Worldview, Islam and LifeWork

This just in from New York Times Columnist David Brooks. He has some fascinating insights on worldview, Islam and media reaction to the Ft. Hood massacre. 

…unlike the other animals, people have a drive to seek coherence and meaning. We have a need to tell ourselves stories that explain it all. We use these stories to supply the metaphysics, without which life seems pointless and empty.

Among all the things we don’t control, we do have some control over our stories. We do have a conscious say in selecting the narrative we will use to make sense of the world. Individual responsibility is contained in the act of selecting and constantly revising the master narrative we tell about ourselves.

The stories we select help us, in turn, to interpret the world. They guide us to pay attention to certain things and ignore other things. They lead us to see certain things as sacred and other things as disgusting. They are the frameworks that shape our desires and goals. So while story selection may seem vague and intellectual, it’s actually very powerful. The most important power we have is the power to help select the lens through which we see reality.

Most people select stories that lead toward cooperation and goodness. But over the past few decades a malevolent narrative has emerged.

That narrative has emerged on the fringes of the Muslim world. It is a narrative that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other. This narrative causes its adherents to shrink their circle of concern. They don’t see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so.

This narrative is embraced by a small minority. But it has caused incredible amounts of suffering within the Muslim world, in Israel, in the U.S. and elsewhere.”

Read the full editorial here.

On another note, Thanks to Bob Osburn for the very positive review and endorsement of LifeWork in the Pearcey Report. Read it here.

One more…

The World Magazine blog posted an article on November 11 titled “Going to the Root of Poverty.” It highlights a discussion that Darrow recently had with students at King’s College, New York (hosted by Marvin Olasky). 

- Scott Allen

Darrow Shares Important Lessons from his Time in Peru

October 15th, 2009
Extracted from Darrow Miller’s Memoirs during his recent visit to teach in Peru.

I have been encouraged and gratified by the numbers of people who have come up to me to say that they have read Discipling Nations or have attended a conference, and about the impact that the school of thought has had on their lives. A pastor from the leading Alliance church in Ecuador told me that he had read the book ten years ago and that it changed his life and reshaped the focus of his church. I also met a businessman who said that he and his wife had attended the Nurturing the Nations workshop last year in Lima. Since then they have been team-teaching groups from the Nurturing the Nations materials. The wife teaches the materials to her students at a secular (perhaps a private) school. A graduate student in economics is using Discipling Nations as the foundation piece for a major paper that he is writing.

One woman, who first heard me speak at a YWAM base in Switzerland, said that Discipling Nations has been an anchor to reality for her own life and was part of what God used to bring her back to Peru to contribute to the building of her nation. She teaches at the university level here in Lima and the book is part of what shaped her being a professor who teaches from a biblical, rather than a humanistic paradigm. She has been writing and lecturing in the area of a biblical framework for politics and governance.

I had maintained a periodic correspondence with her for perhaps six years – since then she returned from Switzerland to Peru. Until I saw her in Peru yesterday, I could not put a face to her name and did not make the connection between the person that I met in Switzerland and the person who was writing to me.  When we saw each other yesterday, with profound emotion, she shared how important my correspondence had been to her life. She said that both the fact that I would take the time to write to her in the midst of my busy schedule and the advice that I gave to her profoundly touched her. They were like a lifeline for her during some of her more difficult days in these last six years. They helped her to stay the course that the Lord has her on. My perception of the correspondence was that of routine and common courtesy of simply responding to a personal correspondence. This encounter has reminded me of the importance of personal correspondence as a means to coach, encourage, and walk with other younger leaders.

Another man came up to me at the Vision Conference. He is the leader of an organization that does evangelism and church planting among poor people in rural communities all over Peru. An American friend had given him a copy of Discipling Nations a year ago. He said that it had so blessed him and that it has refocused the ministry toward wholism and the planting of wholistic churches. He introduced me to one of the pastors he works with and said that his church is involved in helping the community have access to clean water, and that his church provides a meal each day for poor children in the community.

All of this reinforces in me the power of books and speaking. It reinforces my desire to continue to write and helps me see that there is a need for us to be more proactive in getting our materials translated and published where there is a felt need for them.

