Episode 192: Can You Build Your Worldview on the Bible?

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Today Counts Show Episode 192

Preview

Brett: Over a span of eight years, the Center for Biblical Engagement surveyed more than 100,000 people around the world about their spiritual lives. And what they found is that people who consistently engage the Bible four or more days per week had a profound impact on the individual’s life. In fact, if you Google this, they found that there was a 20 to 62% reduction, depending on the particular specific example, but there was a 20 to 62% reduction in risky behaviors. Things like overeating, extramarital sex, pornography, lying, lashing out at people in anger, drinking in excess, overspending, mishandling money. Basically what the study found is that the Bible transforms your life.

Appreciation of our Supporters

Winston: Hey, before we jump into the podcast, we want to thank all our donors and supporters who make the Today Count Show possible. It’s through your generosity that we’re able to shape leaders through this content and this podcast. And be sure to like, subscribe, and follow wherever you find yourself coming across this content. All right, let’s get to the podcast.

Introduction: Every Leader Has a Worldview

Jim: All right, welcome back to the Today Count Show. I’ve got something to say here on the front end, and it goes something like this. Every leader has a worldview. Whether we realize it or not, we lead from a set of beliefs about what’s true, what’s right, and what matters most. Some leaders look to philosophy. I kind of look to philosophy, to be honest. Experience. I kind of look at experience or data. I don’t know how big of a data guy I am to shape that view. But others like me, though, we look primarily to the Bible. But that raises a question, a serious question. Is the Bible trustworthy enough to build my entire or your entire worldview on?

I want to introduce our guest today on the Today Count Show. He’s been on the show a couple times. We’ve known each other since birth, I think. At least it seems like, Brett Kunkle is the founder of Maven. Brett, thanks for being on the show again today.

Brett: Thanks for having me, Jim. Yeah, I think as soon as I was a teenager, you were telling me what to do, and you’re still telling me what to do.

Jim: No, I’m kind of getting elderly, looking for you to help me out on some things.

So, the foundation of how we build our worldview determines, in my opinion, how we lead, how we decide, how we respond when life tests us.

What is a Christian Apologist?

Brett, I think it’s fair to say that you are a Christian apologist. Would you say so?

Brett: Yeah, I think I fit in that category. I’m more of an apologist who really tries to translate for the church. You have your more academic apologists, but I’m really interested in translating what the really smart guys say and helping the church to think about those things, but putting it in a way and communicating it in a way that’s accessible to most of the normal people like you and I.

Jim: Yeah. I’m definitely a normal. That’s for sure. Yeah. I kind of see it as someone who gives reasoned answers for faith. I think you’re pretty philosophical as well, wouldn’t you say?

Brett: Yeah, I would say so. In one sense, I would argue that we’re all pretty philosophical if you mean by philosophy just thinking carefully about life’s most important issues. Now, of course, you have the academic or the professional philosophers who specialize, who get really down into the weeds.

A lot of times I think when we think about philosopher we think about the ivory tower of academia. But philosophy is something that we all do all the time because philosophy is just thinking carefully about the big questions and it’s reasoning and it’s trying to think logically. And that’s just what we do as human beings because by our very nature we are rational creatures made in the image of God. And so yeah, we’re all philosophers. The question is whether or not we’re good philosophers, whether we’re good thinkers.

Jim: Yeah. Well said. Well said. Real quickly though, just to give a quick background, when did apologetics thinking, rational thinking, the Bible as a subject matter, become personal for you?

From Doubt to Deeper Faith

When Faith Became Personal

Brett: Well, the Bible became personal when I was in middle school, high school really, is when I think I got serious about it for myself. And it was a period of transitioning from receiving the faith from my parents. I think I genuinely put my faith in Christ when I was 5 years old. I remember my dad leading me through a little track that explained the gospel, and he led me in a prayer, and I put my faith in Christ at that point.

But when you’re young, there’s a lot of borrowing from your parents’ faith. And it really was in middle school and high school that I really began to own the faith and to think carefully about the faith and to really start reading the Bible more seriously and studying out what we believed.

The First Crisis: A Professor’s Challenge

But then, when I was a freshman in college, I had a philosophy professor. And we were doing ministry together at that point and you remember this, and you were one of the people to help walk me through this time. But I had a philosophy professor who basically dismantled my faith a little bit in philosophy class, talking about the big issues of life, talking about all of these things, and then his very direct challenges to Christianity, to the Bible itself in particular.

