Hi friends. Welcome to a very special episode of Ideas Have consequences. As Christians, our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. But our mission also includes transforming the nation's to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of her mission. And today, Christians have 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.
Welcome again, everybody to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences, the Disciple Nations Alliance podcast, so happy that you joined us today. And here today with my coworkers, Dwight Vogt, Shawn Carson, and Luke Allen. And really excited about the topic we're going to be speaking about today. It's one that's very central to our ministry. We're going to talk about how we can bring biblical truth into every area of society every part of our lives. What are ways or practical ways that we can do that? And we're going to introduce the concept of principle, biblical principle, and how thinking in terms of biblical principles is a really powerful way of bringing biblical truth into every area of society. Now, the reason we have to talk about this is, I know that a lot of Christians, you know, and for a large part of my own Christian walk, we're not used to thinking in terms of biblical truths or biblical principles that apply to every area of our lives. We have this kind of divided mind, this dualistic mind, if you will. That, you know, you could think of it in terms of higher and lower. In the higher part, you know, we have the Bible and it applies to spiritual things, it applies to our devotional life, it applies to topics that we speak about at church, and Bible study, and things like evangelism and missions and personal discipleship.
But then you've got kind of all other topics of life and areas of society, you've got, you know, pretty much everything else, things like education and family and work and business and government and policy and everything else, entertainment. And that's the part that we've been kind of trained, I think, over many years as Christians to kind of think that there's a gap or a divide that the Bible doesn't really speak to those areas other than very kind of generically, like if you're in those areas, you should be moral. Don't lie, don't steal, don't cheat. But in terms of giving rise to a particular way of doing things, a biblical way of doing business, government, community development, poverty alleviation, or whatever it is, we've not really been trained to do that. And we don't really know how to do that. That's my experience, in terms of just dealing with a lot of Christians.
And so consequently, what happens is that when we function as Christians in those areas— just like take business as one example—when we're out there in the business world, doing our business, the way that the business is being done, the way that we treat employers, employees, I mean, the way that we enter into contracts and agreements, or think about money and profit, or whatever it is, it's not that those things aren't shaped by some set of basic principles that are more foundational. They are. Everything is ultimately rooted in some kind of basic understanding of reality, if you will. But if it's not, if we're not intentionally thinking about biblical principles that underpin these things, then by default, we're gonna go with whatever the principles are that are operating at that particular time in the culture.
And so, again, consequently, you've got Christians who are very devout on Sunday, they go to church, they pray, they may be involved in evangelism, but when they operate outside of those quote, unquote, spiritual parts of life, they are, you know, largely operating based on principles from whatever their dominant worldview or belief system is in the society. And they just don't know that that's a problem. They, you know, think that's okay. That's the worldly part of the life, the secular part of life.
And this is one of the reasons that the church is having so little influence on the culture. It's because it's got this kind of divided mindset. It's going along with the flow of the culture. It's basing its way of working and thinking and doing on whatever the dominant principles are for the culture. And it hasn't thought about what are biblical principles? And how do we bring those into the way I think about everything, and kind of breaking down this higher/lower sacred/secular divide.
Before we get into the topic of what are principles and what do we mean by biblical principles, I'd like to hear from you guys, in terms of just my setup there. Anything that you'd like to add in terms of my sense of the problem, the diagnosis that we're facing, here on this particular topic,
I know for my own life, dualism has been something of a concept I've learned more recently. And I guess I've always known it, but I haven't understood it. You know, I grew up in a Christian household, a little bit of my testimony, grew up in the church, went to a Christian college, had a pretty cool dad. And but the thing is, when I went to Christian college, or in Church, the professor, the pastor, they're always speaking to the audience. They're not speaking individually to you. So you're always hearing these more broad spiritual concepts. And then there's this other part of your life, that is very, very personal. Your spiritual gifts that God has given you. Your passions, your desires. These other things that are definitely a core part of what makes you you, they don't get usually addressed in a church setting, or for me in my classes.
So in a way, you know, just over time, I would think, Oh, those are less spiritual parts of my life. What do I do with these things? I know God has given me these gifts. I know he's given me these passions for a reason. But why did he give me—why did he give me the art of paintings—something that God's gifted me with—instead of leading worship? Or why did he not give me a desire to go and be a missionary? You know, he gave me different desires, but in my mind, seem less spiritual, you know. Why can I have, you know, some spirit, like a more spiritual gift, like prophecy? To me that seems more useful in a way.
And that's so wrong. And what it does is it creates in our mind that divide. And in a way, these parts of us that are those gifts and those passions and those desires, we almost think of them as like a guilty pleasure, like, whenever I'm doing that I'm not being spiritual, and not living out my walk with Christ. And so I need to just a little bit of, you know, these other parts of my life, like my hobbies, and so forth, and then back to God, as if there's two separate things. And I mean, in that verse where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. We were worried about this, this non sacred part of our life, because we don't want to put any of our treasure there and put our heart there.
