Practical Things Parents Can Do

And welcome to Family Life Today. We're going to be continuing today the conversation we've been having this week with Sean McDowell and Jay Warner Wallace about how we build a Christian worldview in our thinking and in our children's thinking, but we're stopping here at the beginning of today's program to just pull back and reflect and think carefully about all that has happened in the last week. David Robbins, who's the president of Family Life, is here with us. And David, this has been, I've been thinking in the context of my own life.

I lived through the 60s, so I've lived through some moments like this before, but I don't remember a national moment like this, really, in my lifetime. Yeah, our nation is aching through this deep struggle that makes us certainly long for the Lord's return and also long for the promise that he will make all things new and for us to ask questions of how can we participate in making all things new in this moment. This is a time for all of us to have some sober personal reflection to apply Psalm 139, search me, O God, know my heart, see if there be wicked ways in me, bring that to the surface so that I can confess it and deal with it. How do you think we should be praying as individuals and as a family in the middle of this moment? I wrote an article for familylife.com that you can find there, and it basically is an invitation to intercede, to pray, to literally get on our knees, and it walks through five different areas. And the first is to confess and lament, to pray that Psalm 139, verse 23 prayer, to come in humility and to search out our hearts, to feel pain, to listen and to hear it and to understand it. And when you talk about lament and feeling pain, we may not be feeling it personally because these are not things that have happened to us directly, but the Bible says we're to weep with those who weep, and we have brothers and sisters, fellow image bearers who are in pain, and God calls us to feel that with them.

That's right. He says multiple times in the scriptures, do not fear. He says, do not be anxious. He never says, do not be sad. And he actually teaches us how to lament all throughout the Psalms and multiple times in scripture and us being able to understand how to lament as an act of worship is really important.

Well, and you said confession as well. This is where I do think we need to examine our own hearts. I've been asking the Lord to reveal blind spots in my own life when it comes to how I interact with people who are different than me, and to bring those out in the open and confess that and listen and learn. Yeah, absolutely. And to learn from people that have different experiences than us.

That's really important. The second area I invite people to pray through is to pray for injustice to end, that we would understand that all are made in God's image, and to intercede that peace would be found and that justice would be found. Justice is a big theme in the Bible. God is a just God. And when we as his image bearers are unjust with one another, we are marring the image of God. And again, that needs to be confessed as well. So, I agree with you. Pray for justice, Amos said, for justice to roll in our world.

Yeah. A third area is that we would pray for our leaders at every level in our country, our national leaders, all the way down to our community leaders and local church leaders. Pray for wisdom and compassion for them to engage with people with compassion and wisdom, and also to make decisions that bring flourishing for everyone in our communities. And as we think about leaders, I think about those public servants, police officers, and those who are in the military who are being called out, and I think about protesters as well. Pray for them to exercise wisdom and to protest appropriately. Yeah, that those seeking justice would also seek peace, and for those who are seeking peace would also seek justice. There is a power in a peaceful protest.

Yes. The fourth area would be to pray for renewal and revival, that we, in this time, so much has been going on in 2020. What is God doing in our midst to break up hardened places in our hearts? And we need to pray for God's Spirit to move powerfully, transformationally, and broadly through our land. This past week was Pentecost Sunday when God poured out his Spirit on his church, and I thought we need a fresh pouring out of the Spirit of God in our land today. So, yeah, pray for renewal and revival.

Absolutely. He has put that same Spirit in each one of us, and that leads to the fifth point, that we would pray for unity. Pray for unity among the body of Christ. Pray that we would be one in expressing love and righteousness together. Well, this is helpful, and I just want to mention that these prayer areas are a part of the article that you wrote that's available on our website at familylifetoday.com. You can go there and refer to this, maybe lead your family through this, and it's just important that we take a few minutes here before we dive into today's program and talk about these things. You want to pray for us and for our world?

