May 9, 2024 • 36 mins
SUMMARY:
Discover the profound influence of living for truth in order to transform the world, especially in times of crisis. In this episode of Treehouse Storyteller, we delve into discussion with Dr. Jeff Myers, an authority on youth leadership development from Summit Ministries.
Navigating through various cultural issues, biblical stories and viewpoints, Dr. Myers discusses the challenging prospect of distinguishing between biblical worldview and the alternative views in today's culture. Exploring history and how embracing God’s truth brings forth transformation for our youth and young adults.
In this dialogue, Dr. Myers and Hannah further delve into areas of parenting and discipleship, offering valuable insights for parents seeking to raise children in accordance with Biblical teachings. Discover the pivotal role of discipline and discipleship.
Join us in this episode as we absorb wisdom from Dr. Jeff Myers on how walking with faith, purpose, and truth will equip the rising generation of Godly leaders to push into the promise of hope!
BIO:
Dr. Jeff Myers is the president of Summit Ministries. As an educator and entrepreneur, Dr. Myers has become one of America’s most respected authorities on youth leadership development. Through his speaking engagements and media appearances, Dr. Myers has become a fresh voice offering humor and insight from a Christian worldview.
Check out his podcast HERE
Check out his book HERE.
TODAY'S SPONSOR:
This Episode is brought to you by Brave Books! If you are fed up with the woke agenda coming after your kids, be sure to order your free book HERE when you subscribe and take advantage of the 15% off when you shop my link!
MAKE SURE AND HEAD TO THE TREEHOUSE for the shop, blog, artwork, and more encouragement! www.thetreehousestoryteller.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hey, you're listening to The Treehouse Storyteller. Meet me in The Treehouse
for God-shaped storytelling.
Treehouse Storyteller is where we can come together as messy parents seeking
Jesus together and raising kids to love Him too.
If you aren't scared of addressing cultural issues head on and finding a deeper
(00:24):
understanding of the biblical worldview to share with your children,
then you've come to the right place.
I'm not afraid to be transparent and tell all of the juicy details.
Our children are being chased by the world and it is our job to be well-equipped
and know not only how to lead our flock, but successfully send our arrows out
into the world one day to build the kingdom.
(00:46):
So snuggle up by the fire or soak up the sunshine with those earbuds in and
meet me in the tree house for some biblical storytelling.
Music.
Hey guys, welcome to the Treehouse today.
I have the pleasure of introducing to you someone who is on the front lines,
(01:08):
I believe, and truly creating solutions to some of the world's problems affecting our youth today.
Dr. Jeff Myers is the president of Summit Ministries. As an educator and entrepreneur, Dr.
Myers has become one of America's most respected authorities on youth leadership development.
(01:29):
Through his speaking engagements and media appearance, Dr.
Myers has become a fresh voice offering humor and insight from a Christian worldview.
Welcome to the Treehouse, Dr. Jeff.
Hannah, great to be with you. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
I am as well. Oh my goodness. First of all, I want everyone to know what Summit Ministries is,
(01:52):
because for those who maybe are far off the country, maybe haven't heard of
you, I mean, you guys are so close to me, and I've had the great opportunity
of being introduced to you on multiple levels.
But can you just tell us all what Summit Ministries is?
Well, Summit Ministries started in 1962, started by David Noble.
(02:13):
And as a philosopher he felt
very concerned that people were not thinking biblically
they could think of their personal salvation
they might think of themselves as being part of the body of christ but they
weren't thinking about the rest of the things that were happening in the world
and he knew that there were world views like marxism that were very well thought
(02:37):
out and had something to say about theology, but also philosophy,
ethics, biology, psychology, sociology,
law, politics, economics, history.
And he wondered, do Christians have anything to say about these things?
So we started the ministry as a youth training program, and we operate that
program to this day, 62 years later, in an antique hotel in Manitou Springs,
(03:03):
Colorado, which is a little hippie town right at the foot of Pikes Peak.
And we are equipping and supporting this rising generation to embrace God's
truth and to champion a biblical worldview in every area of life.
That's awesome. I love Manitou Springs. It's such a cool little town.
So what could parents expect when their kids go and what age groups?
(03:26):
And I'm like, I'm literally asking for myself because my son is 13.
And I'm like, okay, when can he go? When can he get there?
In three more years, he can go. 16 to 22 is the age for these in-person programs.
Now I will mention though, Hannah, through time, we've developed curriculum
for Christian schools, for churches, for homeschool groups.
(03:49):
For individual study. And those materials are all available at summit.org.
You can find out more about that, but our curriculum courses go all the way down to kindergarten.
We were just in our staff chapel today talking about a school in Rwanda called, it's called Hope.
And it is 1800 students and they all study biblical worldview with us every
(04:14):
single day, the entire school year, kindergarten through grade 12.
Oh my goodness, that's incredible. I would assume that's an incredible resource
for us homeschool parents.
Yes, you can. Yes, the materials are available to use in your homeschool situation.
So if your son has questions about the faith or, hey, you know,
(04:36):
mom, what about this or that?
Or, mom, I think you're crazy to think that God is good when there is so much
evil in the world or whatever. whatever, just the kinds of things that we all
struggle with growing up, that's where Summit Ministries can come alongside and help you.
And then when he turns 16, he can come out here and spend 11 days with us.
And I believe it'll be transformative.
Oh, my word. That's amazing. I love it. All right. So you guys,
(05:00):
you talked about a couple of things that stood out to me just now.
You mentioned absolute truth.
Can we dive into that? How do we raise and disciple our kids to stand for absolute
truth? And what is absolute truth?
Do we even know anymore? Does anyone even know what truth is anymore? How do we define that?
Well, for most of history, people were interested in seeking the truth.
(05:24):
They had a lot of different ways they were going to do that.
Some ways are empirical and internal, say in Asia, but in Bible times and throughout
that Mediterranean region,
the idea was you seek the truth by thinking, and you must figure out somehow
(05:44):
to connect what's immaterial to what's material.
Like, not to be too nerdy about it, but the Greeks, they believed that the universe
was eternal, and they very quickly figured out that if the universe is eternal,
something that never started never came into existence.
So if it never came into existence, how is it that we know something about it
(06:08):
or we suspect that it exists?
Why do we think that our physical existence here has any meaning?
And they began looking for what's the connecting point between what we know
of our material existence and what we think is out there somewhere in the immaterial world.
And the term they actually used for that connecting point was logos. Logos.
(06:32):
And for some, it meant, well, we connect the immaterial and the material through our words.
We make reality when we talk about it.
Other people thought that it's just you use logic.
You can develop logical syllogisms, and through these proofs,
we can demonstrate something of our existence.
But the Apostle John, through the whole thing, turned it upside down when he
(06:55):
said, in the beginning was the Logos, the Word of God, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.
And he says, yes, there is a connecting point. There is something there that
connects us with ultimate reality so that we know that our lives are meaningful,
and it's not just a logical proposition.
