Even though you have doubts, there are valid answers to the questions that you have about Christianity. And so many people who are quote-unquote deconstructing and then ultimately leaving the faith, I doubt that they're really going through the process of trying to seek to get answers for what they believe. Yeah.
They're just kind of jumping on the bandwagon and just saying, well, I don't believe any of this stuff. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.
You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. So I'll never forget coming home for Christmas break my junior year in college. I'd just given my life to Christ and I was on fire. And I think I told my mom within the first five minutes of walking back in the house, you're going to hell if you don't know Jesus.
Well, I think you said it kindly. When I walked in my house as a 16 year old, I yelled it, we're all going to hell without Jesus. So anyway, I was, you know, on fire and I'll never forget, my mom just looked at me like, what has happened to my son? And then I said, I'm not going to be home on Christmas break.
I'm going to a Christmas conference with Campus Crusade for Christ in Chicago. And I literally think my mom thought I was in a cult. She had never heard a crew who we are now literally doing a radio program on the crew campus, uh, in Orlando.
But I, she was seriously concerned. Like, I don't know this organization. My son is flipped. He's totally changed. I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing, but he's, he's a radical and he's not even going to be around for New Year's Eve.
He's going to go to some conference with a bunch of weird Christians. And my family thought the same. I mean, we didn't go to church even growing up.
And so when I started following Jesus and getting a Bible and reading it, they thought this girl has gone out of her mind. Yeah. And so we're sitting here today with Alan Parr, who is coming from Dallas, Texas to Orlando to be on Family Life Today. And Alan, I mean, it's a little bit like your story as I read your book, but first of all, let me just say welcome to Family Life Today. You've never been here, right?
I have not. No, thank you for having me. I'm excited for this conversation.
We are too. So when you hear that little story of our little journey, again, years ago, is it anywhere close to your journey? You know, my journey is a very interesting. I grew up in a Christian home. My parents were divorced, but both of them were, were Christian. So I got saved at early age of eight, but didn't really know the Lord, didn't have any relationship with the Lord for most of my time. And whenever I was in my parents' home, and then I went off to college, didn't go to church for a whole year, for my freshman year. And it wasn't until a deacon of a local church came by, and he started discipling me and some of my friends in college. And for the first time in my life, I picked up a Bible, and I started reading it, and started really understanding it, because he was doing this Bible study in our campus, and he was teaching it in a way that really made sense to us, and it was exciting. So I started picking up the Bible, and I hadn't been able to put it down since. But interestingly enough, the church that he was a deacon of, I started going to that church along with my friends, and, and it was a church that had a lot of false teaching and different things going on that at the time I didn't know about, because as the old saying goes, the worst thing about being deceived is you don't know that you're being deceived, right? That's the problem. So you really had no idea?
No idea. I was just young, and I was like you, like both of you, very zealous for the Lord. I was on fire for the Lord, and I grew up in a traditional Baptist Church where there wasn't any raising of hands, no shouting, no running around, no, none of those things, just very traditional, sang hymns from the hymn book and things like that. So when I got to this church and everybody was singing loudly and raising their hands and shouting and having these experiences, obviously it was very attractive to me as a young man in college. I had never experienced any of this type of thing, but as I started reading my Bible and as I started studying and as I started really just observing what was going on at the church, I realized that there was a lot of false teaching, a lot of practices that were against Scripture, and little did I know at the time that that would be the catalyst for my entire ministry, is wanting to equip people to be able to discern truth from error, and so that's kind of how it happened, was in college. Yeah, tell our listeners what you do, because I'm guessing there's some listeners in a car right now or maybe working out, listening, and they recognize your voice.
Yeah. Because your voice is known around this world through YouTube and other ads. Tell us what we do. I graduated from college in 98, and then I went to seminary. A couple years later I felt called to the ministry, as they say, and went to Dallas Theological Seminary from 2000 to 2004, and then from 2004 to about 2017 or so, I was teaching high school math, and so I was a high school math teacher for many, many years, kind of bivocational. I was doing ministry at night and teaching during the day, but around 2014 or so, I feel like God gave me this idea to start a YouTube channel, and boy, I tell you, that just catapulted me into the ride of a lifetime. I didn't know at the time what I was getting myself into. I didn't know how to edit any videos, did not do any graphic design. You really didn't know any of that?