Read the rest of Darrow’s trip report to Peru in our News section on the DNA website.

The Sanctity of Work

One ministry that learned of our work has started to send me their periodic updates via email. When I received this newsletter, I wanted to share and highlight what they have been learning and the impact they’re having on the world around them with you.  At Romanian Orphan Ministries, they have been learning about the importance of a correct understanding (i.e. a biblical worldview) of work for success in working with the local orphans.  Here is what they had to say:

. . . [P]eople are realizing that God knew what He was doing when He led Paul to write the third chapter of 2 Thessalonians, where he says, among other things; “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat” (vs. 10b). Why does Paul say that? Why so harsh? Because laziness breeds sin and hard work develops character. We have seen both of these truths among our orphans who have had everything handed to them for 18 years growing up in an orphanage.

Now, granted, the orphanage is a horrible place to live and it’s not like they were given great things there…but, they were not taught how life really works. There they could be lazy all day and not work at all. All of a sudden, out of the orphanage, in the real world, things don’t work like that. Nobody gives them a thing! Nobody cares about them. Nobody is there to take care of them. They are handicapped by this mentality and unable to survive in the real world. They wind up on the streets. They are easy prey for sex traffickers and pedophiles because they are easily lured into other countries where they are then enslaved.

This is horrible! The knowledge of this situation is what motivated us to begin working in Romania in the first place. What could possibly be the solution? The third chapter of 2 Thessalonians is the solution. They must learn how to work. They must learn how society really functions. They must learn to take responsibility for their lives, shed the self-pity, stop the entitlement mentality, and move forward. This is not a problem specific to Romania, it is everywhere.

So, through all of my reading I learned about many groups who are ministering to people by creating jobs for them. Orphans in Africa making soap. War widows making jewelry. Businesses started with all profits going to ministry. I was surprised to see how many people are doing this. I was also surprised to see that this is not something new. John Calvin himself, 500 years ago in Switzerland, felt that the best way to help the poor was to create businesses and hire them. The down and out are being given an opportunity to work, creating dignity and self-respect!

So God has led us to do likewise. Our girls are engaged full-time in making greeting cards. There are several challenges to this: 1) Teaching orphans to make greeting cards is not easy! 2) Starting a new business in this economy is not easy! 3) Beginning a new business, putting all the pieces together, and making it work is not easy! But this is the point, it is not easy! It is hard work. And that is exactly what our orphans need.

Please pray this month for the girls and staff involved in this new endeavor!

When the hard times come, orphans are used to quitting. Some of them have. Some have stuck it out. They just need a lot of prayer, praise, mentoring, love, and good old fashioned hard work. Please pray that they will stick it out!

To find out more about this ministry, visit their Facebook page.  To see more of our discussion on work, visit MondayChurch.org.

-Tim C. Williams

The Cultural Mandate and The Great Commission

For the church to be a positive force in creating healthy, prosperous and free societies, it must recover an understanding of the Cultural Mandate found in Genesis 1:26-28 and 2:15. Darrow describes the Cultural Mandate in his new book LifeWork this way:

What God made in Genesis chapter 1 was perfect, but it was not finished yet. God is the primary Creator; humankind, to use J.R.R. Tolkien’s word’s, is a “sub creator.” God makes primary creation. Humankind is to make a secondary creation–culture–that reveals and glorifies the primary Creator and the primary creation. Human beings were made to be active in creation, as God’s stewards. They are to fill the earth with the image bearers of God who will, in turn, develop the earth. Like an acorn that is nurtured into a mighty oak tree, creation from the hand of God was perfect and complete in itself, but the potential had to be released by men and women” (p. 91).

Today the evangelical church is focused not on the Cultural Commission, but on the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). As a result, we now have more Christians and churches worldwide than ever before, but these same Christians and churches are having less of an impact on shaping and transforming culture than ever before.

