John Fuller: You know, historically, in the middle of chaos in any culture, the church, followers of Christ, have proven strong and determined to shine His light in the darkness. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller. And Jim, no matter how difficult things become in the culture, there’s always hope for us in Christ.
Jim Daly: I believe it, John. Some people call me the eternal optimist. But I think as Christians, we should be, uh, hopeful people. And we should never let the world take away our joy and steal that very important gift that God has given us. Sometimes we can look at the culture and be overwhelmed by it. I get it. We’ve got all that technology, but God is in control and He knows what He’s doing, and we simply need to stand for Him, show people the fruit of the Spirit, and trust that God will take care of things. Uh, we want to talk about the hope we have in Christ with our good friend Dr. Os Guinness, a renowned author and social critic. And by the way, he’s one of the hosts of our new documentary film called Truth Rising, which is premiering on September 5th, Focus on the Family and The Colson Center are excited about partnering on this new project, which we hope will inspire a cultural movement for Christ.
John: Right. And you can learn more and get the free four-part study that goes along with Truth Rising. Uh, we’ve got the link at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And Dr. Os Guinness is an author of a book called Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times. Now, he wrote this book because there’s so much doom and gloom around us. And so we’re gonna unfold that today. Now, we recorded this conversation with Os a while back, but all these principles still apply. So let’s dive in on today’s episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Jim: When you look at it, um, people of faith, Christian faith, why do we become fearful when the very words that Jesus spoke to us should give us the courage to stand firm?
Dr. Os Guinness: Absolutely. And you can see our brothers and sisters. I grew up in China.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Guinness: And saw the beginning of that brutal, vicious, systematic persecution. And we’ve seen this summer, what’s happening in the Middle East, but we’re in a new situation. So our western world, decisively created by the gospel, and yet it’s decisively repudiated it today. And so I call this the ABC moment, anything but Christianity.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: (Laughs).
Dr. Guinness: People will believe any weird, wild and wonderful thing except faith in Christ. And so we’re in a different situation. We’ve gotta recognize it.
Jim: What’s working in the human heart to be that ABC person? Why is there such animosity towards something so wonderful, the Good News?
Dr. Guinness: Well, there’s a general reason. Cultures in decline tend to turn against their old faith, whatever made them what they were. And the old faith in the West is clearly the Jewish and Christian faith. So they’ve turned against it. But if you think, some of the alternative philosophies are ex-Christian in a very special way. So Islam in the seventh century came out of a Christian context, very corrupt one, or you take secularism. No other cultures in the world have produced secularist societies like we have in the Christian West. So you’ve got a very special animosity in each of the cultures and philosophies that are ex-Christian. And we’re not used to that. And so there is a good deal of, I call it animosity, not hatred. The word is bandied around too much. But there is a real animosity we’ve gotta come to terms with.
Jim: Hmm. You write in the book about a profound transition, a moment, and you feel like we’re in that moment. What is that profound transition?
Dr. Guinness: Well, my conviction is this is an Augustinian moment.
Jim: What does that mean?
Dr. Guinness: You know, St. Augustine had the privilege and the challenge, he lived after 800 years of Roman dominance, and his vision was one of faith in our Lord that spanned the dark ages after the collapse of the church. And in many ways, we’re not 800 years, no. But western culture has been dominant to the world for 500 years. And we’re clearly living towards the end of that, the rise of countries like India, China, and so on. And so we’re in a new situation. You could analyze it various ways.
Jim: W- When you look at that, that people have talked about the torch, the flame of God, the Holy Spirit of God moving across the globe, almost just right around the globe, starting in the Middle East, Europe, the United States, Latin America, now moving into Asia. Is there credence to that? Is that, is that the path it seems to be taking?
Dr. Guinness: I don’t think that’s biblical myself. The idea that it’s gonna go west to Asia again, and we’re gonna be left behind, that’s not biblical. If you look at our world, we are the product of two earlier missions to the West. The first, the conversion of Rome. But what people forget is that when the Roman Empire in the West fell, so did much of the church, and the dark ages were very dark. And Jim, you and I are Irish.
Jim: (laughs).
Dr. Guinness: This is Ireland’s greatest hour, the conversion of the barbarian people, which was the second mission to the West. So we’re living today at the twilight of that long second mission. But instead of doom and gloom, we should say what the Irish did in fifth, sixth, seventh centuries. We’ve gotta win our world back to our Lord again. It’s not all over.
Jim: How do we go about doing that? I mean, you’re talking to folks for the most part, married couples, people with kids. John and I, we have children. We’re worried about their future. Will they have the freedoms that we have? Uh, today, we see them slipping away. It feels like nobody believes we can win.
