Inviting the Hard Questions

It's easy as parents raising the next generation to watch teenagers or young adults who move away from their faith and wonder if that's going to happen to our kids.

Shelby Abbott says our responsibility as parents is to be faithful in what God's called us to do. I need to trust that regardless of what happens with my children in the future, and I pray daily that they will walk with Jesus for a lifetime. I have to believe that God knows exactly what he's doing with them and that he is in control. And my responsibility is to be intentional with them and shepherd them, care for them, teach them as much as I can. But ultimately, they are not in my hands. They are in God's hands.

And I need to live that as an act of faith. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapeen. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. What's our assignment as parents? How do we help steer our kids in the right direction and help them deal with challenges to their faith as they grow? Shelby Abbott joins us today to talk about that. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I got a call recently from a friend, someone in our church, who said, My niece is struggling with the difference between doubt and unbelief. She's wrestling with doubts and wondering if her doubt is unbelief and how can you tell the difference between the two? And I said, Well, would it help if you guys came over and we sat down and just had a conversation about it? And she said, Yeah, that'd be great. So, they came over and Mary Ann and I spent the evening and we talked about issues. And I remember thinking ahead of time, it's pretty important how you have these kinds of conversations. Because for somebody who's in a fragile faith place, those conversations can either help ease them back toward the faith or can turn them off and have them run in the other direction. I think that shame piece can be really big. If you shame someone in their doubt, then they won't talk about it anymore.

And so, then it can stay inside and fester. It was interesting. We had a four-year-old son.

We were talking about David and Goliath. And I was telling him the story that night and all of our boys were listening. And I thought, Oh, this is so good. I'm telling this great.

They're loving it. And we went to bed that night and I turned off the light and the four-year-old said, Hey, so David cut off Goliath's head. I'm like, Yeah. But we also have learned that we're supposed to not kill. It says that in the Ten Commandments. I'm like, Oh, wow, he's getting this.

This is awesome. He goes, So why is it okay for David to kill and to celebrate? And everyone celebrates that.

But the Ten Commandments in the Bible tell us that we're not supposed to kill. I don't even get it. How can that happen? Tell them what you said. I'm like, in my heart, I'm thinking, Oh, no, he's like his dad. I remember what you said.

She goes, Go ask dad. I called you. I'm like, Hey, Dave, come in. We're having this great discussion. And in my heart, I'm in pure panic. Like, Oh, no. And I think that's easy to do as parents, to know, like, How should I respond?

I want to talk about this. And I was freaking out. And so I called Pastor Dave. And did you have an answer, Pastor Dave? Oh, yes, of course, Bob.

I had the exact right answer. No, I mean, I actually got excited. I mean, CJ was only four years old, and he's grown up to be a 34-year-old married man now. And he still asks questions. And I love that.

I just encouraged it. The first thing you said was, Wow, you are smart. And what a great question. And Bob, what you started the program with, I think is so good that those people sat in your living room and talked to a human being.

It's so easy to go on the Internet and never converse with a real live human being. It's so important to have presence in that moment and dialogue about these, because there are real good answers. We've got a guest joining us this week who is helping us with this issue and has written a book called Doubtless. Shelby Abbott joins us. Shelby, welcome back. Thank you for having me once again.

Good to be with you. In addition to being an author and a speaker, Shelby has been on staff with CREW for 21 years now and has been on Family Life Today before, wrote a book called Pressure Points about how to deal with pressure as a college student, as a young adult. And you wrote another book called I Am a Tool. You talk about a great book title. Yeah, it's fun to mention it to people and see if they actually have a sense of humor at all.

So if they chuckle, I'm willing to lean into the conversation a little bit more. This new book Doubtless, I'm thinking of moms and dads I know who have got kids coming home from junior high or high school or college, and all of a sudden the kids are coming and saying, you know, my professor said and my teacher said, and the parents inside of them, there's this freak out moment that happens where it's like, am I at the beginning stages of my son or daughter starting to head out the door and leave the faith completely? Yeah, I've seen many examples of that over the years, both people that I went to college with when I was a student to the first round of Bible studies that I led at James Madison University, people walking away from the faith and seeing, and because of social media and that kind of stuff, now you actually know about it, you can see images of it, you can see stuff that people type out, and it can be very difficult, but I've likened it a little bit to, my daughters right now are nine and six, and so I don't want them to learn about certain things of the world from riding the bus home. That's not where I want them to learn about sex or issues of sexuality or what people think about different religions or even curse words. I don't want them to learn about that from completely unqualified fourth graders. I'd rather engage with them myself and talk with them about those things, and so I want my daughters to feel welcome to ask those kind of questions from a very young age, and I think what you said to your son, you're like, this is great, celebrate him as a person and that he's inquisitive. Address the doubt, of course, go after that and come alongside them in the process because the journey is as important as the destination, I think with our kids especially.

