Them Before Us #060 | 10 Words to Heal our Broken World | Scott David Allen

Summary

Them Before Us Podcast Episode #060: "10 Words to Heal Our Broken World" with Scott David Allen

In the latest episode of the Them Before Us podcast, hosts Jenn and Katy engage in an enlightening conversation with Scott David Allen, author and leader in Christian discipleship and poverty alleviation. The discussion centers around Scott’s new book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken World: Restoring the Meaning of Our Most Important Words. This summary captures the key points, insightful discussions, and profound conclusions drawn during the episode.

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1. Introduction and Guest Background

Jenn kicks off the episode by introducing Scott David Allen, highlighting his extensive background in ministry and authorship. Scott is recognized for his work on Christianity, culture, worldview, family, and Biblical justice. He has authored several books, including the bestseller Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice: An Urgent Appeal to Fellow Christians in a Time of Social Crisis. Scott currently serves as the president of the Disciple Nations Alliance, an international discipleship ministry aimed at equipping Christian leaders globally.

Scott shares his journey, emphasizing his 19 years with Food for the Hungry and his dedication to helping impoverished communities rise out of poverty. He underscores the pivotal role of language in transforming cultures, a theme central to his new book.

Notable Quote:

"If you want to see a change in a culture, you begin by changing language."
(Scott David Allen, [04:56])

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2. Overview of "10 Words to Heal Our Broken World"

Scott delves into the core premise of his book, which revolves around the transformative power of words. He argues that the translation of the Bible into indigenous languages introduced vital concepts—such as compassion, justice, and freedom—that were previously absent in those cultures. These words, when embedded into societal institutions and curricula, catalyzed significant positive changes.

Scott emphasizes that understanding and restoring the original biblical definitions of key words is essential to combating cultural shifts driven by adversaries of the gospel. His book identifies ten critical words that, when redefined, can either heal or further fracture the world.

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3. The Power of Words in Shaping Culture

Scott illustrates the profound impact of words through a compelling example from Guatemala. He recounts how the indigenous Pokemchi community, despite rapid church growth, remained mired in poverty due to a lack of understanding of the biblical concept of "dominion."

Notable Quote:

"Words are like building blocks of culture. They're the most basic building blocks."
(Scott David Allen, [06:14])

He narrates how introducing the word "dominion" transformed the community’s approach to pest control, empowering them to implement effective agricultural practices independently.

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4. In-depth Discussion on "Marriage"

The conversation shifts to one of the ten pivotal words: marriage. Scott contrasts the traditional biblical definition with contemporary cultural definitions, highlighting significant discrepancies.

Traditional Biblical Definition: Scott refers to Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary entry, which defines marriage as a "God-ordained, comprehensive, exclusive and permanent union" between a man and a woman, emphasizing procreation and the nurturing of children.

Contemporary Definition: He juxtaposes this with the modern definition found in platforms like Microsoft Word, which describes marriage as "a legally recognized romantic, caregiving relationship between consenting adults who intend to live together as sexual and domestic partners." This definition omits crucial elements like procreation, permanence, and the complementary roles of husband and wife.

Notable Quote:

"If this idea comes into the church, and this is back to your question, why I wrote the book, like Christians, we have to know that this is happening. This is a tactic to change the culture on the part of adversaries of the gospel."
(Scott David Allen, [10:24])

Scott warns that such redefinitions erode the foundational aspects of marriage, leading to societal issues like the neglect of children’s needs.

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5. In-depth Discussion on "Sex"

The episode also delves into the word sex, exploring its traditional and modern interpretations.

Traditional Biblical Understanding: Scott defines sex as both the biological distinction between male and female and the procreative act intended within marriage. He underscores that sex, as defined in the Bible, is a powerful, God-given gift meant for procreation and enjoyed within the confines of a permanent marital union.

Modern Redefinition: In contrast, he explains how contemporary culture conflates sex with gender identity, transforming it into a purely social construct. Terms like "non-binary" and movements advocating for sex as entirely self-defined have stripped sex of its biological and procreative significance.

Notable Quote:

"The redefinition of sex has completely taken over that subjectivity and said that, you know, you've elevated gender."
(Scott David Allen, [24:39])

Scott argues that this shift leads to moral relativism, where the lack of objective definitions results in cultural decay and a "sexual wasteland," characterized by issues such as pornography addiction and the devaluation of procreation.

