This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Bill Westers about his article, “Questions and Doubts: 5 DON’Ts for Christian Parents”. https://www.equip.org/articles/questions-and-doubts-5-donts-for-christian-parents/
Related articles and podcasts by this author:Episode 428: The New Religion In Public Schools: Progressivism and the Trojan Horse Called SELThe New Religion In Public Schools: Progressivism and the Trojan Horse Called SEL
Related articles and podcasts by this author:Episode 428: The New Religion In Public Schools: Progressivism and the Trojan Horse Called SELThe New Religion In Public Schools: Progressivism and the Trojan Horse Called SEL
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the Postmodern
Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research Institute
and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing editor
of the Christian Research Journal. It's May twenty twenty five,
and you're listening to episode four hundred and forty seven,
which is a conversation of advice of five don'ts for
(00:44):
Christian parents when their kids questioned their faith. On this episode,
I'm joined by Bill Westers, who teaches at a public
high school in Michigan. Bill also hosts the Encountering Truth
podcast and graduated from the Cross Examined Instructors Academy and
participated in the Colson Fellows Program. Bill has written a
(01:07):
online feature article for the Christian Research Journal. His article
is called five Don'ts for Christian Parents, and you can
read his article completely free of charge online at equip
dot org. That's e quip dot org. Bill, it's good
to have you on the podcast again.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's great to be back. Thanks again for having me well.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Today I mentioned that Bill has written an article for
us about parenting, and I guess that I mean maybe
dreaded for some parents if their kids who have been
raised in a Christian home are starting to have doubts
about the Christian faith, and so he's written an article
(01:52):
called the Five don'ts for Christian Parents. Well, I want
to ask him a first of all, why did you
write this article.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, parenting today is hard. Parenting well is even harder.
You know, we live in a very confusing culture right now,
where a lot of people are saying, you know, calling
evil good and good evil and sowing seeds of doubt
into many Christians lives and especially our children. And so
(02:25):
studies have actually shown that as many as sixty to
eighty percent of Christian youth end up leaving the church
by the time that they're in college. And we're talking
kids raised in the church and by the time they
get into college they're walking away. And so it's a
pretty scary statistic. And you know, I have kids. I
(02:46):
have an eleven year old and a son who's about
to turn thirteen. We've had to walk through some things
with our own kids, and you know, there's a lot
of resources out there about parenting of what to do
as parents, you know, and when it comes to questions
(03:06):
and doubts and when our kids approach us with questions
about Christianity or doubts that they might be having. There's
not as much out there about what to do in
those circumstances or what not to do, and so I
felt like this would be a good kind of a
structure for parents to think about as they try to
(03:28):
answer their kids' questions and doubts and what not to
do in those circumstances.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So, as I said, I think that's kind of one
of those big fears for Christian parents that their kid
would come to them, you know, like you said, in
probably those middle school and high school years where they're
starting to have questions about is Christianity true? And so
you know, parents probably are feeling ankst that they don't
(03:56):
want that to happen. So tell us a little bit
overall and ask ask you specifically about some of those
five don'ts individually, but just overall, tell us a little
bit about the article.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, well, you know, I kids are We often hear, oh,
kids don't come with an instruction manual, right. You know,
we can also say things like parents don't get a
roadmap and there's obviously no GPS for your phone, and
we often say that to our kids ourselves. You know, like,
so we don't always make the right decisions because you guys,
(04:30):
you didn't come with an instruction manual. And so so
when you're talking about like navigating the streets of parenting
and Christian parenting specifically, you know, a lot of us
are old enough to remember those days that you know,
driving the streets without a GPS and all you had
is this big at list and you you know, you
were a very broad overview of some of the bigger roads,
(04:53):
and so we ended up have to stop for directions
along the way, ask people for help, and that's something
that we still should ought to do as Christians and parents.
But you know, we also would have to pay attention
to street signs along the way, and that would often
add a lot of extra stress to us, right so
(05:14):
you know, making sure we don't make some huge mistake
while we're driving, well, like turning down a wrong way
on a one way street. And so I kind of
liken these five don'ts to to those street signs. You know,
a lot of street signs tell you what to do,
but a lot of them tell you what not to do.
And if you violate those those don'ts of like do
(05:36):
not enter, no turn on read, no left turn, things
like that, you could have catastrophic consequences for you or
other people that are on the road. And in the
same way, you know, violating these donts of Christian parenting specifically,
when our kids have questions in doubts, they could potentially
have those catastrophic consequences for our kids face as well.
(06:01):
And so this is not some you know, magic formula
for parenting and nobody's going to do this perfectly, but
just a quick overview of the five domes you've got.
You know, Number one is that don't freak out when
your kids ask you questions. Don't freak out. Number two,
don't dismiss their questions. Number three is to don't oversimplify
(06:23):
those questions. Number four is to not be afraid to
say I don't know. And then finally, don't be passive
in how you handle these things. And so simple guidelines
for parents just to kind of walk through and as
as I think before responding to those questions in Dallas
that our children might have, we'd like to.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Hear from you directly if you have some suggestions for
topics you would like to see covered on our website.
For the Christian Research journel or if you would like
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(07:08):
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(07:29):
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if you would like to partner with us financially. But
(07:51):
thank you for listening. And now back to my conversation
with Bill westers Well. Bill just gave us an overview
of some of those five don't said he wrote about,
and now I want to ask him a little bit
more specifically about each and unpack those. And the first
one that he mentioned was don't freak out now. Of course,
(08:14):
that's usually what happens when your kids come in with
some kind of news and internally who are starting to
freak out? Maybe you also freak out externally too, if
something big happened, or there's some kind of thing that
they might have done wrong that they need to tell
you about. So when it comes to doubts, what do
(08:36):
you mean by don't freak out?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, this is like you had mentioned, This is kind
of a rule for a lot of things in parenting. Right.
Some things, of course, are going to end up being
more important than others. But we don't want to freak
out and give some sort of overblown reaction to our
kids when they come to us about quite a number
of different things, because we want to have that safe
space for them to offer them questions and those doubts.
(09:01):
We don't want our kids thinking, WHOA, I wasn't expecting that,
you know, we we don't want them thinking twice about
asking us next time, you know, I joke around in
our family. You know, certain words or phrases can often
elicit a song, could bring to mind some lyrics of
a song, especially for my wife. You know, if someone
said respect r E. S P E C T or
(09:22):
stand by me. You know, these things will trigger a
certain response. You know, so the point where kids might
be saying, oh, don't say that I'm around mom, she'll
burst into a song and you know, it's so annoying.
You know, a lot of what parents do is annoying
to their kids. But you know, sometimes that's good, but
if it causes them to not approach us about certain things,
(09:43):
it can also be very detrimental. You know. It could
be things, you know, like a boy or a girl
that they're interested in, and you know, whether whatever your
rules are for that, whether it's good you know, being
over excited for them or teasing them, or whether it's
you know, this bad anger you broke in our rules.
I'm going to go get the shotgun. I'm gonna get
that boy, come talk to me. You know, these types
(10:05):
of overreactions and strong responses can have some bad effects
on our kids. And like you mentioned, some of those mistakes,
some of those things that they've may have put themselves
in a compromising situation, maybe found themselves at a party
that didn't go with the way they thought, or maybe
they gave into some temptations with alcohol, sex, pregnancy things
(10:27):
like that, where you know, we want to be the
first phone call that they make when they've messed up
and need help, and so that we can model forgiveness
and walk through that with them and those consequences, and
the same goes for doubts and questions. We don't want
to have this overblown reaction of where did you hear that?