John: Hmm.
Dr. Guinness: We certainly can. And we have in the past. Take the revival under Wilberforce and Wesley in England. But let’s leave that to one side for the moment. You know the maxim, “Think globally, act locally.” That’s a secular one. Our equivalent, I think, is to think and pray globally with vision for the entire world, because the gospel’s for the whole world, but to act locally, and for each of us, that’s the sphere of our calling. So none of us can save the world. We’re just little finite people. But we’re called to be faithful. Are we homemakers or teachers or, uh, lawyers or computer scientists or cab drivers or political leaders? If each of us is faithful in the whole of the spheres of our calling, the salt and light will be salty. The tragedy in America, we’re the huge majority, and yet tiny minorities like say the gays and lesbians, bless their hearts, have far more cultural influence than we do. Something’s wrong. The salt is not being salty.
Jim: How do we do that? Another way to say that is holding truth and grace in a proper tension.
Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm.
Jim: How do we do that? We seem to be struggling with either wanting to be fully engaged on the truth side, telling people they’re living incorrectly, they’re not honoring God, or on the other side, uh, being only about grace, as you said, and not engaging the truth of God’s Word. How do we go about doing that in our neighborhoods?
Dr. Guinness: Well, truth and notions like sin have been incredibly trivialized today. And I think, you know, Karl Barth talked about faith, having what he called a binding address. You believed something, you behaved a certain way, but that link between belief and behavior has gone. So what we believe and how we behave, they go in two different directions today. It’s part of the meltdown of faith. And you can see that there are reasons for this. We’ve shifted from authority to preference, and it’s not ’cause we’ve been attacked or bad theologies come in, although that’s there too. It’s that in a consumer society, everything’s a choice, a preference, a whim, including our faith and our lifestyle and all these sort of things. And there’s a massive meltdown. You know, the best analysis of our advanced modern world is in terms of it being a liquid world. Things that were once solid, faith, freedom, human dignity, they’re just melting and evaporating into the air.
Jim: Mm.
Dr. Guinness: And soon, we’ve gotta come to terms with this. So the gospel’s exploding in the global south, thank God. But the global south is largely pre-modern. And our privilege for the Lord is to stand firm in the heart of the advanced modern world, and to show that our faith in Christ can prevail against the toughest, most seductive challenges of our day.
Jim: The, the question is how to compete with, uh, the tools that are used by those who would oppose a godly worldview. I mean, it’s the media, it’s Hollywood, and the shows that are produced. It seems to be a withering advancement to where how do you proclaim a worldview that’s different from that and succeed at it? Um, that may be why we’re fumbling. We don’t have mechanisms.
Dr. Guinness: Well, we’ve got, always remember, we gotta begin by living ourselves.
Jim: Well, that’s very true.
Dr. Guinness: That’s where it has to start.
Jim: That’s the strongest media you have is live it.
Dr. Guinness: Absolutely. And as you know, Focus on the Family, the tragedy is that the three nurturing institutions of any free society are all in crisis. The family, the faith community, and the school.
Jim: Hmm.
Dr. Guinness: Those are the nurturing institutions without whom freedom never lasts, and they’re all in crisis. So we’ve gotta start there, the way we live and some of these basic nurturing institutions. Now you’re right, the media’s overwhelmingly progressive and liberal, MSNBC and so on. But how do we speak to people who don’t agree with us at all, who think we’re out to lunch? We gotta be persuasive in the same way that our Lord was and the great spokesmen down the centuries have been.
Jim: Uh, it’s important to me. I mean, I love church history, early church history particularly. And I, I feel like there are a lot of parallels to where we’re at today. Um, I’m sure that it’s not exact, but when you look at the demeanor, the temperament of the disciples in Rome at that time when they were seen as this, uh, far out sect, uh, trying to disrupt things, trying to potentially go against Rome and Roman rule, um, how do we apply those lessons of the New Testament, uh, to our everyday life?
Dr. Guinness: Well, in all sorts of ways. I mentioned persuasion. There’s an idea today that evangelism is one thing. Apologetics is something else, just for the intellectuals. But look at Paul. He is proclaiming and he is persuading, reasoning, defending. We gotta bring those together. So apologetics is ground-clearing for everyone who misunderstands or opposed or are closed or whatever. And when they know they’re in a bad situation, then the gospel is truly good news. We’ve gotta bring together apologetics and evangelism once again for every Christian. Be ready to give a reason for the hope that’s within you. That’s not addressed to intellectuals. It’s addressed to everyone in that church.