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6. Implications for Children's Rights and Society

Aligning with the podcast’s mission to prioritize children’s rights, Scott highlights how the redefinition of words like marriage and sex directly impacts children. By removing procreation and the nurturing aspects from the definition of marriage, society begins to overlook the needs of children, leading to their neglect and diminished role in cultural and familial structures.

Notable Quote:

"Children are being neglected. Children are paying the highest price."
(Scott David Allen, [15:29])

He connects the loss of clear, biblically grounded definitions to broader societal issues, emphasizing that children suffer when foundational cultural concepts are undermined.

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7. Conclusion and Future Directions

As the episode wraps up, Scott shares information about the upcoming release of his book on November 15th and encourages listeners to visit 10wordsbook.org for more details and to join the launch team. He also promotes the Disciple Nations Alliance website, disciplena.org, as a resource for Christian discipleship and biblical worldview training.

Notable Quote:

"The definitions that God himself gives to us in His Word are powerful. They're beautiful. And they create beautiful, fruitful, thriving cultures."
(Scott David Allen, [19:43])

Jenn and Katy express their appreciation for Scott’s insights, recognizing the profound impact his work can have on listeners dedicated to children’s rights and cultural transformation.

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Final Thoughts

Episode #060 of the Them Before Us podcast offers a thought-provoking exploration of how language shapes culture, particularly through the lens of children's rights. Scott David Allen’s insights into the redefinition of crucial words like marriage and sex serve as a wake-up call for advocates to reclaim and restore their original meanings to foster healthier, more just societies. This episode is a must-listen for anyone committed to understanding the intersection of language, culture, and the well-being of children globally.

For more information and to access resources mentioned in the episode, visit 10wordsbook.org and disciplena.org.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign welcome to the Them Before Us podcast. Today we're chatting with Scott David Allen. Scott is an author and teacher on topics ranging from Christianity, culture, worldview, family, Biblical justice and poverty. He's authored and co authored numerous books, including his best sellers selling book why Social Justice Is Not Biblical justice, an urgent appeal to fellow Christians in a time of social crisis. He is president of the international discipleship ministry, the Disciple Nations Alliance. Before that, he worked 19 years with the Christian poverty alleviation organization, Food for the Hungry. He's traveled extensively in Africa, Asia and Latin America, equipping Christian leaders to embrace a biblical worldview and live it out publicly in faithfulness to Christ's command to make disciples of all nations. He and his wife Kimberly live in Bend, Oregon. He's a proud father of five children and has three grandchildren. Scott, thanks so much for joining us today.

[B]

It's great to be with you, Jennifer. Thanks for having me.

[A]

Yeah. And so we're here to talk about Scott's new book, 10 Words to Heal Our Broken Restoring the Meaning of Our Most Important Words. And I'd love to start out just by hearing a little bit about you. You can introduce yourself to our audience and maybe just share about some of your non profit experience and then what you're currently doing would be great.

[B]

Sure, yeah. Glad to. Well, yeah, so I my adult life has been involved in, in ministry to the poor through the ministry of Food for the hungry and now the Disciple Nations Alliance. I felt that calling right out of college God used the parable of the Good Samaritan to really lead me in this direction and have really given my life in many ways to, you know, helping impoverished communities around the world to rise out of poverty. And over the years we, me and my co workers Darrell Miller and Bob Moffat, my co founders of the Disciple nations alliance, we began to recognize a couple of things. In some of the most impoverished nations of the world and communities the church was growing quite rapidly in places like Africa and Asia. And so it created attention for those communities. They, they had a rapidly growing church, but they were living in contexts of great brokenness and poverty and they knew that something wasn't right. Like this just wasn't the completion of the Great Commission. And so we be to see that, you know, really what was lacking in many respects the gospel had come a gospel of salvation. And people, you know, they were saved and their churches were growing, but they didn't have much knowledge of a biblical, what we call a biblical worldview. They still had animistic beliefs, you know, whatever their Indigenous belief systems were. And those indigenous beliefs were really a lot of what was holding them back and keeping them bound in poverty. So we began a ministry to just disciple people in some of the most basic principles of the biblical worldview that actually lead people out of poverty and that. That ties into the book that I just, you know, we're going to talk about today. Because so much of the transformation that has happened in the world through the Bible, through Christians, through Christian missions, has been as the word of God was translated into indigenous languages, it brought with it a whole new vocabulary, new words that didn't exist before, words that we take for granted, like compassion or justice or freedom. I mean, these are really important words, even how we understand human marriage, these really important concepts. The Bible brought a true definition to cultures that had no concept for that. And it was when those definitions became known and embedded in the culture, in the institutions and curriculum and all sorts of ways that the nations began to change in positive, hugely positive ways. So my mentor, Darrell Miller, he said to me many years ago, if you want to see a change in a culture, you begin by changing language. That simple idea really stuck with me and has been kind of a guiding, kind of a direction for my ministry.