I remember being in his office trying to battle back intellectually against the heavyweight, the PhD, the smart guy. I remember him pulling out my Bible and then showing me these alleged contradictions that I just was not aware of. And I had no framework to think about those things, I didn’t know how to answer him. And I remember walking out of his office with a lot of fear and trembling thinking, “Oh my gosh, this smart guy has just uncovered some dark secrets about the Bible for me.”

Walking Through Doubt and Searching for Answers

And so that sent me into an episode of intellectual doubt that made me start searching out answers. I know I had a little bit of apologetic exposure before that, but that really awakened in me a desire to not just know what I beleive but why I believe it. Are there good reasons? Is there evidence for this stuff? Is there good reason to think the Bible is the word of God? I mean, that’s a big claim.

Jim: A big claim. Yeah. I remember that. I remember that time very vividly because I think you were taking some classes outside of Biola for financial reasons and whatnot, if I remember right. And I remember you were very distraught. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how easy it can be, just being human, for another person to inject a virus of doubt in us. But to your point, it caused you to go deeper versus run away.

Your dad, speaking of your dad, your dad used to hold me to account too, being a youth pastor. “What are we teaching these kids? We need to make sure they…” etc., etc. Was there a time in your life that you doubted the Bible’s reliability? Was that the time that you doubted it? Or was that the first time, or had you had any more serious doubts prior to that?

The Role of Community and Changed Lives

Brett: No, that was the first time that I’m aware of where I had serious questions. I think God had been favorable to me. I had an early faith, and I think I also grew up in some really good churches. So when we were living on the East Coast, we were part of a good church, moved to the West Coast, and then got involved with our old church, Chino Valley Community Church.

I think my church life and the community there and the living out of the Christian faith and seeing the reality of God and the reality of the gospel and the reality of Christ in people’s lives was very– I think that helped sustain my faith. In fact, even in that season of doubt, I think one thing that ended up being an anchor in hindsight was the changed lives of people around me.

Okay, my professor at the local junior college is saying this about the Bible, and yet I’m also seeing the fruits lived out, and I’ve seen it for many years—the fruit of people who put their trust in the Bible and who read it and study it and who are transformed by it—which I think is actually another kind of evidence. So it’s not that that didn’t play an evidentiary role. It certainly did.

How Doubt Ultimately Strengthened Faith

And so I didn’t end up walking away at any point. I just added to that kind of evidence, additional kinds of evidences. It ended up strengthening my faith. That’s what doubt can do. Doubt is not always a bad thing because doubt can refine your faith. It can refine your thinking and grow your faith. And through that process, my faith was rebuilt in a much stronger fashion, I think, even than before.

Defining Worldview: Your Picture of Reality

Jim: I have had the opportunity to peruse through some of your library from time to time, and so I know that you are a diligent seeker of information and truth and perspectives. But before we go on and hit this topic of why the Bible, helps us define worldview, because I know that you work a lot in that realm, what does it mean and why does it matter for everybody, but even for leadership?

Brett: Yeah. Well, a worldview can be defined very simply. A worldview is just your picture of reality. And of course, you can get very academic on the definition of worldview, but I think that is a simple, concise definition that really captures the essence of worldview. It’s your picture of reality, and everyone has a picture of reality.

The Puzzle Piece Analogy: How Beliefs Fit Together

An analogy I like to use is a puzzle and puzzle pieces. And so imagine we have all these beliefs in our mind, and they’re represented by different puzzle pieces. I have beliefs about all kinds of things that have to do with reality, whether it’s my relationships, my family, the nature of economic activity to my home, the afterlife. Everything is encompassed in worldview.

And so all these different beliefs that we hold in our minds are these different puzzle pieces. When we think carefully about our thoughts, about our beliefs, and we start to organize them—because that’s what we do as human beings, by nature we’re rational—we want to put things together. So what good worldview thinking does is it starts to take those ideas we have about the world and then see if they fit together.

