Follow My Heart, Or Follow My Head? Kevin DeYoung

I never really talked about football today. Oh, no. Are we going there today? Hey, wait. You know what?

You just be true to yourself. If that's what you want to talk about— That's pretty funny. Based on where we're going, I see what you're doing.

Our listeners don't know where we're going yet, but here's what I thought. I coached high school football, I think, 12 years. Got to coach all three sons through there. And, you know, I love football, so it was fun.

Honestly, the reason I did it was not football. It was boys to men. I got the chance to help young boys become men. But I got to tell you the story.

Our head coach would often bring in motivational speakers. And this one time this guy came in, and the gist of his message—and this is what we're talking about today—was, young guys, you guys, boys, follow your heart. Whatever your heart tells you to do, go with it. You're walking down the hallway at school and your heart tells you to do this, you follow your heart. And I wanted to stand up. I'm surprised you didn't. No, don't listen.

That is really bad advice. 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. Kevin would probably disagree with that message. But Kevin, before we go there, I just want to say welcome to Family Life Today.

Glad to be back. No, I was not your motivational speaker. You were not the guy.

I mean, even when I was telling that story, you were trying to jump in. That is bad advice. And yet we've all heard that. And we've seen it in movies and postgame interviews and a thousand times, that advice. Kevin, your book is called Do Not Be True to Yourself. And is that why you wrote this book?

Because you're hearing it all over? Oh, we've all heard it so many times. And actually, the origination of this little book. I just write little books. I love it. We all love little books.

Can read them in trips to the bathroom, you know. So I was asked to give a commencement address at Geneva College up near Pittsburgh. And so this was the commencement address.

And I tweaked a little bit and I gave it to our high school. But I was thinking, what's the sort of thing that, you know, commencement addresses so often there that and hopefully Christian schools do better than that. But it's be true to yourself. And so I start there with an excerpt from a commencement address, a very secular one from 20 years ago, a New York Times writer that says that very thing.

You know, march to your own drum, follow your own timpani. Don't let anybody marching in lockstep is the evil in our world. Really, if you would just think for a moment, besides the reasons as wrong as Christians, just common sense should tell you, you know what some people's hearts are? They're psychopaths.

They're not nice people. And what worse advice to give a bunch of, you know, high school boys whose brains have literally not fused together yet to just follow your heart. I know it's maybe well intentioned, but what really misguided advice. So, yes, it's a lifetime of hearing those things. And in particular thinking, oh, my own kids are graduating now.

And what message do they really need to hear to be faithful Christians in the world? Well, tell the listeners what you do. I know you're down in Matthews, North Carolina as a pastor.

I am married, one wife and nine kids. This is crazy. This is nine kids. That's why he's here. He and Trish are here to get away for a few hours. Tell everybody what Trish is doing right now.

She's looking for a pair of jeans, I think. All by herself. All by herself. Every woman.

I can go somewhere by myself. So, our kids, and we love them all, of course, but they're ages two to 20. So, nine kids, one in college all the way down to a two-year-old who's still toddling around and trying to get to use the toilet.

So, we got a house full. So, that's a lot of what I do. I'm a pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, which is outside of Charlotte. I also teach at Reformed Theological Seminary, Systematic Theology there.

I have a ministry, Clearly Reformed, which has resources and other things. And then I do things like this and write books. That's interesting. So, there's a lot going on. You do. Yeah, you have a lot going on. But I was just thinking, you have a PhD. Yeah.

You don't go by doctor. Yeah, I don't fault people for doing that. But it was a conscious decision, even when I started writing books, to just do Kevin DeYoung. There's nothing wrong with putting your middle initial in there. I thought, hey, if John Piper says John Piper, Timothy Keller, there's nothing wrong. You know, D.A. Carson, he's a New Testament scholar. So, I'm not opposed to it.

But it was a decision. I want it to seem accessible. And hopefully, if I have any learning, I wear it lightly. I love to do academic papers. I love to write academic stuff. But I like to do kids' books. And like I said, I write these little books.

I think the thing that I'm really drawn to doing is a translator, not from one language to another. But read the stuff on the top shelf and put it there where anybody in the church going out to the book nook in the back can pick it up and say, wow, this might help me. Yeah. So, let me ask you, Kevin. You've got nine kids and they're growing up hearing this, hey, just be true to yourself. What's wrong with that? Some people are thinking, I think that's really good.