(10:47):
I'm calling the school right now? Or I'm going to
have to talk to Jimmy's parents. You know, not that
you shouldn't necessarily do some of those things on the
back end, but if their questions and the us to
have these knee jerk reactions where they're feeling like they're
getting interrogated or getting some sort of long lecture or
(11:07):
even yelling, or even even if it's something more soft,
maybe maybe an unexpected display of emotions or tears, well,
they'll worry that whenever they ask us these types of things,
that that's the response that they're going to get. They're
going to get us freaking out overreacting. And these overreactions
(11:29):
can you know, sometimes cause kids to even be suspicious
and wonder why are my parents getting so defensive? What
they might think that their parents are hiding something or
that there maybe is no good answer, So we don't
want to have those overblown reactions that kind of scare
kids away from asking us about the tough questions in
(11:52):
their faith.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Well, you've been on this podcast before in you're a teacher,
so I'm sure you've had some of the parents teach
your conferences too, where you'd have to, you know, make
sure that you navigate it so the parents don't overreact
about something that you need to speak with them about.
So that's just a good word for us. But what
are some other kinds of freaking out? You mentioned some,
(12:15):
but are there other responses in that category that parents
you talked about. You want them to come back to
you if they have questions or if they're facing serious
not just questions, but personal, you know, distress. You want
them to come to you, and what should they avoid
so they don't push their children away in these very
(12:39):
crucial times, whether it's hey, we had a conference with
your teacher or your grades or whatever. It may be
a question about your faith or like you said, they
ended up being in a place where they shouldn't have been.
How do you avoid those types of things that would
push your children away? From you and not want them
to come to you.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
A big thing is to not shame them. Of course
we don't ridicule them, but we also don't want to
bring shame upon them and say things like, oh, well,
you know, you should know better than that, or sometimes
you know, we might be tempted to quote Scripture at them,
you know, or say something that will you know, without faith,
it's impossible to please God, and those types of responses,
(13:20):
you know, throwing scriptures at them instead of really responding
to their heart, it's not going to resolve their doubts
or lead them to just kind of snap out of
it like we would want them to write. So instead
it almost really kind of communicates to kids that they're
even in the wrong for just holding those types of doubts,
(13:41):
that maybe even that they're lesser Christians for just simply
asking questions. And so if we think about scripture, for instance,
you know when Thomas said that he would not believe
in Jesus until he saw the holes in his hands
and his side, you know, Jesus did not shame Thomas
for doubting. Instead, he provided evidence, He gave him what
(14:04):
he was looking for. He said to him, put your finger.
Here see my hands, reach out your hand and put
it into my side. Stop doubting and believe. He didn't
shame Thomas. He just gave him the evidence and provided
what he needed in that time. Even John the Baptist,
you know, Jesus didn't shame John the Baptist when he
was in prison and sent messengers saying are you the
one or should we wait for another? In Luke chapter seven.
(14:27):
You know, John the Baptist was Jesus's own son, who
leapt in his mother's womb in the presence of his savior,
and who baptized Jesus in the Jordan. And he was
there when the voice came from heaven. And even he
had questions about Jesus as the messiah. So what did
Jesus do. He didn't shame John the Baptist. He performed
all these miracles and gave evidence and said, hey, go
(14:48):
back and report to John what you have seen and heard.
The blind receive site, the lame walk, those who have
leprosy are cleansed, the deaf here the dead are rais,
and the good news is proclaimed the poor. And so
we should communicate that to our kids in a way
that is not shameful that having doubts and questions as Christians,
(15:10):
it's normal. And so if they don't feel safe to
express their doubts without being shamed or without having some
sort of overreaction from us, well they're just going to
keep silent. They're going to keep their doubts to themselves.
They're going to go elsewhere to find the answers, and
those or those doubts will just continue to fester, unexpressed
(15:31):
and unaddressed. And studies have actually even shown that it's
not even necessarily doubt that is destructive to faith, but
unexpressed doubt that is destructive to faith. So we don't
want them sitting there with their doubts and their questions
unexpressed because they're afraid to ask due to some overreaction
(15:52):
or the potential to be shamed.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
So the second don't that you have for parents is
don't dismiss it. And I think as adults we can
dismiss kids' questions as silly, or maybe we want to
avoid it because we think it might cause them to
have more doubts, or it could be detrimental to their
(16:16):
faith because it would cause them to question even more
the truth of Christianity. So what do you mean by
don't dismiss it?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Well, this is kind of the opposite reaction of the
freaking out right. So we don't want to give that
overblown type of reaction overreaction, but we also don't want
to give an underreaction, so to speak. We don't want
to just act like, hey, everything is going to be fine.
(16:47):
I don't need to worry about this. It's not that
big of a deal. You know, a lot of parents
they don't really want to believe or accept the idea
that their kids are actually having these legitimate questions and
doubts and and so they just kind of dismiss it
and kind of just push it off and figure that
(17:07):
maybe it'll just kind of work itself out or resolve
itself in the end, you know. And sometimes they might
even be afraid to do anything about it and and
validate it, because then you know, they wonder, I wonder
if this is going to make things worse. They might
just end up, you know, laughing it off, or they
just tell them, oh, you know, just go read the Bible.
(17:28):
All the answers are in the Bible. Well, that's kind
of a an inadequate type of response. You know, if
we just dismiss it, assume that they're going to just
go read the Bible find the answers in there, or
maybe sometimes they might assume that well, we just we
go to church. You can get your answers from the
children's church or from the youth leader and they'll take
(17:51):
care of it. And that's kind of just shifting our
own parental responsibility off of ourselves and trying to put
it on other people like those youth leaders and church
workers the children's church. And so the problem is is
that if parents are not willing to answer their kids questions,
those questions don't just go away. They're going to go
(18:14):
elsewhere to find the answers. And sure, sometimes maybe it
will be the children's church leaders or the youth leaders
at church. But then again, in today's society, are what's
our first go to? You know, you google it, right,
and there's certainly no shortage of internet websites or personalities
(18:35):
online that they'll be willing to offer your kids the
answers that they're looking for. There's lots of YouTubers, TikTok influencers.
They would love to tell your kids what to think
and believe and they're also the ones that are causing
a lot of kids to walk away, even older kids
and young adults to question and deconstruct their faith in
(18:56):
a way that they leave it behind entirely. Well, if
we do this, if we dismiss our kids' questions, if
we ignore them, like I said, it might seem like
they go away, But what's probably happening is that they're
just no longer asking you. They found someone else, or
they've gone somewhere else to find the answers that they're
(19:19):
looking for, those honest answers to the tough questions. So
we need to take their questions seriously. You know, kids
take their question seriously, even if it's just a small
little question, they're going to take it seriously. And so parents,
we need to take kids questions seriously as well. You know,
simple responses like just believe or have faith or you know,
(19:40):
many of us have you know, grown up hearing things
like well the Bible says it, I believe it, and
that settles it. Yeah, that might be true. We do
acknowledge that the word of God, you know, the Bible
is the word of God. It's an errand it's inspired
by God. It has the answers, but to respond that
(20:01):
way again, it's just very inadequate for what our kids
are looking for. They need to have good reason to
believe that it's true, that it's not just blind faith,
but that there is good reason that to believe that
the Bible is reliable, that we have accurate copies, that
it's truthful, and we can't just dismiss their questions about it.
(20:25):
We can't dismiss their questions about the existence of God
or anything, and we can't just shift that responsibility over
to youth pastors or volunteers at children's church. We need
to take those questions seriously. We need to address them
head on, and even when it's hard to admit that
(20:45):
you know, or to accept the idea that our kids
are actually having those types of questions and doubts.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
And perhaps they have questions in doubts because they googled
it before they came to and now they're they're wondering.
The next one that you have for under the five
do ance for the Christian parent is don't oversimplify. And
you start the section out by saying, don't answer questions
that your kids aren't asking, So what do you mean
(21:15):
by that? And what does it mean to oversimplify?
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, when I say don't answer questions that your kids
are not asking, I'm not saying that parents should not,
you know, of course, answer more questions or go above
and beyond to give more answers to other questions. Maybe
all of the kids didn't ask this particular question, but
I'm going to answer it anyway. That is perfectly fine.
But what I'm trying to get at with this is
(21:43):
that we need to take the questions that they are
answering and give them the right answers and honest answers
to those specific questions, and not some caricature of them.
Parents should not take their kids questions and oversimplify them
into some sort of, you know, false representation of what
(22:05):
they're actually asking. Doing so like, we can do that,
but it might make it easier to answer, but it's
only easier to answer because we're not really addressing the argument.
