passages using different verbiage on this? Why is this such a difficult thing for us to land on?

Speaker 1 49:32

What a good, what a thoughtful question, Luke. Um I I think that's beyond the powers of my reasoning to answer well, but I will just quickly say even having a front row seat at the seminary of Jesus, the the apostles, the band of Christ's, you know, closest in disciples, did not keep you from major errors of cultural engagement. Peter picks up the sword when Jesus is arrested. Peter himself models a different form of cultural engagement, abdication, when he denies Christ. Um the church in Corinth, past that age a little bit, is clearly accommodating culture. So even just in a few pages of our New Testament, and we can go elsewhere in the New Testament and the Bible, you have Christians who are directly taught or saved by Jesus Himself, who are ratcheting between wrong positions, what I would say are wrong positions. Because of sin, as you said, and because of the fallenness of our world, because of the real oppositional power of the devil, we are always in danger of being maneuvered out of the position we should be in. I'm modeling this in our video right here. We're always in danger of being slightly elbowed out of a faithful biblical posture. And what we have to do as disciples then, knowing that even sitting at the feet of Jesus for three years didn't guarantee you getting things badly wrong in your cultural engagement, that means that we have to we have to, in the power of God's grace, work very hard to keep our eyes on the ball and stay focused on the Great Commission and not underplay the Great Commission, like Scott was talking about. I'm kind of adapting what he said, and not overplay the Great Commission. And let me just say a quick word there. Underplaying the Great Commission would be not really believing that there's wheat growing. Yes? And so again, you just you just find a commune in the Bible belt somewhere and stop making disciples in hard places. We have freedom to move. Families, if they are struggling, can move to a red state if they're in a blue state. That is not wrong or sinful, but we need Christians in hard places, and the existence of hard places does not mean you're in the wrong place. It means it's hard to make gospel advancement in a fallen world. But you can also overplay the Great Commission and you can make it about more than it is. The same apostles and disciples who get the Great Commission are most of them going to be slaughtered in the name of Christ. And those same authors in writing their biblical letters or books are going to tell future generations of Christians to endure suffering. They're going to say, we're not in the lasting city. We're looking forward to a city that has no foundations built by man by implication, but foundations built by God Himself. Here we have no lasting city. Hebrews 13, 14. So, all that to say, you don't want to underplay the Great Commission as if all I've got is my woe-begone little local church and nothing else. No, God is working powerfully in our world. But don't overplay the Great Commission. Don't, by the way, hijack it and now make the Great Commission about Christianizing all of America and all of the West as if you can even do that. I don't think you can. What you can do is make disciples build churches, be faithful where you are. And yes, to Scott's challenge earlier in the episode, be salt and light with no clips on your wings. Go hard. That's what I would say.

Why Christians Misread Cultural Engagement

Scott Allen 53:38

If I could just push in back to the wokeness thing, when I was writing my book, one of the things that struck me was that I was of the mindset uh wrongly that uh communism uh had kind of died at the uh at the fall of the Berlin Wall, you know, that it was pretty much put into the dustbin of history, and that, yeah, while there may be a few stragglers and uh holdouts, you know, is the movement itself was dead. Um what I had to come to grips with as I was writing that book was that I was really wrong. Like it didn't, you know, it didn't go away. It um and I think w when I pushed into why that was the case, what I started to see was that um uh the people that believe in that deadly and harmful and evil ideology, um they really believe it and they put their hand to the plow. And I give them credit for this. They d in a sense discipled the nation in the sense that they pushed that ideology into the institutions of society, public school curriculum, uh, you know, board, you know, corporate boards and policies like DEI or you name it, they had incredible all the way through our government and you know, p big sports, and you could go on and on. They had incredible success. Um and it wasn't it wasn't uh by accident, and it it was it was because they they wanted to to do that. They wanted to to uh shape a culture, cultivate a culture in the image of the God that they worship, right? This demonic God that they worship. And they were successful. And I I felt looking back at the church again and myself included in that a sense of why why is it that we don't have that same zeal or that same vision? I think part of it is that you were saying don't put your hope, and I agree with this 100%, don't put your hope in the nation. I I feel like the other side that is their hope. They don't have a God to hope in. So they you know, the ultimate hope is found in their vision of politics being realized in the here and now, right? That's all that's all they've got, right? So they're gonna work really hard for that. Um but um I guess it speak to that a little bit, you know, because I I feel a tension on that. Like we we could learn something from their zeal, their passion, their fortitude, their stick to it, even in the face of the fact that they, you know, the lots of ups and downs for that movement, but boy, they stuck with it. And yet I feel like if Christians have that mindset, yeah, it's it's well, we're putting hope in politics, we're putting hope in the nation, or whatever, there's a lot of reasons we can kind of talk ourselves out of having the same kind of zeal that they had to shape the culture according again to their false God, as we can to uh and you know, hopefully around the worship of the living God.

