Words are constantly created and redefined in our day. With such dramatic shifts, how can we have the “mind of Christ?” Words are not just sounds we utter; they are powerful building blocks for culture. Words and their meanings shape our thinking, convictions, beliefs, and worldview – ultimately bringing about our actions. Which words need to be redeemed? Are there words that need to be rejected? Today we are joined by author, teacher, education consultant, trainer, speaker, and our good friend, Dr. Elizabeth Youmans, who helps us think deeply about this while helping us consider specific words like, gender, marriage, liberty and more.
Words are constantly created and redefined in our day. With such dramatic shifts, how can we have the “mind of Christ?” Words are not just sounds we utter; they are powerful building blocks for culture. Words and their meanings shape our thinking, convictions, beliefs, and worldview – ultimately bringing about our actions. Which words need to be redeemed? Are there words that need to be rejected? Today we are joined by author, teacher, education consultant, trainer, speaker, and our good friend, Dr. Elizabeth Youmans, who helps us think deeply about this while helping us consider specific words like, gender, marriage, liberty and more.
Well, we go back to see how we got into the condition we're in today our corrupt nature. How did that begin? It began when the enemy tried to get Adam and Eve to think a different way than the way God had said it.
Scott Allen:By calling into question his words right yes, by calling into question his words, yes, god's words.
Elizabeth Youmans:Did God say yes by calling into question his?
Scott Allen:words, yes, god's words Did God say Exactly yeah.
Elizabeth Youmans:And so he wanted to interject a different meaning, which of course he did, and it led Eve to become deceived and it distorted really her ability to think and reason Well, all of us, our ability to think and reason carefully with truth.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, welcome to Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. Here on this show we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world, to all the nations, but our mission also includes to be the hands and feet of God, to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission and today most Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Scott Allen:Welcome again, everybody, to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. I'm Scott Allen and, as you know, I am the president of the DNA. If you listen to this podcast, and I am joined by my colleagues and friends and family members, Luke Allen. Hi Luke, Daryl Miller, Hi Daryl.
Darrow Miller:Good to be here.
Scott Allen:Great to have you, dwight, hi Dwight, dwight Vogt. Hi and we, for our discussion today, have brought in an expert in the field, Dr Elizabeth Eumanns. It's great to have you back on our podcast, Dr Eumanns.
Elizabeth Youmans:Thank you for inviting me. It's good to be here.
Scott Allen:It's so great to see you again, it's so great to have you, and we brought Elizabeth in because we are going to pick up our theme that those of you who listen regularly to the podcast will know, that is, the power of words, words and language, and that's something we who listen regularly to the podcast will know. That is the power of words, words and language, and that's something we're especially going to be talking about this year because, yeah, as you know, I have a book coming out on the power of 10 particular words that are deeply biblical, words like love, sex, freedom, beauty, justice, very biblical, very profound, powerful words that have been the focus of attention by the enemies of the gospel in terms of working very hard to redefine those words and how, because of their efforts, many of us, even in the Church, have gone along with those redefinitions in kind of an unawares type of way, and so we're going to talk a lot about words and the importance of words Today. We want to get into a specific aspect of that discussion and I'll just lay that out now, but that is what do we do when words and here I'm going to use the specific word gender what do we do when a word like gender has been so heavily used by people pushing kind of radical sexual ideologies. They've taken a word that has a historical meaning. They've taken a word that has a historical meaning. They've worked very hard to load all sorts of new meaning. They've redefined it and are really writing it, you know, as kind of at the forefront of their movement. And so what do we?
Scott Allen:The question then becomes what do we as Christians do with a word like that and there's other examples we could give that have been so heavily weaponized, if you will, or redefined? This is a question I think many of us have had. I have. Do we continue to use the word? How do we use the word, knowing that kind of context?
Scott Allen:But before we get into that, I just want to go back with you guys, set the stage again on why this even matters, because I still think for a lot of Christians, words when you talk about words, people glaze over. You know, words are just something we totally take for granted. We use them all the time, every day, speaking, writing, reading, speaking, writing, reading. We rarely stop and kind of, you know, just look at the words themselves and think about what they are and where did they come from and why do we even use words and language and what's the power of a word or words. So I'd like to start there, guys, and just get your kind of initial thoughts on that. Why do words matter? What's the big deal about words? And you know, I just want to open it up for any thoughts that you have on that as we get started why should Christians care about words? Yeah, go ahead, elizabeth. What I had was.
Elizabeth Youmans:What I have is a quote from Dennis Peacock. I don't know if you know who Dennis is.
Scott Allen:Yeah, he was on the podcast not long ago actually.
Elizabeth Youmans:Yeah, Well, I got this quote probably 25 years ago and I use it in our teacher manual for our power of words. But he began by saying whoever controls the language controls the culture. Words have incredible power because they set the agendas of whole nations. Words we use to describe a situation or problem frame the way we approach it. It's not bullets that ultimately win wars, it's words. A bullet won't make you die for someone, but the right word lodged within you will make you fearless. Making words mean what you want them to mean is the first step in controlling the minds of men and, from there, their actions. Words have incredible power in the hands of a propagandist. The real warriors on either side of the issues wage war with words. If you divide a people's language, you can divide their will, unify their language and you have unified their power language and you have unified their power.
Scott Allen:Wow, there's a lot there, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Youmans:There is yeah, that's really rich Thinking about whoever controls the language controls the culture, because words are really governing agents.
Scott Allen:What do you mean by that, elizabeth? Let's go into that a little bit. Words are governing agents. What are they governing? What are you talking about?
Elizabeth Youmans:Well, they're governing the way we see life really.
Scott Allen:The way we use words, our thoughts.
Elizabeth Youmans:Yeah, yes, and you know, when we think governmentally, we're thinking internal to external, always in the principle approach, which is where I was taught about words, principle approach, which is where I was taught about words. And when we think about a word, it has the power of creating or destroying. That's what the scripture tells us in Proverbs. You know, jesus said my words are spirit and they are life. So words have this internal spiritual power to cultivate in our imagination ideas.
Scott Allen:And so that's where we begin to make decisions, and if I could just cut you off, because there's somebody wise that once told me that ideas have consequences. In fact, I think there's a great podcast with that title.
Darrow Miller:No, that's right.
Scott Allen:Elizabeth, the word. There's a connection and, if I could just put it simply, and I'm just underscoring what you've said, there's a connection between words, ideas and actions, and so that, just that simple thought. If you want to drive action, you've got to go back upstream to ideas and then to words and their definitions. Right, Go ahead, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Youmans:Well, I was going to say, words have eternal consequences. You know, I think as Christians especially teachers, pastors, leaders, educators you know, we have to realize that the words we use have eternal consequences very often, and so we have to be careful about how we use words. But when you're thinking about how a word impacts our heart and mind, you know, words feed our mind through the imagination, and then our mind feeds our will, and then our mind feeds our will, and our will is where we make choices. So words are very powerful. They govern the choices that we make and, as you say, therefore, they govern our actions.