The Great Commission is not a replacement for the Cultural Commission. The two Commissions are both parts of God’s comprehensive redemptive plan for creation. The Great Commission is a call for the church to announce the Lordship of the risen Christ over all creation and to disciple nations to obey all Christ commanded. With the power of the resurrected Christ and the Holy Spirit now indwelling God’s children, they are empowered to carry out the Cultural Commission as God had originally intended (see Rom. 8:18-21). In short, we are to make disciples of all nations by proclaiming the Gospel and creating healthy cultures.

Michael Metzger writes on this same theme today in his “DoggieHeadTilt” blog:

For “most of Western history, the basic claims of the Christian tradition have in fact been regarded by its proponents as knowledge of reality,” University of Southern California professor Dallas Willard notes. The church taught what was considered real and right as a “public resource for living.” Defining reality was the result of the church connecting the Cultural Mandate and the Great Commission. The Cultural Mandate accounts for the patterns individuals see as well as the problems they experience. The Great Commission points to the power and presence of God that’s necessary to rectify problems.

Patterns + problems + power + presence = the church’s four contributions to culture.

The Cultural Mandate describes the creational pattern intrinsic to the way reality works. The substance of the mandate is to be creative. The scope is all creation. The stewardship is promoting flourishing or maximizing latent potential. The Cultural Mandate explains what everyone is hard-wired to do everyday. It is the “human job description.” It accounts for Hertz seeing patterns and problems.

This mandate “stands as the first and fundamental law of history,” Al Wolters writes.  It has never been rescinded. After the fall, God reiterated the same mandate to Adam and Eve—“cultivate the ground” (Gen. 3:23). After the flood, God reiterates: “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (9:1). The entire book of Genesis traces the ever-widening pattern and problems as successive generations strive to “cultivate the earth” and establish cities.

The Great Commission is a re-mission of the Cultural Mandate that incorporates the original pattern with a new power and presence. After the fall, human performance became wildly uneven. People now need personal renewal in order to renew the world. The task is the same, but the power and presence of Father-Son-Spirit reality—incarnated and embodied Trinitarian reality—makes the doing of the task infused with the resources of heaven. The two commandments speak to the same reality, but the second—the Great Commission—by necessity takes into consideration the reality of the fall. Without the power and presence of God, economic cycles endlessly repeat a boom-bust, prosperity-panic cycle due to human frailty. The dismal science will not be renewed by good intentions alone however well conceived.

When faith communities disconnect the Great Commission from the Cultural Mandate, they truncate the task to individual renewal—evangelism and discipleship. These are essential but explain why evangelicals are mostly drawn to missions of mercy to the poor, the homeless, and the addicted. Yet, as Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith warns, none of these efforts “attempt to transform social or cultural systems, but merely alleviate some of the harm caused by the existing system.”—a solution that falls short of making a lasting difference.

Read the whole article here.

-Scott Allen

DNA Materials Mysteriously Appear in Kabul

A friend of mine recently returned from Afghanistan where he worked as a consultant for a major relief and development organization. While spending the night at a Christian guest house in Kabul, he saw sitting on a coffee table, a lesson from the Disciple Nations Alliance “Worldview and Development” curriculum that had been translated into Arabic. He made a copy and brought it back to me.

Worldview & Development in Arabic

From time to time, we hear reports of people finding translated DNA materials in the most unlikely of places–and we have no idea who translated them or how they got there. We are always encouraged by these serendipitous reports.

God has a way of getting the ideas and messages into the hands of people who need them, often without us knowing anything about it.

Part of this is by design. One of our Operational Principles is “Getting Ideas Out as Widely as Possible.” It reads:

We are seeking to spread a set of ideas into churches, Bible schools, seminaries, mission/church-planting organizations, discipleship movements, and relief and development organizations… Since we want to widely distribute these ideas, we hold them—and the materials in which they are conveyed—very loosely. Those who join with us need to share this conviction: they are responsible to distribute and disseminate materials and ideas, but should not control, own, or franchise Disciple Nations Alliance materials or messages for their respective organizations.

This principle continues to enable DNA materials to find their way into the hands of Christians in places like Kabul, Afghanistan, and for that, we praise God.