Luke Allen 56:40

Uh-huh. And what you're leaning on there, Dad, is is kind of a uh Colossians 1.20 kind of view of Christian engagement, like we are here to reconcile all things to himself as Christ modeled for us. Is that is that what you're leaning into there, Dad?

Scott Allen 56:55

So it's right. I feel like yeah, redemption goes beyond the individual, even though it starts with the individual. Um, it cannot start anywhere other than individual people being saved. But that's got to have ripples that go out and begin to shape cultures. You know, we were talking about this earlier, cultivating cultures in a family, and then even beyond that, you know, culture uh in a community, in a nation, uh even a civilization. And I think that's I think earlier generations of Christians understood that, kind of did that. Um, and we we enjoy the fruit of that, frankly. Um we struggle more with that today. Anyways, thoughts on that?

Learning From Zeal Without Idolatry

Speaker 1 57:33

Yeah, a lot of different places to go. I I think there is there are two dangers similar to how we've been already speaking, but there is the danger of underplaying what God can do. And so you t you say to a young Wilberforce, you know, uh don't don't be in politics, right? Because what good are you gonna do in politics? It's all thieves and liars.

Scott Allen 58:00

It's all corrupt, yeah.

Speaker 1 58:01

It's all corrupt. And the three of us would say, Go please go into politics. Stay in politics, you're already in it, stay in it, uh, knowing knowing the end of the story. The other problem, though, is that we I think we put our hope in Christianization. And I I think God, in his mysterious providence that we were talking about earlier, the zigs and the zags, the ups and the downs, God has a way of bending things back to the mean that he has established for us, the the principle he has written into the cosmos. And I think what that means is you look at European and American attempts to create, for example, a Christian nation, and you look at how frustrated they are in actual time and space. You look at what my New England forebears coming from Maine, you look at, you look at what happened to their project, and I think you see that God has not promised us that we will see um a golden eschatological dawn in this life, shy of, short of. This is my eschatology speaking, and you may very well disagree with me, but this is what we're doing. We're conversing uh about serious things. This is what we have to do. I I don't think we're gonna see that golden era until Christ um burns the earth with fire, as Peter says in 2 Peter, remakes all things, and establishes the new heavens and the new earth.

Scott Allen 59:30

So that is my eschatology on.

Speaker 1 59:34

Yeah. So I think I think we are not, we that's why we have to calibrate things rightly. Because the New England Puritans thought the calibration was to establish a Christian commonwealth, and that is a that is a commendable desire. Don't we all want um communities and countries that love God? The problem is it is hard enough to have a church of 150 members keep their eye on the ball, let alone a state, let alone a region, let alone a country. It is incredibly hard and it does not usually happen. God has allowed us to have the rudiments of Christian influence in America and the West, as you talked about some time ago, Scott. So the heritage of religious liberty, the heritage of uh judicial process, the heritage of political representation, basic freedom and et cetera.

Scott Allen 1:00:39

Even toleration for other religions, you know, for the world.

Speaker 1 1:00:41

Toleration, the free market, which is a massive engine of freedom in the world. And often often where there's a free market, there ends up being freedom in other areas, at least to a degree. All of that is wonderful. So we want a lot of Christian influence, but I think we've got to just set the calibration right, or else we'll end up disappointed like my New England forebears were, as their Christian civilization crumbled in the ashes of the halfway covenant, now leading to 1% of New England professing to be evangelical.