Scott Allen:I mean, you could almost make the argument that there's nothing more powerful than words in this respect, at least in the human realm. You know, they're so powerful.
Elizabeth Youmans:Exactly. I think it's one of the reasons why, in the last 30 years, what we've seen, especially since television has come along, how children have been drawn away from reading good books to watching a screen, because they don't need words to watch a screen. And you know, I always tell my people, if God had meant for us to learn through imagery which we can learn through imagery, but solely by imagery he wouldn't have left us a book with words in it, but he left us his instruction in a book with words that were meant to read. So reading becomes very important and knowing the meanings of those words is very important.
Scott Allen:Yeah, go ahead, dwight and Daryl. But let me just clarify, elizabeth, you used the example of a video, a movie or whatever something you watch. Watch, I mean words are being used. We're listening to those words or otherwise they would make no sense to us. But there's a difference, isn't it, between processing a word in writing than there is in just kind of passively listening, isn't there right? Is that what you're talking about?
Elizabeth Youmans:Yes, and the image is then projecting what the author wants you to know right and you kind of absorb that almost unconsciously, right.
Scott Allen:So there's yeah yeah. Go ahead. I want to bring the rest of the team in. What are you hearing from Elizabeth, and what do you want to add to that?
Dwight Vogt:I want to go back just about five minutes in the conversation because I remember the first time somebody said well, if you don't have a word, you actually can't think. And I thought, no, I can think, I think all the time. Well, I'm thinking with words, but I had to process that idea that I couldn't think without words, and yet if you've ever been in another language, all at once you'll come across the word.
Dwight Vogt:I was in Thailand under Buddhist culture for three and a half years and I came across a couple of words that I realized didn't have English, english meaning, didn't have an English word for it, and yet it was real and it was a word and it had meaning and I thought I have to use that word. And if I use an English word it's not quite the same. So they're really. It was like tangible. I remember my, my parents spoke German and sometimes they'd laugh about something and use a German word and we'd go what does that mean? And they'd go oh, it sort of means this, you know. So it's true. It's true. You actually think in words and if there's no word, you don't think right. And Scott, before this, podcast.
Scott Allen:You were talking about the fact. That's a really good point, dwight. I just want to underscore what you're saying, though. I've known people from Japan, for example, and when they come to the United States and they're using English, they act differently. They act differently than they would have in Japan. It's again, it's because they're using English. It's a different language and so and the meanings are different enough. There's enough kind of you know, or they're new words that leads them to act in a different way. Go ahead, yeah.
Dwight Vogt:Well you were. You also shared, I think, in a previous podcast, about Arturo's situation with the word dominion and these Pocomchi farmers who he finally had to. They didn't have a word for dominion, which meant you have power over creation. They didn't have that in their mind, and so he had to use the word command and then take that word and say, well, you know what command means. That's actually what you do over nature and it's God's mandate for you. And they went oh my goodness, there's a and it was a new word for them and I remember you sharing that. So it's like Go ahead.
Scott Allen:Darrell Darrell's raising his hand trying to jump in here on this conversation.
Darrow Miller:I remember a conversation I was having with a friend of ours, dr Ace K Konda from Japan, and Ace was bilingual. Japanese was his first language but he was totally fluent in English and his boss was bilingual. And Ace told me he loved to speak with his boss in English Because he he was alive, he was fun, they had a great time together. But he didn't like talking with him in Japanese Because in the Japanese language there's a built-in hierarchy and when you're speaking Japanese, he knew where he was in the hierarchy in relationship to his boss, and the language his boss used made him understand where he was in the hierarchy. And then he made this comment. He said this is one of the reasons Japanese youth want to learn English, because it's the language of freedom. And I thought, wow, that is really profound.
Scott Allen:Yeah and Darrow, just to push on that a little bit, english is the language of freedom. Well, okay, that idea of freedom was introduced into the English language. My guess is you wouldn't have found it there before the Bible was translated into English, but it became part of the way English-speaking people think because of the Bible. In other words, that hadn't happened in Japan. It hadn't penetrated the culture in the same way that it had, over centuries, in the English language.
Darrow Miller:But the root of it was biblical. The root was biblical and that word had a certain meaning. And when you learn that word you can begin to understand something that you've never understood before.
Scott Allen:Yes.
Darrow Miller:And then that creates behavior and creates a culture.
Scott Allen:Yeah, I have a personal experience, having lived in Japan for a few years and I never did learn the Japanese language, although I know what Dr Kahn is talking about, because I know that the verb endings and whatnot, they vary depending on the level in a social hierarchy of a person that you're talking to. That we don't even have that in an English language, right? But my observation, one of my many observations being in Japan, was that the Japanese, the Bible's, of course, been translated into Japanese, but it's much more recently than into English and so it hasn't had this centuries-long kind of penetration of the way people think. So there's a word for love in Japan, for example, but the way people historically understand love is it's something along the lines of I'll scratch your back if you scratch my back, you know, and it's kind of this reciprocal idea. And I thought, no, you know, love isn't that way, right? Love is, you know, I'm going to, it's like a river, I'm going to give and bless you and even if it means sacrifice, and you don't pay me back, you know, you just pass that on, right. And then, yeah, I thought, where in the world did you know, did I get that idea about love? That's a very kind of radical understanding of love. Well, that comes from the Bible, of course. It comes from a biblical understanding of what that word means, but you can't assume that in every culture they're going to have a word that means something like that. They probably don't. So when that word is introduced, it begins to shape a whole new way of action, in this case, love.
Scott Allen:Let's continue, guys. This is really rich in terms of just why do words matter? Why should we stop just using them and begin to think about them? And we've talked about several things. We've talked about how powerful they are. They have the power to shape our thinking, which shapes the way we act, which means that people that want to, social revolutionaries, should be very tuned into, and they usually are the power of language. We've got to fight that language battle first. I want to bring something else into this. Well, maybe before I do that, luke, what are you hearing? And I don't want to just run past you. I've got thoughts, but what are you hearing here and what insights do you want to share?
Luke Allen:Yeah, thanks, I'm just trying to keep up. Really, my mind has been bent three times already, but it's still stuck on what you said, elizabeth. First, which is that quote it started with whoever controls the words controls the culture, and I was trying to think okay, that sounds smart, but how can I make this tangible for my life? First off, culture is a big word in its own. What does that mean? It's the way we do things around here, simple definition. But I'm thinking of okay, what's a culture? That I know? Well, I know basketball, I played basketball for 10 years. Okay, there's a basketball culture.