Jim: Sure. You know, one thing that I’ve noticed, Os, is, um, it seems to me, as I’ve talked to people that would not support the views that we have, whether that’s the, um, homosexual activist community, the abortion industry, but people that I’ve intentionally wanted to talk to, it’s fascinating to me that we’re wired in such a way. And I think it’s why God said, the Lord said, um, to love your neighbor. Because when you show sincerity, even with people who oppose you, and they sense, um, a certain love for them, it’s like their heart can’t help but open up to you.
Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jim: And you do become friends and you do begin to talk. Um, there’s an element there that’s really intriguing, isn’t it?
Dr. Guinness: Absolutely. So all communication must begin and end and go the whole way through in love. And a practical example, like Dan Cathy reaching out to gay leaders, or take Wilberforce. He was the most vilified man in the whole world when he started. Twice attacked physically and attacked in the papers and, you know, by everyone. But he loved his enemies. He was humble, humorous. But he did work at it. I mean, he figured out what he called launchers. How you go to a cocktail party, how you go to somewhere that’s absolutely against you, and you raise a question. And so, you know, one of his greatest tracks was that little Wedgwood plate, the head of the slave in the middle in chains. And Wilberforce knew that a question biblically is much more subversive than a statement. So the question round the plate, “Am I not a man and a brother?” And he’d figured that out carefully. If you look in scripture, our Lord is brilliant at asking questions.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Guinness: And questions are very subversive. So statements aren’t. Statements are take it or leave it. Questions get under someone’s skin.
Jim: That is fascinating. I mean, that is really true.
Dr. Guinness: You’ve got to learn of these things again.
Jim: Yeah. The art of asking the right questions.
Dr. Guinness: The art of persuasion. It’s very Christian and we need to do it, but it has to be done, as you said, with real love. And I would add, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Guinness: A lot of Americans, we’re actually much more secular than people realize. Paul talks about bringing thoughts captive to Christ, and that is an argumentation alone. That’s knowing how to really pray and bring in the power, supernatural power, because behind many of the ideas we’re opposing are principalities and powers.
Jim: Mm.
Dr. Guinness: And we can’t argue these just by mass movements.
John: Mm. Well, some, uh, really, uh, big concepts and deep thoughts and biblical, uh, ideas about how to engage, uh, in the culture. Uh, the book that we’re talking about on today’s Focus on the Family is called Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times. Our guest is Os Guinness. And we’ll have a description of the book and ways that you can order it at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And, uh, by the way, when you make a gift to this ministry of any amount, we’ll send that book to you as our way of saying thank you for supporting the work here to, uh, Jim, I, I guess it would be appropriate to say, to equip the Saints to do the work.
Jim: That’s a good way to say it. And uh, I want to ask you, uh, Os, where you left off there, I think it takes courage, because I think one of the big things we can believe privately fervently what we believe in Christ, uh, the challenge is expressing it in a culture that will begin to push back.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And maybe it’s that some people are uncomfortable with that, uh, they don’t have the answers, they lack confidence in expressing their faith, and so they retreat and they’re good in their home teaching their kids. But that’s not enough, is it?
Dr. Guinness: No. And in, in the book, I, I, we look at St. Augustine, and our Lord’s words, we’re called to be in the world, but not of the world. Now, what does that take? Two extremes reduce the church to impotence. One extreme is to be so otherworldly we’re not engaged at all. Our Lord told us to be in the world. That’s not an option. The other extreme is to be in it and of it. And sadly, that’s increasingly the problem of much of evangelicalism. It’s indistinguishable from the world. How are we in it, but not of it? Now, it’s easy to say, hard to do. I think you need three things. One is engagement, the second is discernment. In other words, people have gotta know, where is the world of my day good, beneficial for the kingdom? And we thank God for it, like healthcare, but where is it really seductive and dangerous?
Jim: Hmm.
Dr. Guinness: So we need engagement, we need discernment. But you’ve mentioned the third thing, courage. So wherever the world of our time, whether it’s ideas or its practices, are against the kingdom of our Lord, we’ve gotta say no. You know, Churchill, he always said, he, he had a wonderful line. He said, “The Persians,” he’s quoting Alexander the Great, “The Persians of Alexander’s time would always be slaves ’cause they didn’t know the meaning of the word no.” We need courage today. When the world is wrong, we go a different way. The caving in to the sexual revolution is pathetic. You know, people say to me, “How could the German Christians have caved in so easily to national Socialism?” And the answer is very simple, very easily if you understand the times in which they lived. And the amiable accommodation of much evangelicalism today has lost the courage to say no.