Absolutely. Lord, we come before you, King of Kings, Lord of Lords. You have said for us to approach your throne of grace with confidence when we are in need of grace and mercy. Lord, we pray for ourselves individually and corporately, that you would move in us and transform and form our own hearts and souls toward you, and you would also form our country and our world toward you, that it would be on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, thank you for getting to be a part of ministering to families where we would live out our vision of every home becoming a godly home.

Lord, would you do it in our day? In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you, David. Now, we have been having a conversation this week about how we as parents can help our children think biblically, think critically, think from a biblical worldview about the issues that we're facing in our world today, and we've got friends who have been with us this week. They're back again today. Sean McDowell and Jay Warner Wallace are joining us. Guys, welcome again to Family Life Today. Thanks for having us.

Good to be back. Sean and Jay Warner are both involved at Biola University as professors in the apologetics program that is one of the premier programs on apologetics in the country, maybe in the world. I think that would be safe to say.

We would say that. Hey, best schools gave us the top apologetics program, so it's objective truth. And you are equipping college students to know how to defend their faith in a way that brings reason and logic and says this is a reasonable faith.

This makes logical sense. But even on the college campus, it's not just middle schoolers, but college students. The headwinds for Christian living today, is it stronger than it's ever been, or am I overstating the case?

I think it's shifted a little bit. When I talk with my father who's spoken on, I don't know, 1,200 universities, going back to the 60s and 70s, he said the questions he used to get are, is it true, give me facts. There was an assumption that there's such a thing as truth and you should put evidence forward for your position. Well, we now live in what's called a post-truth culture, in which people tend to navigate reality a lot through their feelings. Doesn't mean truth is not important, but feelings, for a lot of different reasons, are shaping how people are even processing truth today. And the questions have shifted from, is this true, give me evidence, to the assumption that Christianity is bad. How can you believe this? How are you not a bigot?

How are you not hateful? So we still have to make a case that Christianity is true. And I would say people always inherently care about truth because we're made in the image of God. But what happens now, it's not just that Christianity is false. Christianity is deemed as being bad and it's being harmful. And that, a lot of young people look at this and go, if I really want to love people, what does that mean for how I view marriage? To cite the example you gave earlier, because they're saying, I want to follow the biblical worldview, but I don't want to be a bigot.

I don't want to be a jerk. Navigating those waters is really, really tricky for this generation. How did Christianity and hate get melded together in the minds of so many people? Well, I mean, think about this for a second. We're serving on the mount. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. This has been the construct for Christianity from the very beginning. I think part of what we're trying to do with young people now is we're both at Summit Worldview Conference where we're talking to high schoolers, seven sessions every seven or more every year. And a lot of what I try to tell young people is, are you really surprised? This is what we signed up for. At some point, I think we have to embrace this position we hold that righteousness has never been popular.

It'll never be popular in a fallen culture. Why? He says, blessed are you. Rejoice and be glad, he says, when you're persecuted this way because in the same way the prophets were persecuted who were before you.

And why is that happening? Because when you speak the words of God to the ears of humans, you're going to take it tough. It's going to be a hard sell.

It's going to be a hard sell for even our own kids. You will be in the minority position because prophets are the same way, speaking the words of God to a world of fallen humans never goes well. But as a grown-up, I'm equipped a little better to handle that than a 14-year-old who's trying to say, who am I? Do people like me? How do I get people to like me? How do I fit in? How do I not be an outcast? And we're saying, oh, you're going to follow Jesus, which is going to make you an outcast.

And who wants to sign on for that? Well, don't you think that most of the time, though, our young people are, by their innate nature, a bit rebellious? I think young people are, by very nature, trying to carve a new way that is somehow slightly countercultural. The culture is shifting now. It's actually embracing the views that the rebellious teenagers held two generations ago. To be countercultural in this culture, I think, means that we could adopt the views. Jesus was very countercultural.

If you're looking for a countercultural role model, I think we've got one on the pages of the New Testament. I think for parents today, it's really confusing. A practical question is, should we put our kids in Christian school? Should we be homeschooling them? Or do we put them in public school? I think so many young parents are trying to make those decisions, and they feel very lost. I think that's going to depend a lot on the quality of the public school, the quality of the private school, the resources to homeschool or not, and the nature of the young person.