[A]

That's actually a quote I had pulled from the book to ask you about, because I love that setup. And I'll read the full thing in a little bit. But as you were talking, I remember one of the stories that you mentioned in your book. I forget which country you had identified, but it was where the rats were eating a significant portion of the corn. Was that Peru?

[B]

It was in Guatemala, in the highlands of Guatemala with an indigenous group called the Pokemchi. It's one of the. Guatemala remains, sadly one of the most impoverished nations in the Western hemisphere, and yet it's got one of the fastest growing and largest evangelical churches. So it's. It's a kind of great example of what I'm talking about. And it's just, yeah, this is a story about a group that had been evangelized, but they still didn't understand some of these most basic biblical concepts. They didn't have words to describe them.

[A]

Yeah, well, in the word you give, the example is someone who is ministering to them and discipling them, teaches them about the concept of dominion.

[B]

Dominion. Yep.

[A]

And that it means you don't need to let rats eat most of your production from farming, just because it's always been that way. And it really revolutionized how much food they have.

[B]

And absolutely, it transformed that, and it literally transformed that community. And that was one word. And it just. It's really powerful illustration of the power of words. We use words, but we don't think about them very often. We kind of take them for granted. But yeah, in that. In that culture, it was. The indigenous belief system was animistic. And so in an animistic kind of belief system or context, people actually believe that nature, the gods, these powerful forces of nature, are more powerful than human beings. And human beings in that respect are kind of passive recipients of what comes their way. And that carried over all the way to something as simple as, you know, these folks were subsistence farmers. Corn was their crop. And every year, rats would get into the corn crop and eat half the crop, and they never did anything about it. Which for Americans seems really nonsensical. Like, of course you would try to get to the bottom of that problem and fix it. The reason we think that way is because we've been discipled over generations with this biblical concept of dominion, that human beings don't just let rats do whatever they want. We actually have dominion over things like rats and corn and weather. And so we just take that for granted. But we don't realize that's a biblical concept. It comes from Genesis chapter one. And that, you know, that idea really shaped our culture. So Arturo, the missionary there, he. He said, they don't understand this concept. And he went about, you know, doing some kind of fun skits. They were, you know, they were an oral culture. So he. They did a lot with skits and, you know, things that stories. And he just told them this story. He said, I want you to imagine, farmer, that you're out there working hard in your field, and it's hard work. You got a weed, you got to go down to the river to bring water back to, you know, to water the crops. And you do that for months. And finally harvest comes. And you over here, I want you to play the part of the rat. Life is good. You're kicking back, just relaxing. And then at harvest, the farmer, you just put that corn on a platter and you serve it to the rat. And then he, you know, and they did that. They literally acted that out. And then, you know, then he read the passage in Genesis about how God created man in his image, male and female, and gave them dominion, the right to exercise godly stewardship and care over his creation rule. And he said, now who's got dominion here, you or the rats? It was that simple question. And then the light bulb went off, and they said, the rats. And he said, should it be that way? And they said no. Well, then the question, next question is, what are you going to do about it? So they themselves went ahead and created, you know, techniques and technologies for protecting their corn crop. They didn't need Westerners to come down and do community development projects. They were plenty smart. They just didn't have the idea, you know, again, that simple thing. You know, words are the, they're like building blocks of culture. They're the most basic building blocks. They just didn't have that piece in the puzzle until Arturo brought it from the word of God.