Luke Allen:So when basketball was invented, in order to create that culture, you had to. Whoever controls the words controls the culture. The inventors of basketball had to create a lexicon for basketball to explain what this new sport is. They had to create new words like point guard or free throw or, you know, three seconds in the key or whatever that is, and those words created what we know of as basketball, but those words didn't exist before. Words created what we know of as basketball, but those words didn't exist before. So that's a. That's a simple example, but I'm just trying to make these, make these huge ideas as tangible as I can Um. And then I'm thinking okay, well, if you want to change basketball or ruin it, what you can do is you can just start defining an important piece of the game in a different word. For example, if you you know the basket, if you started calling the basket, you know something else, the whole point of the game would be thrown off. I'm just trying to wrap my head around this, trying to keep up.
Luke Allen:Does that make sense?
Scott Allen:Yeah.
Luke Allen:Okay, kind of.
Scott Allen:Go ahead, elizabeth, yeah.
Elizabeth Youmans:I want to take us back to the garden of eden, because when eve was deceived, she became deceived because the serpent said did god say? Yes so when we go back to see how we got into the condition we're in today our corrupt nature how did that begin? It began when the enemy tried to get Adam and Eve to think a different way than the way God had said it.
Scott Allen:By calling into question his words right. By calling into question his words. Did God say?
Elizabeth Youmans:Exactly yeah. And so he wanted to interject a different meaning, which of course he did, and it led Eve to become deceived and it distorted, really, her ability to think and reason well, all of us our ability to think and reason carefully with truth, and so we were born with a corrupt ability to reason. You know, and I think that's where it starts when we start talking about language, because that's what any enemy of our culture will try to do is distort our language, and then, by doing that, we're thinking differently you bring up such an important point too, elizabeth, I just need to underscore it, and that is when we're talking about the power of words and language to shape action and to shape a culture.
Scott Allen:You know you can leave people with this idea that, you know, words are just kind of empty vessels that we're going to fight over and we're going to fight to see who gets to fill that vessel with my definition or your definition. But you're bringing up this point that, no, god actually fills those words with His definition. In other words, they're not just merely the definition of words, is not merely subjective, some kind of cultural creation that I get to make up or you make up, but that God himself—and I wouldn't mind even pausing on this—God himself right, he's before all things. Right, he's the base of all being, he uses language and he speaks. Right, this is so powerful.
Scott Allen:In the beginning was the word, and again, I don't want to get too philosophical, but there's a reason that we, as his image bearers, use words and language in a way that no other animal does. Right, because we're made in his image and he's a speaking God and he uses language, he speaks, he communicates. He wrote the Ten Commandments with his finger on stone tablets in words that we could read, and he's the one that defines these words right. So there's not. You know, this isn't a battle over your definition or my definition. This is really a battle to uphold God's definition, isn't it?
Luke Allen:Hey guys, thank you for listening.
Luke Allen:I just wanted to quickly direct your attention to our core training here at the Disciple Nations Alliance called the Kingdomizer Training Program, where you'll learn not only what a worldview is, but why there is only one worldview that works, that comports with reality.
Luke Allen:As Christians, we know there is only one God and one Bible, but we don't often think about how God also created one way for us to make sense of this world and to therefore live according to his design in his world, and what we call that way of seeing the world is having a biblical worldview.
Luke Allen:Unfortunately, when you become a Christian, you don't just automatically start seeing every part of life through a biblical worldview, so it's important to be discipled in forming this worldview, to be, in the words of Paul, transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is where I would highly recommend the Kingdomizer training program, as it is a great tool to help you continue to align your worldview with God and His Word. If you'd like to learn more about the Kingdomizer Training Program, then just head over to quorumdeocom Again, that is quorumdeocom or follow the link in the episode page, which is linked in the show notes. Today there are people from 162 different countries going through this course, so if you would like to join them and learn how to bring biblical principles into every corner of society, then sign up today at quorumdalecom.
Dwight Vogt:Well, and at the end of the day, it's a battle over explaining God's reality, reality.
Scott Allen:Yes.
Dwight Vogt:As it really is, and and it's, you know, the word may, we can use whatever word we want, but the point is it has to be the reality, it has to focus on what.
Scott Allen:There's a true definition, a real definition. There's a true definition for that sound. Exactly Right.
Luke Allen:Yeah, and because God created us, he created words that actually work. I think of the word marriage, which is being actively redefined right now. God's definition of marriage actually leads to human flourishing, actually works. You know, a man and a woman are required for marriage to work and for one of the key aspects of marriage, which is procreation. You can't do that if you mix up marriage and who's involved in it. I don't think we often think of the Bible as being a dictionary enough. It's not your standard dictionary, but the Bible does give us full definitions for each of these words, like love and marriage and faith and so on. It's not the format we're used to, but it still explains them all in God's own way.
Elizabeth Youmans:Well, that's what Webster did remember. When Noah Webster wrote his dictionary of the English language, not only did he go back to the roots of the words, whether it was German or French or English or whatever, but then he spent another 10 years trying to find out how God had used that word. And that's what makes that dictionary so powerful, because he wanted to base the English language and have it rooted in the word of God. So what did God mean when he used the word serve? Or what did God mean when he used the word man? You know, and that's a powerful concept, because as you trace that dictionary through the generations and the years, you find out that the modern Webster dictionary, of course, doesn't sound anything like the original 1828, because they've accepted, you know, modern man's concept of what this word should mean, based on how the culture is using it.
Scott Allen:Yeah, they've stripped out the biblical definition.
Darrow Miller:Yeah, go ahead.
Scott Allen:Daryl.
Darrow Miller:Dwight and Scott and I worked for 30, 35 years for a nonprofit organization that worked in the developing world to help the poor, and I went to Africa a lot. So did Scott and Dwight because Africa is one of the it's probably the poorest continent in the world and yet it is the wealthiest continent in terms of natural resources. So it's not that Africa needs resources, they needed something else, and I was reading a book by John Mbeth. He is a scholar in East Africa who wrote a book called the Religions and Philosophies of Africa philosophies of Africa and in this book he had a whole chapter on time, the simple term time, and he said of the 2000, some odd dialects in Africa, there was only one, one dialect that had a concept of future and that was tomorrow, literally tomorrow.
Darrow Miller:None of the other dialects on the continent had a word, had a word for future. What does it mean when a whole continent of people are missing the word future? And I hope that our listeners are thinking about that now, because that would be I would argue that would be one of the reasons that Africa has stayed in poverty, because we have a friend in Africa and he said Africans walk backwards into the future and that they're always looking backwards. They're always looking backwards because they don't have a word, and that's the concept of future, of future. And if you want there to be change from today, where does that change take place In the future? And what happens when you don't have a word like that in a nation or a culture? It puts a huge barrier on development, a huge barrier on change, a huge barrier to coming out of poverty.
Scott Allen:Yeah, you can only live on the basis of what has happened in the past. That's right. You don't have a place where you can think what would be an ideal future situation that I can work towards. You just can't think that way.
Luke Allen:That's right.
Elizabeth Youmans:And when you can't think that way, you can't yeah, yeah.
Scott Allen:what steps do I need to take to get to?