I've seen Christian young people thrive in all of those different settings, and I've seen them crash in all of those different settings. So I think what parents have to do, if they send their kids to a public school, be involved, be engaged, build relationships with the teachers, find out what's being taught, and be really active in that relationship. If they homeschool, that has challenges. If you private school, that has challenges. So I'm not going to say you necessarily have to do one or the other, but I think parents need to be very thoughtful about this.

They better find out exactly what is being taught in schools right now, kindergarten, all the way up through high school, in terms of what are called sexual health standards. There are things being taught in the public schools, which you cannot opt out your kids, that are directly in contradiction with the Christian faith. Now, does that mean no Christian parents can send their kids there? That's not my point, but if you do, be aware, be involved, and know exactly what you're getting into, and make sure there's a relationship there to counter some of the ideas that are coming through California, New York, and to a state near you.

You know, I gotta say something. My wife, Susie, was here with me last time I was here for the radio show, and she said something yesterday that struck me about this very thing. She said that it was so frustrating for her to have to have the conversations she had to have, because we did have our kids both in all these settings. We've had some of our kids have been in private school with Sean. Some of our kids have been in public school.

We've homeschooled for a season. So we've kind of experienced all of this. And one of the things that was so frustrating for her was to have to, what she said, I had to interrupt their innocence in order to explain what they were about to encounter. And because we have a sense that there's an appropriate time for these conversations, and I want as the parent who knows my child best to be able to figure out when that time is, not to have that time dictated to me because tomorrow we're going to be talking about it in public school.

So there was a sense in which she said it was so frustrating to have to interrupt our kids' innocence to have that discussion. And I think that's a fair way to put it, right? I think that one thing we would all agree is that as parents, we ought to have the right to share the worldview, to teach our kids, to bring our kids up in the worldview that we think is true. So to that extent, in public schools, may I do that for you? Here's the deal. Think about this. Even homeschool parents today can't keep their kids from the ideas in the culture.

That's right. You are fooling yourself if you think, oh, I homeschool my kid. They're not getting exposed to pornography or not potentially getting exposed to these ideas. It's ubiquitous. So unfortunately, we have to start those conversations early. It breaks my heart, but we have to for the sake of our kids. But like we said before, if we can control some of their consumption of this digital media, if you have some parameters, at least you're monitoring what your kids are viewing.

That's right. And there's enough technological changes right now that are out there that are designed to protect these platforms. If you will install them on your platforms, they will give you a good sense of what your kids are doing. Even send them by email screenshots of what they're seeing on their phone.

That's pretty much a limiter for a lot of young people. If they think their parents are going to get a daily email, which they're going to have screenshots from their phone, there's some ways to kind of set some boundaries, some realistic boundaries. I think that's probably appropriate for us to do. But what we try to do with this book is we recognize that there's a lot of books that are written about what is true, what is true, what is true. This book we wrote this time is really, how do you take what is true and practically engage your kids with it? It's a how-to book. And the book is called, so our listeners will know, So the Next Generation Will Know by Sean McDowell and J. Warner Wallace. And as you said, it's practical. So let's make this practical. Let's get into, if you were sitting at a table with a group of parents of middle school, high school, college-age students, and they're going, we want our kids to thrive and to embrace their faith and to be able to defend their faith and to hold fast to their faith.

Where do you start? Here's a couple practical examples of things parents considered doing. Now realize, kids are different. Some things work for one kid and not for another.

So part of the book is to say, here's a bunch of tools you can try, take what works and throw out what doesn't. So about a year, year and a half ago, my son wanted to see this movie about the rock band Queen. And it was called Bohemian Rhapsody. It was PG-13. I knew it had- What band?

I never heard of it. Oh, stop. I got a guitar right here. You want a little Queen? Right?