But the problem is, that's exactly the problem. Because why don't we just take those areas and see what we're going to talk about today. Understand the biblical principles for those areas. For me for art, what is the biblical principles for art? How can I make that a part of my walk with Christ, and therefore, put my treasure there and there my heart will be also. And I think in a little bit, we'll talk about some examples of people who have done that well, who have taken the things that seem sacred and secular in their life and join them all together in their walk with Christ, and using the gifts that God has given them, those unique things about them, to uniquely bless the world in the only individual way that they can.
Thanks, Luke. As you're sharing... Luke, I'm thinking, gosh, it's interesting that you picked up that sacred/secular divide, you know, and I was pretty intentional as your father and your mom in raising you without that, because that was such a big part of my faith. And yet, you know, to me, it just speaks to the fact that so much a part of our Christian culture, our Christian way of thinking in the west today, that we just kind of absorbed that anyways, you know, we've all been kind of shaped by that higher/lower divide.
Like, if anyone would have not encountered that, it would have been me. But I still feel that way.
Just goes to show you're not the entire culture.
No, I'm not the entire culture. And that's exactly right. Yeah.
This world is bigger than you.
Yes, it is.
Shawn, what do you think?
Yeah, I mean, I guess I fell prey to that myself. You know, it was kind of discipled in the way of thinking that, you know, spiritual matters were more important than physical matters, and through the church. And so, it wasn't until, you know, I had fully kind of absorbed that and was living trying to encoururge people around the world to come to know Jesus, that I was confronted with the idea that, well, if everybody became a Christian, and we still had all these problems, then society is still very, very broken. Why? Why is that? Is that the gospel? Like, you can just go to heaven? But you know, you got to muscle it out here on Earth, or is there something bigger than that? And as I wrestled through that personally came to understand like, wait, no, I think there is something bigger at work here. And I, I believed in, was discipled in, in a truncated gospel. And so that has had a huge effect on me.
I remember, when I was in college, I was interested in getting into missions. And so I actually studied some and read missionaries. And I was surprised to find out that that most of the missionaries I talked to, they had evangelistic ministry and church planning ministry. But so many of them were involved in other kinds of serving activities with people. And I realized that most of their life, whether it was in the Philippines, or in Arion, Jaya was spent doing things to help other people flourish. And yet, they didn't put that in their newsletter, because that's not what they were raising support for. And I thought, wow, well, isn't that where real life is anyway? And so I remember having this, this was before the DNA, if you can imagine. But there was a dissonance that I was struggling with in college. And it was the sacred/secular.
Yeah, I know, Dwight, you'll relate to this from our days with Food for the Hungry. We worked for so many years in Christian relief and development. And I saw it play out there and Christian relief and development in basically this way, that you had a lot of very devoted Christians that were, you know, working for Food for the Hungry. But when you talk to them about the approach, or the policies, the principles, the methods of doing community development, they very much were what they learned in graduate school, or when they were with the Peace Corps, you know, or whatever it was. In other words, what they had learned about poverty alleviation and community development wasn't really from the Bible.
And if you ask them about that, you know, what does the Bible have to say about this subject, of how do we help the poor to rise out of poverty? They would say, well, it gives you a motivation were to care for the poor. I said, yeah. But is there a way that we're to care for the poor? And they that was when I started getting blank stares. And people would go, No, not really. What the Bible says is that we should get up in the morning and pray, and then we go to our community development work in a way that's no different than any secular community development organization would go do their work. It's just that we're motivated by Christ, and we pray in the morning. And so I definitely saw it there.
And I thought, something's not right. Now there really should be a kind of a uniquely biblical way of doing community development work that looks different than a secular organization does it, except maybe without as much cussing and drinking and swearing. And so that kind of got me thinking about this, I think for the first time, I don't know about you guys. Shawn, you're laughing there. What are your thoughts?
Oh, I totally agree. It's almost like trying to take a methodology and baptize it with the gospel, but then just kind of continue to use it rather than thinking that maybe God has a different idea and a different perspective about these things. And I think that applies to just about every vocation, right? Like, how do you function as a good businessman? Well, you get an MBA, and then you function as an MBA. Versus thinking, well, how does an MBA function from a biblical worldview? Now it could be the same, but it could be very different. But if you don't know that, maybe we should figure that out, you know? But I think to me, also, the thing that really made a difference to me was being challenged with the idea of the gospel of the kingdom. So I never really seen the difference between the gospel of salvation and the gospel of the kingdom. It was just the gospel. And when somebody separated that out for me, I thought, oh, wait a second. I've been believing the gospel of salvation, which is to preach the gospel and save souls, plant churches. But then gospel of the kingdom, now that absorbed every area of life.
And we're talking about kingdom here, culture, if you will, right, yes.
Yeah, totally right. And that to me, that blew the doors off my understanding. And that's the thing that kind of set me free. Its distinguishing between the gospel that we would say is the gospel, that is the gospel of salvation, versus the gospel of the kingdom, which includes salvation but it expands beyond salvation to every other area of our lives here on planet Earth.
Yeah.
I think of E. Stanley Jones that wrote The Unshakable Kingdom book. There is this one line that he always quoted was "The kingdom is God's..." Oh, my goodness, I forgot it.
