Culture Friday: Living out a Biblical worldview

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 24th of May, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet. He’s president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, it’s that time of year for us when we empty the office and head up to Sioux Center, Iowa. We’re on campus here at the beautiful and growing Dordt University. It’s the 2024 World Journalism Institute collegiate course and we have our largest class ever.

BROWN: Good class, yes! They are getting the opportunity for some hands-on journalism practice. They’re hearing some excellent worldview lectures from Les Sillars who leads the journalism program at Patrick Henry College.

EICHER: And then of course nightly editing sessions led by our fearless WJI leader Lee Pitts who does such great work.

But let’s turn to student questions, John. I think we can get three in if I get out of the way, so here we go.

TAYTE CHRISTIANSEN: Hi John, I'm Tayte Christiansen, a student here at WJI and also a student at Hillsdale College. And I just want to know your thoughts on the Pledge of Allegiance, and if it's too similar to an oath, and if so, if Christians should be saying it, thank you.

STONESTREET: Yeah, good question. And I think there's always this tension between Christians and our ultimate loyalty that is to Christ and His Kingdom, and the loyalties that are part of being human and the way that God designed us in relationship with with one another. And then the loyalties that we owe, for example, those who've gone before, these are very real things. These are Christian things because they're real things loyalty, gratitude, honor, duty, goodness, beauty, truth. And thankfully, in the history of Christian theology, there's this idea of order, as almost kind of a description and adjective to things like love and the things like liberty and things like loyalty. So Aquinas, you know, talks about this idea of ordered loves. You see that order reflected in Jesus's, you know, answer to the question, what's the greatest commandment. He said, the first one is love, the Lord your God. Second one, which is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself. Now, you've probably experienced this and a culture like ours, which is always trying to tear apart truth and love that if you try to love your neighbor before loving God, you're not going to love either one. Well, you have to love God first. And that orders our love, then for our neighbor, I think the loyalty is the same way. I'm loyal first and foremost, to Christ, my ultimate allegiance has to be to him because He is first Creator and second Redeemer. And yet we know that he has put us in particular times and places, and we're created to be stewards. So there's a sense in which we are called to a time and place, and we're called to steward that time and place well. Now our loyalties to our time and place, our country, our nation, the circumstances in which we find ourselves in should never exceed that of Christ. And it should never, by being loyal to those things make us loyal to that which is antichrist, that which is evil, that which is wrong. So I don't think they're in conflict. I think they can be, you know, and I think for Americans, including American Christians, at times, they do feel like they're in conflict, and the order is upside down. But I don't think by definition, they have to be that way.

SARA SMITH: I'm Sara Smith, and I'm from Fargo, North Dakota. In conversations with people regarding support for Israel versus Palestine. I've heard some claim that the Koran asks Muslims to kill those who don't agree with them. But in the Old Testament, we see examples of God telling the Israelites to kill other people groups who might not agree with him. So how would we as Christians go about responding to the claim that the God of the Bible isn't that much different than the Koran or the God that Muslims serve?

STONESTREET: Yeah, it's a great question. First thing I would say is that the God that is explained in the Old Testament, and the New Testament, for that matter, and the God pointed to by the Koran are different in other ways. In other words, not just in how they deal with people outside of the religion. But just in essence, the most notable way, the fundamental way, this is a question of ontology, in other words, the nature of being of God that is different is Trinity. That makes an enormous difference, by the way, in practical terms, but the idea of the Trinity is blasphemous in Islam. Now, I would also make a distinction here in terms of the way you framed the question, which is in the Koran asked Muslims to kill those who don't agree with them. That is not exactly accurate, because what the Quran asks Muslims to do is kill anyone who sees God differently. And that is not, for example, the blanket requirement of a God of the Old Testament the God of the Old Testament also tells us people to welcome sojourners to welcome foreigners. In fact, later on in the prophets, when the prophets are going to the Israelites saying, Hey, you haven't kept up your end of the bargain here and this covenant you made with God, and look at what God gave you. And, hey, by the way, he got rid of your enemies in this land and very specifically says not because of who you are, this isn’t because you're great. It's because their sin and their wickedness was so grievous. In other words, God used in a sovereign kind of meta plan, at least if you take the prophets seriously, the Israelites ridding Canaan, of these people, as a way of protecting women and children in particular as a way of ending some really bad evil stuff. You also have out of the Judeo Christian vision of things, this long tradition that we call just war. In other words, that there is a moral consideration not just into whether to wage war, but how it's to be waged. That is not found in Islam. And you look at this, and you say, yeah, tthere's nothing like what comes out of the Judeo Christian understanding, which is, for example, restraint, not targeting civilians.