-Scott Allen

Practicing Compassion

When God appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai, he passed before him and proclaimed his name (Ex. 34:5-7). What was the first word God used to describe himself? Compassion. Indeed, this quality is at the very center of  his nature. As Marvin Olasky reminds us in The Tragedy of American Compassion, compassion literally means suffering (passion) with (com). Philippians 2 gives witness to God’s compassion in Christ, who leaves his heavenly throne to come down to earth to suffer together with poor, broken people–even to the point of death on a cross.

It is no surprise then, that God calls his chosen people Israel to reflect this same compassion before the watching eyes of the world.

“If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. Rather be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs” (Deut. 15:7-9).

It is also no surprise that his anger is kindled when his people are hard-hearted and unconcerned.

“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen” (Ez. 16:49-50).

Overfed and unconcerned. Americans should tremble at God’s fierce anger against such people. Lord, have mercy!

Jesus incarnated God’s compassion. We see it in his dealings with the poor, the diseased, and the broken. The coming of his Kingdom is “good news to the poor” (Lu. 4:18) and his judgement rests with those who fail to practice compassion (Mt. 25:41-45). In the Great Commission, Christ commands the church to “obey all that I commanded” including his command to “go and do likewise” following the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:36-37). As the church, we glorify God most powerfully when our antenna is up for the broken, powerless, and voiceless people on the margins of society, and we go to them in the love and power of the Holy Spirit and “suffer with them.”  This is God’s “Samaritan Strategy” for Kingdom advancement.

Ask yourself: Who are the broken, powerless people who live in obscurity in my neighborhood, in my community–maybe even in my family? A friend recently shared a short film that does a powerful job of bringing these people out of the darkness and before our attention.

When you see them, don’t pass by on the other side. Stop. Look. Act compassionately. Make a plan to demonstrate Christ-like love in a practical way. It doesn’t need to be a complicated endeavor. Need some help? Here’s a wonderful  tool developed by our good friend Bob Moffitt called Seed Projects. Why don’t you download the guidelines and do a Seed Project with your family or small group? Let us know how it goes. We’d love to hear!

-Scott Allen

Christianity as a Worldview

Good words from Chuck Colson:

“Many evangelicals define faith strictly in terms of personal salvation. Yet soul-winning is not an end in itself. We are not only saved from sin, we are also saved to something—to the task of cultivating God’s creation. Genesis teaches that on the first five days, God did the work of creating. But on the sixth day, He made human beings in His image to carry on His work—to develop the raw materials of the world He had created.

This is called the “cultural commission,” just as binding as the “Great Commission.” It means our faith is intended to encompass every part of life, every sphere of work, every aspect of the world.

In short, our faith must be a complete worldview, the basic set of beliefs that function as a set of glasses helping us to see all of reality through God’s eyes. If God is creator and sovereign over everything, as we confess He is, then everything finds its identity and meaning in relationship to Him—not only our spiritual life but also our work, politics, science, education, the arts, etc.”

Read the entire article here.

For more on this theme visit our new MondayChurch website, and check out Darrow Miller’s new book LifeWork: A Biblical Theology for What You Do Every Day.

-Scott Allen

Vishal Mangalwadi on “The Bible Answer Man”

Vishal Mangalwadi will be on Hank Hannegraaff’s “The Bible Answer Man” radio program Thursday, October 8 and Friday, October 9. Here’s what Hank recently wrote about the book:

Every now and then I come across a book that is “must reading!” And that is precisely what happened this week. The book, titled Truth and Transformation, was written by an Indian thinker named Vishal Mangalwadi—aptly described as the Francis Schaeffer of India .

I still have a vivid recollection of starting the book on the East coast and turning the last page as the airplane’s wheels hit the tarmac in the West. My first thought as I stood up to retrieve my luggage was, “I have to put this book into the hands of ministry partners as soon as possible.”

Be sure to tune in if you can!

Dallas Willard on Worldview

I’m a big fan of the writing of Dallas Willard. His recent book, Knowing Christ Today (which is quite different from his previous writings focused on spiritual formation) deals with themes of knowledge, truth, and worldview. Willard’s combined vocation as a Southern Baptist pastor and professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California enables him to have some tremendous insights on the power of worldview in shaping lives and cultures.

