Focus on the Family with Jim Daly

Preview:

Dr. Os Guinness: People often say, right, “What’s the big issue for the Church?” And I would say, if you reduce it to one word, it’s faithfulness. And today, faithfulness requires courage. God is greater than all. The Lord can be trusted in every situation. Have faith in God, have no fear.

John Fuller: Hmm, well, this culture we live in can be so divisive and contentious. Sometimes it’s hard to know which way is up, but in Christ there is hope. And on today’s show, Dr. Os Guinness shares his observations of what’s going on in the culture. He’s got encouragement for all of us. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and I’m John Fuller.

Jim Daly: John, as you said, we’ll hear from Os Guinness today, that we’re in a pivotal moment in America and in the culture worldwide. Uh, but in the darkest of night, God’s light often shines the brightest. And this is a real opportunity for us as Christians to be salt and light in the culture. Uh, a lot of people are looking for solutions in politics, and I get it. Yes, we do have a civic duty to participate in representative government, but our citizenship is in God’s Kingdom, first and foremost. In fact, uh, Focus on the Family and the Colson Center releasing a documentary film, I want you to jot it down in your phone. Uh, this film is gonna release in late August called Truth Rising. And it is like goosebumps.

John: Hmm.

Jim: I’ve seen the trailer. It is a great film that stacks up and informs us what’s going on globally when it comes to spiritual things. And I’m so looking forward to this. I think it’s gonna be epic.

John: Hmm.

Jim: If I can use that term.

John: Wow.

Jim: Os Guinness is an important part of that film, along with John Stonestreet, talking about the cultural moment as, uh, he spoke with influential people from Europe and the United States, painting a picture of some of the problems and the answers that are found in Christ for this cultural moment.

John: Yeah, we’ve got, uh, some details for you about Truth Rising, uh, which comes out as Jim said in late summer, uh, at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And Os Guinness is a scholar. He’s a social critic. He is one smart guy. And, uh, Jim, you got a chance to sit down with him for a great conversation about culture, the Church, and spreading the gospel. Now, uh, he’s written a number of books, but, uh, the foundation for this conversation is the book by Os Guinness called The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and The Future of Freedom. We got details about that book on the website as well. Now we recorded this in Washington D.C. in front of a small group of Focus friends. And with that, here’s the conversation on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

Jim: Let’s get into it, Os. When you look at the culture today, uh, there’s so much turbulence going on. Um, you spent the early years, your early years, in China, and we’re gonna get into that. But h- how would you describe what’s going on in the American culture today as an observer? You certainly have lived here many years and you know American culture better than many Americans.

Dr. Guinness: Well, I’m a great admirer of this country and above all the distinctive view of freedom. But Jim, I think if you talk in a big framework, we are at what’s called a civilizational moment. In other words, the Western world is at a crucial moment. But so also is America. You have a deeper division here than at any time since just before the Civil War. The difference is you had a Lincoln then who addressed the evil, slavery, in the light of what he called the better angel of the American nature and his great conviction about the Declaration. You don’t have any leaders talking about that today.

Jim: Well, that’s a, a good follow up question. I don’t wanna miss the opportunity. From your observation, uh, what is it that made America great?

Dr. Guinness: Well, my book’s about the clash between the ideas coming from the American Revolution, which through the Reformation is rooted in the Torah, the 17th-century was called the Biblical century. And people were fascinated with what they called the Hebrew Republic. In other words, when the Church became the official faith of the Roman Empire 380 under the Emperor Theodosius, the Church made a bad mistake. It copied Roman structures.

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Guinness: Roman structures were hierarchical, based on power. And it was a Catholic layman who made the famous remark, you know, “All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But the Reformers, Luther to some extent, but much more Calvin, Zwingli, Bullinger, Knox, they went back to the Torah. And of course in the Torah, the heart of freedom is covenant. And that became the American Constitution. So America owes much, much more to the first five books of the Bible than many Americans have a clue about that.

Jim: That, I mean-

Dr. Guinness: So you need to unpack that in detail. For example, many don’t know that Constitution came from covenant, but equally the consent of the governed. If you read Exodus, the Lord puts out the covenant three times, it says. The people reply. All that the Lord says, “We will do.” That is the origin historically of a consent of the government. And that’s just the beginning. The best of the American experiment comes from that. You had a covenantal view of freedom.

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Guinness: And who defends that today?