We're only addressing a straw man version of the argument
knocking down that straw man version, and your listeners are
(22:25):
probably aware of what a straw man fallacy is, but
it's basically to oversimplify or distort another person's argument and
then to refute that simpler distortion of the argument rather
than the actual argument that the person is making. Now,
as Christians, a lot of times we have, you know,
(22:47):
certain skeptics or atheists will do this towards Christian arguments
for the existence of God. For example, one of these
examples is the colomn cosmological argument. The true version of
this argument states that everything that begins to exist has
a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore, the universe
(23:12):
had a cause. Well, a lot of times. What will
happen is an atheist will take that and try to
refute that by presenting a straw man version to question,
and they say, okay, yeah, well, then who created God?
Of course, not the Christian, not the atheists. Nobody believes
that God was created in this circumstance, right, Christians believe
(23:38):
that God is eternal and has always existed and therefore
does not need any sort of cause or creator. And
so instead, what the atheists and the skeptics are saying
with this straw man fallacy is that they're basically turning
it into something that we're not saying. Basically saying that
everything that exists has a creator rather than everything that
(24:02):
begins to exist has a cause. So as Christians we
don't appreciate when atheists or skeptics do this to arguments
for Christianity. And so as Christians, when as parents, when
our kids come to us with these same types of questions,
we should not oversimplify and just try to answer a
(24:24):
basic false representation of it, just like the atheists would
do for arguments for Christianity. Instead, we need to take
the Steelman version. We need to address that and properly
refute it in that way. For instance, one example is,
you know, my son came home from school one day
asking about something that he was learning in school about
(24:47):
the timing of the ice age, and he had questions about, well,
how would humans have survived through it? And when was it?
And so instead of oversimplifying, I had to kind of
figure out, Okay, what are you really asking? What's really
being presented in your school? Had to asked some questions,
get some clarity, make sure I was actually answering the
(25:10):
question properly according to what was really being asked. So
I had to figure out what is being taught, what
ice age are we talking about? When was this taking place?
You know, of course, part of this depends on our
view of the age of the Earth. Are we younger
Earth creationists or older Earth creationists? What do we mean
by the Ice Age? Was the entire Earth covered in ice?
(25:30):
Or were there some areas, maybe closer to the equator
that had more moderate temperatures. So it's important to know
and get the clarification of what's being taught, what this
question is really rooted in, where it's coming from, What
are some of the details, and really address that properly,
as opposed to some straw man version and some assumption
(25:50):
that we think we know what they're asking but really
not answering it appropriately.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
So, what are some examples of how how parents could
like fall into the trap of we shouldn't oversimplify, but
what are some ways that we could fall into this
trap that we should just be aware of so that
we don't go in that direction.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
One of the most common straw man type of responses
that I've heard from a number of Christians has to
do with the theory of evolution. You know, a lot
of Christians. Of course, as Christians, we don't believe that
humans evolved, and so what a lot of Christians will
say is something like on the lines of, well, if
(26:32):
humans came from apes, or if they came from monkeys, well,
then why are there still apes and monkeys? Well, again,
kind of going back to that cosmological argument, neither the
Christian nor the atheists believed that God was created. Well,
in this situation, neither the Christian nor the atheists believes
that humans came from apes. Instead, the real argument that
(26:54):
they're trying to say is that there was a common
ancestor that is neither true the human or truly ape
according to how we know it today. And so there's
all sorts of refutations and problems with that still that
we can address, but we have to take that actual
(27:14):
steel Man version of the argument, not the straw Man version. Otherwise,
when kids learn that there's more to the argument than
what the adults are letting on or expressing, well, they're
going to feel lied to, maybe deceived, or maybe they
might just think, well, my parents were just ignorant. They
didn't really know this true version of the argument, but
(27:38):
they didn't really know that that's not really what evolution
is claiming that humans came from apes, but that there's
a common ancestor. So they're going to have this feeling
of being deceived or misled, and so of course there's
certainly some solid refutations of Darwinian evolution, including concepts like
irreducible complexity, or you could talk about the fossil record
(28:01):
and the Cambrian explosion. But the argument really has to
be accurately stated before it can be properly refuted. And
so other issues that parents might have to deal with
with their kids is having these honest discussions about maybe
Old Testament depictions of God that, you know, to use
(28:21):
poulical Pan's word, is God a moral monster or a
vindictive bully, you know, And having these honest conversations about
that with our kids and properly addressing what they're asking
or maybe talking about the hiddenness of God. And another
thing is recognizing that when our kids ask us questions
and express their doubts, well, there's all sorts of there's
(28:43):
three main types of different types of doubt. You know,
it might be intellectual, emotional, or volitional. And so if
we're we have to recognize what type of doubt are
we dealing with here. If this is an intellectual type
of doubt, then yeah, we can provide the data to
the information, the facts and kind of express that accordingly.
(29:04):
But if this is emotional or volitional, we're going to
have to address these issues in a very different way.
One example of this is something like the problem of evil.
You know, or kids might say, well, why is there
so much evil in the world? Could God exist? A
good God exists if all this evil is in the world,
(29:25):
thinking that, you know, maybe if God is truly good,
that he would eliminate all the evil, and if he
was truly all powerful, then he had the ability to
do that. So is he not all powerful? Is he
not all good? Well, you know, to respond to our
kids with just an intellectual, factual information response to that
might be missing a little bit of the point. It
(29:46):
might not quite be answering the question that they're asking.
This might actually be coming from a personal experience associated
with it. Maybe they have a friend at school who's
had to go through something really difficult. They're just a
really good person, But why does their mom or their
dad have to pass away, or why does their sibling
have to be terminally ill? You know, how could they
(30:10):
have to deal with all of this evil? And so
we need to ask these types of questions to our
kids to kind of get under the surface of the question.
Itself to figure out where is this question coming from.
Let's address the root of the question and talk about
what they're really asking and maybe read the reason why
they're asking it, because it might be more than just
(30:32):
an intellectual type of doubt or question. It might be
more emotional that we have to kind of get under
the surface and address what they're really asking instead of
some sort of oversimplified, surface level type of response.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
So, as we've talked about some of these don'ts, I
think maybe some parents listening, especially parents of middle school
or high school students, they might feel a little overwhelmed,
maybe nervous. I know they're thinking, Okay, don't freak out,
don't dismiss their questions, don't oversimplify. But I think in
the next section of the article, you give them encouragement
(31:10):
and a little bit of comfort, because I don't think
we want to overwhelm people and think that they're doing
a bad job parenting through these very you know, challenging situations.
So you kind of say in a positive way, like,
don't be afraid to say I don't know. So tell
us why this kind of honest response can be a
good thing. You were just talking about evolution I mean,
(31:31):
there could be parents out there saying, you know what,
I just don't know how to review that. That would
I would be overwhelmed if my kid came home from
school and said, well, why wouldn't Christians believe in evolution?
So tell us why not being afraid of saying I
don't know would be a good thing.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, these questions certainly can be scary, especially if we
don't necessarily feel like we are equipped. You know, what
if we don't know the answer, or you know, we
might be thinking, well, what if I give the long answer,
and what if answering my answer just actually makes things worse. Well,
the good news is that it's okay to not know everything,
(32:09):
and it's okay to say I don't know. You know,
we need to just be honest in those situations, and
sometimes that's just the best thing that you can do.
We don't I mean, we don't want to lie to
our kids. We don't want to make up some sort
of answer on the spot, and so being honest can
build trust. And so what we we don't want to
(32:32):
do is, you know, feel this need to spontaneously concoct
some sort of answer on the fly, not sure whether
or not it's really true. But at least I'm answering
my kids questions. Well, that's eventually probably going to get
found out, you know, even if we just want to
get out of an uncomfortable situation. You know, sometimes we're like, oh,
(32:55):
I'm overwhelmed by this because I don't know the answer,
but it's okay, just just be honest and say I
don't know. You know. As Christians, of course, we're called
to tell the truth and not to lie to our kids,
you know, and not knowing an answers doesn't justify being
dishonest or especially telling some sort of outright lie. And
(33:17):
so if we don't know, then we can just be
honest because that honesty builds trust and it might actually
in some cases surprise our kids what you don't know? Well, yeah,
but you know what, that's okay. We're we don't have
to know all the answers all right in that moment.
