Q&A with Dr. Os Guinness, ACSI Public Policy & Advocacy Summit Speaker

In the upcoming documentary “Truth Rising,” produced by Focus on the Family and the Colson Center, you shared your personal and powerful testimony of living under the China regime in the 1940s and barely surviving. What encouragement would you have for brothers and sisters still living under persecution today? 

Dr. Guinness: “‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church’ is as true today as ever. We who live in safer and more comfortable places in the West need to remember the persecuted, we need to generously support the ministries that work on their behalf, and we need to stand as tireless defenders of religious liberty for them and for ourselves.” 

You call this our “civilization moment.” How can a Christian educator help transform culture? 

Dr. Guinness: “The challenge of the hour is always to respond in the spheres of our individual callings, and no sphere is more important today than education. What I call the ‘golden matrix of meaningful life’ is formed by the family, the church, and the school. In a free society, these three institutions are primary and more important than the state, the market, and technology. So, educators should take great confidence in the fact that their role is central and indispensable. Socrates was famous for saying, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ The Bible would complement him by adding, ‘The uninstructed life is not worth living.’” 

In your opinion, why is it critical to stay involved in public policy and advocacy? 

Dr. Guinness: “The American Republic owes everything to the Hebrew Republic, and a key principle of both is the idea of reciprocal responsibility. ‘Every Jew is responsible for every Jew,’ and ‘Every American citizen is responsible for the American Republic.’ In Tocqueville’s time, churches were ‘schools of citizenship,’ so that a failure to play a proper part in public life was a failure of both discipleship and citizenship. The politicization of life is a serious danger— ‘The first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing.’ But opting out of public life is the other.” 

Dr. Os Guinness talks about the importance of critical thinking in an upcoming documentary called “Truth Rising.”