Scott Allen 1:01:13

Yeah, it's that's that's a fascinating little uh piece of history. I would love to learn more about, you know, the uh Owen, you coming from Maine and Massachusetts, where Puritanism had its, you know, its real strong roots early in in America, and yet now you look at, yeah, like you say, you look at the situation today. What happened? What what was going on? Let me ask you, by the way, let me just say the name of the book here again. The book is called to cultivate overcoming anxiety by thriving where God plants you. And uh, let me just say here how much I love that title too, Owen, because I've often thought, yeah, I want to have a big vision for for impact on the level of a nation. Um you know, I I think that's biblical. You know, God uses the word nation over and over again from Genesis through Matthew 28, 18 through 20, the Great Commission, all the way through to Revelation, nations, we should be the the redemption that God is working goes beyond the individual. I think nations factor into that. Uh but nations are big places, and and I've often said to people, you know, uh st start with your own little nation, right? You know, that's where you begin this. Uh your own life, first of all, and then your family, right? Your marriage, your family, the most basic kind of community. Uh that's where you begin. And um, you know, the vocation that God's called you into, that's where you begin, the neighborhood. And and that's what I see you saying in this book, and I love

Anxiety And The Illusion Of Control

Scott Allen 1:02:35

that. I just start there, right? Um, you know, if you can't make progress in cultivating a godly culture there, uh, what good are you gonna have beyond that, kind of at the broader level, right?

Speaker 1 1:02:46

Yeah, and to pick up on that quickly, that is exactly what I'm after. I I think I think we will feel spiraling anxiety when we think that we can control things. And I see this in my own life. I see how hard it is to arrive at a dependable bedtime for the family so that the kids get enough sleep, and I get enough sleep, and my wife does, and we're up in the morning with some purpose, and it's just you got youth sports, you got church events, you got lots of stuff, you got games late at night, you got all sorts of things cascading out before you as a young family, and what I can feel in those moments, I think is symptomatic of what many evangelicals have felt more broadly in the political realm in the last 20 to 50 years, and that is I'm losing control. Now, of course, as a as the head of a home, there are certain things I need to cultivate and learn and do in a loving, gentle way to have order in the house. But fundamentally, I have had to learn this myself. I don't control my home. I don't control my home. And I think the church has been in the process of learning. We don't control America. We're not in control. It's a little bit like Bain with his hand on the back of the dude's neck and Dark Knight Rises saying, Do you feel in control? Um, we're not the ones in control. I but but it's not that we have lost control. We had the illusion of control. We've never been in control. And if we react to social changes, the the growth of the weeds in our context uh the wrong way, what we will try to do is control it again, or think we're controlling it again, I mean, and we won't succeed. I think let's let's um let's bracket discussion of nations in the New Testament or something like that. I'm not so much talking about what I hear from you two uh in this podcast, but what I do hear from other voices out there who are less thoughtful and principled is we've got, if we would just take this seriously, we would get control again. And I don't think we ever had control, and I don't think we're ever going to get control. I think what God would have us do is not subject ourselves to fear and anxiety about the nation in an ultimate sense, but instead lean into the sovereignty of God, the total control of God over all things, because God does indeed have control and we don't, and then from that posture of deep faith and deep trust, do what we can do, which is, I think, what you are largely responding to. You're responding to a lot of Christians who don't do a whole lot of much of anything in culture. And some of our peers pat themselves on the back for it because they haven't got their boots muddied by anything political whatsoever, and they think that gets them the gold star. I say. Let's not fall prey to the easiest product there is to sell in public life. Fear and anxiety. It's everywhere. And Christian nationalism is a wash in it. If we would just reassert control, we would get it all back. I say, let's let go of that. Let's instead return God in our mind, this is, to where he is, the throne, ruling, reigning, doing all things well, not having his plan get hijacked into plan B, plan C, plan D, or plan E, but doing exactly what he has predetermined from before the foundation of the earth to do. And then to the point about stasis and apathy, then in the overflow of confidence in our sovereign God, knowing that our project is not to Christianize America, but instead to be faithful disciples where we are, being salt and light all the way turned up on the dial, max salt, max light, let's do it. And let's not say what God is going to do on the other end. Let's be faithful and see what God in His perfect wisdom is pleased to accomplish. That's what I'm trying to say overall. Let me with this model of cultivation.

Public Schools And The Neutrality Debate

Scott Allen 1:07:21

Let me put it into let me right now, actually, this week, in fact, in the news, you know, where there's a kind of a case study, and I'd like your thoughts on it. That um it has to do with public education uh in the state of Texas. You're probably familiar with this story now, but uh you know the story of public education in the United States, writ large, you know, that that uh 50 years ago plus um there was uh a lot more prominent role for um the Bible prayer in public schools, and then uh that got stripped out and you know schools supposedly became neutral. I I'm a believer that there is no such thing as neutrality, um, you know, in the sense that somebody is gonna be shaping the curriculum, somebody's gonna be shaping the values. Um, you know, uh the idea that we're not gonna mention God in public school or public, you know, public education uh for eight hours every day, you know, that's not neutral. That's essentially deism, right? That's just teaching the kids that God doesn't is is has nothing to say or isn't involved in any way in math, science. You know, he's disconnected from all of that, you know. So yeah, that's so that's that's not neutral. That's that's teaching a worldview, right?