Jim: Yeah. Let me ask you this, uh, Os, because it’s critically important, I think. Uh, you, you grew up in China-

Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm.

Jim: … as a little boy. I can remember you mentioned Bobby Kennedy. I remember I was seven years old when he was shot. I was watching the television. I can remember that so clearly. My mom had just left the room. You had that same experience or similar experience in China with Mao. What, what took place when you were seven, eight years old?

Dr. Guinness: Well, I was born there during the war and, you know, the Japanese killed 17 million in the invasion. And we lived in the city of Nanking, Nanjing today, which had suffered the brutal Rape of Nanking, the most brutal massacre in the 20th century. But I remember the day, I begin the book, when January ’49, my dad said to me, “Son, we’re in trouble.” Chiang Kai-shek had just abandoned the city and we’re at the mercy of the Red Army. And three months later, they crossed the river and in they came and the reign of terror began and they festooned the town, the city. And the reign of terror was palpable. My father was tried publicly, but all the evidence just fell apart. But you could see, I mean, we met Christian friends and other friends in the street, they’d look right by you. It was more than their lives were worth to acknowledge they knew a Westerner.

Jim: Hmm.

Dr. Guinness: If we went out, there was an instant crowd, “Death to the blue-eyed foreign devils,” and so on. Now it’s certainly important because many years later, when I was at Oxford as a graduate student, my tutor was at All Souls. The cream of the cream of Oxford Life. No students. And I would dine with Sir Isaiah Berlin, the great Jewish philosopher of freedom. And as we talked the first time at dinner, it turned out he’d been a seven-year-old in the Russian Revolution.

Jim: Hmm.

Dr. Guinness: And I was a seven-year-old, nearly eight-year-old in the Chinese Revolution, and then lived there two years. And as we swapped notes, we both, as it were, thanked the Lord that the English-speaking people had stood against totalitarianism. But in discussion, nobody would’ve dreamed, this is the mid-1970, nobody would’ve dreamed that America would be affected by cultural Marxism or any Marxism, because Americanism, the American dream, was always considered the substitute, the surrogate. America didn’t need anything like that. And yet you see the inroads today.

Jim: For the folks that may not spend much time thinking about this, what are those telltale signs?

Dr. Guinness: Well, you can see there’s a lot of radio programs and television programs that keep you up to date with the latest scandal or latest outrage. I would encourage Christians to think deeper, because the difference between the biblical revolution and the American one sadly wasn’t fully consistent. Take slavery and racism. But the difference between the Exodus, the Sinai Revolution, and the French Revolution as ideas is night and day. And we as followers of Jesus need to be defenders of the real thing. So they have different sources. One in the Bible, the other in the Enlightenment. They have different views of humanity. The biblical view is very realistic. That’s why you have separation of powers, because of the potential of the abuse of power. Whereas the French Revolution, utopian. But we’ve gotta make that case in public.

Jim: Os, let me ask you this. One of the difficulties when you sit and think about this is if we really experienced a Judeo-Christian experience here in the United States, why would people be walking away from it?

Dr. Guinness: The princi- … Well, look at the rise of secularism. Always been atheists, but there’s always a minority. But now look at secularism. Continent-sized, aggressive, hostile to the Jewish and Christian faiths. What’s behind it? Well, the principal cause, impulse, we don’t want God ’cause of what we’ve seen at the Church. So you look at the French Revolution, you remember the cry of the radicals. We’ll never be free until we strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest. Now, that didn’t touch America. You had the First Amendment. Faith was disestablished, it was voluntary based on freedom of conscience. But recently the same thing’s happening here, we are the chief cause of our own rejection.

Jim: Yeah. I mean, that’s well said. It’s disappointing. One of the things, when you see or try to understand what the Lord’s hand is doing right now, I don’t think the Church can control culture. You know, I think at times we think we can, if we can just get them in line. But so much of what I read in the scripture is about getting our own hearts and souls in the right place, living it well, and then holding each other accountable within the Church. We tend to hold the world accountable much more aggressively to a standard they don’t subscribe to than we do our own community.

Dr. Guinness: But as Tim Gegelheim was saying earlier, now our call is to be influence.

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Guinness: Salt and light, engaging, penetrating, demonstrating the difference. I love the fact, as the rabbis point out, the first word said to Abraham, the father of the faithful is negative, “leave”.

Jim: Hmm.