Total, something like that? Yeah,
"The kingdom is God's total answer to man's total need." Yeah. And I, when I first read that, what is that? Whoa, total answer for total need. And then you think of all the needs of the human being. And you relate that to the kingdom of God and say, how does God want to meet those needs?
Yeah, it gets us thinking much bigger way than just the very narrow saving of souls and attending church and things like that. So...
Well, what I want to do now guys, is move us into this topic of principles, because principles is an avenue into doing this kind of work of bringing the Bible, the truths of the Bible, or the kingdom of God, if you will, into every area of society. Now, you know, you might be thinking, why don't we just study the Bible and we can pick out some verses here and there, and that becomes the way that we do this. And that's good, right? It's important to study the Bible. But I want us to think in terms of not so much individual verses or passages. But in terms of foundational principles from the Bible.
This concept of principles, let me just define that briefly here as we move forward. A principle is basically a fundamental or a foundational truth that serves as a foundation upon which other truths or a system of truths of our beliefs can be built. So it this basic truth on which other truths are based. And you can see that the Bible has basic, very foundational truths. And having those in your mind clearly, I think, is the first step towards kind of bringing the Bible into every area of life. What are those really foundational principles that we see in the Scripture, that then we can take on the basis of those truths, we can build truths that might apply in different ways, education, business, or whatever it is—the arts. So I want to talk just a little bit about basic principles of the Bible. And how do we think, what do we mean by that? How do we think about that, Dwight, what comes to your mind, when you think about the basic principles, the first principles of the Bible?
I think of the Declaration of Independence, the United States. When it says that we are all created equal before God. That actually isn't a Bible verse, that's Genesis 1:1, God created the heavens in the earth. And Genesis 1:27, where he said, "Let us make man in our image". And the outcome of that is you have a man created by God, and all people created in his image. So because we're all image bearers, we are equal before God. Yeah. And there you have a principle, right? And it starts in the first chapter of the Bible that ended up forming a nation.
Well, the declaration is kind of a good example of how it gets applied in the area of government. But the first principle that they were applying is what, in this case? I would say there was two here. Dwight.
God is the Creator.
Yeah, God exists.
Or God exists. Okay, so go way back, God exists.
You can't take that for granted nowadays.
God is the source. God is the origin. God is the Creator. And then human beings are made in the image of God, made by God in His likeness.
Yeah, those are two foundational, biblical principles. And those are such big ones that they get applied in almost every area. Right? So those are great examples. And in this case, the declaration applies them in the area of government. And you know, so the Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, the authors of that document said, we've got to go back. If we want a free nation, we've got to root it in biblical principles, because that's going to give rise to freedom. And particularly these two, right? These two biblical principles, we hold these truths to be self evident that all people are created—that assumes that yeah—and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, right? These are very biblical ideas applied to our foundation for government.
And the thing to remember is we use the word principles, but there's fundamental truths there. That's so in the last session we were talking about it. And are we grounded in the truth? Because if you're grounded in the truth, you have a chance to flourish, you have a chance to grow.
Yes, and let's just stay with this example. Because I think it's helpful in kind of teasing out what we're talking about. This is a biblical principle, or two or three, actually, that you see in the Declaration of Independence. They're applied in government, you know, and they form a kind of government that honors people's rights and freedoms, because they come from God, not from government. And not every form of government is the same. I mean, you can easily have a system of government that's tyrannical, that doesn't honor people's individual liberties or freedoms, it sees people as widgets to be controlled, or whatever it is.
So my point there is that the Bible is gonna give rise to a particular way of forming government and everything else. Okay? Because I think sometimes people think, oh, government's government, right. It's just government now, and the Bible doesn't really speak to it. But that's not true. The Bible has, if you apply biblical first principles, it's going to give rise to a particular kind of government, a particular shape of government, it may not look exactly the same everywhere it's applied, but it's going to have a lot of similarities.
Well, I mean, even if you look at, you have some parliamentary and governments and we have House and Senate. So that's a little different. But the idea is people are equal, and they self govern. Yes. And that becomes the fundamental foundation, then for government.
Yeah, exactly. So principles, again, are fundamental truths. They serve as a basis for other truths, and a system of belief built around those truths. And so let's talk a little bit more about the fundamental truths of the Bible, I think you could generally say that you find them in, number one, God's existence and God's character. Then a third area where you find foundational, biblical principles has to do with who we are, what does it mean to be a human being? We are made in God's image with dignity. With worth. We are to have dominion. We are to exercise creativity. We're made to work. And so it has to do with who we are, right? You got a whole bunch of other, (or I don't know about a whole bunch, but you get several,) other foundational principles around that whole topic of what does it mean to be a human being right?
We are male and female.
We are male and female.
Right there in Genesis one.
And even that, Dwight, is rooted in the idea that God is one in three, this unity diversity principle. Darrow loves talking about this right? And it's true. It's so powerful, right? When God made us in His image, he didn't just make one thing he made male and female that were both the same, but different. And so that's a biblical principle that you can also apply, that principle in all sorts of other areas, this value of unity, and diversity. So biblical culture, the way that gets applied in business or and family or in every area, should reflect that kind of emphasis on unity and diversity, because that's a foundational biblical principle rooted in the character of God.
Yeah. Do you want to unpack any of these?