Speaker 1 1:08:36

Sure.

Scott Allen 1:08:36

So now we've got, you know, uh the United States is so fractured uh ideologically, and you've had the woke cultural Marxists really asserting a lot of influence in public schools, rainbow flags, black lives matter flags, et cetera, et cetera, transgender is um that's all awash in public school curriculum. Um and now you've got, of course, Islam coming in too in a lot of places, Dearborn, Michigan, and they're gonna push their um, you know, Sharia-based kind of curriculum in public schools. So the state of Texas here just this week said, you know, we're gonna fight, if you will, um to you know, we're we're not going to abandon somebody's gonna prevail, some worldview is gonna prevail here. We we we it's not that we're gonna try to force people to into conversions. We just want the Bible to be having a place in the um daily curriculum, the reading of of public schools in the state of Texas. And and they worked hard. They had to they had to go in there and work to, you know, in those uh uh school board meetings and whatnot, you know, and and so there was some some some level of success. What what do you make, given all that you've just said and your basic position, yeah, what do you make of that? Is that do you do you applaud that? Do you feel like it's futile? What what do you what do you in terms of the Christians that were working on that? Yeah.

Luke Allen 1:09:56

Yeah, and just uh Dad, I noticed you used the word fight there instead of cultivate. Was there a reason you chose that word?

Scott Allen 1:10:02

Well, it was I mean, in some ways it was a confrontation. I mean, I know that in a lot of those school board meetings you had groups like CARE, that Islamic uh organization, they were in there, there was it got heated, right? I mean, it was you know so it didn't it, you know, it didn't seem like the word cultivate fit quite right, even though maybe maybe it did, and I I don't know what those meetings were like. I hope the Christians were gracious, humble, caring. You know, I mean ultimately that's how we we don't force, we don't coerce, right? We don't censor those, we don't you we don't use any of those tactics. But but at the same time, um, they were active, let's just say, in saying, no, we want the Bible to have a place in public schools. Um go ahead, Owen, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:10:42

Yeah, and I anyone who has ever gardened, and I'm no master gardener, and in this book, though I talk about gardens a good bit, I don't present myself as one. If you've ever cultivated against a weed, you know you've got to fight weeds, right? I mean, so I was just back in Maine a few weeks ago with my family visiting my parents, and we had a little plot of garden we were working on for my mom, and you know, I was I was fighting with the best of them against those weeds and feeling very masculine in the in the duty, I will say. So I think there's a way to cultivate that is that is is forceful in a in a Christian way. I the Bible does not say much, it doesn't say, it doesn't tell us how to handle public education. So I want to be careful in what I say. I will say this. I want, if if I am czar of America, which there's no danger of me being, I want a I want a body politic that is not, does not have uh a denomination enforced um on all citizens. I don't want public religion, but I do want an extremely religion-friendly society. And I do acknowledge, this is a good point that you're pushing me on, and my type gets pushed on, understandably, I do acknowledge that there are gray areas where we're having to tap jump balls one way or another, right? Where it's like, well, what's going to be taught in public school? I don't have a Bible verse to go to and say, okay, the Bible says K to four should be biblical education, and after that you stop, or something like that. I don't have that. What I want, though, if I'm czar of America to go back to that, is I want a very pro-religion free market. So that doesn't have to be one size fits all. I think there's some room for us to work out what that looks like. Having said that, I don't feel any pressure as a Christian to have a certain level of Christianity enforced in a society. Let me give a test case to try to enflesh what I'm saying. The English Puritans briefly gain control of the wheel in England, as you two know, in the mid-17th century. They cut off the head of the sovereign of the British monarch, and they, and Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England and the UK. The English Puritans use their time and power to do things like ban Christmas, ban Easter, ban makeup on women, end a lot of public celebrations, and so on and so forth. A serious Christian could say, ah, look at the golden era of English Puritanism when for a brief time Christianity reigned in public. I don't mock that, by the way. In fact, people are saying those kinds of things today. I look at that era, and I'm not trying to be mealy-mouthed to you brothers, I mean this genuinely. I feel real ambivalence about that project, about the Cromwellian project. I don't mean that Cromwell was wrong to be a Christian in office per se. I do mean I'm not sure it is a good thing to ban women wearing makeup and such things. I I don't know that that is the mission of the church. In fact, that's not the mission of the church in direct terms, in explicit terms, uh in New Testamental writ. So, what I am what I want, all this to say, what I want is not so much the Ten Commandments posted on a mauve-painted wall in a second grade classroom. America has reduced the discussion over cultural engagement or public theology largely to whether the Ten Commandments, I'm switching it from what you said, Scott, but I think we can go with it briefly. Whether the Ten Commandments should be posted in courtrooms or schools or not. Is it a harbinger of doom if they're taken out? Is it triumph and the spread of Christianity if they're put in? There may be some goods that come from the second grader looking over to their right and seeing the Ten Commandments on that wall. Let me acknowledge that. That may limit sin to some degree. What it also does, though, is it makes, it puts religion in a place I don't think it is called to be per se, in an explicit form, I mean. And it um it includes the idea that now we have Christianized the culture when the law is not fundamentally what we are about as believers. The gospel is what makes disciples. The law has a restraining effect on sin, but what I am about as a new covenant Christian is not so much old covenant law and its imposition all around me. What I am about as a new covenant Christian is this is the spread of the gospel. That's what I'm most concerned with. So, last sentence. What I really want in America is for the gospel to be unleashed. I don't entirely know what to do with public school. I agree with you, Scott, that someone is going to write curriculum for our for kids. And that's a but you've put your finger on a real gray area. I just am not in the business of putting much hope at all in public education. I don't I don't think publication is where things get settled. I would much rather put my energy in making sure that there is a religious free market such that athletes in action or FCA can have an after-school club and the true gospel can be preached. That's more where I am in terms of the energy I invest in.