What's wrong? What are you telling your kids instead of be true to yourself? It's a great question. And whenever these things catch on, or almost always, they catch on because there's something half true. Or maybe in this sense, a quarter true.

Almost anything that's going to be really popular has something because, you know, it's the same human nature where God knows what we're wired and the devil knows what we're wired. So, the half truth or the quarter truth is don't let everyone around you sort of define who you are, live for the applause of others, live to please others, you know, be true to yourself. So, don't just cast yourself for other people to define, okay, we get that. There's something healthy about that. And yet, as I was joking earlier, you know, the only people who genuinely don't care what anyone thinks about them?

Yeah, serial killers or, you know, class A narcissists or something. So, we are all going to care what people think about us. And the good piece of advice is, well, be true to yourself.

That's a quarter true. What's wrong with it is the whole creation narrative of creation fall redemption. Our hearts are not, because of original sin, are not naturally good. So, to be true to ourselves if we're unregenerate non-Christians is the heart is desperately sick.

And we are not going to choose the right things. So, a little quip that, you know, people in my church have heard me say a million times is, you know, to quote that great theologian Lady Gaga, you may have been born that way, but you can be born again a different way. So, to be true to yourself if you're born again in Christ is actually very biblical. The New Testament is replete with this motivation. Be who you are, but it's be who you are as a new creation in Christ. So, absent that, it's telling us look deep into your fallen human heart and trust that your own desires will not lead you astray. And though we don't put it quite so baldly, I think my kids, your kids, grandkids, they get that message in a thousand different ways. To be most authentic is to be most true. I mean, you live out your truth as if there's not truth, but there's your truth.

And so long as you're authentic, then you must be right. And it's very foreign from the way that the Bible thinks, which considers it a dangerous thing that we would have self-autonomy. That we would decide for ourselves, you know, to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was really a tree of autonomy.

I get to decide for myself. And so, God from the very beginning has been warning us against this and the devil from the very beginning has been enticing us to this very kind of message. Well, it's interesting. You said earlier, I wonder if there's a listener going, man, you are very hard on the human heart. You said the human heart is desperately sick.

Yeah. Well, that was Jeremiah. You are quoting Jeremiah. But as parents, we often are trying to tell our kids the opposite.

Like, you're a good person, which they are. Well, we're image bearers. Yeah. Right. Which is true.

So, how do you balance that? I mean, all my kids are different. And so, some, I will say, if a race goes wrong, you know, one of them might be down on himself and the other one might be down on everybody else if something doesn't go quite right.

They're all different. So, the partial truth there is we do want to say to our kids to wallow in this sense of your own failure. You're not worth anything. You don't measure up to other people. You know, that's not a healthy way to look.

And yet, I mean, David prays in the Bible that he's not a man. He's a worm. So, there's a healthy worm theology and an unhealthy worm.

You know, the healthy is I may be a worm, but God made me and he loves me. And that's not the whole story. So, that's the thing is the Bible is a big book.

Yeah. And we need to tell our kids you're made in the image of God. You're precious to me and your mom. And there's lots of people that love you.

And I don't want you to ever forget that. And at the same time, your heart is bound to lead you astray. And we're bound to sin. And we're dead in our trespasses. I mean, the Bible's full of this language. And so, if we tell people just if you dig down deep enough. There's a famous line from G.K. Chesterton 100 years ago in his book, Orthodoxy, that said the worst God to follow is the God of yourself. He says, let Jones follow the crocodiles outside of the studio here.

Let him follow the sun. But the most tyrannical God is the God that you think dwells within your own self. And that's what our world tells us to follow. I just had a text from a woman who is a believer in Christ, but she said, I'm a piece of garbage. My life is not worth living. What would your response be to our kids even that are saying, I'm nothing, especially those in Christ.

So, in Christ, I'm a piece of garbage when my life is worth nothing. I might as well end it. Yeah. Well, we certainly don't want to affirm that. Right. And you have to ask a lot of questions because people can be saying that in different ways. You know, I take that people say that and they really do feel that.

Yeah. Sometimes, though, and I would want to know the person well before I go in this direction. But that kind of language can actually be the underside of pride.

You might say, no way, this person has no pride whatsoever. Or the person who says, I can't forgive myself. Well, that's often a sign that, well, who said forgive yourself? Your greatest sin is against God. And you know what? God is the one who can forgive you.

