Kindness and common ground can go such a long ways towards just having walls go down and real conversation, you know, beginning.
That's why in conversation with people, rather than focusing on differences, I'm looking for areas of common ground that we have. Dr. Sean McDowell is back with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, talking about grace and truth and about engaging the culture well. Thanks for joining us, I'm John Fuller. John, last time we had a great conversation with Sean McDowell and I so enjoy when he comes. And his father, of course, Josh McDowell, was influential in my life.
Me too. It really made a difference when I was in high school and college and kind of gave me the undergirding beyond the scripture with evidence that demands a verdict. What a great book that was and is. If you haven't read that or have that on your shelf, you should order it.
Evidence that demands a verdict. And helped me in college going to state school. It helped me defend my faith and kind of parry the professors who were really coming after me because I would talk about my faith in Christ.
They would belittle me. That's a fairy tale. If you're a college student, you shouldn't believe that stuff.
I mean, it was horrific. And Josh really did a great job in helping me and I'm probably one of literally millions of people that his writing and his input made a difference in their lives. But we want to talk about how to speak to your teens, especially, but also 20-somethings.
It applies to any young person in your life, really. So let's get into it with Sean and continue our great discussion on these great topics. Yeah, you can learn more about Sean, but he's a professor at Biola University. He's the father of three. He has written and spoken and recorded a variety of things along the way. He's energetic and passionate.
We're so glad to have him. The book that we're really going to be covering a little bit of is called A Rebel's Manifesto, choosing truth, real justice, and love amid the noise of today's world. Great book. Get a copy from us here at the ministry.
You'll find it at our website and we've got the link in the show notes. Sean, welcome back. Good to be back. Good to see you, thanks.
Good to see you, of course. Let's kick it off with the spicy stuff. Now, I don't think we need a PG-13 warning here, but you know, this issue, let me just describe it as physical intimacy if there's other younger ears nearby. But you know, the way that the world has distorted this, you know, God, number one, He created it for us. It's the wedding present. I mean, this is the good gift from God.
And then, of course, the enemy in our own flesh comes along and distorts it, and we are so bombarded with it. I mean, Gene and I, we won't go to Vegas. We don't like driving the kids, you know, especially when they were like 8, 9, 10, 12, just the billboards. I mean, you have to get into a whole explanation about what you're seeing on a billboard, right? So, Gene was like, can we just avoid going there? And it's kind of, you might say radical approach, but as parents of young children and teens, we've got to be so on our toes about how to help our children process this. And here's the presumption. It's not if, it's going to be when our kids are exposed to this and then be ready.
How do you describe that? How would you coach parents to say, okay, this is how you got the attitude you need. This is what you need to say, et cetera. Well, the first thing I would encourage parents with is, and maybe I just remind them that none of us are perfect parents and none of us have a right to talk to our kids because we did everything right.
Obviously, none of us did. So, if what's holding you back from talking with your kid about sexuality, because I made this mistake or I fell short here, experience God's grace and realize your kids don't expect you to be perfect. Just having the conversation is a win in itself. I met a young man, his dad was actually a pastor and he was in his twenties and he was just, the way he described it, an egregious sexual sin. He goes, my dad just never talked to me about this. It was a taboo topic.
So, if it never comes up, you're going to take your script probably from somewhere in the world. My approach is actually, it starts early. In the sense that a kid's worldview about sexuality, I think starts implicitly.
Probably from the moment they come outside of the womb, the tenderness with which we talk to kids, touching them appropriately as a child, teaches them comfort with their bodies. It is not a one-time talk when kids turn 12, that's way too late. It's an ongoing conversation throughout the rhythm of life, typically when opportunities arise to just speak into our kids in age-appropriate ways.