So Shelby, how would you open that conversation? How do you open the door with your kids to have a conversation about that in the first place? You know, I found with my kids, the Bible talks about having a childlike faith, and I always took that to mean like a dumbed down faith, and then I had kids, and my kids started asking questions about everything. Okay, for example, we just in the pandemic when we lock stuff down, I decided I made an executive decision to start watching Star Wars with my girls.

Our son did the same thing with his kids. Yeah, it's been great, and so we started with A New Hope, Episode 4, and as we've worked our way through the movies, they ask a million questions, and I just go, you're going to miss this part, this is really important. But like, I've noticed that children in general, they're just inquisitive, they want to know everything. So opportunity has not been lacking to talk about tons of things.

I think we got to be intentional. We have like weekly family devotions on Sundays in our house, and so that usually brings up a lot of questions about stuff. We encourage them to read through things themselves and ask questions, and I found that I haven't really even needed to bring stuff up when it's come to doubt conversations.

Plenty of other things. Sex is one of those, yes, we have to engage with that. But as uncomfortable as it can be as a parent, you need to be the one to lean into it in order to shepherd your child's heart in a direction that would be healthy for them, because it will help them in the future.

Which means you have to set an environment from the get-go. Questions are okay, questions are good, questions are celebrated. We're not afraid of questions, and bring this stuff to the light rather than keep it hidden away, like if you have doubts, there's something wrong with you. I think too, moms and dads need to be verbal about their own wrestling with spiritual issues and just be open about that, don't you think? Absolutely, and I've noticed even too, as parents we're constantly correcting our children and telling them what they should and should not be doing. And it's important that, at least in our family, what my wife and I have done, we've had these moments where when we mess up and we sin against our kids or we sin against one another as spouses in front of our kids, that we're intentional to bring up to them and say, hey, I'm sorry for what I did, I'm sorry for what I said, daddy sins too, will you please forgive me? And I've noticed that kids don't hold grudges like that.

They're just so quick to say yes and they hug you and want to forgive you. But I think that that shows them that, hey, I'm not perfect, I'm messed up too, and I need Jesus just as much as you need Jesus. And so, when it comes to doubts, being verbal about those things is a healthy thing, but underlying knowing that we're going to lean into our relationship with God instead of slowly back away from Him.

We're going to trust that He's going to meet us as we pursue Him. I love your perspective on having childlike faith. I've actually never read that or heard that perspective. You always hear childlike faith means just blind faith. They believe anything without any reason, you know, and we think, oh, that's what God's asking us.

Just believe, just, you know, rub your feet together and believe it'll happen. But no, it's so good that kids ask questions. And so, you're encouraging. It's okay to ask questions. In fact, you're inviting questions. But let me ask you this. So, your child gets to be 13, 14.

They start to really develop doubts, and they ask you some really tough questions. And you, as a parent, don't know the answer. You don't know. What do you say?

I don't know. And I think that's okay. I think, you know, as parents, we always constantly are tempted to say, I do have all the answers because we want to correct our children. We want them to respect us. We want them to do what we tell them to do. But there are times when we just don't know.

And I think a great answer to a question you don't know is, I don't know, but let me try to find out for you. And that's when it's our responsibility as parents to not just sweep it under the rug and move on, but actually go after those things so that when they are adults, they'll say, you know, my dad didn't have it all together. My mom didn't have it all together.

And they didn't pretend like they did. And that kind of authenticity is attractive. It just is. But the freak outside for parents is, if I don't have an answer for this, you're going to reject truth because I couldn't come up.

I'm going to lose the sale. I'm going to watch you walk away because I can't give you an answer that makes sense to you. Yeah, that's maybe where my theology comes into play in those moments. I just believe that God knows exactly what he's doing. I mean, there's places in scriptures, too, where Habakkuk talks about, hey, you say that you're good, you say that you know what you're doing, but look around, all evidence is to the contrary.

And many people have discovered that in the West lately because of the coronavirus that shut everything down. It's like, how could God be in control of all of this? And it's that your thimble brain of understanding would be like trying to pour the ocean into the thimble. You just don't get things in a way that God does. And so, I need to trust that regardless of what happens with my children in the future, and I pray daily that they will walk with Jesus for a lifetime, I have to believe that God knows exactly what he's doing with them and that he is in control, and my responsibility is to be intentional with them and shepherd them, care for them, teach them as much as I can, but ultimately, they are not in my hands. They are in God's hands, and I need to live that as an act of faith.