Jim: And I think that’s the problem though, Os. I think we struggle on how to say no in a way that doesn’t put too much distance there.
Dr. Guinness: Yeah, no, you’re right.
Jim: And, and, and we don’t have the art of persuasion and we can’t sit down at a table with somebody that doesn’t think our way. I know at times when I’ve met with people, I’ve been criticized by, you know, some within the Christian community saying, “You shouldn’t meet with those people.” But how do you take the gospel to people without meeting with people?
Dr. Guinness: If we are confident in the gospel, the way of Jesus is the highest way of human flourishing. I was appalled to read a pastor, evangelical pastor in San Francisco, who is leading his church away from orthodoxy towards espousing gay marriage. And he actually said that biblical views of celibacy were destructive of human flourishing.
Jim: Huh.
Dr. Guinness: Now that’s terrible. The way of Jesus is the highest Shalom, well-being, flourishing for humankind. And we’ve gotta have the confidence to know that. So we’re arguing for the best interests of our gay friends. We’re arguing for the best interests of our liberal friends. We believe in freedom, we believe in human dignity, and we can argue that fearlessly because the Christian faith is true and the gospel gives us the grounds for the best way to live.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
John: Well, I’m, I’m thinking of, uh, the person who is trying to process. There’s so much that you’re talking about, Os, and they’re overwhelmed. They just need to make it through this chaotic day. How does a mom who’s shuttling kids around, or the guy who’s putting in overtime just to make it all work, how do we in our daily lives, um, live out those convictions in such a way as to be winsome and, but not weirdly different?
Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm.
John: I, I don’t hear you saying that we need to be wearing our differences on our sleeves in, in some strange way. How do we do that?
Dr. Guinness: No, absolutely. No, well, I’d always go back to calling ’cause our modern global world is overwhelming. You know, Marshall McLuhan was right. We’re in a global village, but he was partly wrong, ’cause that notion of a village is too cozy.
John: Hmm.
Dr. Guinness: Every leader, or everyone starts to think about the modern world, what have we been doing in the last few minutes? You immediately realize we’re dealing with the entire world the entire time. And it is overwhelming. And the only way out is to remember at the end of the day, I’m just a little finite person. I’ve only got 24 hours. I’ve only got so much energy. I’ve only got so many dollars. Very little. I can’t manage the world. I certainly can’t save the world. All the Lord asked me to do is to be faithful in my calling.
John: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Guinness: Now, it sounds overwhelming ’cause we’re talking about the big things today. But at the end of the day, I know my little sphere is all I’m responsible for. So the homemaker, the teacher, that’s where I began, the lawyer-
John: Yes.
Dr. Guinness: Each person in the sphere of their lives, but it must be the whole of that sphere. And that was not a privatized faith.
John: It’s not a Sunday faith-
Dr. Guinness: No.
John: … that you’re talking about.
Dr. Guinness: No. And if you look at the tragedy of evangelicalism in the 20th century, for two-thirds of the 20th century, we were out of it.
John: Hmm.
Dr. Guinness: The wake-up year was ’73, and it was ’75 Moral Majority started, many things like that. But for most of the 20th century, with very few exceptions, like say Carl Henry, Francis Schaeffer and a few others, evangelicals were disengaged. It was evangelicals who were described by Theodore Roszak as privately engaging, publicly irrelevant. We let the culture get away from us with a faith that was wonderfully warm-hearted. I love evangelical pietism. We must never lose that.
Jim: Uh, you know, Os, when you look at the younger generation, I’m thinking the 20, 30-somethings, you see some really good things there-
Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm.
Jim: … in terms of their desire to be engaged, to be more fully, I think more fully orbed. Uh, some of the critics would say what they’re missing though is the orthodoxy, that many are not well grounded. They’re well-meaning, but they’re missing some of the orthodoxy. What’s your observation of the next generation, the younger folks who are coming up?
Dr. Guinness: Well, what you’re saying is exactly right. I would go actually further. You can look at all the things that they’re apt to lose. I mean, I grew up under the teachings of John Stott and people like this. You really had solid preaching and wonderful warm-hearted deep theology.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Guinness: But I go further than all that, Jim, although we haven’t got time. There is a broad today, an American notion of generationalism.
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Guinness: A generation used to be biological. So when our Lord talks about this generation in Luke 11, everyone alive on the earth at the same time, but increasingly it’s sociological, people who are shaped by certain common cultural experiences. And so generational has become a new form of identity. Well, he’s a boomer, she’s an X-er, he’s a millennial.
Jim: Right.
Dr. Guinness: And so on, as if we’re all different. And again, it’s become a new form of relativism. Have you heard the little phrase, “Well, it’s a generational thing you wouldn’t understand.”