Nothing. But when you had that vision, like, what did you think, like, this is what I want to talk about? It really kind of came out of a place of, to be honest with you, a little bit of frustration, because I, once again, graduated from seminary in 2004.
Here it is, 2014. Yeah. So for 10 years, I really don't feel like I was able to use the gifts that God had given me. I was doing a lot of worship leading at churches, so that's another thing that I was doing quite a bit, and because a lot of churches could find someone to teach the Bible, but they couldn't find anybody to lead warship and to play the piano, so they would pay me to do that. So you're a musician as well. I am as well, yeah, and so I was doing that for 10 years, but that wasn't really what I was called to do. That wasn't really what I was passionate about. It was something that I could do, and it was something I was good at.
Around 2014 or so, I just got to the point where I said, Lord, I really want to use my gifts for you. I went to seminary to be a teacher, a preacher of the Word. That's why I gave up my career as an engineer, and I want to be used, and so I started a YouTube channel with the mentality that, hey, I'm not gonna wait any longer for a pastor to tap me on the shoulder and say, hey, you can preach for me, or hey, are you able to preach or teach this Bible study?
I was tired of waiting around and being passive. I said, you know, I'm gonna start my own YouTube channel, and at the time, in 2014, there wasn't a lot of Christian YouTube channels at all. I mean, it was pretty much, oh, there was a few, but there were not that many, and what I saw was, I saw all these secular channels, like, putting out videos and getting a million views and a hundred thousand views, and I'm thinking, wow, what could happen if Christians would leverage the power of YouTube? How could we spread the gospel? How could we spread the truth of the Word of God, and how could I communicate the Word in a way that is accurate but fun? And there were some Christian YouTube channels, but they were kind of, like, you know, like 45, 50 minutes long, and they weren't very creative in how they put their videos together, and so it wasn't, like, something that you would, a lot of people would be maybe interested, so I came in, and I started creating videos that were, like, five minutes, and I think the first video that really took off was the book of Revelation explained in five minutes, and people were like, wow, how can I understand that?
In seminary, we were told that you should be able to explain anything in one minute or one hour, right? So that's kind of how it got started, and it just grew from there. Yeah, and so we're sitting here today with a, is this your first book? First book, yes. Called Misled, Seven Lies That Distort the Gospel and How You Can Discern the Truth, so obviously this became a passion, and I'm guessing some of that is even tied to your story in college.
Yes. Because, you know, one of my journeys as I continue to grow in my Christian walk is one of the guys on the football team, I was playing football there, said, hey, you got to come to my church. Well, I'm a new believer.
Again, I know nothing. I had never read the Bible. I sort of grew up going to church with my single mom, but like you, once I got to college, I didn't go to church for three years. I was living the bad life. Right. The quarterback on campus, using those advantages in bad ways, so I become a follower, and then I'll never forget, one of our defensive ends said, you got to come to my church. So I go to his church, and I grew up when I went to my mom's church, it was pretty traditional.
Yeah. I walk in, I'd never seen anything like it. There were people in the pews playing their instruments while the band was playing at St. Tynan. That is something I've never seen before, even to this day.
I've been in a lot of churches. I mean, it was one of the craziest moments in my life. I mean, I remember standing there and overwhelming. Yes. I remember getting, actually, he rode me there on the back of his motorcycle. Which is a little weird.
This whole story is just like craziness, you know, and I just remember coming back to my dorm room thinking, I don't even know what that was. Right. But I had no filter like discernment. Right. Like, was this error? Was this wrong?