Scott Allen 1:16:52

Well, Owen, thanks for that. And I just it it is a blessing to be able to have this kind of conversation with you. I I may disagree with you on that. I think that uh, you know, if if it's not the Ten Commandments, let's say on the wall, and you know, I that's not what the Texans were, I think, um voting on. They wanted they wanted they wanted to have the Bible as part of the curriculum at some level, um, as opposed to being entirely banned. Um but but back to the Ten Commandments, let's say the Ten Commandments aren't on the wall. Instead, you've got the Black Lives Matter flag and the rainbow flag, which you do in a lot of classrooms here in Oregon. Uh or you know, short of that, you've got some kind of Sharia law. You know, you may have that now in places like New York or Dearborn, Michigan. So there's gonna be something on the wall, right? It's just anyways, I I think uh w this is this is the uh the the the myth of neutrality, and this is where I I feel like um yeah, if this is good and this is true, uh even if my kids we homeschooled our kids, but man, I'm I'm concerned about all those other kids. I don't want them being indoctrinated into that woke ideology or that woke religion, much less Sharia Islam, you know, when they go to public schools. And and and it doesn't mean that I'm putting my hope in you know in public schools for eternity or anything like that, but I I just can't, I don't feel comfortable just standing by and allowing that to happen. Uh we could when we could do something about it. I I don't mean to put words in your mouth there, Owen, but yeah.

Speaker 1 1:18:29

Sorry, I stepped on you there. Sorry. I I hear what you're saying.

Scott Allen 1:18:33

Right.