But what we don't want to do is try to
(33:38):
make up those answers, because, like I said, if it's
you know, not necessarily true, what happens when they find
out the truth? You know, what happens if we try
to say something like going back to the evolution that
you know, if there's no why are there still apes today? Right? Well,
that's not the question. And if our kids, you know,
(33:59):
if we just come up with some sort of quick
answer like that, because this is something that we oh,
this will be a good answer, let me just throw
this out there, well, they're going to feel lied to
and betrayed as soon as they find out, oh, that's
not what evolutionists actually believe. So they believe that there's
a common ancestor and we don't actually come from what
we know to be apes today. So they'll even feel
(34:21):
maybe a little bit betrayed in that sense, and so
they will feel like maybe we're hiding something. Maybe that
sense of trust will be broken. And so being honest
and just saying look, I don't know the answer to
your question is just something that, like I said, it
could surprise him a little bit. But in the end,
(34:42):
I think they'll appreciate the honesty and know that they
don't have to know all the answers right away either.
But when they can see the confidence in parents that
you know what I don't. I might not know the
answer to that question, but it doesn't shake me. You know,
I can figure that type of answer out, and I
(35:04):
have a confidence in my faith even when I might
be lacking absolute certainty or absolute knowledge in every area.
There's so much truth to the Christian worldview that something
that I don't know is not going to undermine my
entire faith, and for our kids, it shouldn't do that
for them either, and so communicating that honesty with them
(35:26):
will build that same type of confidence in their own hearts.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
So one of the things that you say in the
article is that if you're ending the conversation with I
don't know, you don't want to be dismissive. You don't
want to make it seem like you're brushing them off
or it's incomplete, and in saying I don't know is
being honest, But also just to kind of say it
tritly would be missing an opportunity. So tell us a
(35:52):
little bit about that. Why don't you unpack that? What
do you suggest that parents do from there once they've said,
you know, that's a good question, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah, that's really the beauty of all of this is
of having that relationship built with your kids and being
honest so that they can they know that they can
trust you. That honesty that builds their trust and confidence.
But like you said, that should not be the end
of the conversation. If you end the conversation there, you're
(36:22):
really missing an incredible opportunity because really that simple I
don't know. Yeah, it's honest, that's great. It's building that
trust and that confidence. But it should always be followed
by you know what, I'll look into it and get
back to you. You know, and then you go and
you do the research, you figure it out, you continue
(36:42):
the conversation, and you know, like I did some of
this with my own son's question about the ice age
and human survival and stuff, and I kind of looked
up some resources to kind of get a better understanding of, Okay,
what timeframe are we looking at here, How does this
play into the history of the human race and where
(37:02):
that would fall and how they would survive? What is
the ice age? What is the timing? And so I
had to I did that, and I promised him that
I would. I said, I will get back to you,
I will look at this. I went to online, I
went to certain people and found out the information that
I needed to be able to respond to his question.
And so it's important that we take that time say
(37:23):
not just I don't know, but continue it by saying
I'm going to look into it and get back to you.
Now that being said, what would be even better, and
this is where the incredible opportunity comes in, is that
you would look into that together, where you say, well,
I don't know the answer to that, but let's research
(37:44):
this together, and let's read this book together to find
some answers. Let's go to the Bible together to see
what the Bible says about that. And it's an incredible
opportunity because not only are we growing in our own
knowledge and relationship with the Lord, but our kids are
(38:07):
also right alongside us, growing in their knowledge in their
relationship with the Lord. And then, of course along the way,
you're also strengthening that parent child relationship. It's not just
a relationship and knowledge and understanding of the Lord, but
you're also building that family relationship and doing this together
and building that trust for the future that when mom
(38:29):
or dad says, you know what, I don't know they
answer that question, they can be like, oh, that's okay,
and maybe next time they'll say, hey, can we look
into that together. Let's do this together, And it's a
good habit to set up in our lives, in our
families is to have a certain go to perhaps a
certain website that we go to, or certain resources that
we're familiar with, and say, hey, let's look into this
(38:52):
together and have it as even an expectation for our
kids to bring up and where there might be looking
into things and have their own questions and say I
want to figure this out as well, and then choose
to do that together as a family.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Well, in the last section of your article, you talk
about the final don't, which is don't be passive, and
you like in doubts that students would have to the
little Baobab trees in the children's story The Little Prince.
I don't know if people are familiar with that story.
It's they'd probably be familiar with the illustrations of the story,
(39:28):
if not the story itself. It was written a long
time ago, the nineteen forties by a French writer and
it's narrated by a little kid. So tell us a
little bit about that story and how are doubts like
that from The Little Prince.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, I'm a high school French teacher, so we actually
just read through this in my French class together. And
so as we came across this part, it just really
stood out to me and it's a great little story.
Is written by Entoine de sent Ex Superi and published
in nineteen forty three. And an interesting fact is that
this book was actually has been translated into more languages
(40:08):
than any other book in the world, except for, of course,
the Bible. But just a fun little fact. But yeah,
it's the story of It starts off with a pilot
whose plane has broken down in the Sahara Desert, and
then all of a sudden, this little prince a child
shows up and out of nowhere in the middle of
the desert, and he's apparently come from a tiny little
(40:30):
planet where he loves sunsets and he can just move
his chair a few feet to see another sunset, and
he says, once I saw forty four sunsets in one day.
And it's just a beautiful little story. But he talks
about all of his adventures that he has gone on
through his travels after having left his little tiny planet.
(40:51):
He's gone to see different other planets, you know, and
he's telling the pilot all of these stories of visiting
the planet with the king and the lamplighter and the
drunkard and the vein man, and just talking about his
own planet before he has come to Earth. And so
he has a little rose on his planet that he
loves and he cares for, and he takes care of
(41:13):
his planet. But the soil on the Little Prince's planet
is infested with these seeds of the baobab tree. Now,
if you've never heard of a baobab tree, you would
probably recognize them if you saw a picture. It's this
tree that's found in parts of Africa in Australia, and
they have these massive trunks and they're very symbolic of
(41:36):
what you think of when you think of a lot
of African trees. But they are actually been also sometimes
called the upside down tree because if you look at
the root system, it's it's very wide, big root system.
But the pilot describes these as trees as big as castles.
But the Little Prince, he points out that just like
anything that grows, they start out very small, and so
(42:00):
as part of caring for his planet, he has to
regularly pull up these baobab saplings as soon as they
sprout up and are distinguishable from the rose bushes. And
so this is like the seeds of doubt in our
kids' hearts. You know, they start out very small, deep
inside their hearts, and we have to be very proactive
(42:24):
in regularly identifying these doubts and addressing them as parents.
And if we're proactive about it, it can be easy
to deal with, as simple as pulling up the sapling
of a baobab. But if we passively sit by and
allow them to grow unaddressed and unanswered, well, they can
be very destructive and difficult to deal with. Just like
(42:46):
a baobab tree is. Once it is fully grown, it's
huge and you can't just pull it out of the ground,
and it becomes very destructive, you know. According to the
story of the Little princey powerful that he gives, he says,
a bao bob is something that you will never, never
be able to get rid of. If you attend to
(43:07):
it too late, it spreads over the entire planet. It
bores clear through with its roots, and if the planet
is too small and the bao bobs are too many,
they split it in pieces. Now that's not to say
that if our kid's doubts become full grown, it's impossible
(43:28):
to get rid of them. You know, it's of course
going to be a lot more difficult if we allow
them to just fester and snowball and grow under the
surface and never actually address them, you know. But fortunately,
of course we serve a God who works miracles in
the human heart, and so God can do those miracles.