(07:15):
It's not just a mathematical formula. It's a person. It's Jesus.
So when I talk about not absolute truth. I am talking about that.
When Jesus said in John 8, 32, if you follow my teachings, you will know the
truth and the truth will set you free.
That word truth there, aletheia in Greek, your brother's a pastor,
so I'm sure you know all of this, but that word means reality.
(07:39):
So Jesus isn't just saying, you will know yourself better. You'll feel better about yourself.
You'll be able to speak your truth. Now, he says, you'll know actual reality through my teachings.
Now, that idea of seek the truth has been replaced by speak your truth.
Rather than saying there is a reality to which our lives must correspond,
(08:03):
people today believe that they are the center of reality.
90% of people say the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself.
And I think that has created so many
societal ills. I don't want to blame everything bad in society on that.
But you sure can lay a lot of blame there for what young adults today go through.
(08:26):
75% say they don't have a sense of purpose that gives meaning to their lives.
50-some percent regularly struggle with anxiety and depression.
This is not normal in history. It's
not even normal in countries that have experienced trauma in times of war.
This is a philosophical decision that we made to make ourselves the center of reality.
(08:48):
And all sorts, you know, think of all the bad things that happen.
Like, you know, I'm actually in my office here on the other side of the camera.
I'm looking at the mountains.
And the Pike National Forest is a million acres. If you go out there without
a compass and a topographical map, you could become lost very quickly.
And if you're lost out there, I mean, you're really lost because you can't,
(09:10):
you know, on a day like today, where's the sun? It's cloudy.
You can't figure, you can't figure out anything.
So you use the compass to orient yourself toward a reality that is bigger than yourself.
That's where your meaning comes from. But if it's all you.
If the compass only works, if the red needle's pointing toward you,
you're not more found, you're more lost.
(09:33):
Yeah. And you feel guilty, too, because you somehow suspect that you're complicit
in everything bad that's going on in the world.
After all, if you are the center of reality and there are problems and you're
not fixing them, it's your fault.
And so anger and resentment often build out of that.
And people, like Albert Camus said, I accuse myself, therefore I have the right to judge you. Wow.
(09:56):
I love the analogy of the compass. And if it's pointing to us,
we're not really ever found.
I love that. I love that. And it puts it in a whole different perspective that
you kind of think of it as this pride thing when you're showing your own truth
and you're doing everything on your own.
And it's weight we're never intended to carry.
(10:18):
That's weight that God wants to carry for us. And that when we try and carry
it, of course, we're going to stumble.
And, you know, those who are atheists or don't believe in the whole,
in the beginning was the word and the word was God's story that we believe is
absolute truth, then they're constantly putting themselves on that pedestal.
(10:41):
But really, it's like it's throwing themselves down and they don't realize how
much It's oppressing them by not uplifting the creator.
So that's, wow. Well, there are a lot of people, as you mentioned,
who are atheist or agnostic.
They begin with the claim that there is no God, or they just set it aside because they aren't sure.
(11:04):
It's like building a house without a foundation.
You've got to start someplace. Now, that doesn't mean that truth is easy to
find. mind, we were always taught in school, you've got to search for it. You've got to seek it.
You've got to work hard that your intellectual growth is going to come on the cusp of despair.
You have to really, you build resilience through resistance,
(11:28):
just like when you go to the gym.
So anyway, that to me is the fascinating thing about working with young adults
today is once Once they get that, oh, this isn't supposed to be easy.
In fact, why do I think that easy is the better life? Where did that idea come from?
We know that that's not true. If you want to be good in the sport, you have to practice.
(11:51):
If you want to survive in warfare, they always sweat in the training ground
so that you don't bleed in battle.
You know, we know that that's true, but it's a matter of saying if that's true
in all these other areas,
and it's observably so, maybe it's also true in my interior life,
(12:13):
in my intellectual life, in my engagement with the world itself.
Yeah, we live in such a fast paced culture that everything is,
you know, generated so quickly and, you know, immediate satisfaction and instant
gratification kind of concepts that I think we I just had this conversation
with my kids the other day.
(12:34):
It's funny that, you know, things are hard.
And we teach our kids to do hard things. We have animals. My husband's a Marine.
He's done hard. He knows how to teach hard. Yeah.
And, you know, and just even my easy upbringing,
things were still harder than they are today from the standpoint of like everything
(12:54):
is, you know, we want to generate AI and we don't want to think about words
and, you know, plug everything into a computer system and make it do the work for you.
And I was telling them, look at the Bible, look at every single story,
every person that fought hard for Jesus, fought hard, or even for Old Testament,
everything was a challenge. Everything was an uphill battle.
(13:19):
And if we are really taking a stand for something, it's going to be hard.
Now, can God carry our weight and make it feel easier and give us a peace and
He's the light yoke? Absolutely.
But it's going to still be work. It's still going to be an initiative on our part to do.
This is a theme all throughout scripture that a lot of people miss because we
(13:41):
kind of fall for this idea because it would be so attractive if it were true
that God just wants to bless you.
And blessing you means he meets all of your needs and you have no struggles.
Yeah. That's actually a Greco-Roman pagan idea, not a Christian one.
When if you even look back at the promised land
(14:02):
our interpretation of the promised land
is oh well they spent a lot of time in the desert they finally
get to go into the promised land land flowing with milk and honey they can kick
back and life will be easy but that isn't what happened they had to fight yeah
god promised them that they would get that land but there were giants to be
conquered there were a lot of difficult things they had to start farms they
(14:23):
They had to actually work very hard at it.
The idea of the promised land was not that you struggled, therefore now you can just take it easy.
The idea of the promised land was all of the muscles that you built up in the
desert now can be used in the promised land to be a blessing to the nations.
That's why God's covenant is from God through the Jews to be a blessing to the nations of the earth.
(14:47):
That's the initial promise, Genesis chapter 12 with Abraham.
Yeah. So what does that look like when we're, when we're discipling our kids?
So I often say, you know, discipline has definite room.
We have to discipline our kids and our, our homes and teach them right from wrong.
But I do think parenting is a lot more about discipleship than actually disciplining them.
(15:13):
And discipleship, we're, we're steering them toward the Lord.
We're We're showing them, we're leading the way, we're leading by example.
So what are some things that you have seen that are really tangible ideas that
we as parents can do to kind of lead this concept and teach them these things?
Yeah, it's a huge question. And I think to be, I always, I like words.
(15:38):
So I look back at the word to disciple someone is not to disciple them to be
like us, but but to disciple them to be like Christ.
And discipline is the process of removing from your life those obstacles that
prevent you from being like Christ.
So a discipline that's focused on bringing people under control isn't fully matured.
(16:03):
Now, obviously, you know, I have four kids. They're all in their 20s now.
They all lived. Congratulations.
Thank you. Thank you very much. That is just God's grace entirely.
But if they were wanting to play in the street, I would discipline them for doing that.
(16:26):
Yeah. Not because I wanted to control them or marshal any all of their creativity
and shut it down in order to better achieve my aims of a peaceful household, but to guide them.
