Well, welcome again to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. My name is Scott Allen, I'm President of the Disciple Nations Alliance, and I'm joined today on our podcast by Luke Allen, by John Bottimore, Dwight Vogt, and Shawn Carson. Hi guys, good to have you together with me today here. We're kind of doing this on Zoom today, so it's nice to see your faces too. We're in different parts of the country, as we are recording here, a couple of weeks before Christmas. And today, guys, we're going to pick up the discussion of the the series that we've been doing on what does it mean to disciple nations? And we've looked at that from a couple of different vantage points, just from the vantage point of what are nations? How should we think about nations biblically, are nations important, and do we have a role in shaping nations, communities, nations? We answered some questions related to that. We looked most recently at the process for discipling nations, it's this inside out process of change that begins inside of people, in our hearts and minds, begins with regeneration, the power of the Holy Spirit to bring change to people, new life, new birth. And God's intention is for that change, that dramatic death-to-life change, to not just influenced us personally, although it certainly does. But to influence society, as well as culture and nations, it's to ripple outward, starting with the most basic kind of social unit, the family, and marriage, and some of those most basic relationships. And then it's spread beyond that into all the different spheres of society. So that was kind of our last discussion, we're going to shift gears now. And we're going to begin a series of podcasts on the importance of biblical principles for discipling nations, in other words, key foundational, biblical ideas, if I can kind of use an agricultural analogy, they're like seeds. And when they take root in a culture and they bear fruit, they bring incredible change. And when we think about powerful biblical principles, our minds can kind of run in all sorts of directions with that. At the DNA recently, we have kind of been doing an exercise to bring some order to this by saying if you had to choose just 10, 10 key biblical ideas or foundational biblical principles that when they take root in a culture bring enormous change, what would they be, and we've developed a list, it's obviously not, chiseled in stone, or this isn't God's list. This is just our own thinking on this. And we'll be sharing those principles with you in due time. But we're going to look at the first of those principles today. And in some ways, arguably all of these principles are hugely important. This one is arguably the most important and it has to do with the nature of what does it mean to be human? So let me just articulate the principles we have articulated it. It goes like this: Human life, all human life is created by God, and is therefore sacred. All people have God-given dignity, purpose, and worth or value. So this is an idea that comes from the Scriptures, it defines what it means to be a human being. And as I say, when that idea takes a root in a culture, it brings about change. And we can see that in human history, wherever the gospel has gone, and that idea has taken root in a culture. You see things change, for example, you saw the eradication of slavery in country after country that were shaped and influenced by this biblical idea of human nature. Why? Because God made people with an inherent dignity and with a God given right to liberty. And so when we think about these biblical principles, it's easy for us to think, Oh, these are what Christians believe,this is what the church believes. It's not what society believes. But I want us to think differently about it, I want us to think, well, first of all, it's not just what we believe, these are true, not just for us, as Christians, these are true for everybody. Because God created everybody, He created everything. This is His world. So there's not multiple worldviews that are equally valid out there. There's one truth. And therefore, when we think about our nations, our cultures, there's always going to be some set of policies, some set of laws, some set of educational curricula, right? That that society is going to uphold or embrace, right? And obviously, that changes over time. But those principles, those laws, those curricula, etc. They're always rooted in some principle. And that principle is also rooted in some belief system, this is something we teach at the DNA, there's always going to be a worldview, a belief system, a paradigm, that's upstream from all of these things that are shaping the culture. And my point here is, what that is, what that principle is, or that belief system matters. And if it's not the true one, if it's not the biblical idea, it's going to, by necessity, be a non-biblical one that's not true. And it's going to shape policy, law, curriculum, etc, it's going to be one or the other. Right? So as Christians then, we don't really have, at least this is the way I see it guys, I'd love your thoughts on just this process. But we don't really have the luxury of just saying, Oh, we don't really need to be involved in championing biblical principles in society or in the culture, we should just focus on preaching the gospel, and seeing people saved, getting them into churches, doesn't really matter what the culture does. To me that just isn't an option, because you're going to have either this principle or some other principle. We're going to look at the other principles today as well. And those other principles, trust me, they're going to lead to the destruction of human life, they're going to lead to the desecration and the destruction of human life. Right guys? God didn't put us here to contribute, even indirectly, in the destruction and the desecration of human life. Right?