But as parents, we still have that responsibility to do
(43:50):
our part to avoid allowing these doubts to grow in
fester and take root in our kids' hearts. And so,
like the Little Prince says, you know, it's a question
of discipline, and he even says it can be very
tedious work, but very easy. But we have to be
intentional about really identifying those doubts and even maybe sometimes
(44:11):
bringing some of those up to talk about on our own.
But if we can do that, it might be very
tedious at first, but it's very easy work, like pulling
up the sapling of a bow, bob, as opposed to
letting it grow to the point where, man, this is
really hard for parents to deal with, and we've got
a lot of work on our hands.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I knew that Bill was a high school teacher, I
did not know that he taught French. And back when
many eons ago, when I was in high school, I
took ap French and my French teacher collected the little
prints in all these different languages, so that was kind
of fun. So what are some strategies to proactively build
our kids' faith and address their questions and doubts? I
(44:56):
think you mentioned one. If they have a doubt about something,
you know, study it together and have them asked questions.
But what are some of the things that parents can do.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah, it definitely takes that deliberate effort and in some
cases even a little bit of courage. You know, sometimes
we're a little bit nervous about it. How do I
bring this up? How do I address this? What if
it's those one of those tough questions that I don't know?
But then there's also the trust in the Holy Spirit,
you know, trusting the Holy Spirit to guide us and
(45:27):
how we respond, how we research, but also trusting the
Holy Spirit in our kids' hearts to work in power
to bring revelation and understanding about his own word. And
so there's there's a lot of that. But you know,
we also some of those practical strategies are I kind
of briefly mentioned it a second ago, But we can
(45:48):
preemptively challenge our own kids with some of these tough questions,
you know, and preemptively provide them some answers to things
that we know they're probably going to come across that
one point or another. This is a great way to
kind of, you know, inoculate our kids to some of
these bad ideas where we can offer, you know, these
(46:10):
ideas in small doses, in a controlled environment in our
own families and homes, and then work together to find
those answers and build their quote unquote you know, immunity
towards these types of doubts and questions. And so again
it takes a little bit of courage and a little
bit of maybe feeling a little uncomfortable sometimes, but to
(46:31):
actually bring up these ideas. You know, one of the
things that we've done in our family is bring up
some of those important arguments for the existence of God.
The column cosmological argument that I brought up earlier. We
talked to our kids about that, you know, talk about
how things don't just pop into existence without some sort
of cause, you know, make it in a way that
(46:52):
they can understand. Of course, it's going to depend on
how old they are, but you can also talk about
the fine tuning of the universe and the human life
and the specificity specified complexity of DNA, and you know,
you can talk about the existence of the moral argument
for the existence of God, so how we all have
(47:13):
this innate sense of morality, and so you are preemptively
like you're supplying them with these tools, but even sometimes
asking these important questions that they might come across at
some point, because we can shelter our kids up to
a certain point, right we you know, eventually, whether we
are there in public schools or private schools or even
(47:35):
home school we can only shelter them from these ideas
for so long. They are going to come across these
and whatever media or news or books that they read
and everything you know is out there, it comes from
a particular worldview. And so if we can identify that
and teach the Christian worldview. That's also also with other
(47:58):
beneficial practical thing that we can do, you know, creation, fall, redemption,
and restoration and what that looks like and how that
plays itself out. But it all depends on building those
relationships with our kids, and we should be the ones
starting some of those conversations to developing routines in our
(48:19):
home and our families. You know, some of this might
take place around the dinner table. Maybe maybe that's the
best place for you and your family to have these
meaningful discussions. For some and this is a lot of
times for us, is at bedtime. You know a lot
of younger kids especially, you know, they always like to
delay their bedtime, and so this might be a legitimate
excuse or reason to do that to bring up some
(48:39):
of these questions and have these important conversations at that time.
Maybe try to get to start bedtime routine a little
bit earlier so you can work in that time. Other times,
it might just come driving in the car. You know,
my son and I we've been going to the gym
to work out together, and you know, I've been thinking,
what are some things that we can talk about, ways
I can disciple and ways, you know, some important conversations
(49:01):
that we can have while we're driving to and from
the gym together. You know, sometimes we would love for
this to happen organically and just kind of naturally, and
sometimes it will and that's great, But even if it doesn't,
it's not always going to but that's okay. We have
to be intentional about it, and it might be a
(49:22):
little awkward. It might be a little uncomfortable at first,
you know, from your teenagers especially, you might get some groans.
Oh man, my dad's going to talk about this again
right now, you know. But how many times as parents
do we have to deal with some of those types
of growans in much less important types of situations. I
think this warrants that a lot more. But one of
(49:42):
the things I wanted to share too is that you know,
nobody's going to do this perfectly, but we have to
do something in laziness or neglect to do this, it
just carries too great of a risk for our kids
in their future in the faith. And so going back
to the Little Prince, there's just a big, strong warning
(50:02):
that he gives as he kind like seems like he
kind of like just looks off into space. But he says,
sometimes there's no harm in putting off a piece of
work until another day, but when it is a matter
of baobobs, that always means a catastrophe. I knew a planet,
he says, that was inhabited by a lazy man. He
(50:24):
neglected three little bushes. So it just gives us that
warning of like, hey, look, it might seem like a
little thing, these little doubts, these little questions. But if
we neglect those, it can be like that planet of
a lazy man that you just know that it can
be so destructive if we just sit back and neglect
what they need.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
I think you said, well, I have boys. So when
we were going back and forth to school before the
driving years, that was a good opportunity to talk about
a lot of spiritual things. And I remember one time
one of my sons said, Mama, this is weird. Nobody's
parents does this. I said, well, what, we're bad parents.
They should be doing this. And so I think you
(51:07):
just persevere in that even if your kids think it's weird,
why are we talking about this? Or why do you know?
Why are we doing this? So I think it's a
good thing to do. And then you start when they're
really young. I mean, that's the counsel i'd give. I
mean I started when I was really young. My oldest
who's an adult now, he had questions when he saw
when we were out shopping and he saw, you know,
(51:28):
Buddhist statues at world market or whatever, and had questions.
And he had quite a lot of different kinds of
apologetics questions and we just answered those is the best
we could, you know, for a first or second paray
who's asking those questions. And I think that's a good
thing to do, that we don't shirk away from the
questions that they're asking. So what about parents who have
listened to this podcast and say, well, you know, Melanie
(51:51):
works in apologetics, builds interested in apologetics. I just feel
really ill equipped to answer anything spiritual or apologetic in
nature if my kids have questions in doubts. So what
kind of counsel would you give parents who are thinking
that right now? Like, I don't know about this, I
don't feel equipped at all.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
Well, first of all, that's normal. There's I mean, I
think that's kind of par for the course, and unfortunately
I don't think that's a good thing. But it's normal
that parents don't know what to do at that moment.
But kind of the classic apologetics first is one Peter
three point fifteen that says, but in your hearts revere
(52:31):
Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer
to everyone who asks you to give the reason for
the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness
and respect, you know, says always be prepared to give
an answer to everyone. Well that everyone includes giving an
answer to our own kids. But it will require number
(52:54):
one of course, knowing the Word of God, knowing our
Bible and being familiar enough with it and so and
if we're not, then yeah, we definitely need to study
the Word of God to be confident in our understanding
of the Bible scriptures, to be able to go into
depth with our kids on that, but also knowing some apologetics.
Apologetics is simply being able to make the case for
(53:18):
Christianity and being able to answer some of these questions.