And so if I think of discipline in that way, as helping my children be disciples.
(16:47):
Then I have to look at how Jesus did it.
So what did Jesus do with his disciples? First, he called his disciples.
He gave them a specific call. all. And that's really important for our children
to know that they've been called by God and they have unique gifts and abilities,
motivated abilities, things that they do that God designed them with that return
(17:09):
energy to them and make them feel more alive.
They're unique in that way. And we can talk more about that.
There's a story I know that I tell that is one of your favorites and we can bring that up.
The second thing Jesus did is that he walked with them.
A friend of mine was really nerdy. He's the guy who told me,
did you know that Jesus asked 288 questions in the gospels?
(17:31):
This was a breakfast one day. And I said, you counted them? He said, I counted them.
I said, I thought I was the biggest nerd in this relationship, but clearly you are.
But he also counted up how long it would have taken Jesus to go all the places that he went.
Oh, wow. And he said, in order for Jesus to go all the places the gospels say
(17:56):
that he went, he would have had to have been on the road all day,
every day for 13 months of his three years of earthly ministry.
Now, that's a lot of walking with.
Last summer, I saw a dad and a son walking through Manitou Springs, big tourist town.
So tons of people here. If you like people watching, this is your place. Yeah.
(18:17):
But I noticed this dad, big guy, blonde hair, flat top, cut.
Then I look at his son, he's probably 12, big kid, blonde hair, flat top, cut.
And the dad was heavy.
And so he kind of walked in the
sort of way that people walk if they're carrying a lot of excess weight.
(18:39):
And the boy was walking exactly like his dad.
He didn't need to. It was he didn't have a physical issue that made him shuffle
like that, but that's the way he was walking.
They just walked together so much
that the son began to walk like the dad without even thinking about it.
Wow. We talk like those we walk alongside.
(19:00):
We think. We see what they see.
All of that is the point of walking with. And then third, Jesus sent them out.
He said, in this world, you will have trouble, but take heart,
I've overcome the world.
They're like, oh, okay, yeah, we're going to have trouble when we get out there.
And Jesus is saying, no, no, no, I'm going to get you in trouble.
I'm going to send you out as sheep among the wolves.
(19:26):
And you will not just want to know me.
You will need that relationship with me to connect you to God,
who is your ultimate source.
And then you're going to watch God work through your lives.
In fact, Jesus even said something completely remarkable, astonishing, really.
(19:47):
Greater things than these you will do.
Like, what? You've done some pretty amazing things. No, no, you're going to
do them. You're going to do them because I called you.
You walked with me. Now you're going to be sent forward. Yeah.
Okay, you brought it up. You've got to tell my favorite story now.
Yeah, it's about calling.
I mentioned earlier that 75% of young adults say they do not have a sense of
(20:12):
purpose that gives meaning to their lives.
I've worked with young adults my whole life, so I'm a Gen X guy.
I worked with people in my generation who are a little bit younger.
I worked with millennials. I'm working now with Gen Z.
And God willing, in my lifetime, I will have worked with four generations of
young people, maybe five if the Lord tarries. But the...
(20:35):
Constant struggle is, what is my calling? What is God's will for my life? Everybody asks that.
So several years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Alaska.
It was one of those amazing phone calls you get. Can you come and speak in Alaska?
I think the Lord's calling me to go.
(20:57):
So I asked, what are the arrangements? And it just kept getting better.
It's like, we're going to pay for your plane ticket.
We're going to give you an honorarium, pay for your hotel, your meals.
And we're going to pay for three extra days for you to tour around our state.
Wait a minute. I thought it was hard to follow. God, hold on.
Somehow I knew it was the Lord's will for me to go to Alaska.
(21:18):
I'll just leave it at that.
And it was super, it was in March. It was super cold.
And that it means that's awesome in Alaska because that means the sled dogs,
you can, so the Iditarod was taking place. I got to watch some of that.
It was fascinating, but I wanted
to try it. I wanted to get on that sled and have those dogs pull me.
So I found a guy who was willing to take me on a sled dog expedition.
(21:43):
And I still look back at that as one of my favorite life experiences.
It was over all too soon, but I noticed several things. First,
I noticed that the dogs were crazy.
However, when he got them on the harness, they were very focused. and
they were focused so much in on his voice that
he never yelled he just whispered commands and they obeyed and
(22:05):
we got back to this guy's house remote cabin
off grid kind of you know picture alaska and i asked him what's going on there
because these dogs were crazy and then all of a sudden you put them in the harness
they're trained they're ready they're focused and they're are listening for
your commands so that you whisper to them wow and he said when you're doing,
(22:29):
What you're designed to do, your master can guide you with a whisper. Wow.
Think of the power of that in a culture that's constantly yelling to get your attention.
That God whispers to us. Well, how does he do it?
Often he whispers to us through, well, he certainly whispers to us through scripture.
(22:56):
That's foundational. foundational, he whispers to us through prayer.
I think sometimes we sort of think of prayer as, okay, God, I got my little shopping list here.
I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you of the way I want things to go.
But prayer really is asking God, will you show me what you see?
Line me up so that what you're seeing is what I see.
(23:21):
Position me so that what you're hearing is what I hear.
Move me so that I intuitively go the direction that you're focused on.
That idea is crucial. But there's one element here that we don't often think
about and people easily misinterpret, and that is that God's personally designed each of us.
(23:46):
Psalm 139, we've been knit together in our mother's wombs, and that God knew
all of our days before any one one of them was lived.
It doesn't mean that God's a determinist, but it means that he's designed us
in a particular way with certain propensities, certain gifts.
Scripture talks about this all over the place, especially in the body of Christ,
(24:06):
but that we are somehow motivated to use those gifts to achieve things in the world.
We can achieve the wrong things with the right gifts, but that doesn't make the gifts bad.
So for instance, for me, teaching is one of those things.
Not only can I teach, I cannot not teach. I have to do this.
(24:31):
Before we got on the call, I'm working on a book manuscript. It's teaching.
It's all teaching. That's when I'm operating in my gifts. And when I'm teaching,
that energy returns to me.
It makes me feel more alive. It's not the easiness of it.
That is not the goal. The goal is to be aligned with what God designed me to
(24:55):
do so that my story makes sense as a plot point in his larger story. Yeah.
So I always ask people, you know, start writing down things.
Ask God to reveal to you all the way back to your childhood things when you
accomplish something. Yeah.
That return, that return to energy to you and made you feel more alive.
(25:17):
You knew that it was a good, that it was good.
Maybe you lost track of time or your surroundings because you were so engrossed in it.
Ask God to reveal to you vignettes in your life where that happened.
Not just one or two, but you know, 15, 20. I think my list got up to 25 when
I was doing this thought experiment.
(25:39):
I didn't expect that. But as God revealed them to me, I realized there was a
pattern flowing through all of those things.
And one of the aspects of the pattern, one of the threads was teaching.