No. I was brand new, and so I needed some help. So that's sort of what your... That's what this book is literally all about. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of your call in life, right, to help discern? My goal is to equip people with the necessary knowledge and skills and strategies to rightly divide the Word of God, to study it for themselves, because I feel like I can spend all day on my YouTube channel pointing out false teaching after false teaching after false teaching, which is what I did in this book. But, you know, my greater passion is to equip people to study the Word of God for themselves, so that they understand how to put a passage in this context, so they understand how to properly interpret the Word of God, so that they are not dependent on me or anyone else to be able to walk into an environment, hear a sermon, and say, well, there's something that was off about that. But this book was really largely motivated by my experience, as well as, you know, whenever I put videos out on YouTube, a lot of times people will comment on the videos, and when I read through the comments, I can see so many people who are misled, so many people who are deceived in how they're responding, and I'm like, I've got to write a book that hopefully sets the record straight.
You know, like I think about my mom. As parents of young men and women in our culture today, middle school, high school, you're sort of an apologist. Yes. Defending the truth and understanding the truth. How would you, and you're, you're married with two kids.
Yes. So you've got kids that are walking into this culture as well. How would you coach parents, you know, as they have sons like we were in college or wherever, and they come back and they don't know if what they're doing is right or wrong. How would you coach us to be discerning parents?
Yeah, well, it starts with, I mean, as we all know, the saying that you can't pour from empty cup, you can't give to others what you don't first possess yourself. So I think that there are many parents who are religious, and we take our kids to church, and we do the right thing. We want our kids to grow up in the youth ministry and children's church, but if we're honest, a lot of parents really don't know truth from error themselves. They're not really being a disciple of Christ, and so I think that if we are going to help our kids understand truth from error, or hopefully protect them from getting into cults and things like that, that they might get really excited about, or maybe they're at a church like you and I were.
If I had a parent at the time that was able to kind of pull me aside and say, hey, okay, I visited your church with you, and there's some things that concern me, and let me take you to the Word of God, and let's just see what that says. Yeah. And that would have probably expedited my whole process of, because I was in that church for about three years, and as you know, probably it's hard to get out of a situation when you're so deeply embedded that you start to feel like that's your your community, feel like that's your your lifeline. Totally. Yeah. How did you end up three years? Because when I read your story, you know, initially it was like you started to see some things that made you question, and I'm like, oh, he's gonna leave, and like, oh no, you're still there.
Yeah. And that's pretty common. Yeah, I would say it probably wasn't until about the year, the second year, that I was there that I really started to even see and understand some of the signs and different things that were going on that let me know, okay, something is off here.
I'm not quite sure what it is, but something doesn't seem to gel with what I'm reading in the Scriptures. And then from that point, took me about a year, a year and a half, to kind of muster up the courage. And even then, if I'm being honest with you, what happened was I graduated from college, and I got a job offer in Detroit, Michigan, and so it was easy for me to leave at that point. I was kind of already checked out mentally from the church and emotionally, and I share in the book some things that happened at that church with the pastor, and that was, you know, really difficult to deal with.
And so at that point, I think God just kind of removed me, and I graduated. I appreciate that you started with that story, because some of the things that happened to us, I mean, God will always use them and draw us toward what he has for us by some of our pain and some of the trauma, some of the things that we go through. One of the things I appreciate about our seminary, I remember this one class we had, they'd bring in, like today, we're gonna talk about, it could be very controversial topics or just regular topics. Then we would be assigned to take one of the sides, whether you believe it or not. You are assigned this side, but you have to come back biblically to prove your point, biblically. That, to me, was really interesting, because they weren't saying, this is what you're going to believe. They're saying, study the scriptures.
Now let's go and really tear them apart. Let's go deep into the scriptures. And I thought that was beautiful, because then we'd kind of all get together, and they'd point out things, they'd say things, and I think as a family, because we've raised three sons that are all adults, and having those conversations, this is what's going on, this is what this church is doing, this is what that church is doing, what does the scripture say?
And that's exactly what you're doing. And I think that's really important for families. And I would say this, our boys are all very different theologically, which drives me crazy. And when they get together, there's some tension, man, but they are solidified on the gospel, on Jesus, on the things that really matter, the necessities, but man, they can go after it on some of the other things. I would call those the gray areas. Yeah, secondary issues, and that's one of the things that I try to point out in my ministry as well, is that it's great to have debates, it's great to have intense fellowships, as my wife and I like to call them whenever we're having a little, I don't know, disagreement, if you will.