You're ready to play it. And let's just acknowledge for folks who don't know, Freddie Mercury was not a moral individual, right? Yeah, to say the least. Fair enough. So I read stuff about it, knew the rock band Queen, saw there's, okay, there's some things in this.

They're probably pushing a certain agenda, read enough. And I said to my son, he's 14. I said, okay, you want to go see this movie? Here's the deal. I'll pay for it. And I'll take a friend who's fine.

And all I ask, I'll even buy popcorn, is when we're done, we just sit down. And I just want to know what you think about it. What did you see? What did you learn? Was Christianity presented?

Were there any ideas that you thought were being preached to you? Was it good storytelling? Just have a conversation. He goes, sure, dad. So we go to the movie. I paid for it. We come down afterwards.

And probably 30 minutes, we sit down at our dinner table. And I'm like, what'd you see? Did you ever feel they're preaching? He goes, oh yeah, dad, in this one scene, they said something they never would have said in the eighties or whatever era it was. And we just simply had a conversation about it. So our goal in the book is to say, there's more opportunities if we build a relationship present, if we'll seize them. So another example is my daughter this past summer, she's 12, wanted these Birkenstock shoes that are not cheap. And she wanted them.

I thought, well, okay, what if I can find a way where she can get these that I bring some value to it? So I said, okay, so I got an idea. There's these short videos online by one of my favorite radio show hosts named Dennis Prager, and they're on religion, and they're on culture and politics. They're four or five minutes. I said, if you watch 50 of these, and you just write a summary of each one, just one paragraph. 50? You made her write 50.

Hey, I was thinking about starting with 100. But she did it. She did it. They're over $100.

These are not cheap shoes. And she really wanted them, apparently. You know, I might have compromised with it, but I started there and she took it. I said, I just want you to watch them.

Just write a summary of each one and just tell me, your mom or your grandparents, simply what you learned in each one. And she did it. She watched 50 of these. She's telling me, Dad, do you know this about Planned Parenthood? She's like, I'm so upset.

I'm listening. Did you know this about history? And she worked through all 50, got her the shoes. So she learned a little bit about things have a value, you know, you work for something.

We had all these worldview conversations. Now, my son just simply would not have done that. But my daughter didn't. When she's done, she's like, I don't think I'd do that again. I said, that's fine.

It was a good experience. So what do you say to the parent that says, no way am I letting my kid see Bohemian Rhapsody, even if we have a discussion about it? What would you say to that parent? I'd say, why not?

What are you afraid of? Look, if your kid is eight, I get it. If your kid is 14 years old, this is the world we live in. And it's not endorsing it necessarily by seeing that film. And there's not sex scenes that are explicit at all in that it's language and it's suggestive. So there are certain films I'd say, no, we're not going to see this. And you do have to be careful and read ahead of time. But the way my parents raised me is to look at this as an opportunity and not be afraid of it. I think what happens is when we say they're not watching Bohemian Rhapsody, it becomes the forbidden fruit.

I just want to take that away from them and go, hey, I'm not afraid of this. We got to have discernment. We got to have wisdom.

Let's watch it and talk about it. Well, keep in mind too, a basic principle here is we do not want our young people to engage bad ideas for the first time when they're not with us to help them navigate the bad idea. So in the end, I want them to engage every bad idea. When I was a youth pastor, we would assign and read through all of the most popular New Atheists, back then it was New Atheist books, you know, because it's now kind of the movement's kind of waned a little bit. But the idea was Dawkins, it was Sam Harris, it was Christopher Hitchens. It was all these folks who were writing books, so very popular.

And I want my young people to have heard every bit of every one of those books before they go to college. So they've already been there, done that, examined the issue, already overcome the issue, already know what the truth is from both sides before they hear it one-sidedly in a university setting for the first time. You know, it's been said that one of the biggest challenges, and we wrote a whole chapter on this, is apathy. That maybe the biggest challenge to theism is not atheism, but apathyism.