I do! I want to make this as clear as we can, and ultimately bring it down to the point where people can start thinking in terms of biblical principles. I think the key questions are, what are the biblical principles that need to inform what I'm doing in my life as a husband, father, parent, you know, whatever it is?
Well, I love Kuyper's division, where he says that he looked at the world's cultures and said, each one creates a different way of living. And he looked at Islam, and he looked at Far Eastern religions, and he looked at Christianity, and he looked at atheism. And this was an 1893, he already went, whoa, we get different results. Then he broke it down into three areas. He said, what I see when I look at the world's religions, in the world's cultures, is a different view of ultimate reality of God. Is there a god/no god? If it's a god, what God is that? And what's the nature of that God? So there's all kinds of core principles that would revolve around that question.
What is God like?
What is God like?
Yeah, assuming he exists, what is he like?
Assuming he exists, what is it? And that's a big assumption.
You can't assume that today. A lot of people don't believe that exists, right? Yeah.
Drives a huge percentage of the world's population already. So and the second one that he looked at was, what does it mean to be human? What is the human being and and what's our identity? What is our purpose? Where are we going? What are we about? And then the third one was the nature of nature? What is creation for? How do we relate to creation? Are we a part of it? Are we separate? And all the rules that go with that. And so those three areas became kind of the seedbed for these fundamental truth core principles.
And on that latter one, let's just give some examples. We could give his examples in all of these areas, but what are some examples of foundational biblical principles as it relates to creation? Just the universe, the world around us?
Well, I think the first one is that God created it. So it's ultimately God's. It's not ours. We are stewarding the world that he made. We don't actually own this world.
We don't own it. And it's his. Yeah.
And he declared it good.
And he declared it good. It's a good creation. I think that's a foundational biblical principle of: creation is good. Now it's fallen, it's been marred by the fall, but that doesn't take away from its inherent goodness.
And he created it to be good for itself and especially for mankind. I mean, it says he created the trees with fruits that are good to eat. So maybe he was talking about the chipmunk that eats a nut and likes it, but really he was talking about mankind. That he had created a world that was really good for mankind. Yes. And it will serve us well. But it's good.
Another principle that I think is so powerful on foundational biblical principles related to creation is the idea that, Darrow would put it this way, he would say it's an open system, it's not a closed system. And what he means by that is that God has built his creation in such a way that it can actually grow, it can expand, it's not necessarily completely limited. So he gives us an example of that, the principle of the seeds, so God made seeds, he made trees that bear fruit, and in those fruits are seeds. And when you plant those seeds, you don't get just one tree, you get many trees, and there's that African proverb that we like to quote, you can count the number of seeds that are in a mango, that'd be one. But you can't count the number of mangoes that are in a seed. It's literally unlimited. That's a biblical principle that's different, in this case, then if your starting point was a materialistic atheistic view. You tend to see resources as limited. And that means we have to kind of fight over them. There's just power struggles over who gets them, you've got it, I don't, I need to get it from you. And the biblical views is, no we can actually grow the pie and we can share in an abundance. That's pretty powerful.
And it's also speaks to human imagination, that he would put into creation, all kinds of, I think what Darrow would call "secrets" for us to discover and tap and understand and then grow. And imagine out of. I love the illustration of the sand on the seashore, that then becomes glass and then becomes the computer chip and then becomes... you know.
Yeah. So maybe we should use that illustration, and unpack that a little bit more for folks that have never heard it. We often are working within DNA in context of poverty. And one of the, the mindset so often in contexts of poverty is that we're poor. We don't have anything, we don't have any resources, we don't have money. We're poor. And when we teach these principles, we'd give an example of sand, and we'd say, do you have sand? Most people can find sand pretty much anywhere, you know, don't have to be on a beach, it could be down by the river, or wherever it is, there's sand around. How much money would you give me for a handful of sand? Well, nothing. It's worthless, right? Okay, but what can we, if we apply—so this is the principle that God made people, human beings in His image, with creativity to take the things that God has put here to apply our creativity to that and actually create new things—so what if we took that sand and we extracted from it its basic ingredient, which is silicon? Now, how much money would you give me for that? Well, I'd give you something, you know, it's got some value, you've extracted silicone from it. But what if you took that silicone and you turn it into a computer chip? And that's what is at the center of all of our computer chips.
And you basically bring people to the point where you realize that the whole modern economy, which runs on computers, has at its core ingredient, silicon and sand. And that gets people thinking in a whole different way you see about this question of poverty and development. So that's the power of biblical principles. Foundational, biblical principles, in this case, as it applies to: how do we think about resources, wealth, poverty, and these kinds of questions?
Something that you've alluded to a couple of times, as a principle, is that we live in a fallen world. We often talk about that. We talk around that, but we don't talk about what that means. And the fact that if we look at the world today, if we look around us and think, well, this is the way it is, this is the way it was created. Well, we missed it. That's not the way it was created. It was created perfectly. But we've distorted it, we've broken it, because we've broken God's law. And I think a principle there is that not only that God created but then man sinned against him. There's a principle that now, as his creation, what do we do with the fact that we live in a world that's broken now? How did that get broken? You know? And then what is our purpose in that? If our purpose is just to... Where does that? How does that work together?