And again you're not always going to know the answers,
but that's okay. But if we take the time to
do a little bit of studying of apologetics, which again
can sometimes feel overwhelming because there's a lot of information
out there. But if we start somewhere and are willing
(53:40):
to just do a little bit of research, a little
bit of studying, then it can make a big difference
for our kids and even for us. If we start
off by taking some bite sized bits and kind of
just looking up maybe one question at a time. You know,
some parents might be thinking, well, I'm not smart enough,
or you know, I've heard that before I've heard you know,
(54:01):
I don't know enough of this. I don't have the
time maybe to study this. Well. Number One, we have
to kind of decide what's important to us, because I
think we all would agree that our kids and our
kids faith and continuation in the Christian faith and staying
in the church, that's a pretty important thing, if not
the most important, And so it's important for us. You know,
(54:22):
if we're overwhelmed, know that it's normal. But know that
you don't have to know everything all at once. You
can start small, find one little thing, take one small
step that you can manage. You know, maybe that's digging
into a website, maybe that's listening to a podcast. Maybe
that is picking up a book like Mama Bear Apologetics
(54:44):
that's geared towards parents specifically, or something of Natasha Krane's,
or something that is geared towards talking with your kids
about these specific things. But just take some sort of step,
because once you take that step, then it may makes
it a little bit easier to take the next step
because you have a little bit of knowledge underneath your belt,
(55:05):
and before you know it, you'll you'll have all of
you know, a lot of little things build up and
add up to a lot of valuable information that will
not only strengthen your own faith but also your children's.
And so going back again, like, nobody is going to
do this perfectly, but we all have to do something
(55:26):
because at the end of the day, you know, our
kids faith. As parents, we need to take ownership of
what we can do to build their faith and make
them secure in that so that they don't go out
into this world and all of a sudden are overwhelmed
by something they never expected to see. And so, but
another word of encouragement with all this is, you know,
(55:49):
we trust the Holy Spirit. But at the end of
the day, our kids, they are still their own people.
They make their own decisions and they choose on their own.
But we we have to do our best with the
time that we have with them, trusting in the Holy
Spirit to work in their hearts to give us the
words and our love for kids, our kids should really
(56:11):
motivate us to do whatever we can. And I'm going
like I mentioned Mama Barr Apologetics, well, Nancy Pearcy and
wrote the forward for that book, and I love what
she says. She says, the best motivator for apologetics is love.
We need to love our children enough to listen to
them and do the hard work of finding answers to
(56:32):
their questions. And so it's so important we love our kids.
And there's nothing stronger than a loving parent armed with
a knowledge of apologetics and committed to their kids into
offering them a reason for the hope that is within them,
(56:52):
doing that with gentleness, doing that with respect, and especially
with love.
Speaker 1 (57:00):
Well, you've given us a lot of thought as parents,
and so now on something a little bit lighter than
our discussion today. I want to end with a fun,
rapid fire question for Bill. So, Bill, summer is coming up.
Would you rather be at the beach to go swimming
or at a lake?
Speaker 2 (57:17):
I would rather be at the beach. We live in Michigan,
so it's a great no sharks, no salt, lots of fun.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
Well, thanks Bill for being a guest again on the
Postmodern Realities podcast.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
Thanks again for having me as a joy.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
You have been listening to episode four hundred and forty
seven of the Postmodern Realities Podcast. Today's guest was Bill Westers.
He has written an online exclusive feature article for the
Christian Research Journal. His article is called five don'ts for
Christian Parents, and you can read his article completely free.
We don't have a paywall at equip dot org. That's
(57:57):
e qu ip dot org. You won't want to miss
out on subscribing to the other podcasts from the Christian
Research Institute. We have the Bible answer Man podcast, which
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week on Saturday. It's hosted by CRI President Hank Handagraph
(58:18):
and is available wherever you get your favorite podcasts. In addition,
Hank has a podcast called Hank Unplugged. Hank takes you
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in free flowing, essential Christian conversations on critical issues with
some of the most interesting, informative and inspirational people on
(58:39):
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It's now on the web as you know, with new
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(59:02):
these audio articles of some of our most popular and
most accessed articles on our website. Equip dot org.
Hi everyone, Thank you for tuning in to the Postmodern
Realities podcast, brought to you by the Christian Research Institute
and the Christian Research Journal. I'm Melanie Cogdill, Managing editor
of the Christian Research Journal. It's May twenty twenty five,
and you're listening to episode four hundred and forty seven,
which is a conversation of advice of five don'ts for
(00:44):
Christian parents when their kids questioned their faith. On this episode,
I'm joined by Bill Westers, who teaches at a public
high school in Michigan. Bill also hosts the Encountering Truth
podcast and graduated from the Cross Examined Instructors Academy and
participated in the Colson Fellows Program. Bill has written a
(01:07):
online feature article for the Christian Research Journal. His article
is called five Don'ts for Christian Parents, and you can
read his article completely free of charge online at equip
dot org. That's e quip dot org. Bill, it's good
to have you on the podcast again.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It's great to be back. Thanks again for having me well.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Today I mentioned that Bill has written an article for
us about parenting, and I guess that I mean maybe
dreaded for some parents if their kids who have been
raised in a Christian home are starting to have doubts
about the Christian faith, and so he's written an article
(01:52):
called the Five don'ts for Christian Parents. Well, I want
to ask him a first of all, why did you
write this article.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, parenting today is hard. Parenting well is even harder.
You know, we live in a very confusing culture right now,
where a lot of people are saying, you know, calling
evil good and good evil and sowing seeds of doubt
into many Christians lives and especially our children. And so
(02:25):
studies have actually shown that as many as sixty to
eighty percent of Christian youth end up leaving the church
by the time that they're in college. And we're talking
kids raised in the church and by the time they
get into college they're walking away. And so it's a
pretty scary statistic. And you know, I have kids. I
(02:46):
have an eleven year old and a son who's about
to turn thirteen. We've had to walk through some things
with our own kids, and you know, there's a lot
of resources out there about parenting of what to do
as parents, you know, and when it comes to questions
(03:06):
and doubts and when our kids approach us with questions
about Christianity or doubts that they might be having. There's
not as much out there about what to do in
those circumstances or what not to do, and so I
felt like this would be a good kind of a
structure for parents to think about as they try to
(03:28):
answer their kids' questions and doubts and what not to
do in those circumstances.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So, as I said, I think that's kind of one
of those big fears for Christian parents that their kid
would come to them, you know, like you said, in
probably those middle school and high school years where they're
starting to have questions about is Christianity true? And so
you know, parents probably are feeling ankst that they don't
(03:56):
want that to happen. So tell us a little bit
overall and ask ask you specifically about some of those
five don'ts individually, but just overall, tell us a little
bit about the article.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, well, you know, I kids are We often hear, oh,
kids don't come with an instruction manual, right. You know,
we can also say things like parents don't get a
roadmap and there's obviously no GPS for your phone, and
we often say that to our kids ourselves. You know, like,
so we don't always make the right decisions because you guys,
(04:30):
you didn't come with an instruction manual. And so so
when you're talking about like navigating the streets of parenting
and Christian parenting specifically, you know, a lot of us
are old enough to remember those days that you know,
driving the streets without a GPS and all you had
is this big at list and you you know, you
were a very broad overview of some of the bigger roads,
(04:53):
and so we ended up have to stop for directions
along the way, ask people for help, and that's something
that we still should ought to do as Christians and parents.
But you know, we also would have to pay attention
to street signs along the way, and that would often
add a lot of extra stress to us, right so
(05:14):
you know, making sure we don't make some huge mistake
while we're driving, well, like turning down a wrong way
on a one way street. And so I kind of
liken these five don'ts to to those street signs. You know,
a lot of street signs tell you what to do,
but a lot of them tell you what not to do.
And if you violate those those don'ts of like do
(05:36):
not enter, no turn on read, no left turn, things
like that, you could have catastrophic consequences for you or
other people that are on the road. And in the
same way, you know, violating these donts of Christian parenting specifically,
when our kids have questions in doubts, they could potentially
have those catastrophic consequences for our kids face as well.
(06:01):
And so this is not some you know, magic formula
for parenting and nobody's going to do this perfectly, but
just a quick overview of the five domes you've got.
You know, Number one is that don't freak out when
your kids ask you questions. Don't freak out. Number two,
don't dismiss their questions. Number three is to don't oversimplify
(06:23):
those questions. Number four is to not be afraid to
say I don't know. And then finally, don't be passive
in how you handle these things. And so simple guidelines
for parents just to kind of walk through and as
as I think before responding to those questions in Dallas
that our children might have, we'd like to.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Hear from you directly if you have some suggestions for
topics you would like to see covered on our website.