And I think there's a good argument to be made there. It's that rolling of your eyes we've talked about in the past, right? Where you have a sense that I doesn't really care about this. And how do we increase passion in our students? This is a challenge, but I would say the one thing we would offer as a kind of an overarching principle that will change every conversation you will have with your kids. So it's not a new thing that you have to say, oh, I gotta have conversations plus this and plus that. We didn't want to do a lot of plus ones on this book.

We wanted to say, how do you transform what you're already doing? You have a tendency as parents to offer a lot of what's. What is true about the Bible? What does the Bible teach about this? What's true about God? What does God say about that? What, what, what, what, what, what? Instead, let's offer two whys for every what, and you will see your conversations change.

You will see the interest in your students change and your kids change. Because what really is happening is you want the two whys for every what. Okay, what does the Bible say about X?

Fine. Okay, so why do you believe that's true? On the basis of what other evidence can you demonstrate? If it's just because the Bible says so, I think we're gonna have a hard time with a generation that is bombarded with other viewpoints in a post-truth world.

What objective reason should I believe that the Bible is actually accurate on that issue? It's gonna require us as parents to have a little bit more in our pocket than just this Bible says so. And I think that's gonna be important for a generation that's getting support for every other claim.

It's like, well, I've got studies. I can show you the study as to why this is true. I've got science behind this. All you guys have is your silly Bible.

Well, it turns out we could make a case for everything that's claimed in the Bible from both natural revelation and from special revelation. It's our choice if we're gonna do that or not. That's the first why. The second why is probably even more important. Okay, so you've made this claim about the Bible and you've told me, give me some good evidence for why it'd be true, but why should I care? Like, why does it matter to me?

Like, how is this gonna change my life to accept this view, which it seems, okay, the Bible says God is triune. Well, why does it even matter to me? I mean, how does that apply to me in 2020?

That's a good question, I think. You know, it turns out that this generation reports themselves. They will say, they will identify themselves as the loneliest generation. And think about that for a second. That is being reported at a time when students and young people have more access instantly to more of their friends than ever before. Yet they report being lonelier now than any other generations ever reported.

Why is that the case? Well, it turns out that it's theological. That that thing you thought was so bizarre, this idea that in Christian worldview, you are not just a soul, a body, you're a soul, you're a soulish creature. That's a biblical truth. I can make a case for the soul without the Bible.

I'm willing to do that. But in the end, that explains why you're lonely. Because under a Christian worldview, it turns out that your body matters. And being in the proximity of another physical body is what relationships are built on.

So you can have all of those soulish relationships that are digital, but they're not physical. And you will always be lonely because you are created in the image of God. And He gave you both a body. And by the way, when we die, we don't go to be a non-physical beings.

We have a resurrection body. We will always be connected as both physical and spiritual. And that's what's missing in the lives of a lot of young people is they have really kind of more of a non-physical relationship with all of their friends, but they are trapped in the reality of being created in this way.

And they crave this kind of physical proximity. So it turns out I can make a case for what the Bible claims about this, why this is true, even if there was no Bible, and then why it ought to matter to you. And it is interesting, you've already said, that even as a parent or as a youth pastor or as anybody trying to influence the next generation, they're not really going to listen to the whys even or the whats unless they feel, and you started the book with this question that you love them. That's so true. In addition, as I looked at even how you broke the book up, the generation is different.

There's all kinds of different influences. But when it comes down to the core, they're still asking the same question we still ask today as adults, but we definitely asked as a 12, 13 year old, do you love me and will you show it? And those are your two sections is like, how do I reach my son and daughter? They are going to want to know first, do you love me? And then out of that relationship, right? And so I love, I love how you phrase it. That's the heart of it. At its core, I think this generation wants to be called the beloved. That's their heart.

We all do. And especially in light of this loneliness, especially in light of the distractions, especially in light of the constant pressures and anxiety in their heart, they just want to be known as the beloved of an adult who steps in and says, I care about you. And I'm going to help you be everything God has designed you to be. They might not show the immediate response they want to, but that's making a difference in their life.