It's not the talk, it's multiple talks and when is as early as possible. Yeah, we have a great tool launched into the teen years, you know, it kind of replaced the Preparing for Adolescence and that one-time talk that so many before us created, but it's that idea of start young and you drip irrigate on this issue of sexuality and what it means and God's design for reproduction and all those things. But let me ask you this, Sean, and you can get a hold of us for launching to the teen years and we'll get that to you. But the twisting of God's design, we have to be straight and truthful and honest about what's going on. The LGBTQ community and the agenda that they represent has done a number on traditional values, traditional definitions of marriage, relationship, et cetera, gender.
I mean, it's a flame right now, right? In terms of who are you to tell me what gender I am? And we're seeing all the manifestations of that. You had an example, which I think was really good of a classmate. I don't know if you were the high school teacher at this point, but this classmate that befriended an LGBT classmate, what did she do that made a difference and how did that relationship develop?
Well, this is a daughter of a friend of mine, and I'm pretty sure you would know who this is as well. And he's had conversations with his daughter early on about God's design for sexuality, built a relationship with her. I mean, he parented her, I think, you know, amazingly. And when she was in high school, she befriended a young man who was gay, just a platonic, friendly relationship. And part of her motivation was just, how do I love my neighbor and people who see the world differently? And so they'd study together, they'd watch movies together.
They would just spend time together as friends. And my buddy's quite the evangelist. And so her friend was over and he said something effective, you know, hey, son, so tell me what you think spiritually. What do you think about Jesus?
I mean, he just cuts right to the chase. And his response in some effect was, I don't know that I'm there. I'm not sure that I believe, but I'm thinking about it. And if I were to get there, it would be because of someone like your daughter. Now, if you're a parent, that's like a mic drop moment.
You can just call it, you know, that's the greatest, you know, compliment you could get. But I thought it shows the power of relationships shows the power of engaging others who see the world differently and just loving them as human beings. Now, I just remind people that she was able to do that because she had developed a Christian worldview.
His parents, her parents were very intentional with her. I mean, the Bible has a lot to say, and, you know, Paul talks about bad company corrupts good characters. So, we got to help our kids choose friends wisely. But if we help them think biblically first, then they can reach out with confidence and love those who are around them.
Sean, how do we do that? Because I know somebody's hearing this thinking, well, you're caving on principle. So, love has to be key in this conversation, in this friendship, but it doesn't mean that that young lady has given up on truth. So, how is she in there?
And this is kind of what we talked about last time. How is she in there and not judging, but still staying true to scriptural principles? There's a principle that I put in the book, and I try to help people grasp, is that understanding and listening does not equal affirmation. If I listen to somebody's worldview, and I understand, it doesn't mean I agree with them. It doesn't mean I'm affirming that on any issue, not just tied to sexuality. So, you can be in relationship with somebody who sees the world differently, in fact, sees it very differently. And that relationship itself doesn't imply that you agree with or necessarily affirm how that person views the world or what they believe. Now, the key is how do you stand firm with what you believe and not compromise it, but also show grace and kindness and be in relationship with somebody, not just to get them to convert, but because you love them as human beings.
That's where the dance is, and that's where it gets tricky. I have a friend of mine. He's an outspoken atheist, and we're talking about writing a book together, point-counterpoint. And I said to him, I said, look, I'll be honest. I want you to become a Christian. This is a book about how we have conversations, about how we understand.
We're going to discuss issues. But I would be totally disingenuous if I didn't say that I hope you become a follower of Jesus someday. But I still care about you, and I love you, even if you don't, because I think you're just an interesting person made in God's image. There's wisdom in just understanding where somebody's coming from. Sometimes as Christians, we feel the need to tell people why they're wrong, why we disagree.
Like, why start there? I mean, take Paul's sermon in Acts chapter 17. He doesn't stand up there and say, Athenian men and women, repent. You're sinners.
You're going to hell. He doesn't start there. He starts by saying, I see that you're very religious. What's he doing? Drawing them in. He's drawing them in, and he's building common ground with them.
He's saying, guess what? You care about religious things. I care about religious things. You're seeking God.