Scott Allen:that ideal future state right, you can't plan in many respects. That's right. Yeah, exactly, and I want to tie together what you just said, darrell, and what Elizabeth was just saying earlier about the Dictionary of the American Language, and that is that I think earlier generations I know earlier generations of Christians have understood this. They've understood the power of words and the power of biblical words, and they understood that in order to carry out their mission, which is to bless the nations, to disciple the nations, to cause the nations to flourish and to thrive right, it required more than just a gospel proclamation. It required them to have the entire Bible in their vernacular. So they translated the Bible into English, spanish and now you know, thousands of languages around the world. It required that they could read those words. So literacy was important and with that process, as we heard from, Jeff.
Scott Allen:Meyer. Forgive me, jeff, jeff Meyer, from now I'm also forgetting the name of the organization. Words don't do you any good when you keep forgetting them, like I am these days. But anyways, jeff Meyer from Summit Ministries. Thanks, luke, you're my memory here.
Scott Allen:But yeah, he reminded us that when Tyndale translated the Bible into English that he had to create I think it was something on the order of 1,100 or more new words that didn't exist in that vernacular, that pre-biblical native English language, biblical native English language. So Christians understood that this was part and parcel of their mission to translate the Bible, to help people to read the Bible, and not just so that they could be saved, but because these words shape the way that they live and the kind of culture that they then create in a way that will be free and can get out of tyranny and slavery and underdevelopment and poverty. This was our mission to do and it all revolved around words and embedding those words. This is Webster right Embedding those words into the cultures so that they could form the foundation of the systems of government and of education and everything else. Christians, this is our legacy, but I think in the time that we live in, there's been this shift. We've forgotten this as Christians, our own legacy, but the enemies of the gospel have learned it and they're the ones who are out there really actively engaged in this realm of language and words, and I just want to kind of talk a little bit about that.
Scott Allen:We've got, you know, it seems like all the energy is on the side of people that are trying hard to redefine words in untrue ways, in false and counterfeit ways, and Christians largely don't even think about words anymore. We just kind of I've noticed this anyways, this is my observation that the enemies of the gospel are using words and language, redefining them to great effect in our culture and I could give many examples and creating new words, and creating new words just like Christians had to do when we translated the Bible into new languages, new words that didn't exist before, like future, darrow, as you gave the example of. They're creating new words. They're actively shaping the culture and because we as Christians don't think like we used to, we don't think about words.
Scott Allen:What happens is that we just go along almost unawares or uncritically with whatever that new redefinition is and we just pick it up, we absorb it kind of almost by. Yeah, maybe it gets back to your comment, elizabeth, about just kind of when you sit and watch something, you just kind of passively absorb it and it shapes you without even you, hardly even being aware of it. So we've absorbed these false redefinitions. It's been such a disaster for the church and I saw this in particular when I wrote my book on justice that's been a heavily redefined word, heavily redefined word over the course of the last hundred years, to the point that what most people mean by justice, what gets taught in our public schools, has nothing to do with the way God defines that word in the Bible. Same word, completely different definition. But if you talk to a lot of Christians, they've completely absorbed that false or that counterfeit definition and so they're, you know, crazy as it sounds, they're being swept up into this cultural revolution. Go ahead, daryl.
Darrow Miller:I just want to ask Elizabeth. The curriculum that you work with, Elizabeth, is rooted deeply in vocabulary and words and definitions. Can you explain why you are developing curriculum for children that is rich in words?
Scott Allen:Let me just mention that we haven't really done a good job of crediting your organization and your work Chrysalis International and Amo Elizabeth, but you know we'll do that towards the end. It's just incredible, ministry, Go ahead.
Elizabeth Youmans:Well, you know, before I answered that, what I was thinking as you were speaking. You know, the Europeans that came west were called people of the word, just like the Hebrews were, and they came armed with their Bibles. Every one of them brought their Bibles. They began education in the early era of the 1600s with the scripture, only teaching their children how to read with the Word of God.
Elizabeth Youmans:How can you imagine if we did that today, which is what we've done in our curriculum? Right, we're reading, having children read the Word. We've done in our curriculum, right, we're reading, having children read the word. And then you know it formed the ideas and the whole culture of those early colonies. And schools began, and even with public schools promoted in Massachusetts, the word of God was still at the heart of education, it was the centerfold, it was the ultimate, foundational. In fact, what was Harvard's mission statement? To lay Christ and his word as the only foundation for all sound learning. That was Harvard's mission statement in 1636.
Darrow Miller:That's our legacy, again, that's the legacy of Bible-believing Christians who wanted to bless the nations right Exactly.
Elizabeth Youmans:And so God used that powerful tool educational tool his word, to raise up a new nation. And we understood liberty based on what the scriptures said. Well, you know what's happened to education in the last 150 years. The Bible was removed. I blame it on the Bible being removed. The German philosophers wouldn't have had any impact on our educational system if the word of God was still at the heart of our educational system. But we remove the word of God lest we offend someone of another religion, and that's where our downward slope began. And today, of course, education has been destroyed, the type of education that our nation was founded on. So how do we begin to restore that?
Elizabeth Youmans:to the next generation. And it's not going to happen in our public schools, as we all know, and it doesn't happen well in many churches either.
Scott Allen:I have to say.
Elizabeth Youmans:I'm sorry to say too, but we as parents and homeschoolers and Christian schools that understand, can begin by restoring biblical vocabulary back to children, and the only way that happens is for them to learn the biblical meanings. But you know, how do we carry that into the culture? I think the only way we do it is by defining our words. If we're asked to speak on a particular subject, we've got to begin by this is what I mean when I say liberty, or this is what I mean when I say social justice. And then you lay that biblical principle, that foundation, from the very beginning, and then you just keep reemphasizing the biblical root and the biblical meaning through your lecture or your class, and this is what we've done in our little program. So every principle that we teach, we select a word in that principle so the children really then begin to think with truth and they're guided by that principle as they think about the word, they're spelling and they're memorizing. And it's really been a powerful tool.
Scott Allen:Maybe this is a good kind of segue, then, into what we wanted to discuss, and I'm anxious to discuss it because I'd like to sharpen my own thinking on this question Again. This came up in an email exchange that we as a team had last week, and I believe that that was prompted Darrell, you can help me with this around the imminent release of a really wonderful short video that comes out of your teaching on the maternal heart of God and the grand design. Do you want to explain that a little bit, just for background, darrell?
Darrow Miller:Yeah, we've just finished a book called the Grand Design and we're developing a series of animated videos right now, and one of them is on the Trinity as the foundation. God being Trinity, god being Father, son and Holy Spirit in relationship is the foundation for the formation of families. And talking about families, it's a male and a female and their children. So that's the context of this animation. But today the words male and female are being relegated to the dust teeth and the word gender is replacing. Male and female are biological terms. They're rooted in reality, but in the postmodern world, reality is jettisoned, so it's all whatever you have in your mind. So, instead of today having male and female, there's something like 70 different genders.