Well and I think, I think that's an important truth, core truth.
That's a foundational biblical principle. Yeah, man has fallen, right?
Because then you have to ask, did God change his plan? Did God changed his mind about creation and the purpose that He put into, we're talking about the purpose of creation right here. Scott and I were talking basically pre-fall. What's the purpose of sand? What's the person of male and female, the human image bearer? What's the, you know, why did God create in the beginning? Did that change at the fall? And the truth of the fall is, yes, it changed but it didn't change God's purpose. That's super important.
But it's a foundational biblical principle that we live in a world that's been marred by the fall and that's affected all people including us. And that means that we all have a inbuilt inclination to do what's wrong. To to be selfish, to lie, shade the truth, steal, whatever. We all have that kind of hardwired into us to a certain degree.
Now, not all worldviews start from that basic principle or that basic foundational truth. I think of Marxism, which is growing right now in the West in terms of its influence, it doesn't believe that. It basically sees human beings as perfectible, more or less good and perfectible by means of just kind of tweaking the society and environment in such a way. Then we can kind of have the perfect society. Those are very, very different starting points. Let's take this fallen human principle, and let's apply it. How can we apply? Where does that get applied? Let's give some examples of how that gets applied. How does that get applied, Dwight, as a father in terms of raising your kids, for example, in a way that it might not if you thought your kids were inherently good and perfectible?
Yeah. Well, I don't struggle with the Marxist view of humanity. Maybe being a parent, it left about day two, because I thought now these kids are wicked, you know. They're fallen, and the first word was no or that's not fair. Whatever. So I think for me, it's to... I think my biggest struggle, honestly, is going past the fallenness. For example, a street person, a homeless person is just really struggling and you go, is that really an image bearer? Yes, that's a human being created in the image of God. Everything that God has towards me is towards that person. All of his purposes, all of his love, all of his nature, all that's his. It's all right there as well poured out on that person as well as me, and that's probably the biggest leap. I look at the fallen I go, God changed his mind. Instead of remembering that He didn't change his mind. So that's probably where I struggle more than the Marxist view of we can make somebody perfect.
Yeah. So just back to the the fallen nature of man, again, when we think of our founders, they took that into account in the formation of our government. And what they said is, well, because of the fallen nature of man, any kind of consolidation of power is going to be dangerous, because it will be abused, potentially, and become tyrannical. So we've got to make sure that those who've got power and authority have it in a very limited way. So we've got to separate the powers and you've got to balance it out, you got at some of the executive branch, some of the judicial branch, some in the legislative branch, some with the states, some with the family. You've got to have power really diffused, and anything other than that's going to get us in trouble.
Well, that's based on biblical principle that man has fallen, and therefore dangerous. I apply that with raising the kids. Basically, I don't start with the assumption that they're perfect. They have to be trained, we've got to train them in righteousness, they aren't just going to do what's right right out the chute. Like I can't have that expectation. So I've got to do training, I've got to do discipline, I've got to shape and mold them in a certain way. So that they can become kind of self governing. They're not born that way to self govern. They're going to go off the rails, because of their fallen human nature. They're going to do all sorts of things that are wrong, and they're gonna hurt themselves and other people. So we've got to train them and got to discipline them.
And I remember for me, one of the principles that I was taught in Parenthood was this idea of the funnel. That your job as the kids are growing, when they're young, it's the bottom end of the funnel, the narrow end of the funnel, you've got to have more constrained because they don't know how to self govern. But the older they get, as they grow in their knowledge of self government, are able to do it, can demonstrate the capacity to do it. If you give them more freedom, they can manage that freedom, then you can keep growing. And ultimately, you want them to grow in their ability to live as free people and self govern, by the time they're, you know, in their teen years, and adults.
But you can't, what a lot of parents do is they just are wide open at the beginning, no discipline, no structure, and the kids run wild. And then when they get to their teen years that they're like "oh crap gotta like, put all this order and structure" and stuff. And by that time, it's almost too late, you know. So that was a very practical, biblical principle that helped me.
And that, by the way, that brings up another thing I like about principles. Principles are different than, let's say, laws or rules. Rules and laws aren't bad, they're good. Do this, don't do that. Or if you do x, then you know, I will do Y, or whatever that rule might be. The problem with rules, is they can't be...
They're not flexible.
They're not flexible, and they're very narrow, so that it might work in this circumstance, but not that circumstance. So they've got a lot of limitations. Whereas principles because they're more foundational, they can be applied in a lot of different ways. And you can, which is another... I'm not sure I've explained that well.
But it's interesting, because of that, the core principle that you just talked about in terms of parenting and helping a child, self govern. The other thing that I had to realize was that they're different, but equal. They're not like me, and I remember that that was a rude awakening to find out my child isn't like me, and doesn't have my bent always. And so well, they need to be like me. And then I had to remember no, they don't have to be like me, they have to self govern, they have to do the right thing. But they're going to be a unique person. And that's going to that's going to look different at times and different decisions that I wouldn't make. Yeah, yeah. Because they're made in the image of God and uniquely made.