In some sense, I'm going to journey with God. And then he cites their poets positively in that presentation. So kindness and common ground can go such a long ways towards just having walls go down and real conversation beginning. That's why in conversation with people, rather than focusing on differences, I'm looking for areas of common ground that we have. Sean, when you were teaching high school, I know you've transferred now to the elite institution of university, but back in high school, you facilitated debate with your students. What was the purpose of doing that? Three of my students came into me after school, and they said they'd gone to the local public school event where they had a hundred students come out and hear about free thinking and atheism and agnosticism. And they were telling me about it. And I said, well, what do you guys want to do about it?
They said, I don't know. And we came up with this idea. They said, well, what if we challenge three of their students against three of you in a debate on the historical Jesus, morality and evolution and kind of creationism. And so we went to their students and they agreed.
And so we hosted this in our church and it was packed, which is probably 400 plus people, not a huge sanctuary, but there was standing room only, there was energy in the room. And I remember one of my students got up there in the middle of this and she made a statement. She said, we all know there's right and wrong. It's intuitive.
It's obvious. And that's because there's a moral law. And the best explanation for moral law is there's a moral law giver. So morality points towards God, she sits down. One of their students in agnostic, he said, there is no objective right and wrong.
It's all a matter of preference. In fact, morality is like ice cream. You use some illustration like that, and therefore it doesn't point towards God and he sits down.
We get to the closing speeches and in the closing speech of a debate, you're supposed to sum up the points you made and why you think you win. One of their students gets up there, the same student who just said, there's no objective morality. It's all a matter of opinion, looks out and realize he has a mostly Christian audience. And he basically starts preaching. He looks out and just starts calling the audience names.
He goes, you know what? You folks are a bunch of bigots. You're homophobic. You're hateful. You're intolerant.
Shame on you. Repeats himself and sits down. And I sat there and I thought, are you kidding me? A moment ago, he just said, there's no objective right and wrong, but you immoral bigots have violated every objective moral norm and should have seen differently. He didn't even see it.
Why? Because his worldview implied there's no objective morality, no need for God, but he's still made in God's image. And Romans two says, we have a moral conscience and he couldn't escape it. Now my students didn't pick up on that until later.
But I, if you know, at that point I couldn't, I'm the moderator. I was about to walk up there and just say, I want to thank the atheist agnostic side for conceding the debate by making moral judgments. But if I could draw one thing about this, the key with our kids is to realize they deeply know God exists. They know there's right and wrong, but our culture suppresses it like a beach ball. So back, you said the LGBTQ conversation earlier, that's related to what it means to be human. Kids know that men and women are different.
They intuitively know it. I want to look for times where our culture pushes the beach ball down, but then the truth just pops up because it's inescapable. Even this atheist kid was made in God's image and lives in God's world.
So in that moment, the beach ball popped up. That's so good. You also did like an atheist encounter. Is that a different illustration where you encourage kids with the atheist encounter?
What was that? So this is where I will go to, I've gone to Christian universities. I've gone to conferences, I've done pastors conferences, Christian schools, you name it. And I will role play an atheist. Now, typically people know I'm role playing. One time they didn't, and a school put it online, and I mean, last I checked, it got like five or six million views.
It went totally viral. I did not expect that. You do a good job playing the atheist. Well, I think the reason it did was because they really thought I was an atheist in this setting. And I put glasses on, I introduced my atheist character, and I start taking questions. And students ask questions, or people in the audience ask questions, and I respond as I think an atheist might.
You let this thing go 15, 20, sometimes 30, 35 minutes, and people start getting frustrated. You can feel it in the room. And many times people will start calling me names, they'll attack me personally, they'll cut me off. These are the Christians.
They'll stand up, they'll shout over me. And then in that case, they really thought I was an atheist. So I take my atheist glasses off and I said, you know what? I'm actually a Christian. And I gave a whole talk about how do we treat people who see the world differently?
And it was like silence in the room. So that's more of an exercise to teach Christians, number one, how do we ask good questions? How do we see ideas and respond, think biblically? But also, what's the way in which we treat people? I mean, communication involves content, but also involves the way we treat people. Do you think where the scripture talks about the clanging symbol without love?