Scott Allen:Gender identities is what it's.
Darrow Miller:Gender identities that are recognized today. So, as we're developing the scripts for these videos, the question becomes well, do you use the word gender?
Scott Allen:In the title for these videos as we release them. That became the point of a discussion that we had internally as a team Internally.
Darrow Miller:And I you know my argument was no.
Scott Allen:Yeah, Darrell's kind of arguing, don't use that word.
Darrow Miller:But that's the word that's familiar today, and if we want to reach young people, do we use the language of gender, because they will be interested in that, whereas you use the archaic words of male and female? They might not want to listen to the see the animation. So that was the discussion we were having internally and that's where your question comes from.
Scott Allen:Scott. Yeah, and just to add my two cents to the discussion. Some on the team argued that gender, the word gender, means the same thing as sex male and female because historically it's been used in that way, kind of almost, you know, as a stand in or just another word for male and female. And I don't know, I've never really done a word study. I know there's a historic root to that word gender and I think maybe you have some insights into this, elizabeth, that I know that it is tied to male and female. My understanding is that it's the way that those are expressed masculinity and femininity. You see this in language like in Spanish, the gendered, you know el and A and whatnot. But also it has to do with the expression in terms of the way that you dress as a boy or you dress as a girl. So it had to do with expression and I'd like to learn more about that.
Scott Allen:But my understanding is that sexual revolutionaries in our day, because there was that element of kind of cultural expression that could vary a bit from culture to culture, there was some subjectivity to gender in a way that there wasn't with this very objective male and female right, but there was some subjectivity to this concept of gender and that's what they latched on to and they said we're going to ride that subjectivity to actually say there isn't anything objective about this whole thing, about sex, male, female, it's all gender, it's all subjective, it's all what you believe. You are right, you become the center of, you know, of determining what you are. And they're going to ride this word gender. They call it gender identity, of course. Then there's gender expression. You know, you name it. Everything is built around this word gender. So that's what's happened. You know again how that happened, how they landed on that word gender, how they changed it. I need to learn more, but it's happened.
Darrow Miller:So Darrow was saying it's a socially non-littable word. I'm sorry, darrow, it's a social construct. The word is a social construction. You can put anything you want into it. Well, it had a historic meaning, though it had a meaning that went back before the sexual revolutionaries.
Scott Allen:Webster actually has it in his dictionary, as Dwight pointed out 1628,.
Dwight Vogt:Yeah, yeah or 1828.
Scott Allen:1828.
Darrow Miller:Whatever it was back then it was.
Scott Allen:So it had you know. But they took it, they did, they brought, they added all sorts of you know things to it and that's what's being taught today. So we're not being taught our young people aren't being taught that sex has to do with this biological binary of male or female. That's objective, that's God-given. They're being taught that all that exists is gender and it's a personal choice. It's your true identity, kind of based on feelings or sexual attraction or whatever it may be. So that's what's being taught and that's why I had to kind of remind the team guys we have to be aware of what's happening in the culture around us.
Scott Allen:So just because you grew up and that word gender was just a kind of meant the same thing as sex male, female don't think that that's what's happening now. Be aware of what's going on around you. See the way this word is being used, weaponized and driven to shape the way people think. Then the question becomes if you see that I think that's always step one See the way words are being used, don't be blind to that, don't be ignorant, don't think it's the same way. Maybe you understood that word growing up, because these things are changing fast. But then when you do see that this is kind of my question to you, elizabeth, or any of us guys.
Scott Allen:Is Darrow's response on a word like gender correct Don't use the word or is it better to say no, this has got a historic meaning that's actually important. And you know, to me the word gender, let's say, is maybe not as important as the word justice or love, but still it's got a historic meaning. I'm not ready to let the people that are working to weaponize that word and redefine it have their way with it. I'm going to defend it, I'm going to preserve it. I'm going to fight on that one. Do we fight to preserve, defend historic meaning, specifically on this word gender, or do we say forget it? It's been so misused and abused that just to use it is going to be creating just confusion.
Elizabeth Youmans:Thoughts, especially from you, elizabeth, on this Well, you know, I was just sitting here thinking is the word gender used in the word of God I'm? You know, I could look it up in Strong's, but I'm not sure it's a good question yeah.
Elizabeth Youmans:That's probably where I would start. I have to say, my only experience with gender do I use the word or don't use the word? We have a little diagram or a little chart that we use, showing the gates of the child that parents should guard, and one of them it's in our family book and one of them is the sexual identity. And Jill, you know, helped us write that book and she called me one day and she said you know, Elizabeth, everybody's using the word gender. Now I think we should change that. Of course, I didn't think anything about it, so I had gender identity. Then, six months later, when I really began to see what was going on, I went back to the graphic illustrator and I said please take the word gender off and replace it with sexual identity, because I don't want to use the word that the culture is using.
Elizabeth Youmans:So, that's what I did, Daryl. My first impulse was to get rid of the word and restore sexual to it. I would like to know if God has used that word.
Scott Allen:Yep, that's a good question, Elizabeth. Go ahead, Darrell.
Darrow Miller:No, I'd say yes. What you're saying, elizabeth, is it in the word of God and how is it used if it is? If it's not, when we adopt what the culture has changed the meaning of a word and we adopt that in our own thinking, then we are adopting the ideas that are part of that, the modern definition. We are using the framework of the culture for our language and for defining things and defining behavior, rather than the culture that's been established by scripture and that's why it creation of that word.
Scott Allen:And what is that going to produce in the culture? Now, darrell, when I wrote the book why Social Justice Isn't Biblical Justice, I had a similar kind of thought discussion challenge around the word justice. And justice is a different word than gender in the sense that justice is used throughout the Bible pervasively and you know in a way that you don't see gender. For example, and more than that I mean, god uses it as a word to describe himself. It's part of his very nature. So this becomes in my mind a much more important word because it's so deeply biblical.
Scott Allen:So I didn't feel like we could just do what we're talking about with gender. Let's not use it, because in this case the culture has grabbed hold of that word and radically redefined it along the lines of kind of Karl Marx's theories and this idea of equality of outcome. Right, you know, it's got a whole different understanding than what we read in the Bible, but we don't have the luxury as Christians I would strongly argue, of saying, well, because it's been weaponized and redefined in the culture, let's just not use it, can't do that.
Elizabeth Youmans:Well, I'm looking at Strong's and of course Strong's is linked to the King James version of the Bible and it's used in Leviticus as a verb Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind and in the New Testament in 2 Timothy. But foolish and unlearned questions avoid knowing that they do gender strifes. So it's being used there as the verb and in Webster as a verb. It means to copulate, to breed, to beget.
Scott Allen:So we're really closely tied to male-female then because you can't copulate without you know male and female right, and that explains why for most of us growing up you know that idea carried through, gender is the same thing as male and female. Yeah, but not today as we're saying. It's been heavily redefined.