Speaker 1 1:18:34

I and I hear the there's no neutrality uh argument a lot, and I think I think there is definitely that there's not some perfect null set neutrality, right? But I it's remarkable to me how comfortable Jesus is with the reign of Caesar and Peter is with the reign of it appears to be narrow. They they know there's no neutrality, probably better than I do, certainly Jesus does, and yet they are comfortable with the church being settled amidst not just a what we would call a secular state, but really a hostile state. And neither Jesus nor Peter calls for the overthrow or the overtaking. I'm not saying you're calling for military overthrow, but even the sort of political, political overthrow. So I I don't think I fully vibe with the no neutrality argument. I don't think there's perfect neutrality to be found. But I do think the church is called to exist in the midst of, call it whatever you want, unbelievable, let's just call it unbelief. That that's to your, that I think you actually supported that point when you talked about the wheat and the weeds. I think you're making you're making my case for me better than I've made it. Because uh it is it is true that there is going to be profound unbelief in the world. And putting Ten Commandments on a wall doesn't change that. Uh the no neutrality thing, furthermore, makes me think about the post office. Well, what am I supposed to do about the post office? Am I supposed to go to the post office and you know fly a flag of Christianity over the post office? Christians, I think, would do better. This is my this is where I'll bring it to what I'm actually saying here. Christians would do better to to not be anxious about our culture and instead focus our with regard to like the Ten Commandment question I'm saying. I'm not saying you're anxious. A lot of Christians are anxious about we've got to get the Ten Commandments back in courtrooms and schools. And I would say, I don't think we need to put our energy there. I think we we we don't want pride flags in classrooms, but I don't think we should be scared of public education being public education. I think math should be math. Uh, I think it should be taught as if it's objective math. I think history should be taught with objective basis, science, and so on. And don't make schools indoctrination centers. I do I don't I think there's a there's a choice here that is not just Christianize them or leave them to paganism. I think there's a middle position where we say it's public education, it's akin to Jesus saying pay your taxes to Caesar. There are there's weeds in the world. We live, we honestly live in a field of weeds, basically, in the world. And what we do is not try to enter Caesar's palace and make it less pagan. I think what we do is we put our emphasis on the gospel-free market and and having FCA be in the in the public school and these sorts of things. Last comment: Britain has Britain had compulsory Bible education for decades. Um generations were trained in a kind of public Anglicanism. There's a lot of give and take there, but uh to simplify history, that has not stopped Britain from sliding much the same way America has slid. You had official state support of religion in Britain, for example. It has not stopped the massive spread of paganism and frankly, the um the injection of Islam all over the place into Britain. So I don't think, all this to say, I don't think getting the old covenant law in the classroom is is is actually gonna change things much. I don't. I think what actually changes things is to unleash the gospel, and I think the gospel is best unleashed, not in a state church, but in a religious free market. That's my summary.

Education As Discipleship And Freedom’s Roots

Luke Allen 1:22:45

This is fun. I this is such a good discussion.

Scott Allen 1:22:48

Yeah, no, that's super clarifying. Yeah, yeah, that's helpful, though, and I agree. And did yeah, go ahead, Luke. Did you have a question? I know we need to be wrapping up.

Luke Allen 1:22:55

I just had a couple thoughts there, too. I I we really need to wrap up. I'm sorry. It's fine.

Speaker 1 1:22:59

I'm good, I'm okay.

Luke Allen 1:23:00

Okay.

Speaker 1 1:23:01

I'm probably uh breaking your your network uh megabytes here. Sorry. My long answers.

Luke Allen 1:23:08

Uh no, this is great. I uh I was just at a conference not too long ago with a bunch of politicians uh who are also Christian. It was pro-life conference, and they had us split up in the conference into three categories media, faith, and uh policymakers. And what I heard over and over again, we're trying to seek to you know build the culture of life here. Over and over again from everyone working in policy, and these are these are state representatives like all the way up the ladder. Um they kept saying we need the church to rise up and engage in the culture. We need the church to be active now if we're ever going to roll back the evils of abortion in America. And what they meant by that, and I I pressed into it, I was like, what do you mean by that? Do you mean voting? Do you mean we need to uh get more people in office? What are you talking about? And they said, no, we just we're just looking for simple faithfulness here. We want Christians to offer a better way for our country. We want Christians to start shedding light again on the beauty of God's design for uh family, sexuality, marriage, children. Uh that that's that's a simple way we can win, essentially. And I thought that was a beautiful answer, especially coming from, you know, people in politics, uh, who often are the people we think put the most hope in politics. Uh but they had it, they had it lined up. I think that that was a great answer. Um, I like what you were saying a second ago, Owen, about um how we don't force. Christians are not in the business of forcing. I absolutely agree on that. But we are in the business of offering a better way uh of shedding light on God's good design for all of us as humans. And uh speaking of education, I I don't think it's a gray space. I think it's uh I mean, God's pretty clear that he's Lord of all all things. God cares about all things. Genesis, he's very clear about that. That it is good, it is good, it is good, everything he makes. And education is really just disciples making factories, whatever form of education you are offering is you're making disciples of some sort or another. And as such, I just I I would just probably apply uh Matthew twenty-eight into that again. Go make disciples of all nations, where, that includes the schools, uh baptizing the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded. And I think as Christians we should offer that in education as clearly as we can, every you know, all that I have commanded. And then as a final point, and this is would be such a fun podcast for another day, is this question of Christians desire and want free nations. We want to offer that. We want that we we want to see those. I mean, it's a great place for Christians to live in free nations, uh, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. But those can only grow out of distinctly Judeo-Christian soil, as far as we've seen throughout history. Free nations. So I my question is if we can't if we're not working to cultivate free nations as Christians rooted in the Bible, then we're gonna lose them. And I think that's why these discussions are starting to pop up like they are in Texas, definitely in Europe right now, is the rise of Islam over there. They're realizing that there's only there's only one worldview that actually supports a freedom of religion, and all the other ones are in the business of forcing. So that's a tough one.

