I think one of the hardest things, I want to know if you agree, as a parent is when your son or daughter starts the teen years. Usually it's around there and they start questioning or pushing back or maybe rejecting the faith of their parents. Yeah, I think that creates a lot of fear in parents because we're afraid of where they will go with their doubts, with their thoughts. And I think it's easy for some parents to avoid it. But I really believe the greatest thing we can do for our kids is to have discussion about it. And I'm so glad our kids were perfect so they never questioned or doubted. No, they pushed back. Yeah, they asked a lot of questions.
And it was really healthy. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.
And I'm Dave Wilson and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. I remember reading a book early in my parenting years because I wasn't raised in a Christian home called The Dangers of Growing Up in a Christian Home. And I thought, I better read this because I didn't grow up in one, but I'm trying to lead one now. And the biggest lesson I took away from it was your children's faith has to be their faith, not the parents.
You have to let them push back. You have to let them question and doubt and come alongside them on the journey. And I think that's really true, Dave. But I also think we're in an era where the questions kids are asking are different from the ones our kids were asking as they were growing up. All I know is we need help as parents coming alongside. And we have help in the studio with us today.
And I'm not laughing. I mean, I'm really excited because Rebecca McLaughlin has written a book for parents and for teenagers, which is sort of off a book you wrote a few years back. Anyway, first of all, let me say welcome to Family Life Today, Rebecca. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, glad you're here. And you wrote a book how many years ago called Confronting Christianity? Yes, I think that was 2018. And that was really sort of written to adults to wrestle with.
You said 12 questions. Yes, I dedicated it to my best friend in the UK. He was not a Christian and to all my other really smart friends who think that Christianity is crazy or dumb or all the, you know, all the reasons that very intelligent people might have for not even considering Christianity. Did they read it? My best friend in England read it.
Yes. She felt that as it had been dedicated to her, it would be rather rude not to. Yeah, she better read it. Well, this one is similar and you can tell us how much, but it's really written to parents and to their teens. The idea with my first book was to write not to Christians saying, hey, this is how you can talk to your non-Christian friend, but actually to everybody's non-Christian friend. So that a Christian could buy the book, read it for themselves, hopefully be encouraged as they wrestle with their own questions, but also have something to give to a friend or a family member who is skeptical or confused about Christianity and have them talk about it afterwards. And to even know and be able to answer some of these questions themselves. Exactly.
Yeah. So the idea with the teen book was exactly the same to say, I want to write something that you could give to a non-Christian teenager or you could give to your kid who's either a teen or even a preteen. My daughter has just turned 11.
I've very much read it with her in mind as well. So, you know, kids mature at very different ages. So there will be some kids who will be very ready for this by 10 and others for whom they wouldn't be ready. But with the idea of saying, you know, this is a book they could read, hopefully would really help them, but they could also give to a non-Christian friend or Christian parents or grandparents could give this book to their kids.
So, yeah, it's very much aimed at the teenagers themselves. Yeah. And I tell you, even as I read it, I read it like I could hand this to a non-believer.
Right. And there are a lot of books you don't always feel that way. I felt like you were writing to a believer, but you were writing to a non-believer.
Like, I love you. I want you to be able to ask and answer these questions. Here's the title, by the way.
Ten questions every teen should ask and answer about Christianity. And here's why Ann and I didn't write it, because we don't have these credentials. Rebecca holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature from Cambridge. All right. People that know Dave and Ann know Ball State University is not quite Cambridge and a degree in theology from Oak Hill College. And you're the co-founder of Vokeable?
Vokeable Communications. That's right. Yeah, what is that? It's a communications firm. I started with a friend of mine who's a professor at UNC Chapel Hill. He's a professor of communications there.
And he had been doing consulting sort of on the side of his professor job for a while and wanted to start a company with some other professor friends as well to train people to be better communicators. So, yeah, I mostly coach pastors through that, actually. Not exclusively, but that's kind of my favorite thing to do. Yeah. And I tell you, I was telling Ann as we were reading the book, it's like, this is so readable for an adult. But obviously for a teenager. And obviously you're tackling big questions that, like you say, a teen should ask and answer.
Let me ask you this, though. Is it good? Is it something scary for parents as their teenagers, as we said earlier, start to reject or maybe push back or start to ask questions?
Is that a good thing? How do we respond? Yeah, it's funny. As you guys were sharing your experience, I was thinking about my kids who are 11, 9 and nearly 3. And my 11-year-old from the first just accepted what we said about Jesus. If she ever had a question, it was always to know more rather than like, oh, I'm not sure about this.