You’re putting together this puzzle. And what emerges as you put more and more of the pieces together is a picture emerges. Those puzzle pieces form a picture that, if you look at any individual piece by itself, it might give you a little bit of insight. It’ll give you a little piece of that picture, but it doesn’t give you the whole thing. And you may not even know, looking at one single piece, what in the world the entire picture is.

You start putting it together and it starts forming this coherent picture, a picture that makes sense. It starts to fit together. And that’s what a worldview does. It starts to put together the beliefs, the ideas, the thoughts that we have about the nature of reality and puts them into a coherent whole or attempts to put them into a coherent whole that makes sense of the world and then guides us through the world.

Life’s Big Questions: The Framework of Every Worldview

Now if you take that analogy a little bit further, think about what you start with when you’re putting together a puzzle. You always start with the edges and the corners because when you put those pieces together first, it provides a framework. That framework then helps you to put the other pieces inside. The framework makes sense of the pieces on the inside.

In the same way, that framework in our worldview is our answers to life’s most important questions, to the big questions, the significant questions. Things like: Where do we come from? That’s the origin question. Why is there something rather than nothing? Am I the result of a personal, powerful Creator, or am I the result of some biochemical evolutionary process that didn’t have me in mind? Well, that’s going to be part of that framework because that big question frames the other things inside.

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>Questions about identity—who we are or what we are as human beings. Questions about meaning and purpose—why are we even here? Questions about morality—how should I, as a human being, live my life? Is there such a thing as a should or an ought? Do I have any obligations to anyone beyond myself? Destiny—that’s another big worldview question. What happens after I die?

And so you answer those questions, and it starts to create a framework. And then the other pieces fit inside and make sense of the other pieces. That’s a really helpful analogy in understanding what a worldview is and how it functions for us. Our worldview, our picture of reality, frames all of life and then provides for us guidance on how we think we ought to live and move in what we take to be the real world.

When Worldviews Go Wrong: False Ideas and Real Consequences

And of course, I think it brings up issues of, okay, what if you get it wrong? Well, if you get it wrong, it’s going to steer you in the wrong direction. If you have false ideas about human identity and what it means to be human and what our meaning and purpose is, well, then you’re going to live that out because it turns out that our beliefs, the things that we believe, are the rails on which we live our lives.

And so they’re guiding us and directing us on how we ought to live. But you can build that—if you have a false worldview, if you have false beliefs about the nature of reality— I mean, that’s the most practical thing you can have because you end up living out your ideas. I’ve heard someone say, “Reality is what you bump up against when your ideas are false, when your beliefs are false.” So we know this just from experience. We believe false things.

Sources of Truth: From Above and From Below

Jim: Yeah. That’s similar to even what Bible-believing people might do. They trust in God, but they don’t put a period at the end. They trust in God for something temporal. And when that doesn’t happen, even in the Christian realm, that is a wake-up call when we learn that our faith is only as good as the object of our faith.

I remember, Brett, way back when I was in seminary and taking a basic Christian theology class. I remember the instructor articulating pretty well all of the sources that we have for truth, and he used terms as I recall as “from below” and “from above.” From above meaning these are revelations from God that have to be accepted or rejected as divine. But then from below was the things also with His fingerprints all on them, like creation, some of the things that we have learned in physics to call laws, the law of gravity, and so forth. And there are so many different evidences. But every worldview has sources of truth or a source of truth.

The Cumulative Case for the Bible’s Trustworthiness

And if I’m correct, your primary source for your worldview is the Bible. And if I am correct on that, why do you trust the Bible so much as your primary source of shaping your worldview?

Brett: Yeah. Well, it’s a great question. The first part of your question really has to do with a field of philosophy called epistemology, just a big word that means our theory of knowledge, our view of knowledge. How do we know what we know? And that’s really an important question because depending on what you think even about the nature of knowledge, it can leave you in a very skeptical place, or it can leave you in a place where you have a confidence that we have been well-equipped to explore the nature of reality.

And I think that this goes back to worldview. If God has created human beings with special faculties, He’s given us a soul with rational mind but also emotion, will. He’s given us a body with five senses. Then we’re actually well-equipped to explore the nature of reality. And what we discover is that this is part of common grace where even if you’re not a believer, you are equipped with these things to be able to explore reality.