[A]

Yeah. So good. Your introduction in the book starts with, God created us in his image with the capacity to use words and language to create culture. And then you quote your friend Darrow, who you mentioned, saying, if you want to change culture, you must begin by changing language. The enemies of the gospel understand this very well. Someone is going to shape culture. Someone's going to define words and embed those words into systems and institutions at the foundations of, of a culture. If not Christians with true biblical definitions that lead to freedom and human flourishing, non Christians with false redefinitions will destroy that. Destroy nations will do it. So can you tell us a little bit more about that? But, but more, what made you want to write this book? And maybe why did you choose the ten words you did?

[B]

Yeah, good question. Well, I think, you know, as you were saying that I was watching, observing, like we all are just what's happening in our culture right now, especially in the west, in the United States. And what I noticed was that there is this really intentional effort amongst people that have the power to do this, to redefine words and language and then really change those words in the culture, to embed them in the culture. And you know, for example, we saw this before the Supreme Court Obergefell ruling with marriage. That whole same sex marriage, you know, debate that happened a few years ago was really predicated on a redefinition of marriage. And I was watching that going, wow, that's so amazing. It actually caused me. Let's just look at that one word for a second, because that's such a basic word. I mean, kind of as goes marriage, you know, so goes a culture, you know, and so I went back, I did this often in the course of the book. I went back to an old dictionary that was actually written by one of the founding fathers of the United States. In fact, he was the gentleman who began our systems of education, Noah Webster, amazing Christian man. And he knew that the United States is a free nation. You know, constitutional republic that was predicated on the idea that people would self govern wisely and you know, that that would only last if people had moral virtue that they needed to self control. And that was based on Christian faith. So he wrote this dictionary based on biblical definitions. And so I read what he wrote about this word marriage. And let me just read that really quick. He said this is from his 1828, I believe is the year. It was the first year that Noah Webster wrote that dictionary of the American language. He said, this marriage is a God ordained, comprehensive, exclusive and permanent union that brings a man and a woman together as a husband and a wife to be a father and a mother to any children their union brings into being. It is based on the reality that men and women are different and complementary and that reproduction depends upon a man and a woman and that children need both a mother and a father. That's a, you know, kind of a slightly modified version of what he wrote. So I read that and I thought, gosh, that's so deep and rich and there's so many powerful ideas in that. And then I went and I looked up marriage on my Microsoft Word. You know, our, you know, Microsoft has a dictionary embedded, you know, you can hover over any word in a, in that you're writing in Word, the software, the program, the app. And I looked up the word marriage and this is what I read. It said, marriage is a legally recognized romantic, caregiving relationship between consenting adults who intend to live together as sexual and domestic partners. And I thought, wow, that's, I mean, it really struck me that's really a different concept. I mean, they're hardly even relating. And yet that's been, that's already in the dictionary, so to speak, that we're referencing, you know, that our students are referencing when they write papers and whatnot. And so, yeah, I just thought, wow, you know, this is really. If this idea comes into the church, and this is back to your question, why I wrote the book, like Christians, we have to know that this is happening. This is a tactic to change the culture on the part of adversaries of the gospel. If we're not aware of that tactic, then we can easily go along with these redefinitions. They just kind of wash over us. And I began to see that over and over with word after word. And I began to be very alarmed, mainly for the church, for my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. I thought, we've got to know these biblical definitions so that it's kind of like a counterfeit, you know, it's like when somebody tries to pass a counterfeit. You have to know the original well enough so that you can see the difference. And I thought people, Christians, I'm afraid, aren't. They don't know the original, the true biblical definitions well enough that they're. So they're buying the counterfeit. They're pass, you know, where they're, they're, they're taking it in, so.

[A]

Right. Yeah. Well, in the 10 words that you highlight for your book are truth, human, sex, marriage, freedom, authority, justice, faith, beauty, and love. And so with the time that we have together and then, you know, sort of our audience and our focus as an organization, we'd love to focus on marriage and sex. We went into marriage a little bit.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I'd love to know if you could just break down. Let's start with the redefinition. Let's start with what it is right now. If we just looked at culture. You mentioned the, you know, if you look online and you looked up a definition. But what are some of the other things we're seeing when we, you know, if you're talking to someone on the street and you hear or see marriage, what are we seeing now?

