True Worldview

One of the major debates in our culture has to do with whether or not gender and/or even sex are social constructs or tied to biology. For many, the concept of male and female is oppressive, just as denying gender fluidity is also oppressive. For others, these things seem nonsensical. How can we make sense of the different voices in our culture? Join Christi and Paul as they shed some light on this critical issue.

A lot of people have been talking about Chick-Fil-A over the last few days. After donating to more than 300 charitable organizations this year, they will instead focus on three initiatives with one accompanying charity each: education, homelessness and hunger. The company confirms that it will be breaking ties with Salvation Army, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and the Paul Anderson Youth Home. Some see it as caving to the LGBT community. How should we think about this move? Christi and Paul try to answer that on today's episode.

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A group of students at Adelphi University gave up their smartphones for one week in an effort to break them of their near universal addiction. They actually discovered that life can be better than what they had been experiencing. The project was not a call to avoid phones altogether, but it did yield a call for more balance. Christi and Paul talk about the wonders of smartphone technology along with the dangers and pitfalls such wonders bring. Listen in as they talk about getting smart with your smartphone.

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Forbes is out with a piece saying that college may not be for everyone. Many college grads end up earning less income than those who never went to college. In fact, half of all college grads have an average income right out of school of only $28,000 per year. Some real concerns are raised including student debt and ill-preparedness for the workforce, among others. Listen in to Christi and Paul as they discuss these and other related issues.

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Human beings have always been divided, but people are more divided than ever in our culture. One of the dynamics that contributes to that division is the rise of numerous social media platforms. But, can they be redeemed? Christi and Paul discuss this issue on today's broadcast: somehow, someway individual Christians need to see the power of social media, organize, and take personal responsibility for unified gospel proliferation. Listen in!

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There is power in social media. It's given rise to immediate news, fake news, and viral news. And, it brings people together. Or does it? If you think about it, social media actually divides. Our culture is splintering and social media is a massive tool being used to bring it about. Indeed, there's power in social media. So, can we harness that power for the gospel? Christi and Paul think we can. Listen in to their discussion.

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It's not uncommon to hear Christians talk about cultural engagement especially in connection with the culture war. Abortion is a good example; we war against it, as well we should. At the same time, we should also recognize that cultural engagement is not only about what we're against. It should be about what we're for, and more than that, it should be about what we're contributing. Join Christi and Paul as they talk about creating new cultural goods that glorify God and benefit others for the sake of the gospel.

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Here's a word about the Great Commission and full-orbed discipleship. We've certainly deepened our understanding of the Lord's command over time -- it's not a command to merely go, but to make disciples as we go; it's not a command about discipling geo-political states, but the myriad people-groups that make up the world -- things like that. But Darrow Miller takes another step forward. He talks about discipling whole nations. It's not that we're to disciple people out of every people group, though we are, but there's more to it. Disciple-making spreads as new disciples are made; it spreads throughout entire cultures. Beyond that, disciple-making is not merely about evangelism, teaching doctrine, and teaching to obey, it's also about inculcating a thorough-going biblical worldview in the hearts and minds of Jesus' disciples.

We can apply these principles to numerous life-situations, not the least of which is missions and relief. Missionaries and relief workers have a heart for God and people; they work hard at spreading the gospel and helping others. However, by way of example, sometimes they adopt less than biblical worldviews to help impoverished persons. Evolution says there's nothing more than the physical world and the limited resources it contains. When Christian relief workers blame a lack of resources for generational poverty and sometimes write whole countries off, they buy into such a worldview. They buy into the same worldview as those calling for population control or the Elon Musk's of the world desperately seeking a way to move to Mars when our planet is used up.

Others adopt a Marxist approach to aid rooted in wealth redistribution or Critical Theory. Woke Culture has slipped into the church as calls for a re-ordering of the social structure reverberate throughout the evangelical world.

Then there are those missionaries who want to save souls and merely feed the hungry along the way. They give them fish, a good thing, but they're not interested in training them to catch fish. Why bother with such when Jesus is coming soon? Certainly, we recognize dispensational underpinnings here. At the same time, there's a sense in which, at a worldview level, a sort of neo-animistic understanding has taken hold. If evolution says ultimate reality is only physical, animism says that ultimate reality is only spiritual. An animistic influence is at work when we downplay the importance of this world's connection to the kingdom and focus solely on Heaven.