General and Special Revelation: The World and the Word

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>And the way I like to think about it is that in terms of the knowledge of God, He’s revealed Himself primarily through, I think, two sources: the world and the Word. And so we can simply look around the created order and we can discover knowledge about God. And this is what Paul says in Romans chapter 1, right? God’s eternal nature, divine power have been clearly seen through what has been made. And then you’ve got Romans 2, where we can actually gain knowledge about God’s moral law through conscience.

That idea that God reveals himself, theologians call general revelation. He reveals himself through the natural world. Then you have special revelation, and that’s the idea that God has also communicated about Himself more specifically through the pages of Scripture.

Why I Trust Scripture: A Cumulative Case

And the reason why I trust Scripture is really it’s a cumulative case. I think when it comes to the Bible, you’re not looking for one single argument or one single reason or a silver bullet that just proves everything. What you actually find is that the case for the reliability and trustworthiness and authority of the Bible is much stronger than that. You can pile on the evidence, so to speak. If you think of scales, you start putting on the evidence, and there’s actually different questions to answer.

Do We Have What the Authors Wrote? Manuscripts and Textual Evidence

So one of the questions when it comes to the Bible has to do with whether or not we even have what the original authors wrote. Because if we don’t have what they wrote, we don’t have any reliable way to reconstruct that original letter of Paul to the Corinthians or that original Gospel that Matthew or Mark or Luke or John wrote. Well, then we’re in a hopeless situation.

Is What They Wrote True? Internal and External Tests

How Scholars Reconstruct Ancient Documents

So that’s the first part, and that’s where biblical scholars—and not just biblical scholars, just historians in general who are in the field of textual criticism—look at the manuscript evidence and various aspects of the manuscript evidence to reconstruct ancient documents or ancient writings. Because of course we don’t have any original copy of a writing from the ancient world.

Why the Bible’s Manuscript Evidence Stands Alone

And so when you look at the manuscript evidence for the Bible in contrast to every other ancient document out there—I mean, you name any writing from any source—what you discover is that the manuscript evidence for the Scriptures blows everything else out of the water. It’s really not even close. You’re talking about thousands and thousands of manuscripts and the earliest dating within just maybe, depending on the dating of the scholars, anywhere from 40 to 100 years. I mean, just within the first 300 years of Christianity, you have plentiful manuscripts to reconstruct the Bible.

And so without getting into all the details, you look at the manuscript evidence for the New Testament and then for the Old Testament as well; it just blows everything else out of the water. And so if you want to throw out the Bible and say, “Well, all we have is copies of copies and they’re error-filled and we just can’t trust it, we can’t trust that we have an accurate copy of what was originally wrote,” well then if you want to be the honest-minded skeptic, you have to throw out every other document from the ancient world. Everything we know about Roman history, everything we know about Greek history and the writings of all of these folks—you’ve got to toss that out too.

Do We Have What They Wrote? And Does What They Wrote Match History?

And so that’s one piece of evidence, the manuscript evidence. Then there’s a question of, okay, well maybe we have what they wrote, but is what they wrote accurate? Is it historically reliable? That’s the question of historicity. And that’s where historians look at all kinds of tests. You’ve got internal tests and you’ve got external tests.

The internal tests are the things that are within the Scriptures or within the book or the document that attest to its reliability. That might be things like the internal coherence of the book. You’ve got these pieces that fit together that tell a coherent story. You have things like what are referred to as embarrassing details. Human nature is such that we don’t want to reveal embarrassing things about us or those who are close to us, our community. So historians, when they see a writer revealing embarrassing detail about themselves or their community, that is actually evidence that what they’re writing is true.

And so those are examples of internal tests. Then you’ve got external tests. Here’s the thing about Scripture: it lists all kinds of specific names of people, places, cities, events, items. And these are regularly verified through archaeology, through the writings of other ancient writers. Israel is just one big archaeological dig.

Transparency, Emotion, and Human Honesty in Scripture

Jim: The way the writers often refer to either one another or what they simply assume is common knowledge—sometimes we discover something in archaeology that maybe we don’t think was explained well enough, when the authors didn’t feel a need to explain it because it was common knowledge.

Speaking to your coherence and the idea of using our logic, that helps us. It’s a powerful thing. And to your point about embarrassing things, I think what I always find amazing in the same brand in which you are speaking is just the transparency. I’m reading through the Psalms right now, and there are much more agonizing things that are stated in human experience in the book of Psalms than there are glorious and celebratory things that are in there. It’s almost like opening up my journal—it’s probably what that would look like. Oh my God.