Speaker 1 1:26:22

But yeah. You raised a number of things there. I'm bad at rambling. No, no, no, you weren't rambling. I I will confess that I'm bad at being the guy who like lets the conversation trail off because interesting things keep getting raised. And this space that we're talking about, wherever each of the three of us land, is where I spend a lot of time here. So if you'd permit me, just one quick response and feel free to respond to me. I hear a lot along the lines of there is no neutrality, I hear a lot of language like Christ has given authority, Christ is Lord of the cosmos, so take that seriously. Let's start taking that seriously. And I agree that he is, without exception or nuance, Lord of the entire cosmos. He is enthroned on high at this very second, listening to our conversation, sitting at the right hand of God the Father, in complete and utter triumph. The ascension means he was not defeated and has to go sit in a timeout chair for 3,000 years. It means he has triumphed, right? And he is now reigning and ruling in victory, and his great commission is invincible because his spirit powers it forward. All of that is true, but does the authority of Christ and no neutrality, so push into spaces where there is the claim of neutrality or the claim of darkness? Does that mean I am supposed to go to the local cracker barrel and claim the authority of Jesus over it? Does it mean I am supposed to go to what I mentioned earlier, the local post office? Because let's take this seriously. Jesus is Lord of the post office, and that's not a space Christians have much entered. So I'm supposed to go in there and declare the authority of Jesus in the post office. Does this mean that I am supposed to go to the local Little League Baseball team and declare the authority of Jesus over it and make it now a Christian Little League team or a Christian post office or a Christian cracker barrel? I think those kind of messages play really well on X. And they get young men in particular really fired up. Like there's a whole bunch of simps over here who have done not much, honestly, in the public square, and have maybe even hurt us in elections because they've called Christians to sit on their hands. And so young men are like, I'm going with this lordship stuff. This is awesome. I understand why they would react to political fecklessness because I think it's ultimately probably cowardice at some level, and I would not want to join in that. However, here is my claim. I won't use the term limited, but is directed to primarily the life of the local church, primarily the Christian home, and primarily Christian evangelism, and let's call it public witness. Public witness could be an expanding category the more we thought about it. All that to say, all this to say, I take the authority of Jesus and the Lordship of Jesus very seriously, but I actually think the wheat and the weeds matters. And I'm appropriating it from Scott. I stole it from Scott. He can charge me for it later.

Scott Allen 1:29:38

No, it's in the Bible, Owen.

Speaker 1 1:29:40

But I mean your rendering of it. But I I I think what that means is there are places we're supposed to actively cultivate wheat and places where it's it's not. That's not where the authority of Jesus has been directed for me to invest. I'm not supposed to go to the local cracker barrel, stand on the middle of a table, and claim it for Jesus.

Luke Allen 1:30:04

Yeah, and there's there's people that do that. It's it's crazy. It's a funny thing. And I could I I I claim Christ's authority over this bush, you know, whatever it is. That's silly. I mean that uh but I do I I guess back to my point. Uh if if God is Lord of all things and he cares about all things, and I'm glad that even in the exile, someone like Nehemiah recognized that there was a Christian way he wasn't a Christian, but there was a way to be um faithful as a cupbearer and the fact that he recognized that he could apply biblical principles, that he could cultivate uh a God honoring uh in his work as a cupbearer, sure, uh that that was a good thing, and because of that he was raised into the seat of of power uh there in the kingdom, and that ended up being uh very helpful in God's plan of uh helping the nation of Israel. So I so I'm just like I I I just don't see the separation here, and I I I see what you're saying with the the silly arguments of like this is a Christian cracker barrel, but I'm like, if I'm a owner of a cracker barrel and I'm a Christian, there's definitely a way to do this as a Christian. I don't need to put a cross on the sign, but I do need to respect my employees, work with excellence. There's there's plenty of you know ways to do that as a Christian, so I would say like that absolutely matters. I would say we're not the ones that measure what matters to God. And I would say that your role as a manager of Cracker Barrel could be just as important in God's plan for the world as Billy Graham. Who knows?