Dr. Guinness: That was break with your country, culture, and kin, and walk before me a new way. God’s new project in history. And our Lord, we’re in the world, we’re not of the world. Saint Paul, we’re not conformed, we’re transformed. Saint Augustine, we are the City of God, although we have to live in the city of man. The American Church is weak. It’s become profoundly worldly. But you know, I’ve been reading a lot about the prophets of the West and decline. And whether they’re atheists like Spengler or agnostics like Arnold Toynbee and Sorokin and Christians like Solzhenitsyn, almost all of them say the key to the West now is religion, which obviously in the West is the Christian faith. Will it be renewed and revived enough to play a role? If it’s weak or more corrupt, that’s the end of the West and certainly the end of the faith in the West. And it flourishes elsewhere in the world, thank God. But we of course believe in renewal. You take the Valley of the Tribunes or supremely the Resurrection, and then the history of the Church. I lo- … I mentioned my great-great-great grandfather came to faith in the Irish Revival. My great-grandfather, at the age of 23, was in the 1859 revival. And in that part of Ireland and the year after the revival of 1859, there was only one recorded crime. That was the ethical impact of the revival was so profound. So we who are Evangelicals, much tarnished today ’cause of politicization, we have an incredible part to play, ’cause we do believe powerfully in the capacity for awakening and revival. And as you know, all we bring is need and the urgency of our prayer looking to the Lord, because He needs to do what we know well we can’t do.

Jim: That idea of strategy also like the Bereans, correct? Taking a- kind of a view of what’s happening in the culture, in the Church, et cetera. I guess a question I would have is why are we missing that? Um, you didn’t see Jesus really going after the Roman Empire directly, give unto to Caesar what’s Caesar’s, right? And so I, I guess the question there, this battle between engaging the culture through a political mechanism versus engaging the culture probably right at your community level. You know, changing the neighbor next door by helping them, by showing orthopraxy to them. Uh, I’ll give you a, a story that I heard just this week where a man engaged a public school who would have nothing to do with the Church because they had come to this public school, made lots of offers to do things, but never followed through. You know, we’ll paint your building, and it never happened. And this gentleman came and he said simply, “What’s your budget to help underprivileged kids and their families?” And he said, “We have $37,000.” And this pastor said, “I have $50,000 I’d like to put toward that, to help the families that are struggling to pay the light bill, uh, to pay the rent, that are going to your school. Could we work together in this way?” And he followed through. And this pastor then was asked by this principal, ’cause he was living with his girlfriend, “Would you mind marrying my girlfriend and I, because we shouldn’t be living this way?”

Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm.

Jim: And then when they wanted to do VBS at this public school, the principal said, “Absolutely you can.”

Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm.

Jim: And then he had to defend it-

Dr. Guinness: Yeah.

Jim: … with all of the non-religious people going to the school. And he did. And they did run VBS, Vacation Bible School-

Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm.

Jim: … at this, uh, public school campus. So my point, there’s a lot in that-

Dr. Guinness: Yeah.

Jim: … that I’m giving you.

Dr. Guinness: We-

Jim: But this idea of fighting just at the political level or mostly aggressively at the political level won’t get the job done.

Dr. Guinness: Now you’re making an incredibly important point, but there’s a pitfall in it I would warn against too. You know, the early Church witnessed primarily in action, love in action, caring for people, feeding people, hanging in there in plagues when everyone ran and so on. It was amazing.

Jim: Hmm.

Dr. Guinness: But remember, they had zero freedom to move politically. So I meet people all over this country now who say something like, “I’m just keeping my head down. I can’t do much. The early Church couldn’t do much, so I keep my head down and pray.” Now that’s false for a simple reason. The American system is based on the covenantal Hebrew Republic. One of the key notions of the covenant is reciprocal responsibility of everyone for everyone. So the Jewish principle, every Jew responsible for every Jew. In other words translate that to America. Of course, that’s behind love your neighbor as yourself, and so on. Every American is responsible for the American Republic. Every American. And if a single Christian opts out and there are millions who don’t even vote, that is incredibly irresponsible in terms of citizenship and Christian discipleship.

Jim: Hmm.

Dr. Guinness: In other words, we have the freedom to move, to act, to give, to live, to speak, compared with our Chinese brothers and sisters or compared with Paul and the early Christians. And if we don’t use it, shame on us. It will go. It is going.

