Helping Your Children Navigate the Culture

I've had so many women come and say I didn't have the language to talk about this. I saw this all going on, but I didn't have the words to talk about it and I feel like I've been unmuzzled. Well that's Hillary Ferrer and she joins us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. She's going to be sharing about the messages that the culture gives us and how moms can use apologetics to help their children.

Thanks for joining us, I'm John Fuller. You know, John, I rarely talk about what we're trying to do every day here at Focus. You know, there's five core things that we're trying to do and some are rooted in the beginning of Focus where Dr. Dobson talked about evangelism, that if we don't help a family find the Lord, we kind of miss the mark. We can help them in their marriage, help them in their parenting, but if we don't talk about the author of the family, we've kind of missed it. So we do try to concentrate on evangelism and discipleship and then we have marriage, parenting, helping children, you know, the ultrasound project and foster care being the voice for those children, trying to do all we can to help them.

And then finally culture, how do we engage the culture? And this program today is going to hit two of those, the discipleship side, how a mom particularly can use that time with her kids to really help them better understand the world they live in. And this will be applicable to dads as well, by the way, really equipping parents to be mindful of how to train their children up in scripture so that the world doesn't wash them down the river, so to speak. And so I'm looking forward to this, but that's what we're trying to do every day and we hope this will equip you as a parent to do the best job possible to help your children understand the world they live in.

Which is increasingly complex and difficult. Hillary Ferrer is the founder of Mama Bear Apologetics and she's written a couple of books. The one we're talking about today is called Mama Bear Apologetics, Empowering Your Kids to Challenge Cultural Lies. And you can learn more about Hillary, her ministry and this terrific resource when you click the link in the show notes. Hillary, great to have you here at Focus again. Yes, thank you for having me.

Yeah, we love the title Mama Bear and fill in the blank. This time it's apologetics and I love that zeal that you bring to this. I think sometimes, and I was like this as a parent, we're not always as intentional as we should be. And what's really troubling now is the need for us to be even more intentional as parents as we send our little ones off to school or homeschool or whatever it might be, because everything is seeping into the home.

We can't create a moat deep enough or a wall high enough these days with phones and everything else. Our kids are going to be exposed to things and we have to equip them to be ready for that. And that's why I so appreciate what you're doing and your presence and your Mama Bear approach to the parenting.

It's really good. Let's, in this case, apologetics. It seems so, I don't know, hard to connect maybe for some parents that Mama Bear apologetics, hey, I need Mama Bear get the shopping done.

Right? So this is like a deeper thing about what it is to be a parent. Speak to that overarching goal that you have to help equip parents to do this job. Yeah, so a Mama Bear, I think one of the key things about a Mama Bear is she will do things for her kids that she might not necessarily do for herself. And so one of the things that we like to say is so for Mama Bear apologetics, this might not affect your faith, but it might affect your children's. And so there was a story from several years back before Mama Bear was even even a thing where I was in my parents helping out with a Sunday school and there was a lady who was kind of giving her testimony of how she got into apologetics. And she was a fitness instructor. I think her husband was a flight was a pilot and their kids, you know, went through a Juana. They were in youth group.

They were youth group leaders. Her youngest son even rededicated his life when he went to college. And, you know, she thought we're locked and loaded. We're good.

We're solid. And he comes back from his first year in the workforce and where his boss had basically told him, well, Jesus is basically Santa Claus for adults. And something about that just completely shifted the way he thought about things to where he came home and says, I don't think I believe in God anymore. And she was just for what?

Like, I thought we were solid here. And so she started saying, what are your questions? And so he would come home with all these different questions and then he would go back to work and doing whatever. And she took her time to study, study, study, study and was saying, why didn't any of the youth groups prepare us for this? What is this postmodernism thing?

Like, how did this come and take over with us? So completely unaware. And she studied postmodernism. She studied apologetics. She studied worldview.

And so every time he came home, she would answer a few of his questions and he'd go back. But she did what she never thought that she would have to do because she saw this is affecting my child. And I thought that is an instinct that, you know, mama bears. People say that they want to protect their kids physically. They want to protect what their kids are eating.