There are other aspects to it as well. But that, to me, makes sense as a parent.
I want my children to find those things that return energy to them and make them feel more alive.
(26:02):
Something that makes the training, like your husband has gone through in the Marines, worth it.
Yeah. You know, it's not just preparing, period. It's preparing for something.
That's awesome. Now, I love the correlation of when you said earlier with the
sled dogs of hearing that still small voice, hearing that whisper.
(26:26):
And if we are aligned with what God is thinking, if we are saying,
hey, God, show me how you see this. show me what your thoughts are toward this,
what your truth is toward this, then everything,
I want to go as far as to say all of those problems disappear.
Our issues with identity is found in him now and not in the world.
(26:50):
Our purpose is found in him and not in the world.
You know, just all of these problems that we see with our kids today,
the anxiety, the pressures, all of that.
If we are looking instead through a lens and asking the father really to show
us which direction is his direction,
then I know it's not that easy, but it just is like, gosh, if that's what we're
(27:15):
pursuing, it's going to get better.
It's going to look like him more.
It's going to have meaning.
This is the, I'm trying to think of an example here. Well, Viktor Frankl was
a concentration camp survivor, a psychotherapist, not a Christian believer,
but tremendous insights in his book, Man's Search for Meaning.
(27:38):
And he said that in the concentration camp, the people who died,
I mean, there were a lot of people who were killed by the Nazis,
but there were other people who just died in their beds. They just lost hope.
And he said the people who remained alive,
who persevered, were the ones who had a larger sense of meaning,
(28:01):
a family they wanted to get back to, something that they felt they needed to do in their lives.
Lives and we don't get to determine the length of our
days but we can ask god
can you reveal to me the meaning
of what's going on here if i
(28:21):
have to dig a ditch that's fine if i have to dig a ditch and then turn around
and fill it back in because it was just a meaningless exercise i'm gonna lose
hope right so finding the meaning in it and that's why walking alongside is
so important because you're encouraging your kids.
Encourage doesn't mean remove the struggles from them.
(28:42):
Encourage means to give courage too. This is tough and you can do it. And I'm right here.
Yeah, that's awesome. I love on the Summit website, it says,
how can your faith transform a broken world?
And I love that question because it gives me hope that there's actually something
we can do to make a difference.
(29:03):
And it tells me there's an opportunity to take action. And I think that's incredible.
And I just, I think it's encouraging what you're doing and the heart behind what you're doing.
And I can't wait till my kids are old enough to come to Summit.
I don't want to lose the opportunity to talk about your book,
Truth Changes Everything, How People of Faith Can Transform the World in Times of Crisis.
(29:27):
Can you tell me a little bit more about your book and why it's so important
for our listeners today?
That book is based on what we talked about earlier about truth,
but it's also recognizing that it was Jesus' followers who believed that Jesus
is the truth, who led the way in science in the arts, in politics, justice, education,
(29:50):
the value of human life, medical care, even the idea that work can be meaningful.
All of those things were benefited from Jesus followers who weren't trying to
change the world. That wasn't their goal.
They just wanted to be the very best scientists they could be,
as an example, because they loved Jesus.
(30:12):
And they did lead the way. Science is really a perfect example.
Rodney Stark was a historian and sociologist.
Fascinating books this guy wrote. Rodney Stark passed away a couple of years ago.
But in one of his books, he talks about science and said, look,
there were 52 people who were the founders of modern science.
(30:33):
Their discoveries, their inventions, constituted the foundation of modern science.
Of those, only one of them was an atheist.
There were believing Christians who were doing science because they believed,
first of all, that God's real and that he wants us to explore his invisible nature.
Second of all, he's created a real world that actually really exists,
(30:54):
and there's consistency to it.
So if you do an experiment at time A, an experiment at time B,
you're actually experimenting in the same world, something the Greeks could never have been sure of.
You see, those biblical presuppositions in the hands of people who believed
that Jesus is the truth changed the whole course of human history.
(31:14):
The question is, can we still do it today?
And most of the book is just telling stories of some of these amazing people,
many stories you have not heard before, not to demonstrate that they were awesome,
but to just show how, look, everyday people who are quirky can do this.
I have hope. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
(31:36):
Yes. Yeah. In fact, you look at some of the, I mean, some of these people were, they were weird.
They were, they didn't, you know, they were awkward. They didn't get along with other people.
Some of them were, you know, they had anxiety or they suffered from depression.
Some of them, they didn't get along very well with those who are around them.
(31:57):
Some of them were headstrong. And God uses all kinds of people to accomplish his good purpose.
Yeah, that's awesome. All right, listeners, go check out that book.
That sounds amazing. I have not read it yet.
I am really excited to read it, though, now that I have heard more about it. I'm very excited.
(32:20):
So I just, Dr. Jeff, I just really appreciate you coming on today. day.
I want to be mindful of our time here, but I just, I think readers can really,
or listeners, not readers, but readers for your book too, but listeners can
just be really encouraged by what you have to offer.
I will make sure and have Summit Ministries links and all the ways to connect
(32:42):
to Dr. Jeff in the show notes as usual.
But I just, is there any last remarks that you have, maybe something about,
you know, what values did you make sure you instilled in your kids or as a a dad of four.
I mean, that's just, and they all lived. I mean, that's just an incredible.
That's an incredible story.
(33:03):
Is there just anything that you're like, gosh, I just, now's my chance to,
to tell these, tell these parents.
Yeah. I might answer it a little bit differently.
There, there are two things that are coming into my mind. So the first one is
one thing that I really tried to do with my kids is, and this sounds very strange, but just play dumb.
(33:27):
Don't underestimate the value of playing dumb.
If you want your disciple to grow, they have to take responsibility.
And so I was constantly saying things like, I don't understand this song on
the radio. Why is everybody listening to that?
Oh, we feel so sorry for our dad. He's just so clueless.
Okay, let me see if I can explain this to him. All of a sudden,
(33:49):
we're in a conversation, right?
Or why is everybody playing this video game? Or this is something I heard on
the news. Is anybody at school talking about this?
Those sorts of things, just playing dumb. And the second thing is helping them
distinguish between optimism and hope.
I just came back from Israel and being there in the battle space,
(34:09):
there's so much more. That would be a whole other show or two or three to talk about.
I actually recorded some of this on my podcast called The Dr. Jeff Show Podcast.
And you can hear about my experience there. But the Israelis,
it was so strange. even in time of war, they're distressed, but they're not discontent.
(34:30):
And I asked, where's the hope? And many, many people use this distinction between optimism and hope.
They said, optimism is a good feeling about something. Hope is a willingness to act.
They said, we're not very optimistic, but we have hope.
What a powerful distinction extinction in times like these.
(34:53):
80% of people, Hannah, in the world live with a constant fear of impending doom.
80%. Wow. Instead,
we are people of hope, not because we can make everything turn out right,
but because we know that our lives are meaningful, that we bear God's image, and that it matters.