That's just been her personality, her sort of orientation toward the faith. Our now 9-year-old, I remember when she was 4, I was reading before Christmas the story of Gabriel telling Mary she was going to have a baby. And my 4-year-old goes, yeah, I don't think I believe that. I was like, OK. 4-year-old.
So what is it? I asked her some questions to figure out what it was she didn't believe. I was like, do you believe that God made us? Yeah, I believe that. Well, do you believe that Jesus came and died?
Yeah, I believe. It turned out it was the angel. That was what she didn't buy. She was like, I don't buy angels. I mean, I don't believe in fairies.
Why would I believe in angels? And I thought, OK, this is definitely a different feel to my firstborn. But I actually like it because she's not just taking what I say on trust.
She's actually asking her questions and engaging enough to be skeptical. My 2-year-old, who's just turning 3, I was reading a little bit with him a few weeks ago, which is called The God Contest. It's a great book. And it starts with the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal and talks about people on team Yahweh and team Baal. And then it transitions to Jesus and the resurrection. At the end, it says, so now you need to decide, do you want to be on Jesus's team?
And my 2-year-old looks at me and he goes, team Baal. Oh, no. Really? That wasn't even an option. Really? But he's just the kind of kid who pushes every boundary he can find. And he knew that was the thing not to say.
Wow. So I think what you guys went through with your teenagers, I'm already in the thick of. With your 2-year-old.
With my 2-year-old. That kind of answer puts a fear in parents' hearts, like, oh, no. But it doesn't for you, because honestly, you have answers, which is good.
And I think it's important for us as parents not to have all the answers, but to be able to dialogue with our kids. Tell me about your faith. Like, when did your faith become really important to you? Where did you get that accent? Well, I come from the UK, as you may imagine, from my dulcet tones. I grew up in a sort of mixed Christian family, I would say. So my mum's family were Catholic, and my dad's were Church of England. And we used to alternate between a Catholic church and an Anglican church growing up as a kid. And I think my parents very much made themselves of discovering their own faith. And their families of origin had a mixture of people who went to church because they believed something, and people who went to church just because that's what you did on a Sunday morning. So I grew up going to churches which, honestly, I probably wouldn't recommend to a friend today to go to. But I was exposed to the scriptures, I heard about Jesus, I don't remember a time I didn't believe. And I remember distinctly when I was around about nine and my family was going through a really hard time, my mum was hospitalised at the time, she was very sick. And I had a clarity at that point that Jesus was the only certain thing in my life.
Anything else could just be taken away. And I think that's still true, but I think it's moments in our lives like that when other things feel unsure, that we actually properly recognise the stronghold that Jesus is. And you were nine years old at that point.
Yeah. So how did you find your calling to write on apologetics, to write on the defence of Christianity? From childhood onwards, I was in very academic, very secular environments. Even if I went to a school that was called St Paul's Girls School. It was dedicated to the Apostle Paul, but really extremely hostile to actual Christianity.
Wow. And so I grew up around a bunch of people who were very smart and not impressed with Christianity at all. So from early on, I was having conversations with friends, trying to persuade them to consider Jesus. Even when you were younger?
Yeah, yeah. I was like the keen bean in the youth group, I guess. Yeah, and engaging with teachers as well, because it was the sort of school where there was a lot of kind of frank and open conversation and it was okay to push back on ideas.
And so I would argue, actually, especially with the school chaplain who took a very sort of liberal view of the scriptures and things. So I spent a number of years doing that. I went to college as an undergrad and got a whole other set of very smart, mostly non-Christian friends. Same story, second verse in grad school.
And after that, I thought, you know, the Church of England spends its money on a lot of really stupid things. So they might as well spend their money on theologically educating me. So I went to seminary because I just realized, I mean, I loved studying Shakespeare, but I was never going to be passionate enough about it that I would make all the sacrifices you need to make to really sort of succeed in academia. Even if I don't know if I even had the brain to do it, but like even theoretically. And I thought, what am I actually most passionate about?
What would I sacrifice things for? I thought, huh, it's definitely telling people about Jesus and helping people, especially who, as I say, have good reasons to not consider Christianity. You know, whether it's because they think of Christianity as racist or as discriminatory against people, or whether they see it as oppressing women or whether they see it as like incompatible with real academic engagement.
Like those are really good reasons to discredit potential belief. But as I've gone on in life, the more I've read, the more I've learned, whether from Christians or from non-Christians, actually, the more convinced I am that Jesus gives us the best answer to all those questions. There's nothing disappointing about Jesus. And actually, the more that you ask the questions, the more you actually look into things, the more brightly Jesus shines. Well, it's interesting, you know, as you look at your 10 questions, you think, OK, these are 10 questions every teen should ask and answer. I'm expecting what's going to be about the Bible, about heaven and hell.