And God is the one that you have to repent towards. So, sometimes the very self-negative language is a sense of, you know, it's the classic teenager or something who might say, you know, I'm ugly. I go to school. You know, nobody likes me. Well, of course, you don't want to affirm that. But underneath that might be a sense of the fear of man, the love of the praise of man, trying to find their worth. So, you don't want to ask, why don't you think you're worth it? Who establishes what you're worth? Why aren't you worth?

Well, because I look this way, because I made these mistakes in my life. Let's talk about what worth means to God. It's that quote that says, who said that? Pride isn't thinking a lot of yourself. It's thinking of yourself a lot. I forget who said that.

But that's basically what you're saying, that maybe you're consumed with self. Yeah, right. And that's why sometimes well-meaning, if Christians come around and say, no, you are beautiful.

You are awesome. Everything about you is great. We all mean that well. And those may be some true things to affirm.

And yet, it can subtly be reinforcing of the person. So, I'm worth something if I am beautiful. I'm worth something if I am a good athlete.

I'm worth something if I do have friends at school. Well, I want you to see clearly about yourself. But more than that, I want you to understand who you are made in the image of God, if you're a believer, who you are in Christ, and what it means that Christ would die for us as sinners, that he has a plan for us, that he has a purpose for us. These are the things that get to our identity, because that's what this book is about. And that's what so many of the issues in our day are really about, who we are as human beings in our identity.

Yeah, how do you get to that identity? You just touched on identity in Christ, because there's that balance of, okay, the Bible says our hearts are desperately wicked, Jeremiah. Ezekiel, we have no longer a heart of stone, but a heart of flesh. God's redeemed us. 2 Corinthians 5, I'm a new creation, I'm not the old.

So, I am new, so maybe I should trust my new heart, or shouldn't I? It's like, you know, what am I? And I know it's some Romans 7 a little bit going on, you know. I want to do right, but I do wrong.

How do you navigate that? And it's very important to realize that, because sometimes, wanting to emphasize the depravity of man, which is true and biblical, but we forget, well, we are born again as Christians, and we have indwelling sin, we never fully eradicate the remains of sin, tempted to various things, and yet, we do have a new nature, an inclination that should be drawn to Christ, that is drawn to new things, that has, you know, Jonathan Edwards would say you have new eyes, you have new taste buds, you have a new nose, you know, you can taste and smell the things of God in a different way. We don't want to say to each other, as Christians, everything you do is filthy rags, everything in your heart is, it's all black, dark, wicked.

No, we actually can please God, we actually can do things that God is happy with in Christ, and yet, the world's message of just dig deeper is not even for the Christian, that, you know, God doesn't tell us, if you would just unearth, you know, pull away all the layers of the onion, and just find the real you, it's almost a Gnostic kind of idea, that ancient heresy, that you just have to find the real spark inside you, and if you can find that authentic you, when the Bible is saying that you look outside, you're seated in the heavenly places in Christ, that's where you find the real you, and that's how you should live. When I became a follower of Christ my junior year in college, and I started this brand new journey, because I was not really a church kid, even though I was around church, so I'm on a totally different trajectory in life, and I'm learning who I am and what the Bible says, I thought the more I would look inside my new life, I would find more light, and yet, the more I dug into my heart, I found more evil. I was like, I'm worse than I realized. I thought it was bad, but I'm wicked. You know, and it was like, I wanted to eradicate that in my soul, and part of my journey in all of us was like, it has been. It has been done at the cross, but it wasn't like I looked inside and found good. I looked inside and found worse than I expected, right, and had to navigate. That's not who I am anymore, but it doesn't go completely away, and you're sort of frustrated, because you think it should be gone, completely gone, and it is, but it isn't. Yeah, and one of the experiences we have as we mature in Christ, paradoxically, it will seem to us often that we're farther from God, because, like you said, I had similar experience when I was growing a ton as a college student, and you have this sort of thought. I remember telling one of my friends, you know, I don't, I'm not sure what will be left to sanctify a few years from now.

Did you say that? I mean, yeah, I knew it was wrong, but you're just like, we have been growing so much. Wow, we're going 10 years from now. I guess nothing left for God to do.