The Ring of Truth: Human Experience and Honest Detail

Brett: Well, that’s another kind of evidence, right? When you read it, it rings true. It’s true to reality. You actually can relate with the people of the Bible because they are flawed. They are imperfect, they struggle, they have victories. They experience emotions that we experience. And so it just has that ring of truth to it as it describes these events.

Look, any parent will tell you: if you sense that your kid is lying to you, what do you do? You ask more questions. You try to pull out more details. And that’s how I catch my kids in lies. I just say, “Oh, you said you were here. Okay, who else was with you? What time were you there? How did you get back here?” And you get more of those details, and eventually the story starts to fall apart.

Well, it’s the exact opposite with Scripture. It gives all these details, and what we just keep doing is we keep confirming the details. And when you compare it to something like the Book of Mormon—this is scripture in the view of those who are part of the LDS church—and it gives all kinds of names of people, places, things. And so the question is, when you look at those internal tests and those external tests, do we have anything verifying the details?

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>And when you look at other books that are claimed to be scripture, they just do not even hold a light to the historical reliability of Scripture. So that’s another piece of evidence you’d put on the side of the scale for the Bible.

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Is the Bible Divine or Human?

Brett: Then you’re looking at, “Okay, now I’ve got an accurate historical, I’ve got an accurate book. I’ve got an accurate copy of the original. I’ve got a historically reliable document that’s telling me the truth.” Okay, that doesn’t make it God’s word, because you can have accurate history books. Then you look at the different evidences for, “Okay, why do we think this book is no ordinary book?”

And that’s where I think you’re kind of looking for these divine fingerprints, so to speak. Do you see these divine fingerprints on the book? And that’s where something like its construction — 40 different authors or so over a period of 1500 years in multiple countries, in multiple continents, writing a book that tells one grand story. How would you ever come up with that humanly speaking? The best explanation is one divine author speaking through all of those human authors.

You look at things like the fulfillment of prophecy, looking at the life of Christ and just in his life alone, the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies written hundreds and hundreds of years before his coming, and then he fulfills them. You look at the transformation of people’s lives. In addition, they encounter this book, they read it, their lives are turned upside down for the good. And those are divine fingerprints. And so we’re just heaping on this evidence that gives us confidence that this is no ordinary book.

From Accuracy to Authority: Vetting the Scriptures

Jim: I think you bring up a really good point about even the accuracy and the historicity of scripture doesn’t necessarily make it a divine or a higher level, the word of God, the written word of God, the living and written word of God. Yet I would think that the human being who, to your point, has been equipped with the ability to not grasp God’s essence but to be convinced of his existence and his activity both past, present, and future, we would really want to vet the scriptures because if indeed it is the word of God, then so much of what we need has been provided in that.

If it’s merely a good history book, then it might be worth reading once or twice in your life, but if it’s something beyond that and it’s authoritative in your life, then you’ve got some of the direction that you’ve been looking for.

And so I always get dumbfounded, and I’m not sure what to think about this, but if the Christian world claims the Bible is the word of God, I would think, and to your point about Romans 2 and our conscience, I would think as leaders, we would really be on a mission to arrive at a conclusion ourselves. Is this something that I can build my life on or is it merely good information for later?

Where Leaders Build Their Truth Base

And it almost brings me to another question as to where does a leader build their truth base from? Do they succumb to a full democracy of ideas where whatever the majority believes I now see as reality, as morality, and therefore I go with that? Or do I see it from something that has been written before the ages even began in the essence and the person of God and then revealed to us over time and in various ways? I mean, those are two completely different ways of going about navigating our lives.

And then my final thought there for you to comment on is when you have a worldview, there’s going to be some major points that depend probably on your personality or your experiences or where you live in the world, or if you somehow have been able to clean all that out and could just academically come up with your seven main points of your worldview.

Facing Reality: Brokenness, Mercy, and Empathy

But one of my, and it sounds so dark and negative, but it’s actually freeing and grace-filled if one really thinks about it — I believe that the world is broken. And there’s a lot of folks who don’t want to believe that. It sounds like I’m a guy standing on a soapbox at the corner of a busy street in every major city in America telling people to turn or burn, and that’s not my message. But no, for me, it’s a sobering thought. It’s a humbling thought. It’s a thought where it postures not only myself seeking mercy from God and direction from God, but also fills me with empathy for others.