But we're not looking at what is going into their spirit. It's like we kind of think, you know, I just I pray the prayers and I send them off to church and we should be good. Let me let me dig into that for a minute, because I think a lot of parents listening are going, what did they miss and what could I possibly be missing as well? So that that linkage between your kids going through Awana, which is a great organization. We love the organization and Young Life and all those great things that will make the assumption as parents that they're getting it.

Yes. So in that diagnosis, why are kids not getting it? And what do parents need to do to kind of peer into that to make sure that when they leave the home, they are equipped? Well, there's a bunch of different things.

So when I first was planning on the book, what I did was I took some of the books that talk about the questions that kids have and I put them all onto a board. And I said, there are different philosophies that are undergirding each of these sets of questions that are undermining kids ability to have faith. So, for example, you know, with postmodernism, if if you do not believe that there is such a thing as ultimate truth and absolute truth, that's true for everyone and everyone's you do your truth.

I do my truth. Christianity has no legs to stand on because Christianity claims to be the truth. But if they have imbibed that Christianity is just that person's truth, well, suddenly that doesn't apply to me.

Well, how do I figure out what my truth is? Or if they've imbibed the idea that the only way to really have knowledge that everybody agrees upon is if there's a scientific study to prove it. Well, if we don't have a scientific study that shows that Jesus rose from the dead or that, you know, God is real. If I can't test this and prove that God is real, then maybe he's not real. I need to have something to prove it. Or the idea of what we have going on right now that which we're going to talk about later in the segment, that all of life can be explained in terms of who is oppressing who. And so if someone is using their oppression in order to claim that this is the way you need to be, well, then Christianity then becomes a power play.

And it's not a way of freeing the captives. But let's go to ROAR, the acronym that you use as a starter, the primer here. So how do you use ROAR and what does it stand for? So the ROAR method is something we came up with. I kind of joke that we started out with the six D's and then we realized none of us could remember them. So we're like, if we can't remember, then nobody else is going to remember.

Well, it's interesting. We're mixing a little metaphor here with a bear and a lion. But we get the idea. It was like disciple, discern, detect all these different things. Anyway, so we made it down to ROAR. So ROAR stands for Recognize the Message.

So it's like there are sometimes where you'll hear just, you know, things like follow your heart or I remember back in the 90s, Sega Genesis, they had this thing where it was like this kind of creepy kid's voice that goes question everything. So there's recognize the message. What is the main message of either this media or this idea that's being promoted to me? Then the next one is offer objective discernment. So first off, we're offering this. We're not just going in with, you know, a sword and trash and everything that that we don't like. So we're offering discernment in terms of what is the good that this thing that I might normally disagree with offering because nobody, nobody would believe anything unless it was wrapped in partial truths. And unless we recognize the partial truths that these lies are wrapped in, then people are going to think that we're not being objective and we're just poo pooing everything.

So O is for offer objective discernment. A is for argue for a healthier approach. And that's where we're saying, OK, what are the truths that we discover and how it's like a lot of times people will agree on the problem. What they don't agree on is the solution. So if we can say, OK, we're going to come to this agreement, maybe on the problem or the motive, how can we argue for a healthier approach? How has the Bible actually addressed this better?

And then the final one is specifically for parents. And that's reinforce through discussion, discipleship and prayer. So this whole process is just being able it's like it's almost like the recognizing the message is just slowing down enough to realize that these messages are coming to begin with. The O and A is really just the process of discernment. And discernment means you're looking at what is true.

You're looking at what is to be approved, looking at what is excellent and praiseworthy. But you're also looking at what lies have slipped in with this. And then, you know, the discipleship aspect reinforcing through discussion, discipleship and prayer, knowing that prayer really comes in. I mean, it's never going to be a last resort, but it's also sometimes with ideas.

There is a spiritual blindness that's going on and there's no amount of discussion. Well, and that kind of takes us back with the parents role. I think, you know, again, those of us and Jean and I had children later in our marriage, so we were late 30s when Trent and Troy came along.

And I'm sure they were beneficiaries of that. We were much calmer parents. But you kind of feel like as a Christian, society generally in the past kind of supported major themes. Thou shall not murder, thou shall not steal, you know, those kinds of things. And public schools supported generally reinforcing those beliefs. And now it feels like a rickety old home that's got all this airspace in the walls and you can see outside and stuff seeps in. And I think what I'm driving to is that importance for that parent to realize those structures that help you and support you are really no longer there.