John: Well, it’s a stark, uh, observation from Dr. Os Guinness today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. The topic, of course, closely related to a new documentary that Focus on the Family will be releasing late this summer, uh, along with the Colson Center. It’s called Truth Rising. And the film addresses solutions to the spiritual decline we all see in the culture and the hope that we have in Christ. Learn more about Truth Rising and sign up to get updates at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. All right, let’s jump back into the conversation as Os Guinness talks about how you and I can be courageous followers of Christ and bring hope to those around us.

Dr. Guinness: I think as followers of Jesus, a hundred percent realistic, we look reality in the white of the eye. What do you think Jeremiah thought of his day?

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Guinness: But we always come out with hope. Put it another way, if you want me to be more hopeful-

Jim: No, I know I want you to be real. You’re a realist.

Dr. Guinness: Many of the modern ideas are totally bankrupt and very evidently bankrupt. So if you look to the future, the world where China looks threatening, where singularity is coming, huge questions for humanity. The gospel is not only good news, it’s the best news ever.

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Guinness: With the whole truths of scripture and the wonder of the gospel of Jesus, we should be off the back foot, off, out of a state of siege, and being the champions of justice, freedom, human dignity, all wrapped up in the good news of Jesus. This is an incredible moment.

Jim: Mm-hmm. It is.

Dr. Guinness: But you gotta look at evil in the white of the eye.

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Guinness: Now, how does that apply to America? You remember renewal in the scripture, Hezekiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, many others, they’re calling the nation back to its covenant commitments.

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Guinness: So you have a rededication. I wonder, could you have a Lincoln-like president today who knew enough of what, what America should be and was, could call the nation back as Lincoln did, Frederick Douglass did, Martin Luther King did, and call the nation back to its first principles, the American experiment rooted in the biblical republic? And then as part of that, nationally confess the sins that are wrong, and then make a commitment to tackle any and every racism or whatever today? You need to do something like that where the cross on the day of atonement are made more than just individual and spiritual.

Jim: Os, and that is the right hope. At the same time, where is that leader? Right?

Dr. Guinness: Well-

Jim: And I-

Dr. Guinness: You are a leader for bigger than-

Jim: Well that’s way too-

Dr. Guinness: … than I am.

Jim: … kind.

Dr. Guinness: I mean, I go out of my way to try and make these, you know, when talking, I, last year to a table room of, of congressmen, eight of us at a table. And I was telling them about Lincoln. I said at the end, “Which of you at your level would be the Lincoln?”

Jim: Did anybody put their hand up?

Dr. Guinness: I confess with that group, they all looked at each other.

Jim: Right. No, I, and that’s part of it. And I’m thinking specifically, you know, Focus on the Family, we’re about moms and dads raising kids and helping them-

Dr. Guinness: But rememb-

Jim: … stay together. So that question is when the Lord brings that person, hallelujah. What do we do in the meantime?

Dr. Guinness: But as you know, Jim-

Jim: (laughs)-

Dr. Guinness: … leadership biblically is not just the people at the top or out in front. Leadership is the person who will take responsibility, initiative for whatever’s right in front of them, an opportunity or a crisis. And you take someone then you … Dear old Ananias, that’s the only reference we have to Ananias. But what a part he had to play with Paul.

Jim: Hmm.

Dr. Guinness: Well, the Jews love someone that I’d never heard of till I heard them talking about it. Have you ever heard of Nahshon?

Jim: No.

Dr. Guinness: No. Nahshon in Jewish tradition, and they praise him, was the gentleman at the Red Sea who put his foot in it first.

Jim: (laughs) That’s good.

Dr. Guinness: In other words, Moses held out the rod.

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Guinness: The Lord sent the wind and all that. But everyone thought, you know, “After you, mate.” Nahshon strode out.

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Guinness: And everyone followed him. In other words, leadership is everyone … you mentioned moms and dads, everyone at their level, their sphere, standing up, speaking out. If all of us do that together, the scandal of the American Church … Compare us with Britain or France or Sweden. We’re a huge majority here. Maybe not where we were, still a huge majority. Take our Jewish friends, they’re 2% of America and yet they punch well above their weight. We’re a huge majority and we are called to be salt and light. So we gotta encourage, if every Christian in the spheres in which they live, their neighborhoods and so on, the workplaces, stood up, spoke out, the country could be turned around in 10 years-

Jim: Hmm.

Dr. Guinness: … calling as God’s in strategic employment of His people.