Jim: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Guinness: That’s ridiculous. We’re all human beings, and you can see it’s a new form of the distrust of authority. You know, don’t trust anyone over 30. Well, yeah. He’s out of date, he’s a whatever, you know, and so on. We’ve gotta tackle that. It’s part of the worldliness of our time falling for this view of generationalism.
Jim: Huh.
Dr. Guinness: And the real challenge today is know to hand on well. And I often say to Americans, think of the Beijing Olympics. It was the first time that America had no relay runner on the podium, and the Beijing Olympics, you heard that incredible sound of the hollow aluminum baton dropping.
Jim: Right.
Dr. Guinness: They didn’t hand it on. And we’re in great danger and evangelicalism of doing a poor job in handing on to the next generation. And then the weaknesses that you are mentioning are coming out. And sadly, we’ll pay for them.
Jim: No, I mean, that is well said. And there’s so much there, uh, in terms of that need to pass on the faith to that next generation. But there is skepticism because they see and label everything now as bigotry. If you’re not, um, directly in line with the culture, uh, especially around sexual identity and those issues.
Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm.
Jim: It’s, it’s bigotry. It’s hatred, rather than it’s hope and it’s a better way, it’s a better, uh, worldview if you follow Christ in this regard.
Dr. Guinness: But part of the answer to this, and too many of us are spending time just attacking the extremes. We’ve gotta do that, make a clear stand. Where are the Christians setting out a huge constructive vision-
John: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Guinness: … of what the gospel means for the human future? You know, at the end of the book, I quote that debate 60 years ago where they’re talking about the Christian gospel and civilization, and they raised the question, can the church be warmed again? In other words, revived. And some of them like Emil Brunner, the Swiss theologian, say, “I’m not sure. The challenges of the modern world are maybe too much.” But Christopher Dawson says, “Of course the gospel can warm the church again.” But then he adds, “We mustn’t answer that too quickly or lightly, ’cause then the outcome of that answer depends the future of humanity.” And that’s right. In other words, if you look at the giant questions facing the world, they are overwhelming, again, John, but if you look at them, where are the secularist answers? They’re not there. They can’t give a grounding say to freedom or to human dignity in many of these things. Truly, it’s not a cliché to say, “Only in the good news of Jesus do we have some of the answers for the future of humanity,” but we better be there articulating them. In other words, we can’t just always be negative. Someone’s gotta paint the highly constructive, imaginative, appealing vision of the way of Jesus,
Jim: Uh, Os Guinness. Man. In some ways it makes my brain hurt to sit and listen to you.
Dr. Guinness: (laughs).
Jim: But that’s a good thing. It must be exercise.
John: Uh-huh.
Jim: But, uh-
John: Yeah.
Jim: You have brought so many good thoughts to us today, and I appreciate that admonition actually to go deeper with the Lord. There are more questions, and I know more answers that I would like to cover. Can you stick with this, come back next time and let’s keep the conversation going?
Dr. Guinness: Delighted to.
John: What a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Os Guinness on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I hope you’ll carve out the time to listen next time for part two, as he challenges us to be salt and light in our own neighborhoods, in our community, and, uh, in the world generally. Uh, how God has called us to make an eternal difference for Christ.
Jim: And John, Os has shared some very important concepts from his book, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times, I’ve got so much admiration for Os as a writer, a social critic. Man, he is whip smart. And I know every one of us will grow spiritually from reading this book. Let me say thank you for helping us to reach hearts for Jesus Christ here at Focus on the Family every day. Almost 800 people a day are committing or recommitting their lives to Christ through Focus on the Family.
John: Mm-hmm.
Jim: And that’s because of your financial support and prayers. That’s how we get that done. So right now, as giving has slowed down a bit in the summer months, would you consider helping us so that we can continue to impact the culture, see those decisions for Christ, help, uh, parents, help marriages, man, save a baby’s life? We can do that together if you become a monthly sustainer or a one-time gift. It all contributes to the mission. So be a partner with us.
John: To do that, uh, to make your one-time gift or to become a friend of the family with your monthly pledge, and to get a copy of Os Guinness’s book Renaissance, call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459, or donate and request resources at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. We also have details about our new documentary film featuring Dr. Os Guinness and John Stonestreet. It’s called Truth Rising. As was mentioned before, uh, Os has a key role in this film, which is going to inspire you to impact your world for Christ. That premieres on September 5th, and we’ve got a four-part study that goes along with it and so much more. Uh, all the details are on our website. Well, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Tune in next time for the balance of the conversation with Os Guinness, as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.