Darrow Miller:Well, I think, scott, what I'm hearing in this discussion is, if you have a biblical word, have a biblical word. We should use that in our vocabulary, and we should. Even if the culture has left it behind or has redefined it, then we use it. But, as Elizabeth said, we use the biblical definition. When we're using it, we say that.
Scott Allen:And that has to be made very explicit now it can't be assumed and I think there's way too much of that happening Christians will just say oh, everyone will kind of understand what I mean by that. No, they will not. And that's to your point too, elizabeth. You said you know, here's what I mean. I mean, when you say I, I mean it's really, here's what the Bible means Go ahead.
Darrow Miller:You have a word that is biblical, like justice, and then you have words that are being made up today for categories that have never existed before and do not, you know, do not exist in a biblical framework, in a biblical worldview.
Scott Allen:Can you give example, Darrell?
Darrow Miller:Yeah, some of these 70 different gender identities.
Scott Allen:Okay. So all of these new gender identities, yeah, two-spirit, and all the pronouns that go along with them, identities.
Darrow Miller:Yeah, two-spirit, and all the pronouns that go along with them.
Darrow Miller:Those are new words. Right, they're all new words and they're all made up words. Yeah, and they're made up out of this new way of thinking and my guess is there'll be another 20 in the next year. You know, people just keep experimenting and feeling and adding new words. Let's not affirm those words, let's not use them and affirm them. So you have over here on the biblical you know biblical word like justice, you continue to use that word, even if the culture has left it behind or if the redefined it you use the word and you say this is what it means.
Darrow Miller:And then over here, these new words that are coming out of an ideology that is evacuous of anything godly or biblical. We don't give legitimacy to those words by using them.
Scott Allen:Now you have a word like gender.
Darrow Miller:Okay, now, what do you do with that? There's some okay. It's found in the Bible a couple times in King James Version. What's the Greek word? What's the Hebrew word that's translated? That you do that kind of a thing?
Scott Allen:Yeah, thanks for giving us the example of that. By the way, elizabeth, it'd be kind of good to just kind of help make that even more explicit for people who aren't familiar with the exercise you just did. But go ahead, darrell, yeah.
Darrow Miller:Yeah, and you know, take a word that is the one that you're using here, Scott, and saying, OK, well, it is in the Bible, in the King James Version, but what did the Hebrew word mean in the Old Testament? What does the Hebrew word mean in the Old Testament? What does the Greek word mean in the New Testament? So we have that biblical understanding and biblical usage of the word. Yes, so okay that, but then you don't take that word where it is today and just casually use it because it has all these meanings to it now.
Scott Allen:So just again to underscore I think this is such an important discussion when you come to a word like gender, you've got to stop and you've got to. You can't just immediately start using that word, given what's happened with it. You have to do a couple of things. Number one ask the question that Elizabeth did is it in the Bible? And then how is it used in the Bible?
Scott Allen:right and that's what Elizabeth just did by looking at. You know, the Strong's the, and I know that this is something that a lot of people aren't used to doing. You know that's something that people are going to seminary.
Scott Allen:That's what people that go to seminary do. It's actually not that hard to do. Okay, I'll come back to that, but it's important. Is it in the Bible? How does the Bible understand the word? Question one. Question two how is it understood? How is it being used in the culture today? What is that false meaning? Don't ignore that, and then you can only begin to speak intelligently using that word. Once you've answered both of those questions, right, go ahead.
Luke Allen:Once you've answered both of those questions right, go ahead. Well, I mean just to clarify it. Just because a word's not in the Bible doesn't mean we can't use it. You know, I don't think you were saying that. I mean, like the word Trinity isn't in the Bible.
Elizabeth Youmans:The word isn't in the Bible, worldview's not in the.
Scott Allen:Bible no great clarification. Luke Great clarification. So, it's not that these words that aren't in the Bible aren't important and useful, yeah, yeah, I just wanted to clarify that. I knew you weren't saying that, but if they are in the Bible, then I think it adds a level of just importance, you know, to those words. Go ahead, luke. Yeah.
Luke Allen:Yeah, one thing I'm thinking about, and I think I've noticed, is so, as far as I know, the word gender, gender yes, it does have quite a long history, but it was John Money in the 50s who created the phrase gender identity. So he tacked on to that word identity, which is very subjective, and gave it this new subjectivity that we see today. That word's been pushed dramatically since then.
Scott Allen:That has replaced sex, male-female, in the mind of our young people today.
Luke Allen:And this is my point is, a lot of times, when you want to hijack a word, what you're going to do is you need to not only start using the word but you also need to explain what you mean by it. And a lot of times, what people do to explain what they mean by a word. And a lot of times, what people do to explain what they mean by a word is they tack on another word. So gender identity or social justice, social justice or biblical freedom, you know it's another word that explains it and what that does. It pulls the word towards your definition. But then what we see a lot of times is, once that word is so far towards your definition and you've swayed enough people, then you can drop the second word and you can just start using the original word because you've essentially hijacked it at that point. And that's what we see with gender nowadays.
Luke Allen:Gender identity in the 50s and 60s meant something. Now that word has become so common that we can just use the word gender and we all think the same thing John Money did essentially. Does that make sense? So, like with some of these words that have already been hijacked, like you could say, marriage in a way? Should we start using the phrase biblical marriage to swing it back and then eventually, once everyone starts, you know, understanding marriage through the biblical definition, we can drop biblical and just use marriage like it was used in the Bible. What do you guys think about that? I've seen that with a lot of words.
Scott Allen:I like that, Luke, I like what you're saying. I think it's important because what it does when you add biblical in front of a word like marriage or justice, is that it puts in the hearer's mind a thought which is maybe he's got something or she's got something in mind. That's different than what I understand about justice. There's this idea that this is a biblical understanding that might be different from the cultural one. I think that's an important idea to put in people's minds, you know.
Scott Allen:There may be more than one definition here that we're dealing with.
Elizabeth Youmans:I think we should take every opportunity to educate. That's my personal belief. If it takes a few more sentences, that's all right, but let's educate, especially our Christian brothers.
Scott Allen:Starting with us right? Yeah, we always have to educate ourselves.
Elizabeth Youmans:I have to educate myself. What is the biblical definition? God is holding us responsible. You know we are the ones that fell off the wall. You know we've left our place of prayer and instruction.
Scott Allen:No, it's so true, elizabeth. I mean, it begins with ourselves. Do we understand? And when I say we understand, I'm just writing this book on 10 words and I can tell you that the thing that I've come away with in my writing is that I understand them at a very shallow level and often at a culturally confused level. And I've been a Christian for years, I'm heading up a Christian organization, so if that's my story, how much more is that going to be the story of a lot of Christians? So we have to start with ourselves and we have to kind of say hey, I've got to go a couple steps deeper in my own understanding biblically, of what this word means. Darrell, go ahead. This is why I so appreciate.