Scott Allen 1:31:34

And I think yeah, Owen, your example of the post office, I think i vis-a-vis the public schools, I just think it's important to just say that the the mission is very different. One is delivering mail, not to say that that's unimportant, the other is shaping the minds of children. And those are two very different things. Um maybe you can have some level of neutrality when it comes to the post office, although I agree with Luke, even there, if you're a Christian, there's a way of putting of not living in a neutral way, but living in a Christian way as a postman. But but but when you're talking about the shaping of the minds of children, um there that that that's where I find it very hard to say. There can be kind of a neutrality to it. I I don't think you're going to be able to to to see that that kind of neutrality. I think the idea that that public education uh public education can be neutral is always uh a fool's errand. Um it's it's it's it's you know, there's somebody. Darryl, our our um, you know, mentor here at Disciple Nations Alliance says that culture, uh the root of it is cult, and at the root of that is the worship of a god. You know, there's always a god at the center of it. You know, the question is just which god, right? Yeah, so there's gonna be a god at the center of every form of education. The only question is which one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:32:56

I guess, I guess I I fully agree about the Nehemiah example. That's actually exactly what I think we're called to be. I think we're called to be Nehemiah in every field, so to speak, we can be. I guess I just mean I would actually be in the business of saying, absolutely, there's no neutrality in the cosmos. But if there is a trade school for plumbers, the focus of the trade school should probably be on plumbing or welding, if it's a welding school. I I am all for, not thinking there's neutrality in the cosmos, but I am all for a public school, um, generally just teaching kids math, science, and other subjects, and not trying to be religious in any way, not because I think there actually is spiritual neutrality, but because I am bold to think that what you said, Scott, is true. The post office should deliver mail, um, the welding school should train welders. And and what I would say is where the church comes in, especially, is it comes in on around and alongside all of those things. And so I want the Christian welder to be a welding witness with his his fellow workmen. I want the Christian to be a light in the public school. I don't want ideology taught in the public school, just like I don't want ideology taught uh in the welding school or dentistry. I uh so I would just push against this idea that either it is wicked pagan dentist school or it is theonomic, you know, or reformed dentist school. I would say I think there can actually be dentist schools that are decent. You're not gonna get born again because of the curriculum, but hopefully there are Christians all through that space who are being a witness. I I guess that's just more where I land. Um, acknowledging, even as I say this, that these are some gray areas. I don't think there, I don't think a dental school in St. Matthew's, Kentucky that isn't expressly under the authority of the Lordship of Christ is something that I need to go and change as a Christian. I see a dentist school and I think, I hope there's Christian witnesses there, and I will pray for that. And if I meet somebody who is a Christian there, I'm like, yay, start a start a club for the Christian faith. Because I want the genuine article to go forward, not kind of a formal top-down commitment. That's what I'm after.

Final Encouragement And Book Wrap

Scott Allen 1:35:32

The book is called Call to Cultivate Overcoming Anxiety by Thriving Where God Plants You. Oh, and this has been just a really stimulating arg uh discussion, not argument, it's been a good discussion. I think uh iron sharpening iron. And uh I'd like to continue it with you, if you don't mind. Um I just think it's important. Um I think one of the things that you said that really struck me in our conversation was that uh you you were talking about Peter and even uh to Luke's question about how come we have a hard time with this, this whole area of how do we engage in culture, even the followers of Jesus had a hard time with this. So let's give each other some grace as we try to figure this out and uh try to understand how to be faithful, how to be faithful in a way that really honors God and hopefully is a blessing to our nation and loves our neighbors at the same time. I think we can all agree on that. So uh, and beginning where we are at, uh, thriving where God plants you, as you say in your book. I want to encourage everyone to go out and buy a copy of Owen's book. Everything Owen writes is worth reading in deep consideration. Thank you for your work, Owen. It's uh it's it's a blessing.

Speaker 1 1:36:40

Thank you, and thank you guys very much for the stimulating conversation. You made me think in a lot of different places. I I I love the Wheat and Weeds application. We typically think of that um just in terms of salvation and will God save my kids and that sort of thing, or mixed churches, but I haven't really applied that to public square thinking. And I I'm gonna muse on that because that's really rich. So thank you guys for having me and and such rich conversation.

Scott Allen 1:37:08

Thanks, Swan. God bless you.