And those are in there. Is Jesus really the only way? But your first question I found so interesting in terms of like, wow, this is the first one. I'm not saying it's in order that way.
Maybe it is. But it was my question of I didn't come to Christ till my junior year in college. And this was one of the reasons I didn't think there was any life in Christ. I just thought I've been around church, I've been around Christians enough to know.
And I actually developed a talk later as I preached and different things that here's my perspective on Christianity. It's no fun. It's no freedom. And there's no fulfillment.
And that was what I saw. And so I'm like, who would want to do that? And that's your first question. So I'd love to hear your perspective, why you started with this question. And then let's talk about it, because I loved how you answered the question.
And I think every teen will go, that is a great place to start. So you call it, how can I live my best life now? So that's the question.
How can I live my best life now? Why did you start with that? And let's talk about it. A few years ago, the previous job that I did, one of the areas that we got interested in was modern psychology. And as I started to read on the discoveries of modern psychology and all these different things, there was this eerie thing that would happen. I'd read a paper and then I'd think, wait a minute, the Bible says that. Or I read another one and I'd be like, wait a minute, the Bible says that. Or I read a book by a non-Christian social psychologist and I'd be like, wait a minute, I know all of those things already because of the Bible.
And not to say that the research isn't valid and hasn't sort of validated it in a different way. But for example, I mean, even one of your points there was that no fun, no freedom and no fulfillment. We have this idea as modern Western people that if only I have enough freedom, I'll be happy. They give me enough options, whether it's chocolates in the chocolate box or potential spouses.
They just give me enough options and I'll optimize and I'll find the exact right one. When actually the study after study has shown that unlimited freedom is really bad for us. We have a terrible crisis of decision making if we have too many options. And what's actually good for us is to commit to something.
And when I read that research, I was like, oh, wait a minute. That sounds awfully like Christian marriage. And if you look, in fact, at the studies on correlations, especially for women, in fact, between having multiple sexual partners, for example, it's correlated with lower levels of mental health and happiness and high levels of sadness and suicidal ideation and potential for drug abuse and all these things. Which is not to say, of course, that every single woman who's made those choices or been pushed into those choices is necessarily going to struggle with depression. But if we look at the population level, actually this modern idea that unlimited freedom, whether it's about the jobs that we might have or the people we might sleep with, the idea that that's the way to maximize happiness doesn't actually correspond to what we know from modern psychology. And nor does it correspond to what we know from the scriptures, which is not because the Bible doesn't give us freedom. It gives us all sorts of freedom. It gives us the most profound freedom in Christ. But it gives us freedom within real important constraints and boundaries. And so it's that kind of balance is where we humans thrive, it turns out. I remember reading John 10, 10, I came that you might have life and have it to the full.
I remember putting down the Bible and thinking, Jesus said that? And then it made me start to think, what is full? What is fullness? What would that look like for me? And I feel like we've lived that out. It feels like the opposite would happen when you surrender your life. You feel like, oh, no, now my life is in the hands. I will be in bondage. But the actual opposite happens.
You are free. And there's something great to that. One of the verses that I keep coming back to, both in my life and also in my writing, is when Jesus says that anyone who wants to save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Anyone who wants to come after him must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
It's so countercultural and against all of our immediate human instincts. And yet I think even experientially, as I've grown older, I've more and more realized the truth in that, of course, for the long term of eternity, but also for the realities of here and now. And I think what I've tried to be careful about in that first chapter is not to in any way preach a kind of prosperity gospel. You know, come to Jesus and you'll be healthy and wealthy and happy and all the things.
No problems. No struggle. That's absolutely not what Jesus promises us. He actually says life's going to be pretty hard.
Indeed. And yet the teachings that he gives us really do promote human flourishing. And one of the fascinating areas of research for that is even just like regular going to church, which there's a guy called Tyler Vanderbilt who's at the Harvard School of Public Health. He specifically studies the relationship between religious participation and mental and physical health outcomes. And it turns out that people who go to church once a week or more are measurably happier and healthier, less likely to suffer from depression, substantially less likely to commit suicide.
I mean, extraordinarily so. I think there's a large scale study done of female nurses in America. And they compared people who didn't go to church or any kind of religious services at all on the one extreme versus people who went once a week or more. And it turned out that people who went once a week or more were six times less likely to kill themselves than people who never went. And so there are all these ways in which I think many in our society today have come to think of religion in general and Christianity in particular as being sort of psychologically bad for you.