Darrow Miller:what Elizabeth is doing is working with children. Yes, yes, and she's not only beginning in terms of discussion with what is the word, what does it mean, how do you use it, but that whole process is teaching children to analyze and to reason, to reason from biblical concepts. That's something that is totally vacuous in public schools today. Unless you take a course in reason, you're not taught to reason you know, everything's about emoting.
Scott Allen:Well, not only are you not taught to reason, you're told you must use this definition. It's kind of become tyrannical or you'll face some kind of you know penalty, fine, right, fine for not doing it, or censorship. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's gotten really tyrannical out there around words and definitions right now. I'm even thinking about this podcast, because we're right at the center of this battle right now. Go ahead, we're teasing out tools that we can use.
Darrow Miller:That's this last 10 minutes of the discussion and one of the tools is to teach kids to think from biblical language and to reason from biblical language, so they're learning to think and reason, which is not something that's commonly done in our schools anymore. So yes, elizabeth.
Elizabeth Youmans:Well, that's what gives the Holy Spirit a place in the classroom. Frankly, when we allow the Word of God to be laid as a foundation, then it says come Holy Spirit, enlighten hearts and minds, because you and I don't do the enlightening. It's the power of God's word that enlightens. So when they begin to read the scripture and work with the word, then their minds are enlightened and those definitions settle down and get planted in fertile soil, rather than just whizzing over their head because they heard a word in class. You know it's combined with the word of God, which is the power, you know, that brings life out of a lesson.
Elizabeth Youmans:So it all works together and I think you should take every opportunity to teach our brothers and sisters we're in a war. I mean, this is a spiritual war we're in and we need to be in there fighting for the next generation and for our culture, and I just think most Christians are happy if you know the police aren't knocking on the door and they can still do things the way they want to do them.
Scott Allen:Yeah, no, this is so true, elizabeth. I couldn't agree more that this is really needs to be part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian, faithful Christian, living at this time. It's to understand deeply, as deeply as we're able to, the true definition of really important words and to be ready to fight if you will, but certainly to defend those and then to bring our own lives into order. Alignment with that word right, I mean part of this is just obedience. Once you know something as powerful as what biblical definition of love is, you know, then you've got to do that, you know you've got to be, you're kind of accountable to live that out.
Scott Allen:There's so many ways that I think we need to be engaging, and I think one of the ways is what you said too, dara, going back earlier. You know you said don't use these new words that have been created, just don't use them. And when you, you and particularly around the sexual revolution, when you said that, it brought to mind for me that famous quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he says let the lie come, but not through me. I love that quote. It's like man, there's a lot of force here behind this lie in the culture and it's coming hard. It's like man. There's a lot of force here behind this lie in the culture and it's coming hard. It's going to come and it might even sweep over the culture, but kind of over my dead body, right.
Scott Allen:I'm not going to use that word. You're not going to force me to use that word. Go ahead, darrell, but.
Darrow Miller:I would say at this point we shouldn't simply be defensive, we need to be offensive. Elizabeth has just said we're in a war. We are in a war and you don't win a war simply by defending. You need to defend, but we need to be on the offense. And you think of people out there who are money strategy, all this promoting this new kind of gender stuff. They know what they're doing and they're on the offense. And if they're on the offense and it's all we're doing is no, no, no, we're going to lose. So how do we become proactive? With the wonderful, with a biblical worldview so we're thinking in a biblical framework and with the incredible language and words and all that they mean from scripture. They have the ability to shape nations and if we're conscious about this and are proactive, we become. We go on the offense and not simply the defense the defense.
Elizabeth Youmans:Isn't this what Martin Luther did back in 1517? He was defending that scripture in Romans, right by faith, oh my goodness, and he almost lost his life over it. But he started a revolution changed the world.
Scott Allen:Well, I'm reminded of that, elizabeth. Just, you know how this is such a pitched kind of warfare, spiritually, when you think about those early pioneers that you know, following in Luther's footsteps, translated the Bible, say, into English, they paid the price with their life for doing that. In other words, the warfare against getting those words out into the vernacular that common people could understand, because there was such power behind that. Satan kind of threw everything he had against that, you know, and people had to pay that ultimate price for that. That's just a reminder to me of just how important this is. We're talking about words, words, what. Who cares about words?
Dwight Vogt:No, go ahead.
Scott Allen:Luke, yeah, you were saying something again.
Luke Allen:I agree that we should be on the offensive and we shouldn't let go of some of these incredibly important words, um. But at the same time, I work in the online space, online communications and um trying to share some of the messages here from our podcast and from the DNA with more people via the internet. Unfortunately, on the internet, there's this new thing called AI, keyword tracking, which is monitoring almost everything I write or put out there, especially on social media platforms, and when this AI sees keywords that they don't like, they flag it and they won't let that message go out. For example, I used in a post last week the phrase Israel versus Hamas. Apparently, you can't use that phrase, so that post got blocked and didn't go anywhere.
Luke Allen:Biblical sexuality that one's not going to make it very far, um. So how do we play offensive when we have, when the words we use, I essentially hit a wall, um, and we can't use them. I've noticed some people will use construed ways of saying the same message, but they'll alter their language to try to pass the guards essentially algorithms, yeah, kind of bypass the algorithm, yeah, yeah, and then other people will message, but they'll alter their language to slip past the guards.
Scott Allen:essentially Algorithms, yeah, kind of bypass the algorithm, yeah.
Luke Allen:Yeah, and then other people will use the words that the culture is using but try to point towards a biblical message, so kind of adopting the language but still pointing the direction they want. How do we do this? Just on a really practical side, there's, you know, there's forces that are flagging the words that we use that are biblical words.
Dwight Vogt:I'd like to point back to what Elizabeth you said. I think well, and Scott, I mean, it begins with clarity. You got to understand what you're talking about, luke, what you do, and then educate. And the question on educate is really tricky, because this question is how do you best educate? And? And it depends on what age the child is, it depends on what the child already knows, it depends on where the child's at, it depends on what their culture is, I mean, but the goal is the same, it's how do you educate? And you educate well. So I think to look for one answer might be a little tricky and you educate well.
Scott Allen:So I think to look for one answer might be a little tricky. I think there is a lot of things. I think to Luke your point, just to be aware of the fact that powerful people that have you know that have their hands on the levers of these powerful, let's say you know, they're kind of cultural gatekeepers. They're writing these algorithms that we all use because we're all online and they're using them to shape the way we think around words and language. Just being aware of that is kind of step one, I think. And then being aware that they're doing that, why are they doing? Why do they care to censor and to kind of silence you Like that should also kind of motivate you that this is really important, that they would go to such trouble. There must be something very threatening, right?
Darrow Miller:Another aspect of the tools of this in these companies like Google, like Facebook, are there people there who profess Christ? My guess is, you know there's people that profess Christ. In hospitals that do abortions, there's probably people on the board who are Christians. There's doctors that are Christians. There's nurses that are Christians. And do we simply go along to get along, or are we? Are pastors, encouraging Christians to be Christians?