Right that's the kind of the unity/diversity example.
I had to remember the diversity part.
Yeah, it's powerful that you know, God made a lot of diversity into his creation. And he loves that diversity. Wouldn't have made it without that and you know, he didn't make one kind of flower, one kind of tree, one kind of personality. He made lots of personalities. No clones, no robots.
Wven twins aren't clones. I'm an identical and my brother and I are quite different.
And that should shape the way you as a Christian, think about parenting and the way you treat your children. So are we getting the point across, Luke and Shawn, how's that sounding to you guys? What can we do to bring more clarity to this?
I think so. I think one thing that I was thinking as you were talking is, because we started out talking about the sacred/secular divide. And I think for me, another thing based on these principles that really kind of challenged me with this perspective was that when the fall happened, when man sinned, it wasn't just that the spiritual side of man was broken. And oftentimes, in the church, that's what we talk about, because we need to redeem people, and we talk about that in redemption of the spiritual side of man. And so you need to come to Jesus and get saved and give your life to Him. And then He will restore you.
Now the relationship, with God can be restored, you're talking about, right, yeah,
Exactly. Versus that, in every area of our lives, we've broken. Our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with others, our relationship with creation in our relationship with God, all through all of those things were broken. And so as a follower of Christ, as a person made in his image, my goal isn't just to be reconciled only to God in my relationship with him, but to be reconciled to all parts of life, spiritual, physical, social, mental, all of those areas,
Give me an example.
How do you apply that in an area of your life?
With nature, let's say.
So well, I was gonna say, so I struggled with Lyme disease. So I have to take medicine to help me deal with the effects of Lyme disease. So Lyme disease is an effect of a broken world. And for me dealing with that I have to rest more. There's lots of things that I have to do that I can't do. But one thing that helps me is if I take medicine, then it helps me kind of have dominion, so to speak, over the effects of Lyme disease in my life. That's one example, I guess. But even relationship with other people, we talked earlier, you'd mentioned about Marxism, or about parenting, being kind of ruling with an iron fist and realizing that, that doesn't bring reconciliation. Reconciliation with our fellow man is recognizing the dignity that God has placed within them, appreciating that, and helping that person to flourish, just as I flourish, not to wield power over them, but to come alongside, to come beneath it, to serve them, to love them, to help them to flourish, just as God desires me to flourish. That's a whole different perspective than an ideology that says, I have to dominate, you know.
That's good. Luke, what are you hearing? And what are you thinking as we go into this discussion here?
I just think it's so important for people to grasp this, this concept of these principles, because, yeah, I mean, you mentioned Marxism, if we're not following God's principles for how to live in the different areas of life we each individually live in, then we're following someone else's always.
Exactly. We're following some principles. I mean, we're doing our work—
—Based on some principles. But they're not going to be the Bible's, if we're not stressing that. Another thing I was just thinking about is these principles. These are the a framework for the way God wants us to live. He has created a way for us to live. And it's the best way for us to live, it's going to lead to flourishing, it's going to lead to joy, it's going to give us purpose, it's a good way to live, even after the consequences of the fall. God still has a plan for us to live on this earth, in every single capacity of life, every single area of life.
And I was in the sermon yesterday, I was listening to pastor and he explained God's jealousy in a way I'd never heard of before. And I really liked the concept. And he said, a lot of people get tripped up on this, this concept of God being really jealous. God is jealous for us. And the pastor explained it in this way. And he said, like, God is jealous because he sees us and knows the way that we can live our lives. And it is the best way. And he's jealous for us. Because it's like that jealousy when you see someone you love so much, not living in a way that is the best suited for them. It gives you this desire to help them. But in God's case, he's already helped us so much. I mean, the Bible is full of these principles for how to live this life. And he's jealous for us. We see this not living in that and hurting ourselves against this.
Yeah, immediately I thought of a movie I saw recently where the coach was jealous for an athlete because the coach knew the athlete wasn't performing up to his or her level.
Exactly.
He's really pushing because he knew they could do it. And it was out of love. It wasn't out of you know... that was it. It was out of love.
I want to given another example of the power of thinking in terms of biblical principles. This one comes from a Czech reformer, one of the one of the great reform leaders named John Amos Comenius. And many people consider him to be the father of modern education. "Modern" meaning, the idea that in most countries around the world, you have the system of public education. There's an expectation that all children should be educated. And their education should be well rounded.
We take that for granted. Like we assume that that always was the way it was, and it wasn't. Comenius lived at a time when not everyone was educated. Only if you were a child of the elites, were you educated. Nobody else was. And he also lived at a time where there was a strong, sacred/secular divide, coming kind of out of the Catholic tradition. And the only thing that really mattered in terms of education was kind of theological education. There wasn't kind of an emphasis on education in terms of the sciences, or literature, these other things, these were seen as lower or secular.
So as a reformer, as a guy who had the Bible now open to him, he started saying, Gosh, I think the way that we're doing education isn't right here. I'm reading here in my Bible, it says that all people are made in the image of God, and that God has a purpose for their lives, that he has a plan for their lives, their lives matter. And so that means that not just the wealthy elite children should be educated, I think everyone should be educated. So he basically built—he took a principle and brought it into education. And it was this simple, it was really this simple. Everyone should be educated in everything. The "everything", meaning that, theology is important, but actually all of these subjects are important, because this is God's world, he made it. And so we should learn about it in every respect, all of these different subjects are important to learn about.