But then you had kids. Yeah, right, exactly. Well, because God's like the next peak in the Rockies, and you've been out there, and you come up to the front range, and it looks like it's right there, and then you keep going to the mountain pass, and you see there's another one, and another one, and a higher one, and it keeps going. So, what we think when we're first Christians, you know, kind of the holiness of God, and the character of God, I often joke, because my first church was in Iowa, and there would be a little sign, highest point in Iowa, and it's like, whoop, it's just up a little teeny hill. When you're a little Christian, you think, wow, that's a big hill right there, and you don't see God for all that He is, and so the more you know God, the more you see God, okay, now it's the Rockies and the Himalayas, and then you realize, I'm smaller than I thought, I'm farther away than I thought, but actually, you're growing in godliness, you're growing in Christlikeness. So, it's not that you are taking steps backward so much as you're seeing God more accurately for who He is. Yeah, when you can be honest about your sin, that's a real step forward. It feels like a step backward, because you're looking at it, maybe for the first time, like, this is really ugly, but it's in me. That's a good step, if you also understand, and it's been redeemed by the blood, and by the light of Jesus has come into my darkness, and is leading me out of this. That repentance piece.

I mean, that's a good move, it feels like it's a backward move, but no, it's actually a forward move. Some of the Puritans would say repentance is the vomit of the soul. You think about vomit, don't think about it too much, but nobody wants to vomit.

Everything about the experience says this is not the right direction. It hurts, it's painful, and yet you know sometimes when you're sick, that's the only thing that helps you start to feel better. That's true. And with repentance, it feels unnatural, because it is.

It's supernatural. It's natural to feel regret. You don't have to have the Spirit of God to feel bad when you blow a test, or you slept in, and you messed up something. It takes the Spirit of God, though, to repent, to really say, God, I sinned. And yet there is true freedom.

There's only freedom when we really admit those sins and mistakes. One of the illustrations I give in the book, I just compare these two Pixar movies. They're about ten years apart, which I don't know, says something maybe about Pixar or about the change of the culture, but the movie Brave and then the movie Red. They're both about mother-daughter kind of conflicts. In Red, it's all about, you know, let the panda within you come out, and it is a kind of be true to yourself, don't let anyone stuff this in, let it come out. And yet Brave, much more nuanced, much more Christian, is mend the bond torn by pride. Sorry for our Scottishness.

But that's what they do. The story is really, it's set in, you know, mythical, magical Scotland, but it's really about a mother and daughter realizing how they've hurt each other and how both of them need to change and repent. And so, you know, her spell to become a bear, the only way to reverse that spell is to mend the bond torn by pride and to realize what pride has done in this relationship. It's really a kind of Christian story, and yet so many of the other stories are like the other movie that are just telling you don't stuff down anything you have, just whatever seems authentic, let it come out. So, Kevin, in practical terms as parents, we're like, all right, all right, I'm not going to tell my kids be true to yourself.

That sends this kind of mixed message, even though there's, as you said, a piece of it that could be, you know, right in a very limited kind of way. You have nine kids. What are you telling them? Instead of, hey, guys, be true to yourself, what are the things you're telling them before Christ, because some of your kids are small, and then being in Christ, what does that look like? What are the things that we could say to our kids to encourage them to follow Jesus?

And not the culture. Yeah, I think of this, and I don't know how well it answers the question, but a year or two ago, one of my daughters, she was maybe 10 at the time, and she was with a friend. She was doing her first 5K. Wow. So, you know, she was going to- Ten years old? Ten years old. Wow. Yeah, I don't know if she was going to walk some of it.

Yeah, but still, it's cool. She was going to go out and do and run a 3.1-pound. She was so excited and so nervous, but I just said, I want to tell you three things. Because you're a runner. I am a runner. So, I said, I love you, Jesus loves you, and you're a DeYoung. The DeYoung was like, we run. This is who we are. This is who we are, but more important than that, I love you, Jesus loves you.

And, of course, I'm going to be proud of her, whatever she did, because she didn't qualify for the Paris Olympics, but that's not what you'd expect. So, there's little things like that. And, you know, I said it with a smile. It was an over-the-top kind of dad speech, but there was a serious lesson in there, too. And so, then as they get older, yeah, you have more corrective and weightier talks where I try to help my kids with this very thing and help them understand. One of the things that I think it's hard for us as parents, because we hurt when our kids hurt, and we come in and we mean really, I see this in myself, we mean well when we come in and we're trying to tell them why, you know, the race was great or that wasn't a bad, or the girl or the guy problems, it's all going to turn out. And what we're doing is we're kind of putting a stiff arm to what they're experiencing, and we're trying to fix it, and we're trying to help it. And so, I've learned, I've had to say, it really hurts, doesn't it?