Now, of course, you know, what you're thinking, which is, well, in the Old Testament, you know, one of the big problems is that Israel didn't wipe everybody out, agreed. That was, according to the prophets and act of national judgment that God was carrying out against the Canaanites. And this was actually, you know, God doing this, and this way, which is something I think that's different enough. I'm not saying that there aren't tough questions, but there are significant differences.

I'll end with a recommendation, which deals with this way more than I could in the time allotted, And thus a way more intelligently. The Christian philosopher Paul Copan has written a book called “Is God a Moral Monster,” and addresses this specifically, you know, claims of genocide and things like that against the God of the Old Testament, and how does that purport to our sense of justice, so I would recommend that book highly.

TATTON STRASSHEIM: Hi, I'm Tatton Strassheim. I'm from Patrick Henry College. Here's a situation for you. You have Christian friends who have fallen into a homosexual lifestyle. You're having a hard time winning the argument with them. How do you remain faithful to a Christian worldview while still loving someone who is your friend and further, as far as you're aware, is your brother in Christ?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I mean, there's not a magic formula, there's not a four step plan, you just got to do it. And I think part of it is you got to do it in the face of being accused of not doing it. And I think that's where we have seen, for example, so many adults, faithful Christians, whose children have basically forced them into an ultimatum. You either affirm me or you don't love me. And they feel left with a choice that they don't know how to make. And I think that the answer to that, when someone lays that kind of ultimatum down, that we've got to be willing to say is, I know, that's what you believe. But I think you're wrong. I do love you, and I will show you, but I cannot affirm you. Because if I do that, then I would not be loving you. 

And I think at some level, you have to admit that those categories won't make sense to them. And in fact, those categories could very well make them angry and ended up breaking the relationship. So you have to do it, I think with a measure of the wisdom of Proverbs. But one of the things that says is a soft answer turns away wrath. And I know that sounds like really simple, because it is. But simple, doesn't mean it's easy, and doesn't mean it's any less true. Make sure that you have the conversation in the right context. Make sure you explain very clearly, I know you think this. Recognize, and in a sense, acknowledge maybe even honor that you have taken the other person seriously. But you have to be willing, at some level to disagree. And I think that's the crux of the disagreement is whether or not you can actually love someone while still holding fast to truth at all. 

This idea comes from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And his last piece that he wrote to his fellow countrymen was lived not by lies, that's what it's called. And his point was, look, to be faithful to Christ in these really confusing days, doesn't mean that every conversation you have with your friend who identifies as gay, needs to be about this. This isn't his true identity, and to talk to him or her as if it is, is actually to say something about them, that's not true, either. So you don't have to make every conversation about this. It's not like you're, you've failed Christ, if you haven't convinced him with your arguments, because, by the way, people are rarely rationally convinced of arguments. They want things to be true, and they justify their behavior and what they want with reasons. 

But here's what you've got to commit to: just don't go along with something that's not true. And I think that's a choice that many Christians increasingly are going to face in a culture that is redefining these fundamental words, fundamental ideas. Don't say something that's not true. Don't live in such a way as to say something that's not true. Don't live by lies. So I think that's going to be part of the commitment going forward for a lot, all of us actually.

EICHER: John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Have a great weekend!

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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