So everyone should learn. He taught everything. That was the principle that comes from these ideas, these deeper biblical principles that all people are made in God's image and therefore worthy of being educated. And secondly, that all of God's creation is good and worthy of study, so we should be learning about everything. He took those two principles, he applied them in education, by creating that principle that he just articulated, everyone should be educated in everything. And that became the foundation or the basis for a whole new way of doing education that hadn't existed before in human history. And that we benefit from today, that didn't just happen. It wasn't an accident, it was a guy working in the Bible, forming principles based on foundational principles and applying them in the area of education.
I just share that as I think a powerful example and I think the Reformers actually were pretty good at this. They tended to think in terms of first principles of the Bible, and how do those get applied in every area of life. I think it's an art that we've lost. Because in our generation of church life, we have this sacred/secular divide, we don't think so much in terms of biblical first principles or how they apply or shape the way we do agriculture, business, poverty, or whatever.
We just tend to not think about that. We just work in those areas. And we work according to what I guess Luke, you were saying, whatever the principle is operating in the culture at the time, but the reformers were pretty good in terms of this kind of principle based thinking and I think that's really a key for us to kind of get back to that, recover that lost art.
And I would say it starts with, it's a way of thinking, a principle, a way of thinking. It's a way of thinking about the Bible. It's, yes, the Bible is books with truths and verses and all of that, needs to be studied, the passages and all the theology but it's also first principles. A lot of those first principles, by the way, you find right away in the Bible, you find them in Genesis chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. They're really right there. They're kind of laid out a lot of these big principles right there in the in the first chapters of Genesis, they get unpacked and further explained, through the course of the scriptures, but they're in a lot of their form, right there at the beginning of the Bible.
I was gonna say except for one, but it is also grounded in Genesis one and two. I'm thinking of the love principle, which in the New Testament is unpacked as the greatest commandment by Jesus. the second commandment. But then Paul underscores it as all the law is summarized in one, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. So it becomes the all including commandment. And yet if you go back to Genesis one and two, you see Adam and Eve created really to serve one another. Adam was not complete without a helper, without Eve. Eve completes Adam and Adam completes Eve. So even there, you have this love principle where two people are serving one another, so that the other can flourish. That principle to me is a great one, too. And Luke, go ahead and define it for us, you got the definition for love memorized, I think. Or, I like it, whatever it is.
Yeah, the way I like to define love is seeking the highest good for another and the perceived expense to yourself. That's not my definition.
Right, you stole it from Aquinas Thomas or somebody like that. But it's this idea that God has a design for every person and we seek that for them, or we seek their utmost good. Yeah. And I go back to Tim Weinhold unpacking of that in our Monday church course. And there's one lesson, way at the end, in one of those special sections on vocation. And I still remember the graph where he said, how does the love principle work itself out in business? And then he said, well, who are all of our neighbors, if you're supposed to love your neighbor? And then he made this chart to show well, who are the neighbors in a business context? And of course, well, there's the customer who buys. There's the worker that makes it. There's the manager that manages the worker. There's the stakeholder, the shareholder that owns the stock. There's the owner of the company, and he just had all of these in a circle. Yeah.
And he goes, so how do we love each? How does this look, if each one of these people is loved by, including the community? We're supposed to love all of these people, which I thought was eye opening. "No, you just love one of them. You love the customer, because they're the ones that pay you for your product. And if you don't love them, you're in trouble. So the rest of them, you can kind of blow off." No, it says, you know, God says love your neighbor, we have to love all of these people. What does that look like in a business context? And I thought I'd never heard anybody say it that clearly. Right? Yeah.
That gives rise to a way of doing business that's completely different than another way of doing business that doesn't have this foundation love, right? Very different.
And it goes down to another principle. It has to connect immediately, I think and this one's more of the the open/closed system principle, which is: in the kingdom of God, you don't have losers and winners. So the question is, well, how can you possibly, in love, serve your shareholder neighbor, and your vendor neighbor, and your customer neighbor, and none of them lose in this equation? They all serve, but you know, that's kind of mind blowing? No, there's winners and losers in every negotiation, there has to be. And God saying, no, no, there doesn't have to be. That's super far out there. You know?
No, it's super powerful. It's the power of these biblical principles. By the way, I just want to go back to something you said a second ago, Dwight, about this principle of love. And you were saying, where do we see that in the first three chapters of the Bible? You know, it's one of those for me when I think about that, it's kind of elucidated later in the Bible.
And for me, there's a passage in the book of John. It's when Jesus is praying to his father, before the cross, the the high priestly prayers in the book of John. And there's a line in there that Jesus when he's praying, he talks about love. And he talks about the love that the Father had for him and that he had for the father, before the foundation of the world. And I love that because before Genesis one, there was there was relationship in the Trinity and it was marked by love. That's so powerful. That's a very biblical idea that this love and relationship existed even before creation. And so then it comes into creation with with male/female, Adam and Eve in relationship marked by love and other service. And that other serving love, that principle, then should apply in all sorts of ways, in our marriages, in our businesses, in everything. And it's revolutionary. It's revolutionary. Again, that to me, is what I get so excited about this topic because of just the power of these ideas when those get applied. It just is revolutionary.