I can't take away that this is sad, whether it's a minor disappointment or a major disappointment, but I wish I could with everything in me. But here's what we can talk about is what do we know about God? What do we know about His love for us?

What do we know about who we are because of Christ and what He did for us? And so, we want to make their circumstances good. I mean, every loving parent.

We don't want our kids there. I heard Tim Keller say one time, I don't know if it was original to him. He said, once you have kids, you'll never be happier than your least happy child. I remember reading that, resonating with it.

Yeah, there's a lot of truth to that. Well, I like what you said, though. Instead of in that tough moment for them, having them look in, you're having them look up. You went vertical, and you're guiding them to the answer's not going to be in here.

Even if you feel better, like, well, I'm really a good person. It's not going to last. But if you go vertical, there's an answer. That's eternal. That's real. That's true.

That's absolutely right. It's looking up, and it's looking outside. When everything from romanticism on down tells us look deeper and look in. And it doesn't even quite make sense.

I mean, what are you supposed to find there? I quote in there lines from the old Rich Mullins song. They told me to follow my heart, but all I heard was beating in my chest. They told me to follow my nose, but it just changed directions every time I turned my head.

Where are you really going to go with that? And yet, it has a kind of veneer of real deep spirituality that, like you were saying, the inspirational pep talk that tells you to go follow your heart. And everyone goes, what does that mean?

Yeah, exactly. So I just do the things that I want to do when actually older models, whether it's Western civilization or Christianity, which are often overlapping, older models of virtue are all about learning to sublimate those things. That maturing as an adult, you know who does whatever they feel like in the moment? Children. Children. That's what children do. They're sad, they scream.

They're hurt, they scream. And part of growing up is realizing I have to do something constructive with these desires. And sometimes that means killing them.

Sometimes that means delaying them. Sometimes it means following them. But that takes Christian wisdom and discernment much deeper than just be true to yourself. I think that's true in terms of when we tell kids to follow their hearts, I can remember as a teenager feeling like my heart was broken or my heart, I feel so scared or I feel so confused. And so it feels like all of our emotions, should we follow our emotions?

No. But to follow Christ, to keep our eyes on Jesus. And I love what you said.

Even our kids are little. I need you reminded. Jesus loves you. I love you.

I mean, it's so good. And we are the Wilsons. You belong with us.

You belong here at this point and we're always going to be with you. And Wilson, I'm a deon meaning, there are certain things that we stand for. And even that little speech, which isn't any sort of brilliance, it is setting someone's identity outside of themselves. Because expressive individualism tells us you determine your identity.

When that sets it outside, we all exist in a matrix of relationships and not just one identity, but many identities. And so it's learning what is most foundational and what is most fundamental. And that's one of the most important things we can do as parents. And often it's not even the speeches that we give them. My kids always joke like, dad, another dad speech.

And I'll say, guys, sit down. I got a great dad speech. We think that'll just transform them, those speeches.

Oh, man. Yeah. It's the things that are caught, you know, as much as taught, as we know, and the things that they just pick up. The challenge for us as parents, and the good news is, our kids are learning their identity from us. The things that we think about, the way where we find our identity, the things that we value in them, the things that we celebrate in them.

And that's a huge opportunity. And that means, even if we haven't been great at having all the family devotions all the time, and even if we're not good at the dad or mom speeches, there's a real good chance they've picked up some things. It also means, the scary part is, they're seeing us much more than they realize. And if we're not putting our identity in the right place, or what really matters to us is, you know, if they can catch the football or what they look like, they'll pick up on what their real identity is to us. Music If our kids are learning from us, that's kind of a temptation to hide, or maybe even perform. But no, this is an opportunity to go deeper into our relationship with God, and fall more in love with Him. The call isn't to do better, or to mask your flaws more often. The call is to run to Jesus as a flawed mom or dad, and know that our kids see our neediness for Christ, which is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Amazing stuff today. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Kevin DeYoung on Family Life Today. Kevin's written a book called Do Not Be True to Yourself, Countercultural Advice for the Rest of Your Life and Impossible Christianity.

This book offers, like I said, countercultural yet biblical advice with practical, gospel-centered guidance for navigating the challenges of high school, college, and adulthood. So, as you hear that and you know maybe somebody in that age range who could really benefit from kind of clear biblical guidance from Kevin DeYoung, you can go online to familylifetoday.com and click on the Today's Resources link, or you can get the link in the show notes. Or you can give us a call. Our number is 800-358-6329.

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