Scott Allen:where they are. Just to that point, darrell, because I think you're putting your finger on a really important point here, and that is that I'm thinking a lot of Christians listening to our discussion today would say I'm just not interested in what you're talking about. In fact, I think what you're talking about is just culture warring. It's Christian nationalism and it's leading us down all sorts of wrong paths. As Christians, we need to just don't even talk this way. We need to just get people into the church, get them saved. End of story. All the rest of this stuff that you're talking about is just a distraction. What's your quick response to that? Because I think that's a pervasive kind of mindset in the church today.
Darrow Miller:Any thoughts? I mean yeah, I would say. I mean I've said this before and DNA says this. We're to disciple at the level of culture. We're not just to disciple in the spiritual disciplines. It's not just about getting saved and reading the Bible and praying and going to heaven getting saved and reading the Bible and praying and going to heaven. No, there's a whole understanding of what reality is and that understanding creates a culture and we need to disciple at that level so that people sitting in the pew understand oh, this is reality. And what does that mean for me when I go into my workplace?
Scott Allen:And I want to. To me, there's many reasons to challenge that kind of bad theology of disengagement from the culture, but I want to just mention one of those that I think should speak to all of us as Christians, and that is this, and John Stone Street, to his credit, often says this he says ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims, and when a word is redefined and given a false counterfeit, you know when it becomes a lie, there's victims, right, because these ideas they destroy. And then the question for us as the church is are we just content to say, oh, it's okay, that's okay that all these kids in school are learning this destructive ideology around gender identity, and I don't care, just get them saved? That just doesn't seem to me. I have a hard time with anyone that's going to make a case for that as a Christian. That just doesn't seem to me anywhere close to what God has called us to in terms of being salt and light, and so, anyways, that's just me, though.
Luke Allen:My response also to Christians who would say that, if this is none of our business, getting involved in these types of discussions is I think that's a really wrong understanding of who we are and who God is. We're not talking about compelled speech here. We're not talking about forcing our language on someone else, forcing our dictionary on someone else. Dog versus dog mentality that so much of our world is used to is no, this is the truth. These aren't our words. These are God's words. These are our creator's words, the one who created you, me and everyone else. His words matter and his words are the only ones that lead to good and human flourishing. All the other ones are destructive. So it's not about forcing anything here. It sounds like it. You could kind of see why people say that. So you're just forcing your biblical definitions on us. No, these are the ones that work.
Luke Allen:I just want to present these to you as an option. These ones work.
Scott Allen:I just really want to underscore what you're saying, Luke. We would never use that tactic of creating algorithms that would censor people to prevent them from using non-biblical definitions. Why wouldn't we do that? Because we don't believe that we would do exactly what Elizabeth is doing. We would present these words and help people to begin to think about them and reason and then make their choices right, Because that's how God created us. You know, the enemies of the gospel don't think that way. It's all about top-down forcing and jamming down. We don't do that.
Scott Allen:So, well said, Luke, yeah.
Elizabeth Youmans:You know, I have a good example. They sent us at Stonebridge a wonderful young Haitian man who'd graduated from a Bible college in Florida, because his uncle had visited and noticed how different our school was and he wanted his nephew to receive some kind of training at our school that he could take back to Haiti, because he was very committed to returning to his nation and helping rebuild it. Now this was 30 years ago, and so he was sent to me, and at that time I worked with the foundation that publishes the dictionary. Uh, the architect of the principal approach founded it, and so they sent him to me first, and so I started, you know, with my little lectures.
Elizabeth Youmans:He'd come into my office and then I, second or third time, I assigned him a word study, and the word was liberty. Well, all all the time that he had sat with me, I could tell just by his demeanor that he was thinking oh my goodness, I've heard this. This is, you know, I got all this at the Bible College, I know all these things, you know. But he was kind, he was nice, but I knew just he really wasn't interested. So when he finally had an assignment to do and he came back, he was different and I looked at him and I said Jean-Marc, what's happened to you? You look like you might be interested today. He said, well, I took that word liberty and I said isn't this a ridiculous assignment? The word liberty actually in English comes from the French word liberty, you know, and so he said I knew what liberty was because I speak French, he said.
Elizabeth Youmans:But then I started going through the process of looking it up in the scripture and finding out what your man, webster, said about it and doing. He actually went through the process and developed some principles. And when he got to the place where he was developing the principles, he said all of a sudden the Holy Spirit showed me that my understanding of liberty was how the French saw liberty, which is very oppressive, he said I might say.
Elizabeth Youmans:And then I realized how God used the word in the scripture which is how you see it in English, and he was Well or how we used to see it anyways.
Elizabeth Youmans:He was a changed person and he had an ear to hear what I was teaching. But up to that point he thought words, words, words. I've heard all this. But then he realized, wow, the vocabulary she's using and I'm hearing, I'm not understanding because I don't know how she's defining her words. So it was a powerful experience for me because once again it showed me the power of words and the meanings of words and how they change the way we perceive life and the way we make decisions.
Scott Allen:Amen. Wow, I think this is a really good place to end our discussion, elizabeth. That's really a really powerful example. Well, listen, what a great discussion, as always.
Scott Allen:My own thinking has been stretched and I hope that, for those of you who are listening, that this has caused you to kind of wrestle with these ideas as well, and just the power of words, and we just want you to really take this discussion to heart, and we'll talk a lot more this year about language, about words and about 10 particular words that we're going to be releasing here shortly in the form of this book. But, luke Dwight, and especially Dr Eumanns, elizabeth Eumanns, thank you so much for being part of the discussion. I want to encourage all of you to check out Elizabeth's outstanding organization and work at amoprogram's. That's the best way for people to learn more about what your program is and the work that you're doing around the world. Yes, if you're involved in education in any way, and particularly cross-culturally in context of poverty, but but this applies everywhere I really urge you to go to amoprogramorg and look at the work that Elizabeth and her team are doing. It's outstanding, elizabeth. Thanks for being with us today.
Elizabeth Youmans:Thank you.
Scott Allen:Thank you all for listening to another episode of Ideas have Consequences.
Luke Allen:This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. This is the podcast of the Dis of words. Then you might be interested in my dad's Scott Allen's newest book, which will be out this year, and the working title for that book is 10 words that transform culture. So stay tuned as we'll share more information about that book as it gets closer to publication. As you heard during the break, our flagship training course here at the DNA is the Kingdomizer training program, which is available for you for free at quorumdeocom today. The Ideas have Consequences podcast is brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance DNA. To learn more about our ministry, you can find us on Instagram, facebook and YouTube or on our website, which is disciplenationsorg. Thanks again for joining us. Please share the show with a friend and leave us a rating and review on the podcast platform that you're listening on. We hope you'll be able to join us also next week here on Ideas have Consequences.