One other thought on that, Good to Great, you guys read the book. I'll never forget getting to the chapter on servant leadership. Number five level leadership. Remember that? That was so eye opening, because it's a book that where a guy did research, Doug Collins did research on what are the best businesses and the most sustainable businesses in the world over the last 10 years. This was written probably 10-15 years ago. But then he did a very, very large research study, and then identified different factors that were critical in the success of this business. And one of them was leadership, obviously. And of course, you get there. And then he went on to say, here's what the good leader, here's what the successful leader looks like. And he called him a level five leader. And I don't remember all of the details of that chapter. But basically, he was describing a biblical leader, in terms of serving others, looking out for the welfare of others, doing what was best for the whole to benefit, and encouraging creativity, everything you'd expect from a servant, biblical leader. And that became, when he looked at the business world, that was—
—those businesses tended to really succeed. Yeah, they were flourishing. They were thriving, because they were based on bibical principle.
And in that case, none of them had opened up their Bible and probably said, well, this is the kind of leader I'm just... it was true, because it was true.
Yeah, yeah. Right. Some people know these things. Just because truth can be known even apart from the Bible, right? I mean, there's true is true. Yeah, truth is truth. Yeah, exactly.
So I think as we wrap this up, that we obviously want to talk a lot more about this. But you know, I guess I'd like to encourage all of you to think about your lives, to think about, what are your roles? You know, for me that includes being a husband, it includes being a father, it includes being a leader here in an organization, a Christian organization. It includes, you know, being an elder at church, whatever they are, what are those roles you play? What kind of work are you doing? What are the roles you're playing, just take one of those.
You're a parent to your children. And by the way, if you're a parent to your children, you're their primary educator. The Bible says that, you're their primary educator, you can't outsource that. Well, you can outsource it, but you're still their primary educator. Take that one role of the education of your children, what principles, what foundational principles from the Bible apply to this area of education? Just start writing them down, just brainstorm. What foundational principles of the Bible apply or would apply, and give shape to my thinking, and my practice of the education of my kids?
Just start writing them down, start brainstorming them. Maybe then prioritize them. Another thing you can do is go back and link them specifically to Bible verses and passages, you kind of ground it in the Scriptures. And then how does that get applied? What is that going to mean? How does that look in terms of what I'm going to do, in terms of the education of my children? What practically, is that going to look like in terms of actions and behaviors? And then the last question is, how is that looking different than the way education is typically done in the broader society? It should be different, unless your societies completely shaped by a biblical worldview. Ours is not at this point. So it's going to look different. How is it different? Okay. I think that's another clarifying question. Other thoughts you guys would have or things you'd add in terms of just making this very practical, kind of applicable?
Yeah, I'd say get really specific. I mean, you're getting pretty specific, there then, but even come down to your hobbies and the things that you love and God's given you like, friendships, or..
Friendship. Yeah. How do I be a good friend?
Or sports. I think of a person that really applied biblical principles to their athletics was Eric Liddell. And that famous quote, he says, "I believe that God has made me for a purpose. But he also made me fast." And he recognized these two parts of themselves that he wanted to join in. He was a perfect example of that, someone who lived out biblical principles in his athletics.
Eric Liddell, for those who aren't familiar, he's a subject of the famous movie Chariots of Fire. That's a powerful story of an Scottish Olympian in the early parts of the 1900s. And then he went on to serve as a missionary in China as well. Yeah, exactly. No, I think he's a great example. That's another good point, Luke, find examples of Christians who've done this—Eric Liddell or others who have really intentionally said "How do I bring the truth, the foundational truths, principles of the Bible, into whatever I'm doing, in a way that gives it a shape, a biblical shape that's different from the society and the culture." Find those people and start learning from them following their examples. Shawn, any final thoughts from you as we kind of wrap this one up here today?
I think another way of getting to the same answer would be to ask yourself, what principles have I been taught that I live out? And how are they compatible or incompatible with what God's Word says?
What are the operating principles right now, in the way that I do things? Yeah. And where did those come from? Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, super good. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Excellent. Yeah, start with that. We're all living according to some basic foundational principles. What are they? Yeah, where did they come from? You know, that's another really good approach to it. Yeah.
Might makes right.
That's the one you live by right, Dwight.
Dwight makes right.
Oh, Dwight makes right. Hey, that's even better.
Well, guys, this has been great. It's really a joy to work with you and to be able to talk about these things. And this one is right at the heart of our ministry at the Disciple Nations Alliance. How do you disciple nations? You bring the principles of the Bible, the foundational principles into every area of life, every area of society. And that should give rise to a particular culture or, "culture" meaning, "just the way we do things", a particular way of doing things. It's uniquely shaped by the Bible. We need to be people that are creating biblical culture. In our lives, families, children, marriages, work, and that's how our nation's get discipled. Well, we'll catch you next time guys. Take care.