Starting with Hosea 4:6 (“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me.”), Willard shares the following insights. Note his choice of words and phrasing. I find it quite helpful in thinking fresh about themes I’ve reflected on for many years.

People perish for lack of knowledge, because only knowledge permits assured access to reality; and reality does not adjust itself to accommodate our false beliefs, errors, or hesitations in action.

There are two different levels at which lack of knowledge takes effect. One level is of particular facts or circumstances, and the other is that of a general outlook on life and world. This latter, in its upper reaches, is the level of ‘worldview’… Hosea 4:6 refers to lack of knowledge at the ‘worldview’ level.

We can fail to know because we do not want to know—because what would be known would require us to believe and act in ways contrary to what we want… The rejection and the subsequent loss of knowledge once possessed is a curious and tragic thing to be seen in individual lives and in societies. Whether we have knowledge and are living according to knowledge is a primary indicator of future weal or woe.

Knowledge of God and his ways was the Israelites’ only essential resource. Conforming in practice to that knowledge kept them in harmony with the reality that mattered… [But] where people do not want to know God, he usually allows them to be without him—at least for a while. When desire conflicts with reality, sooner or later reality wins.

A society is like any living organism; its continued existence depends upon the correct integration of its parts into a whole. That integration cannot be present if the society is organized around ignorance and illusion and the moral quality of the citizens falls below a certain level.

Worldview, simply put, consists of the most general and basic assumptions about what is real and what is good—including assumptions about who we are and what we should do…there is nothing more practical than our worldview, for it determines the orientation of everything else we think and do. Moreover, worldview is unavoidable. Everyone has a worldview… [It] is a biological necessity for human beings, because we act, whether consciously or not, with reference to a whole (a “world”). Our “view” of that whole determines what we shall undertake to deal with or omit in our actions day by day and hour by hour. It dictates what we will or will not count as resources and recognize as dangers. It determines our aims and our means, and eventually, the quality of our lives and the kind of person we will become. Our worldview is simply our overall orientation in life. You cannot “opt out” of having a worldview. You can only try to have one that most accords with reality…What is true of individuals in this respect is also true of social groups and even whole societies or nations.

Ones worldview…lies outside our consciousness in the moment of action, embedded in our body and in its social environment, including our history, language and culture. It radiates throughout our life as background assumptions, in thoughts too deep for words.

What we assume to be real and what we assume to be valuable will govern our attitudes and actions. Period.

Because worldview is so influential, it is also dangerous. Worldview is where we most need to have knowledge.

- Scott Allen

Pro-Life Advocate Gunned Down

I want to take time to acknowledge and mourn the death of James Pouillon, a pro-life advocate who was gunned down as he peacefully protested outside of a high school in Michigan this September. While the media intensely covered the death of late-term abortion practitioner, George Tiller, the media along with abortion advocates have been largely silent about the murder of Pouillon.

Here is an excerpt from “President Obama Waits Two Days to Release Statement on Shooting of Pro-Lifer”:

Former Republican presidential candidate and American Values leader Gary Bauer said he has seen a different approach from the mainstream media in its reporting on the Pouillon shooting.

“Regrettably, there have been incidents of violence at abortion centers in recent years. We, and virtually every pro-life group, have condemned those acts,” he told LifeNews.com. “At the same time, Big Media never missed an opportunity to use each example to condemn the entire pro-life movement as if it consisted entirely of hate-filled people.”

“Today, a pro-life activist was shot and killed outside of a Michigan high school. The victim has been described in press reports as a 63-year old man, who wore leg braces, occasionally used a walker and a portable oxygen tank,” he continued.

“Will reporters and journalists offer commentary on the extremism of the pro-abortion movement and the culture of death that it perpetuates? Will this story even make the evening news?”

Thus far, the media reporting has been light compared with the blow-by-blow details given to the Tiller shooting. (emphasis added)

Here is one sentiment (and an article with more details) on which I continue to reflect: ”Could [it] be that one side in this debate does, in fact, value human life more than the other”?

-Tim C. Williams