Jim: So in a practical way, if I were to say to Jean, my wife, and Trent and Troy, my two sons, here are two or three things that I think we should be doing as a practice within our family, what would you suggest?

Dr. Guinness: I, I’d have to sit down with your family. In other words-

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Guinness: … just as our Lord says to Peter, “Don’t you worry about John, you follow me.” And now it’s every family, every individual’s different. But so-

Jim: Engagement.

Dr. Guinness: No. For a lawyer be quite different from a factory worker or farmer from a computer scientist. And so, you know, we need to unpack calling and encourage people to think of their actual lives. Who are their neighbors they meet every week? Who are the colleagues at work they influence? So, you know, who are the audiences they influence? We all have audiences. We all maybe wish a bit, I wish I had a few more readers, I mean, and so on.

Jim: (laughs)-

Dr. Guinness: But we all have our little audiences.

Jim: Sure.

Dr. Guinness: Are we faithful to the Lord in the y- … But you have to think through, you know, John, Joe, Mary, whatever.

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Guinness: Chart your life for me. And then you might have an idea of the people you are responsible to reach.

Jim: And Os, I think, I think, that’s what I’m trying to get at. What are the practical things that you can do within your home to, you know, encourage yourself and your spouse to be thinking of these things, to impact the culture around you, to encourage your children to do the same? Um, you know, some kids go to school and they’re little warriors spiritually.

Dr. Guinness: Mm-hmm.

Jim: Others pull back because it’s difficult in this culture, especially public school, where you don’t talk about same-sex issues and you don’t talk about life and abortion. You just keep your head down. And again, that’s because the pressure, uh, that the culture puts on you to, um, shame you.

Dr. Guinness: But we need to equip them, Jim.

Jim: Yeah, correct.

Dr. Guinness: There are several people here with, you know, being at UVA, and my son was UVA, a double graduate there, but he was telling me that sometimes new Christians who are faithful, it meant going, say, to the anthropology class, and in the very first class tell the professor, “Well, I’m a born-again believer and I don’t believe in evolution.” Apologetically, that, that’s not the way to do it. If you’re up against it, totally. You listen and love to discover where people are and raise questions. Our Lord was a brilliant question-asker.

Jim: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Guinness: So we gotta equip people to know how to do it. It’s not just standing up and blurting it out all the time.

Jim: (laughs)

John: Mm-hmm. Some great wisdom from Dr. Os Guinness today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. That conversation was recorded in Washington D.C. with a few Focus friends in the audience. And Jim, I so appreciate hearing Os’ confidence and hope in the Lord. I mean, there are so many troubling things we live with, uh, day to day and he offered hope.

Jim: Yeah. Hope is it. And I think as listeners and viewers, that’s the key. I mean, we want to have the hope in Christ. That’s what’s most important. And that’s the point that Os is making. We need to be reminded every day that God’s got this. And as Christians, we need to be in prayer for revival in America, which begins in our own hearts, in our own little community. It’s not the big things, like Focus on the Family. It’s what you do at home and in your neighborhood-

John: Mm-hmm.

Jim: … that really ends up making the difference. Uh, that theme is captured beautifully in our new documentary produced with the Colson Center called Truth Rising. And I think it’s a great title because you feel it.

John: Mm-hmm.

Jim: Truth is rising in the culture today, and it’s much more than a film. It’s a movement that we want to create and it’s only gonna happen with, uh, the Holy Spirit being the undergirding of it. And if we’re going to impact our world for Christ, it begins with a recommitment to studying His Word, allowing the Holy Spirit to inspire us in our interactions with others as we share God’s truth and His love.

John: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Exactly. And Truth Rising is such an outstanding film slated to release later this summer. And, uh, it includes great cinematography, fascinating interviews, inspiring stories that are gonna help you live out your Christian faith with purpose. Look for more details and sign up to get updates on Truth Rising at our website, focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. And then be sure to get the excellent book from Os Guinness that really relates to this topic so well. It’s called The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom. Contact us to get a copy.

Jim: And when you ask for the book, please make a generous donation to support the work of Focus on the Family. You can be a lifeline to help us impact others for Christ when you give. And if you can help us with a monthly pledge of any amount, we’ll send the book to you as a thank you. And if you’re unable to make a monthly commitment, we get it. Uh, we’ll send the book for a one-time gift of any amount.

John: Yeah. Please pray, uh, today about how you might donate and then call 1-800-232-6459. 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. Or you can donate online at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Well, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.