[B]

Well, I think really relevant for your ministry, Jennifer. You know, you guys are all about, you know, them before us is about recognizing the importance of children and elevating their interests. And what you notice, like for marriage right away, is that the older definition of marriage involved. It certainly was about the couple, the husband and the wife. But it goes right away into the fact that God created or established this for the purpose of procreation. So children are mentioned. The fact that children need to be raised, they need to be properly nurtured and trained. All of that is mentioned in this original concept of marriage. And that, you know, for, of course, millennia, that was understood. Right. You know, what I noticed about the redefinition is that children aren't even mentioned. It's just completely stripped out. So now it's an institution. Marriage is an institution between adults, and it's only interested in the needs of adults. And children are completely cut out of this. And I think you. You see that. So again, words shape culture. So we're beginning to see cultures now where children's needs, just children themselves. Right. We're not even reproducing hardly, you know, much less caring for the needs of our children. And that's, again, that's what happens when you change the definition of a word like marriage. You, you change a culture and children are being neglected. Children are Paying the highest price. The same thing goes for the word sex. We can talk about that as well, but go ahead. Yeah.

[A]

I was just going to ask if you'd heard the. It's the acronym dinks.

[B]

Yeah, go. But remind me what that is.

[A]

D I N K. So it stands for double income, no kids.

[B]

Yes, double income, no kids. Exactly. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. What's funny about it is it's not. It's not used to describe individuals who are infertile or who desperately want children in some way. It's sort of been used culturally for people who've decided we don't want kids because we want to go to Disneyland or we want to go on vacation.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And you know, and it's really kind of to your point because marriage now is just about, hey, I like this person and I want to hang out with them. It doesn't matter. We can intentionally just make sure we don't have any children because that was really harsh. Our mellow. Like, then we don't get to go do the things we want to do.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And. And then we're also seeing some of the other things you chat about in your chapter. So it's no longer looked at as permanent. So it's just about how.

[B]

Correct. That's completely stripped out. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So it's just about how I feel. If I'm in love with you, we're married, I'm out of love with you. So divorce is prominent. Redefining it to have two men, two women. For now. You point out that there could be further redefinition down the road as well.

[B]

Yeah, it's so true. In Carta or the Microsoft definition, it struck me that it mentioned two adults. Now, it didn't mention the old one mentioned a husband and wife, male and female. That sex binary was in that definition. That's been stripped out, of course, and that's now codified in our law. Again, if you change, you know that before you see laws change, you have to change definitions again. That's. It's upstream from all of that. So the definition was changed in marriage. Male, female is stripped out. Now it's just two adults. Right. But then what struck me was the word two. Like what? You know, why two? Right. You know, and I thought that's not going to last because once you start redefining these words at will, then, you know, you just keep redefining them and there's already big efforts now underway. I mean, it's amazing how many articles you read in places like the New York Times or the New Yorker about polyamory or polygamy or, you know, it's just. It's all coming back now. And of course, you know, that. That gets us into sex, but it's kind of the. The basic ethic of sex is if you can do it and you want to do it, then there's nothing to stop you from doing it. Right. So why. Why to, you know, there's no reason for that anymore.

[A]

Right. Or even the word adult.

[B]

Yes. Yes.

[A]

People have to recognize, kind of. To your point, we've been discipled in the west to believe that consent and being an adult are actually factors in what it means to be married.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And granted, adolescence maybe has changed over time. And I mean, the founding fathers were 16, 17 years old, and they were practically lawyers and, you know, fluent in multiple languages and things like that. But we don't marry children and we don't marry off children, and there's cultures around the world right now that are doing that. So when people have done all this redefining and kind of saying, well, there is no objective truth, which is one of the chapters that you have as well, then what.

[B]

What.

[A]

Where can they stand to say that something is wrong? You know, so we're just. Whatever culture says is fine now. We just have to slide along and you see some of. I mean, it's not as prominent, but there's a little bit of, well, shouldn't consent be that age of consent be lowered? Because don't children know what they want best? Or don't they speak for themselves when it comes to gender and their sexual practices and things like that? So it's quite scary.