They're not. Which really needs the parent then. It requires the parent to step up. And I think some of us are distracted.

There's no guilt here. It's just, wow, you've got to really pay attention to what's going on in your children's world more so than when we were kids. Yes.

Yeah. I would say thinking that we can parent kids the way we were parented, we do not live in the same world. I like how my my parents pastor is constantly saying, have you all noticed that we're not the home team anymore? It's like not only are we not reinforcing the Judeo Christian values, I'm not even saying morality. I mean, things like that, that man is not basically good, that people are selfish, that we need to curtail, that we need to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior. These are some of the basic things that you would think everybody would agree upon. But if you look at a lot of stuff going on in education now, sometimes it's almost rewarding bad behavior and ignoring the good behavior.

It's like there's just all these different ways where these a different view of humanity has crept in. And so I tell parents, I say, well, what's the solution? Do I have to go homeschool my kids? And I say, you know, the solution really is you have to pick your heart, pick your heart, because it is really hard to be a parent of a public school kid who is hearing a bunch of lies all day every day and not expect and expecting those to not be seeping in constantly.

So you have to work extra hard to be almost like deprogramming. But it's so it's really hard to have your kids in public school. It can be hard to have your kids in private school where they take all of this for granted, all the Christianity and the Christianese and the the God stuff for granted.

And it never really grows deep because it's something that they've they haven't even been exposed. That could be even worse because the behaviors are not challenged and the Christian school is behaving just like the public. Exactly. And the parents think everything is fine because it's a Christian school. Now, no offense to Christian schools.

I'm sure you're trying to do a great job. It's just the reality of how young people are. Yeah. I mean, home school is just a different type of heart. So I say it's not that which one's easier. You have to pick your heart. Hillary, tell me more about the lies that the culture is telling our kids about emotions so that we're we're identifying those handles for the parents. You list several lies, but give us one or two.

Yes. So I'd say one of the number one lies with emotionalism is this idea of if I feel it, it's true. And this does come from there is some truth to this in the sense that there's no such thing as an invalid emotion or a wrong emotion. Now, we have to discipline our behaviors that may or may not match our emotion. Like I think we say in the book, you know, emotions are like toddlers.

They're really great, but you never want to put one in charge. They are great followers, but terrible leaders and people are using their emotions to lead. I don't know if you've noticed, especially like if you look at the stuff surrounding the political sphere, that people are either going out and having these primal screams or they're getting onto their own little, you know, Instagram live or tick tock and just riling themselves up as if the stronger that I feel it, the more true that it is. And the more interesting and the more you should believe this because you're seeing that in protest.

Yes, you're seeing this in protest. And it's almost like people are getting themselves into this fight or flight situation because that is this false sense of empowerment. And that's how we get people to understand truth. I've had people come at me say, well, what about this situation?

What about that situation for, we'll just say, political ideas? And they'll be using, you know, dying babies here, all these different horrible stories, which, yes, those are absolutely horrible. But if I were to use my emotions surrounding that one instance to make overall policy or for our kids to determine what is true in the Bible, that is a bad hermeneutic because there's a lot of stuff in the Old Testament that should make us upset.

And if our kids are thinking that I feel really upset by this thing in the Old Testament and the Old Testament, they also get confused as the idea of what is being described, what's happening versus what is being prescribed as if everything in the Old Testament was is, you know, instructions for this is how things should be. Well, if that gives me a bad emotion, well, I'm going to back away from that as not being true. It doesn't work. And so that's one of the things you hear about Christianity is, well, I tried it and it doesn't work for me. That just sounds so funny. I tried it.

It didn't work. Yeah, that's not the that's not the relationship with Jesus. Yeah, but really at the core is if I feel it, it's true as if my emotions are pointing to truth. I say that it's people kind of treat it like this compass that where my emotions point to. That's my true north. And did you know that you can make a compass go all crazy?

What you have to do is it has to be magnetized in order to point to true north. So that's kind of what we're doing as Christians. Yeah. And I was just going to say one of the observations of that is that you end up conforming the word of God to your emotions rather than your emotions to the word of God. And I think people will connect with that.