(35:21):
Yeah, that's so good. That's so awesome. Dr. Jeff, thanks so much for being
with us today. I will definitely have to have you back.
Just awesome. You are just a wealth of knowledge and I just appreciate you extending
that pleasure for us today.
Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks Hannah.
This episode was brought to you by Brave Books. If you're fed up with the woke
(35:46):
agenda that you see at all of the big box stores and on all of your local shelves,
be sure to turn to Brave Books.
They are pro-God, pro-America, pro-family.
And be sure to use my link below in the show notes to get a free book today
when you subscribe as well as 15% off your order.
Wait, before you go, don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
(36:09):
And follow us on Facebook or Instagram at The Treehouse Storyteller so we can stay connected.
Head on over to thetreehousestoryteller.com for more products,
artwork, photography, and encouragement. See you next time.
Hey, you're listening to The Treehouse Storyteller. Meet me in The Treehouse
for God-shaped storytelling.
Treehouse Storyteller is where we can come together as messy parents seeking
Jesus together and raising kids to love Him too.
If you aren't scared of addressing cultural issues head on and finding a deeper
(00:24):
understanding of the biblical worldview to share with your children,
then you've come to the right place.
I'm not afraid to be transparent and tell all of the juicy details.
Our children are being chased by the world and it is our job to be well-equipped
and know not only how to lead our flock, but successfully send our arrows out
into the world one day to build the kingdom.
(00:46):
So snuggle up by the fire or soak up the sunshine with those earbuds in and
meet me in the tree house for some biblical storytelling.
Music.
Hey guys, welcome to the Treehouse today.
I have the pleasure of introducing to you someone who is on the front lines,
(01:08):
I believe, and truly creating solutions to some of the world's problems affecting our youth today.
Dr. Jeff Myers is the president of Summit Ministries. As an educator and entrepreneur, Dr.
Myers has become one of America's most respected authorities on youth leadership development.
(01:29):
Through his speaking engagements and media appearance, Dr.
Myers has become a fresh voice offering humor and insight from a Christian worldview.
Welcome to the Treehouse, Dr. Jeff.
Hannah, great to be with you. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
I am as well. Oh my goodness. First of all, I want everyone to know what Summit Ministries is,
(01:52):
because for those who maybe are far off the country, maybe haven't heard of
you, I mean, you guys are so close to me, and I've had the great opportunity
of being introduced to you on multiple levels.
But can you just tell us all what Summit Ministries is?
Well, Summit Ministries started in 1962, started by David Noble.
(02:13):
And as a philosopher he felt
very concerned that people were not thinking biblically
they could think of their personal salvation
they might think of themselves as being part of the body of christ but they
weren't thinking about the rest of the things that were happening in the world
and he knew that there were world views like marxism that were very well thought
(02:37):
out and had something to say about theology, but also philosophy,
ethics, biology, psychology, sociology,
law, politics, economics, history.
And he wondered, do Christians have anything to say about these things?
So we started the ministry as a youth training program, and we operate that
program to this day, 62 years later, in an antique hotel in Manitou Springs,
(03:03):
Colorado, which is a little hippie town right at the foot of Pikes Peak.
And we are equipping and supporting this rising generation to embrace God's
truth and to champion a biblical worldview in every area of life.
That's awesome. I love Manitou Springs. It's such a cool little town.
So what could parents expect when their kids go and what age groups?
(03:26):
And I'm like, I'm literally asking for myself because my son is 13.
And I'm like, okay, when can he go? When can he get there?
In three more years, he can go. 16 to 22 is the age for these in-person programs.
Now I will mention though, Hannah, through time, we've developed curriculum
for Christian schools, for churches, for homeschool groups.
(03:49):
For individual study. And those materials are all available at summit.org.
You can find out more about that, but our curriculum courses go all the way down to kindergarten.
We were just in our staff chapel today talking about a school in Rwanda called, it's called Hope.
And it is 1800 students and they all study biblical worldview with us every
(04:14):
single day, the entire school year, kindergarten through grade 12.
Oh my goodness, that's incredible. I would assume that's an incredible resource
for us homeschool parents.
Yes, you can. Yes, the materials are available to use in your homeschool situation.
So if your son has questions about the faith or, hey, you know,
(04:36):
mom, what about this or that?
Or, mom, I think you're crazy to think that God is good when there is so much
evil in the world or whatever. whatever, just the kinds of things that we all
struggle with growing up, that's where Summit Ministries can come alongside and help you.
And then when he turns 16, he can come out here and spend 11 days with us.
And I believe it'll be transformative.
Oh, my word. That's amazing. I love it. All right. So you guys,
(05:00):
you talked about a couple of things that stood out to me just now.
You mentioned absolute truth.
Can we dive into that? How do we raise and disciple our kids to stand for absolute
truth? And what is absolute truth?
Do we even know anymore? Does anyone even know what truth is anymore? How do we define that?
Well, for most of history, people were interested in seeking the truth.
(05:24):
They had a lot of different ways they were going to do that.
Some ways are empirical and internal, say in Asia, but in Bible times and throughout
that Mediterranean region,
the idea was you seek the truth by thinking, and you must figure out somehow
(05:44):
to connect what's immaterial to what's material.
Like, not to be too nerdy about it, but the Greeks, they believed that the universe
was eternal, and they very quickly figured out that if the universe is eternal,
something that never started never came into existence.
So if it never came into existence, how is it that we know something about it
(06:08):
or we suspect that it exists?
Why do we think that our physical existence here has any meaning?
And they began looking for what's the connecting point between what we know
of our material existence and what we think is out there somewhere in the immaterial world.
And the term they actually used for that connecting point was logos. Logos.
(06:32):
And for some, it meant, well, we connect the immaterial and the material through our words.
We make reality when we talk about it.
Other people thought that it's just you use logic.
You can develop logical syllogisms, and through these proofs,
we can demonstrate something of our existence.
But the Apostle John, through the whole thing, turned it upside down when he
(06:55):
said, in the beginning was the Logos, the Word of God, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.
And he says, yes, there is a connecting point. There is something there that
connects us with ultimate reality so that we know that our lives are meaningful,
and it's not just a logical proposition.
(07:15):
It's not just a mathematical formula. It's a person. It's Jesus.
So when I talk about not absolute truth. I am talking about that.
When Jesus said in John 8, 32, if you follow my teachings, you will know the
truth and the truth will set you free.
That word truth there, aletheia in Greek, your brother's a pastor,
so I'm sure you know all of this, but that word means reality.
(07:39):
So Jesus isn't just saying, you will know yourself better. You'll feel better about yourself.
You'll be able to speak your truth. Now, he says, you'll know actual reality through my teachings.
Now, that idea of seek the truth has been replaced by speak your truth.
Rather than saying there is a reality to which our lives must correspond,
(08:03):
people today believe that they are the center of reality.
90% of people say the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself.
And I think that has created so many
societal ills. I don't want to blame everything bad in society on that.
But you sure can lay a lot of blame there for what young adults today go through.