And it turns out the opposite is true. Whether or not you believe in Christianity, there are atheist social psychologists who will say, yeah, actually there's a lot of data to support the idea that regular religious participation is good for you. Most of the studies have been done on church going. It's not unique to church going, but it does seem to be unique to religious participation. Just going to the golf club every week and sort of seeing the same group of people for the same activities isn't going to cut it. But it's fascinating how we seem to be designed as beings who need that specific kind of engagement, that community within the idea that we're actually connecting with something so far beyond ourselves.
Yeah, I found that interesting too with the study that was done for 75 years with professors at Harvard. And you said that when you're talking about how love is the most important thing, they found that good relationships with family and friends were what kept people happier and healthier rather than fame, wealth and success. And yet when you talk to kids that are teenagers and you ask them, what do you think will bring you the greatest contentment in your life?
And they would probably say either fame, wealth or success. Yeah. And this is the saying, no, that's not what brings it. Yeah. And I think one of the things that's interesting there is that there is an idolatry of romantic love that I think we see in our broader culture and I was honestly also in the church.
Absolutely. To where a kid might say, you know what, if I just grew up and get married, everything's going to be great. There's some truth in that, in that having a stable marriage is correlated with multiple mental and physical health benefits. Like there are definitely lots of good things about being in a good marriage. But actually what we most need is close connection with a number of people.
It's not just all about finding that one person who will fulfill all of my relational and social and sexual and emotional needs. Actually, that's far too much pressure to put on one human being. But as Christians, we're invited into this family and given this mission together to where actually things like friendship suddenly become beautiful and missional and important and not just kind of nice to have if you don't have anything better. Well, it's interesting. You know, when I read that chapter and again, I knew where you're going, but the data that you brought in was so interesting because it isn't like you're going to have the best life now because the Bible says so. You're like, the Bible says this. Jesus promised this. But here's the data, almost the science to say, even if you're not a believer, you look at this data and go, that's the way a person should live because there's there's life there. And, you know, the things that I thought before I became a follower of Christ, there's no fun, there's no freedom, there's no fulfillment.
I now have found the opposite is true. You want fun. You want real joy. That's not just a temporary high. It's in the joy of the Lord is my strength.
It's like I would have never understood that before. Freedom. You know, you think freedom, like you said earlier, freedom is being able to do anything I want. It's like, no, no, no, that's not freedom at all, but freedom in Christ. You don't know how free it is to be able to love one woman for your entire life, to be able to to have self-control. It sounds like you're not free.
You are absolutely free. And that fulfillment is like, oh, my goodness, the greatest depth of my life is found in relationship with Christ. And that's what you kept saying in Chapter one.
I thought I didn't expect this book to start there. If I'm a non-believer or I'm a new believer, I'm a teenager saying I need to ask this question. Is the best life to live in Christ? Yes.
That's that is a question that has to be answered before you can really take the next step. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So what I mean, way to go out, because again, I almost read past that chapter, like, oh, let's get to the deep stuff.
You know, like heaven and hell and science and Christianity compatible. And we will talk about those. But I thought what a great place to start. I'll never forget being at staff training with crew. We were on athletes and action staff decades ago at a training with three or four thousand staff in Moby Gym in Colorado State University.
Do you remember this? Yeah. And they had different speakers coming up and we were in our first or second year married and just out of college. And they introduced a guy to speak to thousands of staff. Most of us, some of us young, I was going to say all of us. And he's probably in his 80s, 80, 85 years old. And his name is Sidlow Baxter. And I didn't know who he was, but he's an unbelievable author and thinker and wrote a book called Explore the Book, which is a commentary on the whole Bible. Long story short, I'm like, I literally turned and like, we're going to listen to an 80 year old. You know, look at my judgment.
You know, like, what's he going to tell us? And I'm a musician. And so I appreciate this. He walks up and starts jamming on the piano. I mean, jamming. And I'm like, wow, this guy's got spunk. And he gets up and I'll never forget. I don't know what he talked about. He told this story. He said, so if you're down or you're discouraged or your Christian walk is just flat, it's just empty. There's just no fire and passion anymore in your walk. And if you've ever been there, if you're there, let me tell you what you do.
And I'm like, get in the Bible, go to church, sing a worship song. You know what? You know what he said? He said, get off your couch, put on your coat and go out and serve somebody.
Right. Just go give your life away. What you said earlier, you know, you'll find life as you lose your life. He said, as you serve generously others, fire will come back to your soul. It's not about, I got to go find myself. I've got it.