And we're seeing it in the culture in plenty. That's one of the problems we have right now, because nobody believes in a true truth. And you can go with your emotions as long as I say your your emotional compass is magnetized by scripture. We're not void of emotion. Scripture, reason and reality. If you got scripture, reason and reality disciplining all those emotions, then sometimes those emotions are great to get you to do something at some giant feat that you would have never done. The mama bear instinct is coming a lot of times from that emotional instinct to protect.

And that's a good thing as long as those emotions are disciplined by scripture, reason and reality. Let's move to Marxism. It's another one of these things that people, you know, generally we don't study this and we don't know a lot about it. There was a magazine, I think it was Teen Vogue. This when I read the book and read the prep for the discussion today, I just like, wow, Teen Vogue in 2018 said something. Basically, the article on Marxism was very positive. Oh, very, very positive. Tell us what what the implication of all that. And this is going to our teenager.

Yes, it's going to the teenagers. It was what's called a straw man. A straw man is when you kind of build up not a really good version of what something is. So they made the straw man of capitalism as greed is good, as if that were what capitalism was, as opposed to, you know, Marxism, which is, of course, much more Christ like. And so, I mean, it really kind of comes back to this idea of power and oppression. I would say that that's the number one thing that's come in is really starting with Marx is power and oppression is how we're going to interpret everything that's going on. And in his mind, it was the power oppression of who owns the businesses and who works the businesses. And so he would have these very emotional appeals of the guys that are in slaughterhouses that are the ones doing all the work, while these managers just stand back and make a lot of money. And he's like, the workers should be in charge of what they're doing, not these people on high. And every single generation wants to rebel against the previous generation. So if you can just kind of convince the new generation of who the man is, you know, that you're trying to get away from the man. And they painted Marx as if he was, they said, oh, he was a, you know, middle class worker who struggled.

Marx never worked a day in his life. He had rich people propping him up. And I think I've heard stories where he had a bunch of kids that he gave them all up for adoption because he just didn't care. He's not this wonderful guy that we need to be following after. Well, at the core, they don't believe there's a soul.

Oh, no. And he believes that the family's disgusting. He believes that we need to abolish all religion and all universal truths. So children belong to the state. Children belong to the state.

And so do women. In fact, you look at some of his where where Marxism was turned into women were almost kind of communal property, although he he does say in the communist manifesto how he thinks that the bourgeois society was already doing that with women. But really, I would say if I were to boil it down to one thing that he did, he says that all of history can be explained by class struggles. And so what we've done since then is we've tried to define who where is that class struggle? Where does it exist for him?

It was within money. You move forward to maybe something like critical theory where it's in cultural power of who's the minority and who's the majority. And then you go into the identity politics.

Right. Who's the oppressed? Who's the oppressed?

Who's the oppressor? And so it's like that idea just keeps morphing over and over again, because all we're looking for is to find who has the who's withholding justice and who's being oppressed. And if you look for someone that's oppressing you, you can always find it.

You can always find what you're it's amazing how you can always find what you're looking for. And so once you teach kids to be looking for this dynamic everywhere, they see it everywhere. But one of the problems is you see this dynamic within Christianity. And now Christianity is just this white man's religion passed down by a bunch of old white guys. And you shouldn't listen to what they said because they were speaking their truth again, back to postmodernism. They were speaking their truth in order for them to stay in power because it's all about power.

And that's why you don't want to believe this. And when kids start saying, yeah, yeah, this is all about power. It's hard to unprogram that.

Yeah, it's so true. We have a film, a documentary coming out called Truth Rising. And in there, a recent convert to Christianity. She is from Africa. And she's talking about, you know, today the best education, better than Harvard. Just get a plane ticket. Go to a communist.

Yes. Go to a Muslim country where Western values have not really penetrated. And she said, that'll be a better education than going to Harvard humanities class. Because you see the differences. You see women oppressed. You see people oppressed. You see women being called means of production for the next generation.

All the things that you're startled by. The lack of dignity for the human being is what we're talking about. Those are what those systems promote.

Produce. And yeah, it's like you look at just the number of people that have died under every communist regime. For some reason, communist regimes really like murdering their own people. That's like kind of a commonality that we always see.