And I’m just a little bit amazed by folks who may not see the good and the bad, if you will. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, but that kind of comes more from a heart place than a head place.

The Biblical Worldview and Effective Leadership

Brett: Well, let me step back and say, okay, if the Bible turns out to be God’s revelation to us, right? So the personal, powerful God of the universe who brought everything into existence has now revealed his will, his ideas. He’s revealed these things to us in the Bible. Then it turns out that the Bible is not just a book of spiritual guidance. It certainly is that, but it’s not just that. It turns out that the Bible is a factually accurate account of reality.

And then we connect this back to our worldview. What’s a worldview? It’s your view of reality. Well, the Bible, Christianity, is a worldview. That worldview arises from the scriptures. And the scriptures, if they are God’s word to us, are a factually accurate account of reality.

The Image of God and the Foundation of Human Dignity

So, for instance, you look at Genesis chapter 1. In Genesis chapter 1:26–28, it talks about God creating man, and it says he’s made us in his image. You just stop there. And so there’s this intrinsic fact about us — we’re made in God’s image. And what Christianity has said based off this biblical revelation is that that is the only thing that provides a sturdy foundation for human dignity and for human rights. Because it’s built in. It’s intrinsic. If you are a human being, you are made in God’s image.

Human Differences and the Failure of Other Foundations

And if you think about it, there is nothing, there’s no characteristic or attribute that we can look at when we look at all the different human beings out there. There’s nothing we can point to that we say we all share equally. So, for instance, intelligence — we don’t all share the same level of intelligence. We don’t share the same socioeconomic status or the same level of wealth or the same athletic ability or strength or anything like that, or beauty or good looks, or skin color. All of these things are distributed unequally amongst human beings.

And so what is the history of humanity? It’s basing human value on some of these characteristics. None of them are big enough to support the idea that all human beings have equal value and equal dignity. And so that right there is a description of reality that has led to, if you look at the history of that idea that we are made in the image of God in Western civilization, that idea that kind of, I don’t want to use innovation, but it comes to prominence in Western civilization and leads to the protection of all kinds of people. It leads to some of the greatest moral advancements we have.

Jim: Goodness.

Humans, Gender, and the Biblical View of Reality

Brett: Yeah. And now, secondly, right after the Bible says we’re made in God’s image, it says he made them in his image, male and female he created them. Now, I take that to be a description of the nature of reality that is very relevant at this present moment when we are debating whether or not there are males and females, whether or not sex and gender are binary. The Bible gives a description of reality, and it describes the reality of gender and sex as being binary. There are males and there are females.

And so what you see from the beginning is you get an accurate view of what a human being is. And of course, throughout the rest of scripture, you’re going to get further information, further facts about what it means to be human. Then that’s going to inform us on something like leadership.

Because if you don’t have a proper view of what a human being is — well, step back from leadership — just human functioning in general and human flourishing. We want human beings to flourish and to do well. That starts with a proper view, a proper worldview, of what a human being is. Because if you don’t get human nature right, you’re not going to get human flourishing right.

And think about the situation we’re in now. We can’t even define what it means to be male and female in our culture. And what’s the result? The result is the unraveling of culture, the dysfunction of culture, the dysfunction of humanity.

Human Dignity and Human Brokenness — A Leader’s Tension

And so then when it comes to something like leadership, leadership starts with an accurate view of what a human being is. And so if human beings are these magnificent creatures who are made in God’s image and who have dignity, that’s going to inform our leadership. A job or a workplace or a marketplace or an organization where people are affirmed in that human dignity is going to be a place that’s going to thrive and flourish.

Your employees, your workers, your co-workers — they’re going to want to be there. In fact, that’s what we know about business. Somebody who feels dignified in their work and feels appreciated and feels valued, that means a lot more than just the bottom dollar. You may be making a lot of money and you’ll still walk away from that job eventually if you aren’t being valued and dignified in that work.