[B]

Yeah. There's probably no two words. The words sex and marriage, and of course they go together. There's probably no two words that have been more radically redefined with such massive social implications in our culture in the Western world than those two words. I mean, sex has been, you know, with the sexual revolution. I mean, it's just been. The whole concept has been completely upended. And at this point now, anything goes, you know, and we're living in this kind of wasteland, really, of all of the terrible fruits that have come with that. You can think about the millions of children killed through abortion. And, you know, it just goes on, you know, all of these people addicted to pornography now, you know, and it's just. We live in a sexual wasteland, and that's what happens when we abandon God's definition. You know, some people struggle a little bit with this. Even Christians struggle with this. Like, well, who. What gives us the right to define words. And my response to that is, well, we're not defining them. God is. And you have really two choices at the end of the day. Either God exists, the God of the Bible, the one who created everything and spoke and revealed truth through His Word. Either that's true or it's not. And if there is no God, he doesn't exist and his Word isn't true, then who's going to define words, right? If it's not him, it's going to be us. And, well, who's us? It's not you or me, probably, it's the people that can garner the most power culturally to make that change. Right. And then we all have to live with that. Right? So it's either God or the most powerful human beings that are going to define these words. And I'll tell you what, the definitions that God himself gives to us in His Word are powerful. They're beautiful. And they create beautiful, fruitful, thriving cultures. When you abandon them, you just, you are you. It leads to death and a wasteland. And that's what we're seeing around those two words right there.

[A]

In particular, the good definition of marriage. One way that you describe it in your chapter is you say marriage is a relationship like no other because it uniquely involves procreation, the raising of children, and the establishing of families, communities, cultures and nations.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And some of the ways that we know that we believe marriage is defined as, you know, God laid out, is that it's complementary, it's male and female, it's procreative, it has the capacity to create new life. But you talk about just if because a couple is infertile doesn't mean their marriage doesn't count, but it had that potential to do so because it's male and female and it's exclusive, it's permanent, it would produce godly offspring, not just have a bunch of kids. But know the idea is that those, yeah.

[B]

Malachi specifically talks about God's desire for godly offspring. And so that implies that, you know, parents, and of course there's so much in the scripture about this, have to be very intentional about the raising of their kids to know the truth and to be able to be self controlled and virtuous, obviously to know the gospel, to be saved, you know, things like that. So.

[A]

Yeah. Well, let's move to one of the next chapters. You do this is the word sex and you use this both the definition. Both means our identity as male or female, the way God created us. And also the act God created to be Enjoyed within marriage and the procreative act. Let's focus on the first part for now. How do you see that culture has twisted this concept of sex, being male and female in such a damaging way?

[B]

Well, you know, when the word sex in the Bible, you know, it's actually not a word that you see in the Bible, but you see the concept right away in Genesis, especially when God creates man, when he gets to the creation of man in Genesis chapter one, male and female, that's very explicit. And then Jesus reaffirms that in the Gospels, you know, that in the beginning, God created, created man, male and female. And so sex historically has meant that division between male and female and then the coming together of a husband and a wife in a marriage through sexual intimacy to produce children. So both of those concepts are in the Bible, very biblical ideas. But what we've done now, and this is, you know, this is nothing particularly new, this has gone on for some time now, is we've kind of equated the concept of sex and gender. And I know it's very confusing, you know, to people. I even had to get my head kind of screwed on about this. But, but gender, historically, it has a legitimate historical meaning to it. It, it tends to mean how sex, male and female, is expressed. And often that does vary culturally. Right. So there's certain kind of norms. You know, boys wear blue, girls wear pink. You know, there's kind of that expression of gender. So gender historically is a bit of a subjective concept. Right. Whereas sex is not. It's objective. You know, you're born male or female. It's biological reality to it. But what's happened today is that because we've conflated these two things, sex and gender, and we, even Christians use those words like they mean exactly the same thing. The redefinition of sex has completely taken over that subjectivity and said that, you know, you know, they've elevated gender. So the way that I define sex, the redefined sex, is that sex is synonymous with gender. It's a social construct. Purely. It's a purely social construct. It's a. It's a person's subjective sense of their sexual identity. So what you see today with this redefinition of sex is that the biological male, female is completely gone. And what you've got now is it's replaced by this completely subjective sense. What I think I am, which is very postmodern, by the way, we could get into that a little bit too. But, you know, this kind of. I define reality based on my subjective Feelings. And so that's. That is the way sex is defined or understood today. We've gotten away from male, female. And now, you know, you famously see Katanji, Jackson Brown or many people. Right. They're asked this question. Of course, Matt Walsh did that whole documentary, what is a woman? People have a hard time answering it now because sex has been redefined. You know, we don't. We don't see it as male, female. It's. It's this gender identity that is as long and expressive as people's imaginations. And so lgbtq. But of course it goes on. Now there's something like 50 and there's no end in sight. And so that's where we're at today.