And something that my dad used to say, just as I was, you know, maybe learning government and having some of these questions in my own life. As I was growing up, he would say, oh, yeah, democracy is the worst form of government in the world, except for all the other ones. Capitalism is the worst form of economics in the world, except for all the other ones. And the point being, we are sinful people and you can find flaws and people will exploit everything because we are sinful human beings. But unless you're focusing on sinful human beings being the root cause, if you're trying to make a system is going to be the thing that either makes things worse for people or the system makes things better, then everybody stops trying to root out the evil in their own heart and they start pointing fingers.

Where else can I find this evil to be rooted out? And I'm going to focus all my righteous anger on that. And I'm going to feel super duper moral while I'm doing it.

Yeah, I mean, while we have barely scratched the surface, I'm not even able to get to the all the content we wanted to talk to you about what a great book that's packed with so much mama bear apologetics. I think I want to end with this question. If you're just the normal mom and you're listening to this going, wow, that's a tsunami of things that I need to do.

We've probably increased their anxiety slightly. I don't want to do that. Well, no, no, no, I know. But, you know, I'm working, I'm trying to take care of the kids. I got a lot of plates spinning. And this perhaps is the most important thing.

And I haven't really thought about it. So how do you want to encourage that mom right now? Right at the end to say, I need to get this book and I need to start thinking about these things.

I want to encourage them with the stories that I hear back from from other moms that have gone through this book. So we went round and round and round and round about the subtitle for this book. And when we finally came up with empowering your kids to challenge cultural lies, it's like that really was the word that was prayed over this book is empowerment. I've had so many women come and say, I didn't have the language to talk about this. I saw this all going on, but I didn't have the words to talk about it. And I feel like I've been unmuzzled that I finally have the words to talk about this. I understand how to address this with my kids.

And once you I think one of my favorite comments and mom said, she goes, man, now that I see it, I can't unsee it. And so in this case, you're not having to be like, OK, how am I going to do this with my kids? It's more like all you have to do is pay attention to what you're already doing and just take a moment and say, hey, kids, did you see that? That advertisement just said that we deserve a new bathroom. Right. No, it's so true. You know, drip irrigation is such a good parenting way to do this.

And if you if you come at your children like a tsunami, they're not going to be able to absorb it all. I remember my son Troy and I were watching in 2015 when the elections were, you know, the elections were going on for 2016. And he saw the Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton, and he's like 14. And she said to the crowd, we need to support our men and women in blue. And nobody clapped. The next thing she said is we need to support a woman's right to choose.

And everybody it was like a standing ovation. And Troy turned to me and said, wow, that's really weird that they support death for children and they don't support police. I mean, as a 14 year old, they are noticing so much more than we had.

And I love one of my mama bears, Amy. She talks about so she's always having these conversations with her kids. And it's so fun to hear the conversation they then have with their teachers. And the teachers are like, we don't like your kids because it's like they will challenge them on these things. But then she'll have her son's friends come and say, Miss Amy, y'all talk about this stuff, right?

And come in asking her questions because they know this is the place to talk. It's a way of thinking. It's a way of talking with your kids and it's a way to interact with culture. And I would say with the way our culture is right now, this is part of what our I guess our time, our cultural moment.

This is what it looks like to be set apart. We are called to be holy. We are called to be set apart and being able to have these these discussions in a very objective, grace filled, but truth filled way. That is how we are going to change society as salt and light in this. And I've just heard from so many moms that this book helps give you the language to do it. Well, there it is.

I don't think we need to make more of a pitch, but get in touch with us here at Focus. Make a gift of any amount if you could do it monthly. That's great. It helps the budget. One time gift is great, too. And we'll send you a copy of Hillary's book, Mama Bear Apologetics, as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. Yeah.

And we were a little constrained on time. So we're going to offer additional content from the conversation with Hillary when you order the CD or get the free audio download of this program from us. So donate and get those resources and more when you call 800 the letter A in the word family 800-232-6459 or you can donate and get resources online.

The link is in the show notes. And if you're traveling this summer and you're going to be in Colorado, consider swinging by focus on the family. We have a terrific welcome center here in the springs. It's got a very family friendly space. You can relax, grab a bite to eat, let the kids have some fun in our safe indoor play area.

And long story short, we'd love to see you here this summer. On behalf of the team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. If the fights with your spouse have become unbearable, if you feel like you can't take it anymore, there's still hope. Hope restored marriage intensives have helped thousands of couples like yours. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face them together. Call us at 1-866-875-2915. We'll talk with you, pray with you and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.