Is this the application of that? That we can have knowledge, but if we don't wield that knowledge in a way that can be absorbed and learned and built upon by the other person, the atheist or the non-believer, then we do sound like a clanging symbol. We're not achieving everything that God would want us to achieve. And I think in this day of technology and access to information and Bible studies galore, I mean, we have lots of knowledge, but the maturity of how to wield that knowledge for an outcome is lacking.
I do agree with that. I was doing my atheist encounter, which I call it, with 6,000 students at an event in Minnesota probably 15 years ago. And I set up microphones around the stadium. And at that time, I had my atheist jacket.
They knew I was role-playing. I'm gonna come to that next time you do it. It's really interesting, Jim.
It's really interesting. And when I turned around to start my atheist encounter, the audience booed me. And one pastor shouted out, you're going to hell. So I went off script and I said, whoa, like here I'm invited as a guest who has a different worldview and you boo me. Do you think Jesus would treat an invited guest this way? He talked about praying for your enemies. I mean, of course not.
I said, what about Paul in the passage you cited, the love passage, first Corinthians 13, he talks about if you have not love, you have nothing. You're like a clanging symbol. And it was silent in that stadium, which I think proves there's a God because junior hires were present. But you're right. Communication again, it's the content we want to get across, but it's the medium by which we communicate it. So a clanging symbol is just, it's annoying.
Yes. And it's, it's background that makes you not want to listen. So far attitude and our character is not gentle and it's not kind. It's going to make people not want to listen to us. Now, with that said, is there still a time for a prophetic voice? Absolutely. But that needs to be done wisely and carefully. And I think far more people on Twitter and I'll ever think they're God's megaphone and lack the gentleness and kindness and wisdom you cited from Paul's letter to Timothy.
Yeah, that's really good. You know, the issue of abortion is, you know, a hotly contested issue in the culture today. And, you know, we, as believers in a tradition of defending the preborn child, that was something the early church did. You know, in fact, there's something called the dedicae. I think it was written around 10110. This would have been what we would refer to as those that were discipled by the disciples. This would have been that group of men and women, and they expanded on the 10 commandments and in thou shall not murder. They said you will not procure an abortion or engage in infanticide. That's right from the early church. So when, you know, some of my Christian friends who are more liberal on that issue, I'll say, man, you got to know the history. I mean, if you want to look at something close to the original, meaning Jesus and the disciples, 100 AD, they were talking about not getting an abortion and not procuring or engaging in infanticide, which was birthing the child and leaving it to die through exposure. And I think in that context, when we're looking at the abortion issue, how do we go about persuasion?
I think a couple things help. I think the science is working in our favor. I mean, one of the main reasons a woman will choose to keep her child when she visits a pregnancy resource center is seeing the ultrasound. Like, wow, it's a human being that is forming inside of me. So there's debates about when and how you show images of abortion itself.
But I think people should see it early to know what we're talking about. Let me insert a stat there just to help the audience, because we do that through Option Ultrasound. We've been doing this for over 20 years, providing ultrasound machines to clinics, et cetera, a lot of other things too. But in that context, 60% of abortion-minded women, so they're going to the clinic to get the abortion, will change their mind when they see the ultrasound of their baby, the fingers, the toes, often sucking the thumb in the womb, raising their hands, moving their limbs. When the woman sees that, 60% of abortion-minded women will say, I can't do this.
I've got to have this child. Whew, that's knowing in your heart what is true. Well, we also have social media now to share images of the unborn.
You don't have to wait until you get an ultrasound. The other thing I would say about persuasion is especially on the issue of abortion. This is true in the church and outside. There's a lot of hurt and regret and a backstory of people that if they came to the conclusion that life begins at conception, they've made a disastrous choice. So especially on this issue, I want to get to the story behind the story, the question behind the question. I mean, there's a proverb that says, the purposes in a man's heart are deep, and a person of wisdom draws it out. This can be guys who have regret taking their girlfriend to get an abortion. So on this topic, approach it with sensitivity and try to find out if there's a backstory driving it. But then we also have to be prepared to make a simple case for the unborn.