We call them intense fellowships. It's okay to have those things, but at the end of the day, even some of the things that I write about in this book wouldn't be things that I would say we need to break fellowship with someone, because many of them are secondary issues, you know. At the end of the day, as long as people are in agreement with the non-negotiable aspects of Christianity. Maybe we should say what those are. Yeah, sure, I mean there's several of them. There's the fact that God is a triune God, that we do believe in the Trinity, that God exists as one God in three persons. We believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, the inerrancy of Scripture, the deity of Christ, the humanity of Christ, that Jesus was fully man, but also fully God, the return of Christ, that he is going to be coming back, the atonement, that Christ died on the cross for our sins. These are the primary essential things that we have to agree on.
Some of the other ones are non-essential, that there's room for, you know, interpretation. I think that's good to just keep in mind with our kids especially, because there would be sometimes where maybe our kids are going off into a direction where the essentials aren't a part of it. So as a parent, that's when we do need to be Yeah, I mean talk a little bit about, you know, giving your children freedom. I know your oldest is seven, right?
Right. So we're, you know, a little older with... She hasn't formed all of her theological theology just yet. She'll have it by age nine at least. But as they become teenagers and college kids and older, there's that tension of, as a parent, giving them adult freedom, yet I'm still their parent. Let's say fifteen-year-old, fourteen-year-old, seventeen-year-old.
They're still in my home. They're starting to believe some things that I would say scripturally or not. How do you manage that tension as a parent, you think? I like, Anne, your story about some things that you had to do in seminary about studying things from both sides. Yeah. Because I think that oftentimes we're guilty of that. You know, we have a certain theological idea or a theological bent or maybe our kids... A bias.
A bias, yeah. Or our kids are in college or high school and maybe their friends say they believe this or that and so they just don't really study it out on their own. They're just like, okay, well I believe that too. And oftentimes we don't really know what are the other sides to this particular view here. I would, as a parent, as my kids get older, I would encourage them to always try to study various aspects or different sides of a situation, right? So whether they believe it or not, because the only way that they're gonna be really able to defend their faith well, and now we're kind of moving into apologetics, is if they truly understand what someone else believes and what is their worldview. What type of mindset are they bringing to this conversation so that I can better understand them? But so often we are really arguing from our side without even having any idea. So as a parent, I would try to encourage my kids to always try to study not only what you think you believe, but what other people are believing as well.
And that way you'll you'll have the best of both worlds. I remember one of my first classes in seminary, a communication class, I remember, I forget, the first days the teacher said, hey one of the things I want to encourage you to do is don't just read Christian literature. Read what other people think. Study other religions. You need to understand. I'm like, whoa, whoa, wait.
I thought we needed to keep ourselves. I remember one day we walked into class, it was on theology, they had a rabbi. And the rabbi came up and he said we're gonna give him an hour to present what a Jewish person believes and then we're gonna ask questions. And I remember as soon as he was done, the prophet said, anybody got a question?
And the first hand that went up, somebody said, why don't you believe Jesus is the Messiah? Boom. You know what he said? He goes, because he didn't fulfill the job description. I'll never forget this, this is 45 years ago. And we're like, what do you mean?
He goes, he didn't set up his kingdom, he didn't come and conquer. So it was really interesting to go, okay, I need to understand. So one of the things you talk about in your book I'd love to hear you talk about is deconstruction. Big word right now, we've had Sean McDowell in here talking about it and others, and I think a lot of us as parents are like, oh, it's this scary word that our kids, especially as they get to college, are gonna deconstruct what we've poured into them all these years.
So it's not a phenomenon, but what's going on and how to understand that, especially as a parent. Yeah, that's the buzzword now. Yeah.
That's the in thing, that's the the popular thing is, oh, I've deconstructed and there's even whole, you know, YouTube channels that are dedicated to sharing their deconstruction journey and helping other people deconstruct. I was gonna say they're evangelizing. Oh yes, absolutely.