Leadership and the Reality of Sin

And so that informs our leadership. But then you have the second aspect that you mentioned. The theological term is sin. And it’s the evil, it’s the brokenness, it’s the rebellion, it’s the conflict that we see all around us. Scripture accurately describes reality. All you’ve got to do is jump on social media and scroll for a little bit and you have plenty of evidence there is something wrong with this world.

And actually, you don’t even need to jump on social media. All you’ve got to do is reflect on yourself and you know deep down there’s something wrong with you and me. There are failures, there are imperfections, there’s things that I wish I would do and I don’t do them, and things like that.

Well, the Bible’s described that for us. It’s sin and the effects of sin. And so then that’s going to inform your leadership. Okay, I’ve got these dignified creatures who are also messy and fallen and broken. All right, how do you create an environment where there’s not only a dignifying of those people, but there’s also an accountability? Because as an imperfect human being, we tend towards laziness, we might tend towards dishonesty. And so how is there accountability and things like that?

Sin, Social Media, and the Realities Leaders Face Today

And so this book describes reality and will give you insight into the nature of reality, particularly the nature of human beings, that will then allow you to then lead those kinds of people, which we are all part of, most effectively.

And so yeah, I think that, we don’t hear a lot of Christian leaders talk about the Bible in that way.

When Leaders Turn to the Bible and Feel Lost

Jim: Yeah. And to your point about social media, what we’re seeing today is this flood of silver-tongued individuals that get on for 15 seconds, 60 seconds, and spew something. And it’s really kind of a sad thing.

But all right, so let me ask you this, Brett. You’re listening to this podcast, you’re a leader, and you’re thinking, I think what Jim and Brett are sharing is, if I’m hearing this right, I think that they really believe that the Bible is a channel that God is using to communicate, that they’re even saying that these are the words of God in some way, shape, or form, which is beyond me. And so maybe I’m going to start leaning towards that.

But then they start reading it, and they seek it. They’re looking for direction. They’re looking for knowledge. But then they read things they don’t understand, or they read things they go, what? What would you say to the leader who is making this move towards God in this way? Because it’s not an easy journey.

The Four Chapters of Scripture’s Big Story

Brett: Yeah. This is where we really need to help people understand the big picture of Scripture, or the big story, if you will. And actually a friend of mine wrote a book called The Story of Reality. Sometimes we think about story, we think about “once upon a time.” This is not that kind of story. This one started not “once upon a time” but “in the beginning.”

Jim: In the beginning.

Brett: And so this description of reality. Okay, so what’s the big picture? Because it’s like anything, the larger context always informs the smaller parts. It’s the idea of seeing the forest from the trees, right? If you’re lost in the forest, the best thing to do is to get higher ground so you can see the forest from the trees. And in the same way, that’s what we need to do with Scripture.

The Four Chapters of Reality: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration

Creation – The Origin Story

And I think here’s a very simple way to think about the big picture of Scripture. It’s divided into four primary chapters. You have creation. That’s Genesis 1 and 2, and that small portion of Scripture is absolutely so vital because that’s the origin story. And where you come from tells you so much about who you are and what you are. And so that origin part is so important. So you’ve got the origin. That’s creation.

The Fall – Humanity’s Rebellion

The second chapter is the fall. That’s Genesis 3. What has gone wrong with this world? That’s where Genesis 3 informs us that man’s rebellion against his Creator is the fundamental problem.

Redemption – God’s Rescue Plan

And then what you get is the third chapter. And that chapter can be called redemption. What we see are the effects of the fall. We see then God, and this is where the hero comes into the story, to rescue those who are in distress. That’s what God does first. He attempts to do so through the nation of Israel. And what the nation of Israel shows is that in our fallen humanity, on our own, we can’t do it. And so that’s where understanding Israel’s role in this redemptive chapter is going to start making sense of the particular details.

Restoration – The Final Chapter

Then you get into the New Testament, and God can’t use broken humanity to rescue us. Instead, what He does is He comes down Himself. And this is where God takes on human flesh in Christ. And then Christ comes. He pays the price for sin, he rescues us from our sin. He conquers sin and death in the resurrection. And then He establishes the church. And now that church is taking that message of redemption, the gospel, the good news, to the rest of the world.

God’s kingdom then breaks in at that point and is now starting to be established. It’s the already but not yet. It doesn’t come to completion. Its completion happens in chapter four, and that’s restoration. That’s when the King returns, the hero returns. He’ll restore all things. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. There will be a happily ever after.