[A]

Yeah, I thought one of the great points you made in that chapter is you say basically people, err, either that it has no meaning at all. And this applies to both the act, the sex.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And identity. So, yes, like people who say now they're non binary, that's in essence saying it doesn't matter to be male or female. And I don't fit into the stereotype that I think those things are. So I'm non binary or it's the people who have sex with as many people as possible.

[B]

Right.

[A]

They think it has no meaning, but the flip side is they put all meaning into it. And so, yes, all of my identity and who I am is in, you know, gender identity, or all of my identity is in can I sleep.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or can I rack up however many people or, you know, am I have sexual prowess or whatever it is. So it's kind of those two. The two sides of the coin.

[B]

Yeah. So, yeah, that struck me too, as I was writing. The chapter is that you had this kind of polar opposite kind of view on sex as, you know, kind of the, you know, the hookup culture. Right. It's just something I do because I'm bored on a Friday night, you know, and you've got apps now that, you know, make all of this kind of hookup culture possible. And it really doesn't, you know, on one level has no particular meaning beyond just kind of enjoyment. Right. Just recreation. And on the other end of the spectrum, it's the locus of all meaning and all purpose. This kind of comes from Margaret Sanger, actually, you know, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Back in the 1800s, there was this kind of, you know, I don't know if many of your listeners know this, but she was the founder of modern birth control. And of course, Planned Parenthood now is associated with abortion but the reason that she wanted birth control is because for her sex was the highest thing. She was an atheist, didn't believe in God and she kind of elevated sex into a God itself. In other words, to be fully self actualized, you had to have sex as much as possible. And of course births and procreation gets in the way of that. And so that's the enemy. You have to kind of control that so you can have as much sex as you want because that's how you live a full life. The Bible, you know, says something kind of really different about sex, right? It says yes, it's incredibly important. God created us with this amazing ability to procreate. It's appropriate for marriage. It's a good thing. It's to be enjoyed, appreciated. It's a gift from God. So yeah, we can enjoy it, appreciate it. It's a powerful force because of its association with procreation. That's why it's only to be used within that safe environment of a marriage. It's got too much power outside of it and we see the damage when that's done. But the Bible also says it's not the be all and the end all. You can be fully celibate and live a full life. Jesus exam was obviously the model of this. The Apostle Paul, many people down through the ages. So it's not God, you know, and it ought not to be elevated up to that level of God. So but, but now, you know, with the redefinition we're really getting into a paganized kind of a post Christian or you know, pre Christian view of sex which is just have as much as you want, it doesn't really have any meaning or it is kind of a God. You know, in ancient pagan cultures there was temple, prostitution that, there was all sorts of kind of worship really that was involved with sex. And we're getting back to some of that as well.

[A]

Yeah. Well Scott, this has been great and definitely I want to recommend to our folks to pick up your book. Is it already out? It's already available.

[B]

No, it's not. It's going to be coming out November 15th, I believe is the actual launch date. So we're getting ready for that. And, and actually I really appreciate you guys having me on because this is the first chance I've had to share with another audience the book. So thank you so much for the opportunity. But yeah, November 15th. There's a website though that we've got that I could direct your listeners to. It's 10 words. That's the number 10 words book 10wordsbook.org and you can learn more about the book and even sign up to be a part of the launch team for it. So.

[A]

Oh great. Yes. I just was gonna say I think this would be a great benefit to our audience, especially you define human marriage, sex, but even the other words that aren't necessarily directly connected to them before us. Such a great resource for folks who want to be equipped, like you're saying, to be aware, seeing, redefinition and understanding, you know, how should we look at words, understanding the power of words.

[B]

I think it'll be a really absolutely resource for folks.

[A]

And what's your website for Disciple the Nations?

[B]

Yeah, Disciple nations alliance is just Disciple nations n a t I-o n s.org and yeah, you can learn about our international discipleship ministry, biblical worldview discipleship, and we have free online training that you might want to look at and consider for your church as well.

[A]

Awesome. So great. All right, everyone, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. We'll put all those links in our show notes so you can find everything. Thank you, Scott. And yeah, well, thanks everyone for listening and joining the Them Before Us movement.