For the Christian Research journel or if you would like
to recommend some topics for this podcast Modern Realities. In addition,
we'd like your help to get the word out and
do all the things. Share your favorite episodes on your
(07:08):
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(07:29):
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which you could give us a tip for our work
if you would like to partner with us financially. But
(07:51):
thank you for listening. And now back to my conversation
with Bill westers Well. Bill just gave us an overview
of some of those five don't said he wrote about,
and now I want to ask him a little bit
more specifically about each and unpack those. And the first
one that he mentioned was don't freak out now. Of course,
(08:14):
that's usually what happens when your kids come in with
some kind of news and internally who are starting to
freak out? Maybe you also freak out externally too, if
something big happened, or there's some kind of thing that
they might have done wrong that they need to tell
you about. So when it comes to doubts, what do
(08:36):
you mean by don't freak out?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, this is like you had mentioned, This is kind
of a rule for a lot of things in parenting. Right.
Some things, of course, are going to end up being
more important than others. But we don't want to freak
out and give some sort of overblown reaction to our
kids when they come to us about quite a number
of different things, because we want to have that safe
space for them to offer them questions and those doubts.
(09:01):
We don't want our kids thinking, WHOA, I wasn't expecting that,
you know, we we don't want them thinking twice about
asking us next time, you know, I joke around in
our family. You know, certain words or phrases can often
elicit a song, could bring to mind some lyrics of
a song, especially for my wife. You know, if someone
said respect r E. S P E C T or
(09:22):
stand by me. You know, these things will trigger a
certain response. You know, so the point where kids might
be saying, oh, don't say that I'm around mom, she'll
burst into a song and you know, it's so annoying.
You know, a lot of what parents do is annoying
to their kids. But you know, sometimes that's good, but
if it causes them to not approach us about certain things,
(09:43):
it can also be very detrimental. You know. It could
be things, you know, like a boy or a girl
that they're interested in, and you know, whether whatever your
rules are for that, whether it's good you know, being
over excited for them or teasing them, or whether it's
you know, this bad anger you broke in our rules.
I'm going to go get the shotgun. I'm gonna get
that boy, come talk to me. You know, these types
(10:05):
of overreactions and strong responses can have some bad effects
on our kids. And like you mentioned, some of those mistakes,
some of those things that they've may have put themselves
in a compromising situation, maybe found themselves at a party
that didn't go with the way they thought, or maybe
they gave into some temptations with alcohol, sex, pregnancy things
(10:27):
like that, where you know, we want to be the
first phone call that they make when they've messed up
and need help, and so that we can model forgiveness
and walk through that with them and those consequences, and
the same goes for doubts and questions. We don't want
to have this overblown reaction of where did you hear that?
(10:47):
I'm calling the school right now? Or I'm going to
have to talk to Jimmy's parents. You know, not that
you shouldn't necessarily do some of those things on the
back end, but if their questions and the us to
have these knee jerk reactions where they're feeling like they're
getting interrogated or getting some sort of long lecture or
(11:07):
even yelling, or even even if it's something more soft,
maybe maybe an unexpected display of emotions or tears, well,
they'll worry that whenever they ask us these types of things,
that that's the response that they're going to get. They're
going to get us freaking out overreacting. And these overreactions
(11:29):
can you know, sometimes cause kids to even be suspicious
and wonder why are my parents getting so defensive? What
they might think that their parents are hiding something or
that there maybe is no good answer, So we don't
want to have those overblown reactions that kind of scare
kids away from asking us about the tough questions in
(11:52):
their faith.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Well, you've been on this podcast before in you're a teacher,
so I'm sure you've had some of the parents teach
your conferences too, where you'd have to, you know, make
sure that you navigate it so the parents don't overreact
about something that you need to speak with them about.
So that's just a good word for us. But what
are some other kinds of freaking out? You mentioned some,
(12:15):
but are there other responses in that category that parents
you talked about. You want them to come back to
you if they have questions or if they're facing serious
not just questions, but personal, you know, distress. You want
them to come to you, and what should they avoid
so they don't push their children away in these very
(12:39):
crucial times, whether it's hey, we had a conference with
your teacher or your grades or whatever. It may be
a question about your faith or like you said, they
ended up being in a place where they shouldn't have been.
How do you avoid those types of things that would
push your children away? From you and not want them
to come to you.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
A big thing is to not shame them. Of course
we don't ridicule them, but we also don't want to
bring shame upon them and say things like, oh, well,
you know, you should know better than that, or sometimes
you know, we might be tempted to quote Scripture at them,
you know, or say something that will you know, without faith,
it's impossible to please God, and those types of responses,
(13:20):
you know, throwing scriptures at them instead of really responding
to their heart, it's not going to resolve their doubts
or lead them to just kind of snap out of
it like we would want them to write. So instead
it almost really kind of communicates to kids that they're
even in the wrong for just holding those types of doubts,
(13:41):
that maybe even that they're lesser Christians for just simply
asking questions. And so if we think about scripture, for instance,
you know when Thomas said that he would not believe
in Jesus until he saw the holes in his hands
and his side, you know, Jesus did not shame Thomas
for doubting. Instead, he provided evidence, He gave him what
(14:04):
he was looking for. He said to him, put your finger.
Here see my hands, reach out your hand and put
it into my side. Stop doubting and believe. He didn't
shame Thomas. He just gave him the evidence and provided
what he needed in that time. Even John the Baptist,
you know, Jesus didn't shame John the Baptist when he
was in prison and sent messengers saying are you the
one or should we wait for another? In Luke chapter seven.
(14:27):
You know, John the Baptist was Jesus's own son, who
leapt in his mother's womb in the presence of his savior,
and who baptized Jesus in the Jordan. And he was
there when the voice came from heaven. And even he
had questions about Jesus as the messiah. So what did
Jesus do. He didn't shame John the Baptist. He performed
all these miracles and gave evidence and said, hey, go
(14:48):
back and report to John what you have seen and heard.
The blind receive site, the lame walk, those who have
leprosy are cleansed, the deaf here the dead are rais,
and the good news is proclaimed the poor. And so
we should communicate that to our kids in a way
that is not shameful that having doubts and questions as Christians,
(15:10):
it's normal. And so if they don't feel safe to
express their doubts without being shamed or without having some
sort of overreaction from us, well they're just going to
keep silent. They're going to keep their doubts to themselves.
They're going to go elsewhere to find the answers, and
those or those doubts will just continue to fester, unexpressed
(15:31):
and unaddressed. And studies have actually even shown that it's
not even necessarily doubt that is destructive to faith, but
unexpressed doubt that is destructive to faith. So we don't
want them sitting there with their doubts and their questions
unexpressed because they're afraid to ask due to some overreaction
(15:52):
or the potential to be shamed.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
So the second don't that you have for parents is
don't dismiss it. And I think as adults we can
dismiss kids' questions as silly, or maybe we want to
avoid it because we think it might cause them to
have more doubts, or it could be detrimental to their
(16:16):
faith because it would cause them to question even more
the truth of Christianity. So what do you mean by
don't dismiss it?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Well, this is kind of the opposite reaction of the
freaking out right. So we don't want to give that
overblown type of reaction overreaction, but we also don't want
to give an underreaction, so to speak. We don't want
to just act like, hey, everything is going to be fine.
(16:47):
I don't need to worry about this. It's not that
big of a deal. You know, a lot of parents
they don't really want to believe or accept the idea
that their kids are actually having these legitimate questions and
doubts and and so they just kind of dismiss it
and kind of just push it off and figure that
(17:07):
maybe it'll just kind of work itself out or resolve
itself in the end, you know. And sometimes they might
even be afraid to do anything about it and and
validate it, because then you know, they wonder, I wonder
if this is going to make things worse. They might
just end up, you know, laughing it off, or they
just tell them, oh, you know, just go read the Bible.