And those four chapters—creation, fall, redemption, restoration—make sense of the smaller parts. And so I think getting that bigger story of Scripture will then help us as we read through the particular details of the Bible.

Leadership and the Word: Kneeling Before the Truth

Jim: Man, that’s good. One of the things that we talk about in leadership is that a good and moral leader is also a good follower. And I think the challenge for the leader who is considering opening up that Bible and seeking God through that word will be a challenge for them because in this world we have to grit our teeth, clench our fists, fight hard. And really what we’re talking about here is kneeling ourselves, figuratively speaking, before the Word of God and taking our understanding and our direction from there.

I wrote this to kind of end our time together. I said, “A leader’s worldview is the invisible engine behind decision. The question isn’t whether you have one, it’s what it’s built on.” I think that’s what you and I are encouraging people to do—to read it for themselves, and don’t be alone in it. Seek fellowship in it. Seek people who have some time, some experience, some bumps and bruises along the way in life that can help.

I know we’re running out of time. Brett, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. This was an important topic for the Today Count Show. It’s an important topic.

The Power of Four and Final Thoughts

Brett: Yeah. Jim, can I give one more thing to the listeners?

Jim: Yes, please.

Brett: Because what we’re trying—I mean, at the end of the day, what we really want to do is motivate people to get into the Bible and to read it. And there is an organization called the Center for Bible Engagement, CBE. Over a span of eight years, surveyed more than 100,000 people around the world about their spiritual lives. And what they found is that people who consistently engage the Bible four or more days per week—that had a profound impact on the individual’s life.

The Power of Four—Faith Outcomes

In fact, if you Google this, just Google Center for Biblical Engagement and Google the phrase “The Power of Four.” And it wasn’t two times. It wasn’t three times. It was something about four times per week—reading the Bible, listening to teaching on the Bible, engaging with the Bible. And what it did is that it had profound impact on people’s lives.

Okay, so they broke it up into… they tried to measure the profound impact when it came to people’s faith. What they found is that there was a dramatic increase in proactive faith. So they found that there was a 218% to 416% increase in things like sharing your faith with others, donating to charity, discipling others, memorizing Scripture.

Reductions in Emotional Struggles

When it came to struggles in life, people who engaged the Bible four times per week—there was a 14% to 60% reduction in things like having destructive thoughts or negative thoughts about yourself or about others, or thinking unkindly about others, feeling like you couldn’t please God, experiencing loneliness, experiencing bitterness. There was a reduction in difficulty of forgiving other people, reduction in discouragement, reduction in fear and anxiety.

Jim: Yeah, it’s real.

Reductions in Risky Behaviors

Brett: And then thirdly, they found that there was a 20% to 62% reduction, depending on the specific example, but a 20% to 62% reduction in risky behaviors. So things like overeating, extramarital sex, pornography, lying, lashing out at people in anger, drinking in excess, overspending, mishandling money. And basically what the study found is that the Bible transforms your life.

Scripture as Transformation

I mean, that’s—and see, now we go back to Scripture. And Scripture is a description of reality. Well, that’s what Romans 12:2 says: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” And when you read the Scriptures and the Scriptures wash over your mind, it renews your mind with truth, with goodness, and it transforms you. You are transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And so if all this other conversation was a little bit academic or– Hey, just get into it and start reading it four times a week. Do an experiment for the next month—four times a week—and see the impact that it starts to have on your life.

Where to Find Brett and Maven

Jim: Brett, give us your website address where people want to find you.

Brett: Our organization is Maven. A maven is someone who is kind of an expert or is knowledgeable in a certain area and then seeks to pass that on to others. And that’s what we want to do with a biblical worldview, with the truth of Scripture. We want to pass that on to others, particularly the next generation. And so people can find us at maventruth.com.

Jim: Good to see you again, my friend. I love you. Take care of yourself.

Brett: Yeah, good to see you, old youth pastor.

Jim: Hopefully, we’ll talk soon.

Brett: Yes.

Outro

Winston: Hey, thank you so much for joining us on the Today Counts Show. We’ve got so much more planned for you. So stay tuned and stay connected on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and subscribe on YouTube. And remember, today counts.
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