That's good. You know, Shelby, do you think we live in a time where questions and doubt are greater than before? And again, I'm not saying our times, you know, the worst of times, but I'm thinking in terms of the Internet, in terms of the access that we and our children now have, I know that as a preacher in the last probably 10 years, maybe, Bob, you experienced the same thing, is when I'm opening a text, I think more critically than I would have 20 years ago because I think, okay, my listener is more aware now than they were, let's say, 30 years ago. I'm opening the Bible, and I'm thinking most people here have never read this text because they didn't go buy a Bible and they didn't open it. Today, I know it's accessible on the Internet. They might not only know what this text says, but they know what Richard Dawkins says about the existence of God. They have a little bit of layman's atheist theology, and if I come with an elementary pat answer that would have worked 20 years ago, hey, that's good enough for me, they're going to sort of snicker and go, this dude really hasn't done his homework. Again, I'm not saying we have to be scholars, but there is a sense that, man, I want to do my homework because we live in a different day.

How do you deal with that? Yeah, my guess is that the culture ebbs and flows over hundreds of years. I do know that it's different than it was in the 90s when I was in college. And I do know that because so much more information is readily available at people's fingertips, that there are things that they've read and been exposed to that I just didn't take the time to do when I was younger as well. I will also say that people choose to trust in certain authorities that they just shouldn't trust. There's much evidence for the Bible. There's much evidence for the resurrection. You've just got to be willing to go find it and from the proper sources as opposed to just believing what anyone else says.

If you're going to believe a tweet or a meme that someone puts out there just because it's pithy and kind of funny, then that's on you. But I think, if anything, it forces us to be more, as parents at least, it forces us to be more ready for the kind of questions that our kids are going to ask as they get older. And I found that college students are pretty astute when it comes to that kind of thing. But that's why it's important to be with them in the process and really care for them. When you're a pastor and you're preaching these kind of things, it also helps you to know that, hey, this is, you know, the Bible says that we're going to be judged more harshly as teachers. I need to do my homework. I can't look for silver bullet answers that are going to solve everyone's problems.

I need to put in the work, ask the right questions myself, and then pre-answer them before they're even asked. I think that's a tricky place with especially teens. I think what we can do as parents is we can get fearful of the places they're going for their research. And so we could almost, this is probably what I would have done in the day, I would shut it down like, well, that's a terrible resource.

You know, why are you going to those places to find those resources when there are much better places? And so as parents, if we don't go out of relationship, an existing relationship, and have the talk very carefully of not shaming them of where they're going, but also asking them, oh, have you checked this one out as well, because this is a great place to go. Well, and Shelby, comment on this too, because my sense is if as parents we appear to be freaked out by your doubt, if you come and you say, you know, I'm reading this, and we start to go, what?

Yeah, right. I think what the kid picks up subconsciously is, oh, mom and dad are fearful here. Rather than mom and dad are confident about what they believe, mom and dad are afraid that somebody is going to be able to put a— Sway me.

That's right. And so we have to have an approach to our faith that has a confidence that says, yeah, there have been critics for a long time, there are critics today. You've run into one here, and in some cases they can make a compelling sounding argument, so let's talk about that.

And rather than stop reading this and we've got to clean your room immediately. One of the things that we loved about teenagers and college students that came home from the summer was we loved the conversations that we could have with them. And so even when my sister died, our kids were middle school and elementary school, but I remember sharing with them, like, this is really hard. I've been praying a certain way and I haven't seen those prayers answered the way I wanted, and I've really struggled with, God, this is hard for me and I don't get it. But to have those discussions openly and even having when our kids' friends come in, to ask those hard questions like, this just happened where this woman is really struggling.

Like the one that I just talked about earlier, who's singing this song about how we can trust God and He doesn't let us down, but she doesn't believe that. And to ask our teens, like, have you ever felt like that? I think those late night talks and those dinner conversations are some of the most beautiful times you could have with a teen. Yeah, I found that with younger people, too, like they value authenticity in a way that maybe we 20 years ago like to put on a good show and that the show is what we thought we had to have correct. But this day and age, when it comes to people wrestling with identity as part of what they think about who they are, that kind of stuff. If you're talking about those things and you're forthright about them, and then you're admittedly saying, this is where my flaws are and I need to work at this more, that's just going to go a long, long way. Bob, you mentioned something earlier, too, that made me think is that there are questions they might be asking right now.

They might think that those are new questions, but to help them to see that your question has already been asked thousands of times and there's been really quality answers given to those questions. You just got to be willing to go look for them instead of being, you know, completely derailed by something that they think nobody's ever figured this out before. And I would just say I think that's important when they come, even if you don't have the answer, for you to be able to say, you know, there are smart people who have wrestled with this question before and who have found answers, and let's look at what they say. I was talking with somebody recently about a famous religion professor, Bart Ehrman, who is at the University of North Carolina, who went to Moody and went to Wheaton and then went to Princeton and went off the rails there and said, I don't believe the Bible anymore.