We've got to be ready. And there's different ways to do this. One simple case is humans get human rights. The right to life is a human right. The unborn are human. Therefore, the unborn has a right to life.
I've memorized that and used that in conversation. And I'll ask people, which one do you disagree with? Do you disagree that humans get the, you know, human rights? Do you disagree that the right to life is a human right? Do you disagree that the unborn is human?
And it creates a conversation focused on the facts and the evidence which points towards from the moment of conception, a unique, distinct living human organism is present. Let's at the end here, let's just move to a really serious subject loneliness and the bullying and suicide that occurs in young people today. 73% of young people ages 18 to 22 report feeling lonely. We talked about that last time briefly, but why is Gen Z one of the loneliest generations? And what's the bottom line?
What's happening? Ultimately, loneliness is an extension of broken relationships. We are made by God, you know this, to be in relationship with God and relationship with others. And when we don't have those healthy relationships, some type of counterfeit is going to step in for it.
It might be pornography, it might be working hard at good grades or being an exemplary athlete, it might be video games. Something's going to step in to be the root of my identity if we have broken relationships. So this generation at its core doesn't have the healthy, consistent relationships it needs to flourish.
Now we've seen some positive shifts since COVID, which is encouraging a little bit with fathers being more engaged. But at root, loneliness stems from broken relationships. Look, social media has positive.
It also has negative. But when you're staring at a screen somewhere between five and seven and sometimes 10 hours a day, rather than a human being, this is going to affect your psyche. I think Jonathan Haidt has shown pretty demonstratively that social media, unfiltered access to social media has a negative impact on the loneliness of this generation. So I think there's a number of factors that are at play here. But at root, the solution to it is having the kinds of face-to-face, present relationships God has designed us to have.
Well, the million-dollar question for a parent, an astute parent who's seeing something in their teens, what can they do to help arrest that sense of loneliness and really be there for their teen who is feeling desperately lonely? Well, first off, have boundaries when it comes to technology. I think a positive thing we've seen this year in schools is more and more schools are just getting technology in terms of smartphones out entirely. Now, again, I'm not against smartphones, but you don't have it out so you, between classes, what used to happen is kids would just turn, bam, they look at their phone. Now they stop and turn and they look at their neighbor.
Now they actually talk more together. So most kids, studies show, and I documented in that book that most teenagers want boundaries when it comes to technology. Now, the debate is going to come what those boundaries are, but if we have reasonable boundaries and we state them and we hold our kids to them consistently, that can help and most kids are going to respond. The other thing the parent can do is just talk and listen, go take them to breakfast, take them to coffee and say, I'm concerned, just tell me what's going on. You seem down, you seem lonely. Yeah, like, yeah, that's the simple solution, but just, you know, it's so sad. Oftentimes when people, you know, this is a really serious one, but will end up taking their own life, people look back and go, you know what? I should have seen A, B, C, and D. Well, you got to give yourself grace with that, but parents have to be paying attention.
Teachers have to be paying attention and just ask about it and lean in and try to address it as you can. Well, really good. Sean McDowell, Rebels Manifesto. What a great resource. And this has been a great couple of days discussing these situations with you and how to help our young people do better and be healthier, et cetera. Hey, this is Focus's goal. You know, this, yeah, I often say Focus is just a treasure trove of help. And man, we have counselors, we have resources, books, and articles, and all kinds of things to help you in this parenting effort. And to be that inquisitive person without the ultimate agenda, other than to help your child succeed and be healthy spiritually, emotionally, physically. And so get in touch with us, make a gift of any amount, monthly or a one-time gift, and we'll send you a copy of Sean's book of our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry.
Yeah. Call today, donate and get this book. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, or we've got the link in the show notes. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back 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.