He goes, no, all those things are good. Get into word, but just give your life away and service to others for the Lord. And there'll be a fire and passion that comes back to your soul. You know, I remember that too, Dave. But I also remember crying thinking when you're 21, you're wondering like, what will my life be?
What do I want? And I remember looking at him thinking, I want that. Yeah. He had this passion. He's in his 80s and he was powerful and passionate.
I think he ran onto the stage and ran off the stage. And he had this love for Jesus that radiated and compelled him and it made me think, I've seen a lot of people at that age that are despondent and weary, depressed and cynical. And I thought, if that's what Jesus does, I want to follow him my entire life and give my life away. And I love that you started this book on that note, because you're saying like, you may not believe this, but these are the scientific facts and data that's been researched that you actually are better with following Jesus.
Yeah. And I think even if we lay all of the scientific studies aside and we look at the kinds of stories we want to hear, we look at the films that we want to watch, whether it's Moana or whether it's reading Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings. The ones that we love. We're drawn to stories where there is a real adventure and there is real mission and there is real sort of danger and sacrifice. And that's because that's really what we're designed for. And we're given that. If we don't know Jesus or if we know Jesus, but we sort of aren't actually listening to what he's saying, then we think, well, what's the point of my life? What do I have to contribute?
Who am I? That's not our job to figure out. We've been told who we are and what our job is and we need to get on with it. And I think one of the things that I'm increasingly sort of passionate about, even as we think about church, is like, what are we doing on a Sunday morning? Are we going in there just to hear a sermon and sing some songs instead of sit back?
In which case we've all had to do it through COVID. In which case you can sit on your couch at home and listen to the sermon and sing the songs. Why are you there?
It is for those reasons, but actually it's for doing those things together. And what can I contribute to the people around me? How can I serve? Who can I welcome? Who can I care for who's new or distressed or struggling for whatever reason? And when we realise that we're not just there to spectate, but we're there to actually be the body of Christ in that place, it completely changes how we think about church. It changes even how we think about closeness and relationships. I mean, the kind of, if you look in the Harry Potter series, the friendships that develop between Harry and Ron and Hermione, they didn't sit around thinking, oh, you know, let's roast some marshmallows and try and like have deep conversations. No, they had stuff to do together. They were on mission. They were on mission together.
So it's that mission together that brings us into real closeness. I've always said church should be, and I know this may not be an analogy that you would connect with, but it's a football game. I mean, American football. Right. That's why you're totally wrong.
Yeah, of course. But think about this church is the huddle after you leave church, it's the game. So what I mean by that is, you know, people don't sit in stadiums and watch NFL or college football teams or high school football teams get in a huddle and talk about what they're going to do. They want to see them run the play.
Right. They would never sit there for two hours and say, are they going to do anything or are they just going to talk about it? Church is where we come together and we talk and we study and we sing and we get excited. And then what happens when we go out is what God calls us to do.
He calls us to live our best life now, which is to know him and then go on the adventure of making him known to our neighbors. And parents hear something that's really important. Our kids are watching if we're doing that. They see that fireness, that zeal. They see when we're loving others, complimenting them, serving them, looking out for them. They're watching that.
And so if it's not real, they detect it. And I hope that as we sit in our churches, we will become doers of the word. I think all of us as parents understand that we live in a culture that wants to influence our children, wants to shape their thinking and in our homes and in our churches, as Dave and Ann Wilson were just saying, we need to be standing firm on what God's word teaches and making sure we are helping our children understand what the Bible says, be able to think biblically about the important issues of our day. The book that Rebecca McLaughlin has been talking about today, her book, Ten Questions Every Teen Should Ask, is such a helpful resource. It helps all of us think more clearly about how the Bible speaks to the issues that are being presented in our culture today.
And we think this is such an important book for parents. We'd like to make it available to you as our gift when you support the Ministry of Family Life with a donation of any amount. Your donations to the Ministry of Family Life today help us reach more people more often with practical, biblical help and hope for their marriage and for their family, the kind of help and hope you get as you listen to Family Life Today every day. You can donate online at familylifetoday.com or when you call 1-800-358-6329, 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today, and make a donation to support the Ministry of Family Life today. Now tomorrow, Dave and Ann Wilson will continue their conversation with Rebecca McLaughlin talking about some of the pressing issues of our day, specifically the exclusivity of Christianity.
How in a pluralistic culture do we defend the idea that Jesus is the only way of salvation? We'll hear that conversation tomorrow. I hope you can join us. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
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