And now he's a distinguished chair in religion at the University of North Carolina. And you can get intimidated by somebody who's a Greek scholar and knows more languages than you do and has done more study on this who can say, ah, but what about the Dead Sea Scrolls and what they say over here? What about the archaeological evidence here? And you don't have an answer for that.

What you need to know is there are guys every bit as credentialed and every bit as dedicated to scholarship as Bart Ehrman who have looked at that and said, now, Bart, you're wrong. And they can make an argument. You can listen to both sides and ultimately decide what you want to believe. But I have to say here, Shelby, we were teaching through John 5 recently, and the Jewish leaders were coming and Jesus said, I'm equal with God. And they said, you're what? And he then provides the evidence. He says, John the Baptist said I was equal with God. My miracles say I'm equal with God. God says I'm equal with him.

The Old Testament was pointing to me. Moses says I'm equal with God, so if you don't believe, you're going against all of those witnesses. But in the middle of it, Jesus says, the reason you don't believe is not because the evidence isn't there. The reason you don't believe is because you don't want to believe. Ultimately, you don't want to bow a knee. You don't want to surrender. Often, we have to recognize that behind doubt, there is this desire to want to be in control of our own lives and not to have to surrender to a Lord and not to acknowledge our need for a Savior.

Yeah, I found that so many young people don't like the idea of bending the knee because they don't want anybody to tell them who they are. But it's funny, they're just one trial, one suffering session away from looking for the kind of authority that they need. And the truth is that the Christian worldview is a better worldview than the one that they're clamoring for.

They think it's freedom, but it actually is enslavement. And so, everybody needs to bow to some sort of authority and wrestling with doubt in that process of figuring out what that authority should be is a healthy thing because it can create a more galvanized and strong faith for a young person. And as parents, it's really important that we allow them to take that journey as scary as it is.

I didn't like the idea of letting go of the bicycle seat with my daughter and watching her wobble pedal down the street because I was afraid of what might happen, but if I never let go of the seat, she would never ride the bike on her own. And so, sometimes we've just got to let our kids, even if they're in their teens, twenties, and thirties, we've got to let go of the seat because they've got to make the faith their own. They will not adopt a faith just because that's what we did as a kid, especially in this day and age.

They need to make it their own, and we should want that for them. And even to have, as we've already discussed, the wisdom as a parent. And it takes real wisdom to be able to look at your child's doubt or question and know, is this an intellectual question or is this a moral, I don't want to bend the knee?

Yeah. You know, it could be either or, and both are legit, but many times it's a cover-up. And they may not even know it, but at the end of the day, it's like, no, I know what God is going to require of me if I say He's Lord in the sexual area of my life, in the moral area, and I really want to say it's this question. And many times it's like, nope, the end of the day, you already know the answer to the question.

It's really a fear of letting Him control my life. We had a guest here on Family Life Today years ago who told the story of a young man who'd come back from his freshman year at college, and he came into this guy's office. He was a pastor, and he said, I'm not sure I believe the Bible anymore. And this guy looked up at him, and the first thing he said was, when did you start sleeping with your girlfriend? And the guy was shocked.

And, you know, all the blood drained out of his face, and he stammered and all of that. But the pastor was saying, you're choosing not to believe, not because of intellectual reasons. It's a moral issue.

That's right, yeah. Well, I think, too, as parents, I think it's really important to remember the great power that we have in prayer. And I think the reason we freak out is because we're fearful that our kids will walk away from the faith. We're fearful of where that will take them.

And yet we serve a God that loves our kids more than we do, and for us to daily be praying for our kids to surrender our kids to Jesus, to ask him to fight for them, there is great, great power in that. Yeah, and for a mom or a dad to get with a teenager and say, let's do a book club together. You and me, let's read this a chapter at a time. We'll get together for breakfast once a week and talk about the chapter we read. And I'm talking about your book, Doubtless. And I like how you used to pay your kids to do that with you.

Oh, of course we did, yeah. That's great. You know, if they're going to get a summer job, read a book and give me a book report, and there's 20 bucks in that for you, absolutely. This would be a great book for parents and kids to go through together and talk about. What do we do with doubts, and what doubts might you be having right now, and how can I help you with that?

Because mom and dad have to wrestle with their own doubts as well. And I'm grateful for the book, and Shelby, grateful for you and for your time with us this week. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

It's my pleasure. You can go to familylifetoday.com to get a copy of Shelby's book, Doubtless, because Faith is Hard is the subtitle. Again, the website is familylifetoday.com.

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