God's word presents a different vision. Contra evolution, God has given us resources of which we're unaware at the present time. He's also given us minds for creativity and innovation. Subduing the earth takes on new meaning in light of that reality, particularly when it's connected to the Great Commission. Contra Marxism, that reality also militates against evil redistribution and/or revolution schemes that contradict biblical principles including the goodness and necessity of work; biblical justice as opposed to so-called social justice; as well as compassion and mercy to name a few. Contra animism, this world and its people are important to God, the kingdom is to be brought to bear in the here and now, and certain cultural goods will last into eternity. Therefore, as Miller says, our goal is nothing short of a radical reorientation of a person's life. As this reorientation spreads, whole cultures are discipled. I would describe it as the creation of a kingdom citizen who has kingdom understanding and kingdom goals and engages in, to borrow another word from Miller, kingdomizing activities. We're talking about people who take seriously the words of our Lord when He taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven."

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Truth Transforms Cultures

Most Christians agree that lies enslave and truths transform. At the same time, many believers fail to grasp the significance of such a reality. Darrow Miller points out that lies not only enslave individuals spiritually, mentally, and socially, but those same lies enslave entire cultures in the same ways. For most, it's probably a new concept to think at such a macro level. The implication is that entire cultures could be set free from certain things if enough persons understood and were committed to the truth God has revealed.

The Lord Jesus said the truth will set us free. The primary emphasis there, of course, is the fact that Christians are set free from enslavement to sin, Satan, and death. Beyond that, their minds are set free. By virtue of the Word and Spirit, Christians uniquely have an ability to see what's real. They understand the reality of God, His world, our problem, and His solution. But they understand more than that as well. By way of example, there are certain intellectual and/or spiritual commitments that enslave entire cultures in poverty, instability, and hopelessness among other equally devastating dynamics. When it comes to the issue of poverty, only the truth of God will enable persons and indeed entire cultures to overcome their impoverished state. Too many are enslaved by Satan's lie that poverty is the result of a lack of resources or infrastructure. God's reality is otherwise. He has given us minds to overcome seeming limitations with innovation, development, and so much more.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, it all starts with the gospel. Individuals are transformed when they come to know Christ. They then begin to learn the truths of who God is, what He's about, who we are, and what we're about. Others move beyond the basics of the faith and are discipled in a greater way. They learn to take the truths of Scripture and apply them to their hearts. They shed old, destructive habit patterns and adopt new, life-giving habit patterns rooted in God's reality. But we need to go even further and help others do the same. We must help persons grasp a full-orbed, biblical worldview to combat the multitude of lies Satan throws our way through a host of cultural avenues. We must carry the Great Commission to its full conclusion. We must not only make disciples from all the nations, but as Miller would say, we must disciple entire nations. It is that dynamic that takes the implications of the gospel and the inaugurated kingdom to its fullest extent, as it should: thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.

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Like so many, President Trump is a bad man who sometimes does good things. While some of those good things put the lie to certain false accusations against him, my thoughts here don't center on the President but on religious freedom, a good thing, and the fact that the President has done some good things in that arena. Recently, he addressed the annual Values Voter Summit where he said, "We believe that every American has the right to live by the dictates of their conscience and the teachings of their faith. We believe in the right to free exercise of religion."

There are certain things that Christians need to be reminded of and think thoughtfully about on a regular basis. When we fail to do so, we forget not only the importance of those things but also the ground for them. We ignore them until they're threatened, when they should never have been threatened at all. And perhaps they wouldn't have been threatened had we been diligent. One of those massively important things is religious freedom.

Religious freedom is vital for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the reality that all other freedoms rest upon it. Without religious freedom, the freedom of speech goes out the window. Without free speech, it's easy to see that certain political ideas would be banned along with the books, magazines, radio stations, or web sites espousing them. Next, it wouldn't be long before certain common businesses would be banned. And we could go on.

The President further said that "our shared values are under assault like never before," and he's right. People need to be reminded that certain rights come from God, not the government. If murder is wrong, then there is an implied right to life. If stealing is wrong, there is an implied right to property. We could add more. The point is that government doesn't grant rights but merely recognizes them. That's why Americans have long held that certain of our rights are inalienable. Our government can't take them away because the government didn't grant them; God did. Religious freedom is an inalienable right given by God to all persons. That doesn't mean that all paths lead to God. They don't. There is only one way to God and salvation: faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But it does mean that God has given all human beings liberty of conscience, whether they're right or wrong. As John Leland, the Baptist preacher instrumental in the adoption of the Bill of Rights declared, "Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience. If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise, let men be free."

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