(08:26):
75% say they don't have a sense of purpose that gives meaning to their lives.
50-some percent regularly struggle with anxiety and depression.
This is not normal in history. It's
not even normal in countries that have experienced trauma in times of war.
This is a philosophical decision that we made to make ourselves the center of reality.
(08:48):
And all sorts, you know, think of all the bad things that happen.
Like, you know, I'm actually in my office here on the other side of the camera.
I'm looking at the mountains.
And the Pike National Forest is a million acres. If you go out there without
a compass and a topographical map, you could become lost very quickly.
And if you're lost out there, I mean, you're really lost because you can't,
(09:10):
you know, on a day like today, where's the sun? It's cloudy.
You can't figure, you can't figure out anything.
So you use the compass to orient yourself toward a reality that is bigger than yourself.
That's where your meaning comes from. But if it's all you.
If the compass only works, if the red needle's pointing toward you,
you're not more found, you're more lost.
(09:33):
Yeah. And you feel guilty, too, because you somehow suspect that you're complicit
in everything bad that's going on in the world.
After all, if you are the center of reality and there are problems and you're
not fixing them, it's your fault.
And so anger and resentment often build out of that.
And people, like Albert Camus said, I accuse myself, therefore I have the right to judge you. Wow.
(09:56):
I love the analogy of the compass. And if it's pointing to us,
we're not really ever found.
I love that. I love that. And it puts it in a whole different perspective that
you kind of think of it as this pride thing when you're showing your own truth
and you're doing everything on your own.
And it's weight we're never intended to carry.
(10:18):
That's weight that God wants to carry for us. And that when we try and carry
it, of course, we're going to stumble.
And, you know, those who are atheists or don't believe in the whole,
in the beginning was the word and the word was God's story that we believe is
absolute truth, then they're constantly putting themselves on that pedestal.
(10:41):
But really, it's like it's throwing themselves down and they don't realize how
much It's oppressing them by not uplifting the creator.
So that's, wow. Well, there are a lot of people, as you mentioned,
who are atheist or agnostic.
They begin with the claim that there is no God, or they just set it aside because they aren't sure.
(11:04):
It's like building a house without a foundation.
You've got to start someplace. Now, that doesn't mean that truth is easy to
find. mind, we were always taught in school, you've got to search for it. You've got to seek it.
You've got to work hard that your intellectual growth is going to come on the cusp of despair.
You have to really, you build resilience through resistance,
(11:28):
just like when you go to the gym.
So anyway, that to me is the fascinating thing about working with young adults
today is once Once they get that, oh, this isn't supposed to be easy.
In fact, why do I think that easy is the better life? Where did that idea come from?
We know that that's not true. If you want to be good in the sport, you have to practice.
(11:51):
If you want to survive in warfare, they always sweat in the training ground
so that you don't bleed in battle.
You know, we know that that's true, but it's a matter of saying if that's true
in all these other areas,
and it's observably so, maybe it's also true in my interior life,
(12:13):
in my intellectual life, in my engagement with the world itself.
Yeah, we live in such a fast paced culture that everything is,
you know, generated so quickly and, you know, immediate satisfaction and instant
gratification kind of concepts that I think we I just had this conversation
with my kids the other day.
(12:34):
It's funny that, you know, things are hard.
And we teach our kids to do hard things. We have animals. My husband's a Marine.
He's done hard. He knows how to teach hard. Yeah.
And, you know, and just even my easy upbringing,
things were still harder than they are today from the standpoint of like everything
(12:54):
is, you know, we want to generate AI and we don't want to think about words
and, you know, plug everything into a computer system and make it do the work for you.
And I was telling them, look at the Bible, look at every single story,
every person that fought hard for Jesus, fought hard, or even for Old Testament,
everything was a challenge. Everything was an uphill battle.
(13:19):
And if we are really taking a stand for something, it's going to be hard.
Now, can God carry our weight and make it feel easier and give us a peace and
He's the light yoke? Absolutely.
But it's going to still be work. It's still going to be an initiative on our part to do.
This is a theme all throughout scripture that a lot of people miss because we
(13:41):
kind of fall for this idea because it would be so attractive if it were true
that God just wants to bless you.
And blessing you means he meets all of your needs and you have no struggles.
Yeah. That's actually a Greco-Roman pagan idea, not a Christian one.
When if you even look back at the promised land
(14:02):
our interpretation of the promised land
is oh well they spent a lot of time in the desert they finally
get to go into the promised land land flowing with milk and honey they can kick
back and life will be easy but that isn't what happened they had to fight yeah
god promised them that they would get that land but there were giants to be
conquered there were a lot of difficult things they had to start farms they
(14:23):
They had to actually work very hard at it.
The idea of the promised land was not that you struggled, therefore now you can just take it easy.
The idea of the promised land was all of the muscles that you built up in the
desert now can be used in the promised land to be a blessing to the nations.
That's why God's covenant is from God through the Jews to be a blessing to the nations of the earth.
(14:47):
That's the initial promise, Genesis chapter 12 with Abraham.
Yeah. So what does that look like when we're, when we're discipling our kids?
So I often say, you know, discipline has definite room.
We have to discipline our kids and our, our homes and teach them right from wrong.
But I do think parenting is a lot more about discipleship than actually disciplining them.
(15:13):
And discipleship, we're, we're steering them toward the Lord.
We're We're showing them, we're leading the way, we're leading by example.
So what are some things that you have seen that are really tangible ideas that
we as parents can do to kind of lead this concept and teach them these things?
Yeah, it's a huge question. And I think to be, I always, I like words.
(15:38):
So I look back at the word to disciple someone is not to disciple them to be
like us, but but to disciple them to be like Christ.
And discipline is the process of removing from your life those obstacles that
prevent you from being like Christ.
So a discipline that's focused on bringing people under control isn't fully matured.
(16:03):
Now, obviously, you know, I have four kids. They're all in their 20s now.
They all lived. Congratulations.
Thank you. Thank you very much. That is just God's grace entirely.
But if they were wanting to play in the street, I would discipline them for doing that.
(16:26):
Yeah. Not because I wanted to control them or marshal any all of their creativity
and shut it down in order to better achieve my aims of a peaceful household, but to guide them.
And so if I think of discipline in that way, as helping my children be disciples.
(16:47):
Then I have to look at how Jesus did it.
So what did Jesus do with his disciples? First, he called his disciples.
He gave them a specific call. all. And that's really important for our children
to know that they've been called by God and they have unique gifts and abilities,
motivated abilities, things that they do that God designed them with that return
(17:09):
energy to them and make them feel more alive.
They're unique in that way. And we can talk more about that.
There's a story I know that I tell that is one of your favorites and we can bring that up.
The second thing Jesus did is that he walked with them.
A friend of mine was really nerdy. He's the guy who told me,
did you know that Jesus asked 288 questions in the gospels?
(17:31):
This was a breakfast one day. And I said, you counted them? He said, I counted them.