And more often than not, bears fruit in the long run. I think that's the most important thing that we could really end on is that fact because my mom recently passed away. She's 90 years old. And we recently just celebrated her life. And so for her celebration, their 12 grandsons, no granddaughters, only grandsons, ages 28 to 41, all stood up and gave her a tribute and talked about the impact that she had made on their lives, everyone. And it really wasn't about her worldview.

It wasn't about how she was such a theologian, although she lived her faith. It was that she loved them. She saw them. She played with them. She made them laugh. They said, when she sat down with us, she looked at us in the eye and she said, I love you. I love how God made you.

I'm so proud of you. And basically she said, you are my beloved. And I'm telling you these 12 boys, they would give their lives for her. And that's what really matters is do we love them? Because we can make it so complicated and fearful as parents thinking, I need all these answers. I need to know apologetics.

I need this worldview. It really comes down to, will you spend time with them? Will you be with them? Engage in their questions and their dialogue. They just want somebody to see them, to love them. And maybe if we don't know the answers, we can help them find the answers. And it's not that the apologetics don't matter. Obviously we're sitting here with two apologetics guys who are given their lives to say, and these truth claims do matter. And both are important. But you don't have a foundation to communicate that.

What's the old line? They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, right? All the way through your book, you weave the idea that this is how you love. You love this way by sharing truth, by engaging, by being there. But it's all with this foundation of, yeah, I really do care, and I respect you, and I'm going to listen to you, and we're going to have a relationship. And in the context of that, we're going to talk about what a biblical worldview looks like because you're going to face some headwinds and you're going to have to stand in the midst of those headwinds. And just like you, Shawn, when you were 19 years old, you may think, I'm not sure I believe all of this stuff.

And that's okay. Think deeply about it. Our conviction, your conviction is if people will think clearly about the Bible, the Bible's going to validate itself.

Who was it? I think it was Spurgeon who they asked him if he would debate the Bible. And he said, I don't need to debate the Bible. Just take it off its leash.

It's like a bulldog. It'll defend itself. And the claims of Christ hold up under intellectual scrutiny. But the foundation of love, we started this whole conversation by talking about the fact, John 1.14, Jesus came, he was full of grace and truth.

If our parenting, if our Christianity is not full of grace and truth, there's something deficient, and we've got to be full of both. And you guys have helped equip us in both areas, and we're grateful for the book, and we're grateful for you being here. Thanks for being on Family Life Today.

I was so glad to be here. Thank you. And guys, there are a ton of parents I'm thinking of right now who need this book and realize they need this book. They can go to our website, familylifetoday.com to order the book, So the Next Generation Will Know by Sean McDowell and J. Warner Wallace. There's also a participant's guide. You can get together with other parents and go through eight sessions where you interact and talk about how you're going to do this with your kids.

Great for a small group or a Sunday school class. Again, find the information on our website at familylifetoday.com. You can order from us online or call to order. 1-800-FL-TODAY is the number.

The title of the book one more time, So the Next Generation Will Know. Order online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. I again want to point you back to our website, familylifetoday.com. At the beginning of today's program, David Robbins, the president of Family Life, joined us to talk about how we can be praying together as a family, as individuals, brothers and sisters in Christ, in the middle of the issues that we're facing as a nation. The article David wrote on that and the prayer prompts that he provided are available online at familylifetoday.com.

And let's take this assignment seriously. Let's make sure we're spending time praying for our nation, praying for the Spirit of God to be poured out on us in our day. It's clear we need God to do a work in our midst. And I hope, again, you'll go to familylifetoday.com and get a copy of David's article and pray through it this weekend. And with that, we've got to wrap things up for this week. Thanks for being with us. Hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together with your local church one way or another this weekend. And I hope you can join us back on Monday. We'll introduce you to a couple who, at one point in their marriage, realized they had to deal with what had been a hidden trauma, a wife who had experienced sexual abuse and never told anyone.

That finally came to light in a pretty dramatic way. And we'll introduce you to Bill and Pamela Ronsheimer on Monday. Hope you can be here for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team.

On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. Have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you Monday for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.