They're absolutely doing that, you know. And I think that we need to encourage our kids that it is normal, natural, and healthy to have questions and have doubts about what you believe, and I think we should encourage that. I think we should affirm that because what we don't want is for them to have all these questions and doubts and feel like, oh, there's something wrong with me, or maybe I'm not a Christian, or maybe I don't love Jesus because I have these concerns, or I have these doubts, and then they kind of hold it in and they never really get the help they need.
Instead, we should encourage our kids, hey, and we should have these conversations with them. You know, I'm sure you're probably familiar with Natasha Crane and she had these books out that are really encouraging, you know, parents to have conversations about God, about Jesus, and different things like that. So we should make sure that they feel like it's okay to have these doubts, but at the same time, as parents, we need to help direct them to figure out how can they work through this in a way that would help them land on the faith side and not the lack of faith side after they go through this.
That's where we expose them to, you know, books like, you know, Dr. Sean McDow has, and J. Warner Wallace, and Lee Strobel, and Allen Parr. Mine is less apologetics and more defending the Christian faith and things like that, but yes. And I can see myself doing some apologetic stuff in the future as well, but I think that if we could just direct them to the resources and help them understand that even though you have doubts, there are valid answers to the questions that you have about Christianity. And so many people who are quote-unquote deconstructing and then ultimately leaving the faith, I doubt that they're really going through the process of trying to seek to get answers for what they believe. Yeah.
They're just kind of jumping on the bandwagon and just saying, well, I don't believe any of this stuff. Yeah, you know, I love the fact that we have a disciple who many people think his first name was Doubting, you know, Doubting Thomas. Yeah. That's how we refer to him because he had that moment when he says, I won't believe unless I see the nail scar. Yeah. And I love, and I preach this many times, but I love how Jesus approaches him when he has those doubts. He doesn't look at him like, we sometimes might think he'd be like, come on, dude. Yeah, you've been with me all this time. He looks at him and says, oh, you need evidence? Yeah.
Here you go. It's almost like as a parent when our son or daughter, and I like how you say in the book, I think when they are saying I'm reexamining my faith, that's a better word than deconstruction. Yeah. I like that because, yeah, I've even said deconstruction is a good thing. It isn't a bad thing if you're like trying to understand what did I grow up with? Is this right?
And some of it was error in theology and I want to construct. I've said it wrong. I think that's a bad term because it makes you think you're gonna leave. Yeah.
And examine or reexamine is a better way to say it. And you said that in your book. I like that. Yeah. And I think a large part of what's motivating a lot of the deconstruction movement is the progressive Christianity.
Which is a whole chapter. I'm looking forward to digging into that. Me too. Yeah, I think that's where we head tomorrow because I think a lot of our parents are like, what are you talking about? Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about that tomorrow. That's great. You know, as I've worked with young people over the last 25 years, 25 years, man, it's been a long time, the topic of deconstruction really is quite important because it's the air that young people breathe, especially on college campuses.
So if it's unavoidable, how do we handle it appropriately? I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Alan Parr on Family Life Today. Great conversation today, super helpful, and it will continue on into tomorrow. Alan has written a book called Misled, Seven Lies That Distort the Gospel and How You Can Discern the Truth.
You can get your copy of Alan's book Misled by going online right now to familylifetoday.com or you can find it in the show notes or feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy. Again, that number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And you know, the month of August is really important. We as a ministry of family life want to encourage you to make your mark within the context of this ministry. And we at Family Life are obviously very adamant, we're very passionate about reaching families.
So you can link arms with us and be a part of what family life is doing to help reach families all over the world. You can go online to familylifetoday.com to make a donation or you can give us a call at 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And when you do make a donation of any amount, we're gonna send you as our thank you a special family life pen along with a copy of Brant Hansen's book Unoffendable. It's just a small way of us saying thank you to you for partnering with us to help reach families and marriages all over the world. Again, you can head online to familylifetoday.com to make your donation. Now coming up tomorrow as we talked about what is the difference between traditional Christianity and progressive Christianity. Well, Alan Parr is back to tackle that, along with much more with the Wilsons tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