I said, I thought I was the biggest nerd in this relationship, but clearly you are.
But he also counted up how long it would have taken Jesus to go all the places that he went.
Oh, wow. And he said, in order for Jesus to go all the places the gospels say
(17:56):
that he went, he would have had to have been on the road all day,
every day for 13 months of his three years of earthly ministry.
Now, that's a lot of walking with.
Last summer, I saw a dad and a son walking through Manitou Springs, big tourist town.
So tons of people here. If you like people watching, this is your place. Yeah.
(18:17):
But I noticed this dad, big guy, blonde hair, flat top, cut.
Then I look at his son, he's probably 12, big kid, blonde hair, flat top, cut.
And the dad was heavy.
And so he kind of walked in the
sort of way that people walk if they're carrying a lot of excess weight.
(18:39):
And the boy was walking exactly like his dad.
He didn't need to. It was he didn't have a physical issue that made him shuffle
like that, but that's the way he was walking.
They just walked together so much
that the son began to walk like the dad without even thinking about it.
Wow. We talk like those we walk alongside.
(19:00):
We think. We see what they see.
All of that is the point of walking with. And then third, Jesus sent them out.
He said, in this world, you will have trouble, but take heart,
I've overcome the world.
They're like, oh, okay, yeah, we're going to have trouble when we get out there.
And Jesus is saying, no, no, no, I'm going to get you in trouble.
I'm going to send you out as sheep among the wolves.
(19:26):
And you will not just want to know me.
You will need that relationship with me to connect you to God,
who is your ultimate source.
And then you're going to watch God work through your lives.
In fact, Jesus even said something completely remarkable, astonishing, really.
(19:47):
Greater things than these you will do.
Like, what? You've done some pretty amazing things. No, no, you're going to
do them. You're going to do them because I called you.
You walked with me. Now you're going to be sent forward. Yeah.
Okay, you brought it up. You've got to tell my favorite story now.
Yeah, it's about calling.
I mentioned earlier that 75% of young adults say they do not have a sense of
(20:12):
purpose that gives meaning to their lives.
I've worked with young adults my whole life, so I'm a Gen X guy.
I worked with people in my generation who are a little bit younger.
I worked with millennials. I'm working now with Gen Z.
And God willing, in my lifetime, I will have worked with four generations of
young people, maybe five if the Lord tarries. But the...
(20:35):
Constant struggle is, what is my calling? What is God's will for my life? Everybody asks that.
So several years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Alaska.
It was one of those amazing phone calls you get. Can you come and speak in Alaska?
I think the Lord's calling me to go.
(20:57):
So I asked, what are the arrangements? And it just kept getting better.
It's like, we're going to pay for your plane ticket.
We're going to give you an honorarium, pay for your hotel, your meals.
And we're going to pay for three extra days for you to tour around our state.
Wait a minute. I thought it was hard to follow. God, hold on.
Somehow I knew it was the Lord's will for me to go to Alaska.
(21:18):
I'll just leave it at that.
And it was super, it was in March. It was super cold.
And that it means that's awesome in Alaska because that means the sled dogs,
you can, so the Iditarod was taking place. I got to watch some of that.
It was fascinating, but I wanted
to try it. I wanted to get on that sled and have those dogs pull me.
So I found a guy who was willing to take me on a sled dog expedition.
(21:43):
And I still look back at that as one of my favorite life experiences.
It was over all too soon, but I noticed several things. First,
I noticed that the dogs were crazy.
However, when he got them on the harness, they were very focused. and
they were focused so much in on his voice that
he never yelled he just whispered commands and they obeyed and
(22:05):
we got back to this guy's house remote cabin
off grid kind of you know picture alaska and i asked him what's going on there
because these dogs were crazy and then all of a sudden you put them in the harness
they're trained they're ready they're focused and they're are listening for
your commands so that you whisper to them wow and he said when you're doing,
(22:29):
What you're designed to do, your master can guide you with a whisper. Wow.
Think of the power of that in a culture that's constantly yelling to get your attention.
That God whispers to us. Well, how does he do it?
Often he whispers to us through, well, he certainly whispers to us through scripture.
(22:56):
That's foundational. foundational, he whispers to us through prayer.
I think sometimes we sort of think of prayer as, okay, God, I got my little shopping list here.
I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you of the way I want things to go.
But prayer really is asking God, will you show me what you see?
Line me up so that what you're seeing is what I see.
(23:21):
Position me so that what you're hearing is what I hear.
Move me so that I intuitively go the direction that you're focused on.
That idea is crucial. But there's one element here that we don't often think
about and people easily misinterpret, and that is that God's personally designed each of us.
(23:46):
Psalm 139, we've been knit together in our mother's wombs, and that God knew
all of our days before any one one of them was lived.
It doesn't mean that God's a determinist, but it means that he's designed us
in a particular way with certain propensities, certain gifts.
Scripture talks about this all over the place, especially in the body of Christ,
(24:06):
but that we are somehow motivated to use those gifts to achieve things in the world.
We can achieve the wrong things with the right gifts, but that doesn't make the gifts bad.
So for instance, for me, teaching is one of those things.
Not only can I teach, I cannot not teach. I have to do this.
(24:31):
Before we got on the call, I'm working on a book manuscript. It's teaching.
It's all teaching. That's when I'm operating in my gifts. And when I'm teaching,
that energy returns to me.
It makes me feel more alive. It's not the easiness of it.
That is not the goal. The goal is to be aligned with what God designed me to
(24:55):
do so that my story makes sense as a plot point in his larger story. Yeah.
So I always ask people, you know, start writing down things.
Ask God to reveal to you all the way back to your childhood things when you
accomplish something. Yeah.
That return, that return to energy to you and made you feel more alive.
(25:17):
You knew that it was a good, that it was good.
Maybe you lost track of time or your surroundings because you were so engrossed in it.
Ask God to reveal to you vignettes in your life where that happened.
Not just one or two, but you know, 15, 20. I think my list got up to 25 when
I was doing this thought experiment.
(25:39):
I didn't expect that. But as God revealed them to me, I realized there was a
pattern flowing through all of those things.
And one of the aspects of the pattern, one of the threads was teaching.
There are other aspects to it as well. But that, to me, makes sense as a parent.
I want my children to find those things that return energy to them and make them feel more alive.
(26:02):
Something that makes the training, like your husband has gone through in the Marines, worth it.
Yeah. You know, it's not just preparing, period. It's preparing for something.
That's awesome. Now, I love the correlation of when you said earlier with the
sled dogs of hearing that still small voice, hearing that whisper.
(26:26):
And if we are aligned with what God is thinking, if we are saying,
hey, God, show me how you see this. show me what your thoughts are toward this,
what your truth is toward this, then everything,
I want to go as far as to say all of those problems disappear.
Our issues with identity is found in him now and not in the world.
(26:50):
Our purpose is found in him and not in the world.
You know, just all of these problems that we see with our kids today,
the anxiety, the pressures, all of that.
If we are looking instead through a lens and asking the father really to show
us which direction is his direction,
then I know it's not that easy, but it just is like, gosh, if that's what we're
(27:15):
pursuing, it's going to get better.
It's going to look like him more.
It's going to have meaning.
This is the, I'm trying to think of an example here. Well, Viktor Frankl was
a concentration camp survivor, a psychotherapist, not a Christian believer,
but tremendous insights in his book, Man's Search for Meaning.
(27:38):
And he said that in the concentration camp, the people who died,
I mean, there were a lot of people who were killed by the Nazis,
but there were other people who just died in their beds. They just lost hope.
And he said the people who remained alive,
who persevered, were the ones who had a larger sense of meaning,
(28:01):
a family they wanted to get back to, something that they felt they needed to do in their lives.
Lives and we don't get to determine the length of our
days but we can ask god
can you reveal to me the meaning
of what's going on here if i
(28:21):
have to dig a ditch that's fine if i have to dig a ditch and then turn around
and fill it back in because it was just a meaningless exercise i'm gonna lose
hope right so finding the meaning in it and that's why walking alongside is
so important because you're encouraging your kids.
Encourage doesn't mean remove the struggles from them.
(28:42):
Encourage means to give courage too. This is tough and you can do it. And I'm right here.
Yeah, that's awesome. I love on the Summit website, it says,
how can your faith transform a broken world?
And I love that question because it gives me hope that there's actually something
we can do to make a difference.
(29:03):
And it tells me there's an opportunity to take action. And I think that's incredible.
And I just, I think it's encouraging what you're doing and the heart behind what you're doing.
And I can't wait till my kids are old enough to come to Summit.
I don't want to lose the opportunity to talk about your book,
Truth Changes Everything, How People of Faith Can Transform the World in Times of Crisis.
(29:27):
Can you tell me a little bit more about your book and why it's so important
for our listeners today?
That book is based on what we talked about earlier about truth,
but it's also recognizing that it was Jesus' followers who believed that Jesus
is the truth, who led the way in science in the arts, in politics, justice, education,
(29:50):
the value of human life, medical care, even the idea that work can be meaningful.
All of those things were benefited from Jesus followers who weren't trying to
change the world. That wasn't their goal.
They just wanted to be the very best scientists they could be,
as an example, because they loved Jesus.
(30:12):
And they did lead the way. Science is really a perfect example.
Rodney Stark was a historian and sociologist.
Fascinating books this guy wrote. Rodney Stark passed away a couple of years ago.
But in one of his books, he talks about science and said, look,
there were 52 people who were the founders of modern science.
(30:33):
Their discoveries, their inventions, constituted the foundation of modern science.
Of those, only one of them was an atheist.
There were believing Christians who were doing science because they believed,
first of all, that God's real and that he wants us to explore his invisible nature.
Second of all, he's created a real world that actually really exists,
(30:54):
and there's consistency to it.
So if you do an experiment at time A, an experiment at time B,
you're actually experimenting in the same world, something the Greeks could never have been sure of.
You see, those biblical presuppositions in the hands of people who believed
that Jesus is the truth changed the whole course of human history.
(31:14):
The question is, can we still do it today?
And most of the book is just telling stories of some of these amazing people,
many stories you have not heard before, not to demonstrate that they were awesome,
but to just show how, look, everyday people who are quirky can do this.
I have hope. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
(31:36):
Yes. Yeah. In fact, you look at some of the, I mean, some of these people were, they were weird.
They were, they didn't, you know, they were awkward. They didn't get along with other people.
Some of them were, you know, they had anxiety or they suffered from depression.
Some of them, they didn't get along very well with those who are around them.
(31:57):
Some of them were headstrong. And God uses all kinds of people to accomplish his good purpose.
Yeah, that's awesome. All right, listeners, go check out that book.
That sounds amazing. I have not read it yet.
I am really excited to read it, though, now that I have heard more about it. I'm very excited.
(32:20):
So I just, Dr. Jeff, I just really appreciate you coming on today. day.
I want to be mindful of our time here, but I just, I think readers can really,
or listeners, not readers, but readers for your book too, but listeners can
just be really encouraged by what you have to offer.
I will make sure and have Summit Ministries links and all the ways to connect
(32:42):
to Dr. Jeff in the show notes as usual.
But I just, is there any last remarks that you have, maybe something about,
you know, what values did you make sure you instilled in your kids or as a a dad of four.
I mean, that's just, and they all lived. I mean, that's just an incredible.
That's an incredible story.
(33:03):
Is there just anything that you're like, gosh, I just, now's my chance to,
to tell these, tell these parents.
Yeah. I might answer it a little bit differently.
There, there are two things that are coming into my mind. So the first one is
one thing that I really tried to do with my kids is, and this sounds very strange, but just play dumb.
(33:27):
Don't underestimate the value of playing dumb.
If you want your disciple to grow, they have to take responsibility.
And so I was constantly saying things like, I don't understand this song on
the radio. Why is everybody listening to that?
Oh, we feel so sorry for our dad. He's just so clueless.
Okay, let me see if I can explain this to him. All of a sudden,
(33:49):
we're in a conversation, right?
Or why is everybody playing this video game? Or this is something I heard on
the news. Is anybody at school talking about this?
Those sorts of things, just playing dumb. And the second thing is helping them
distinguish between optimism and hope.
I just came back from Israel and being there in the battle space,
(34:09):
there's so much more. That would be a whole other show or two or three to talk about.
I actually recorded some of this on my podcast called The Dr. Jeff Show Podcast.
And you can hear about my experience there. But the Israelis,
it was so strange. even in time of war, they're distressed, but they're not discontent.
(34:30):
And I asked, where's the hope? And many, many people use this distinction between optimism and hope.
They said, optimism is a good feeling about something. Hope is a willingness to act.
They said, we're not very optimistic, but we have hope.
What a powerful distinction extinction in times like these.
(34:53):
80% of people, Hannah, in the world live with a constant fear of impending doom.
80%. Wow. Instead,
we are people of hope, not because we can make everything turn out right,
but because we know that our lives are meaningful, that we bear God's image, and that it matters.
(35:21):
Yeah, that's so good. That's so awesome. Dr. Jeff, thanks so much for being
with us today. I will definitely have to have you back.
Just awesome. You are just a wealth of knowledge and I just appreciate you extending
that pleasure for us today.
Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks Hannah.
This episode was brought to you by Brave Books. If you're fed up with the woke
(35:46):
agenda that you see at all of the big box stores and on all of your local shelves,
be sure to turn to Brave Books.
They are pro-God, pro-America, pro-family.
And be sure to use my link below in the show notes to get a free book today
when you subscribe as well as 15% off your order.
Wait, before you go, don't forget to hit that subscribe button.
(36:09):
And follow us on Facebook or Instagram at The Treehouse Storyteller so we can stay connected.
Head on over to thetreehousestoryteller.com for more products,
artwork, photography, and encouragement. See you next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!