(17:28):
All the answers are in the Bible. Well, that's kind
of a an inadequate type of response. You know, if
we just dismiss it, assume that they're going to just
go read the Bible find the answers in there, or
maybe sometimes they might assume that well, we just we
go to church. You can get your answers from the
children's church or from the youth leader and they'll take
(17:51):
care of it. And that's kind of just shifting our
own parental responsibility off of ourselves and trying to put
it on other people like those youth leaders and church
workers the children's church. And so the problem is is
that if parents are not willing to answer their kids questions,
those questions don't just go away. They're going to go
(18:14):
elsewhere to find the answers. And sure, sometimes maybe it
will be the children's church leaders or the youth leaders
at church. But then again, in today's society, are what's
our first go to? You know, you google it, right,
and there's certainly no shortage of internet websites or personalities
(18:35):
online that they'll be willing to offer your kids the
answers that they're looking for. There's lots of YouTubers, TikTok influencers.
They would love to tell your kids what to think
and believe and they're also the ones that are causing
a lot of kids to walk away, even older kids
and young adults to question and deconstruct their faith in
(18:56):
a way that they leave it behind entirely. Well, if
we do this, if we dismiss our kids' questions, if
we ignore them, like I said, it might seem like
they go away, But what's probably happening is that they're
just no longer asking you. They found someone else, or
they've gone somewhere else to find the answers that they're
(19:19):
looking for, those honest answers to the tough questions. So
we need to take their questions seriously. You know, kids
take their question seriously, even if it's just a small
little question, they're going to take it seriously. And so parents,
we need to take kids questions seriously as well. You know,
simple responses like just believe or have faith or you know,
(19:40):
many of us have you know, grown up hearing things
like well the Bible says it, I believe it, and
that settles it. Yeah, that might be true. We do
acknowledge that the word of God, you know, the Bible
is the word of God. It's an errand it's inspired
by God. It has the answers, but to respond that
(20:01):
way again, it's just very inadequate for what our kids
are looking for. They need to have good reason to
believe that it's true, that it's not just blind faith,
but that there is good reason that to believe that
the Bible is reliable, that we have accurate copies, that
it's truthful, and we can't just dismiss their questions about it.
(20:25):
We can't dismiss their questions about the existence of God
or anything, and we can't just shift that responsibility over
to youth pastors or volunteers at children's church. We need
to take those questions seriously. We need to address them
head on, and even when it's hard to admit that
(20:45):
you know, or to accept the idea that our kids
are actually having those types of questions and doubts.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
And perhaps they have questions in doubts because they googled
it before they came to and now they're they're wondering.
The next one that you have for under the five
do ance for the Christian parent is don't oversimplify. And
you start the section out by saying, don't answer questions
that your kids aren't asking, So what do you mean
(21:15):
by that? And what does it mean to oversimplify?
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, when I say don't answer questions that your kids
are not asking, I'm not saying that parents should not,
you know, of course, answer more questions or go above
and beyond to give more answers to other questions. Maybe
all of the kids didn't ask this particular question, but
I'm going to answer it anyway. That is perfectly fine.
But what I'm trying to get at with this is
(21:43):
that we need to take the questions that they are
answering and give them the right answers and honest answers
to those specific questions, and not some caricature of them.
Parents should not take their kids questions and oversimplify them
into some sort of, you know, false representation of what
(22:05):
they're actually asking. Doing so like, we can do that,
but it might make it easier to answer, but it's
only easier to answer because we're not really addressing the argument.
We're only addressing a straw man version of the argument
knocking down that straw man version, and your listeners are
(22:25):
probably aware of what a straw man fallacy is, but
it's basically to oversimplify or distort another person's argument and
then to refute that simpler distortion of the argument rather
than the actual argument that the person is making. Now,
as Christians, a lot of times we have, you know,
(22:47):
certain skeptics or atheists will do this towards Christian arguments
for the existence of God. For example, one of these
examples is the colomn cosmological argument. The true version of
this argument states that everything that begins to exist has
a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore, the universe
(23:12):
had a cause. Well, a lot of times. What will
happen is an atheist will take that and try to
refute that by presenting a straw man version to question,
and they say, okay, yeah, well, then who created God?
Of course, not the Christian, not the atheists. Nobody believes
that God was created in this circumstance, right, Christians believe
(23:38):
that God is eternal and has always existed and therefore
does not need any sort of cause or creator. And
so instead, what the atheists and the skeptics are saying
with this straw man fallacy is that they're basically turning
it into something that we're not saying. Basically saying that
everything that exists has a creator rather than everything that
(24:02):
begins to exist has a cause. So as Christians we
don't appreciate when atheists or skeptics do this to arguments
for Christianity. And so as Christians, when as parents, when
our kids come to us with these same types of questions,
we should not oversimplify and just try to answer a
(24:24):
basic false representation of it, just like the atheists would
do for arguments for Christianity. Instead, we need to take
the Steelman version. We need to address that and properly
refute it in that way. For instance, one example is,
you know, my son came home from school one day
asking about something that he was learning in school about
(24:47):
the timing of the ice age, and he had questions about, well,
how would humans have survived through it? And when was it?
And so instead of oversimplifying, I had to kind of
figure out, Okay, what are you really asking? What's really
being presented in your school? Had to asked some questions,
get some clarity, make sure I was actually answering the
(25:10):
question properly according to what was really being asked. So
I had to figure out what is being taught, what
ice age are we talking about? When was this taking place?
You know, of course, part of this depends on our
view of the age of the Earth. Are we younger
Earth creationists or older Earth creationists? What do we mean
by the Ice Age? Was the entire Earth covered in ice?
(25:30):
Or were there some areas, maybe closer to the equator
that had more moderate temperatures. So it's important to know
and get the clarification of what's being taught, what this
question is really rooted in, where it's coming from, What
are some of the details, and really address that properly,
as opposed to some straw man version and some assumption
(25:50):
that we think we know what they're asking but really
not answering it appropriately.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
So, what are some examples of how how parents could
like fall into the trap of we shouldn't oversimplify, but
what are some ways that we could fall into this
trap that we should just be aware of so that
we don't go in that direction.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
One of the most common straw man type of responses
that I've heard from a number of Christians has to
do with the theory of evolution. You know, a lot
of Christians. Of course, as Christians, we don't believe that
humans evolved, and so what a lot of Christians will
say is something like on the lines of, well, if
(26:32):
humans came from apes, or if they came from monkeys, well,
then why are there still apes and monkeys? Well, again,
kind of going back to that cosmological argument, neither the
Christian nor the atheists believed that God was created. Well,
in this situation, neither the Christian nor the atheists believes
that humans came from apes. Instead, the real argument that
(26:54):
they're trying to say is that there was a common
ancestor that is neither true the human or truly ape
according to how we know it today. And so there's
all sorts of refutations and problems with that still that
we can address, but we have to take that actual
(27:14):
steel Man version of the argument, not the straw Man version. Otherwise,
when kids learn that there's more to the argument than
what the adults are letting on or expressing, well, they're
going to feel lied to, maybe deceived, or maybe they
might just think, well, my parents were just ignorant. They
didn't really know this true version of the argument, but
(27:38):
they didn't really know that that's not really what evolution
is claiming that humans came from apes, but that there's
a common ancestor. So they're going to have this feeling
of being deceived or misled, and so of course there's
certainly some solid refutations of Darwinian evolution, including concepts like
irreducible complexity, or you could talk about the fossil record
(28:01):
and the Cambrian explosion. But the argument really has to
be accurately stated before it can be properly refuted. And
so other issues that parents might have to deal with
with their kids is having these honest discussions about maybe
Old Testament depictions of God that, you know, to use
(28:21):
poulical Pan's word, is God a moral monster or a
vindictive bully, you know, And having these honest conversations about
that with our kids and properly addressing what they're asking
or maybe talking about the hiddenness of God. And another
thing is recognizing that when our kids ask us questions
and express their doubts, well, there's all sorts of there's
(28:43):
three main types of different types of doubt. You know,
it might be intellectual, emotional, or volitional. And so if
we're we have to recognize what type of doubt are
we dealing with here. If this is an intellectual type
of doubt, then yeah, we can provide the data to
the information, the facts and kind of express that accordingly.
(29:04):
But if this is emotional or volitional, we're going to
have to address these issues in a very different way.
One example of this is something like the problem of evil.
You know, or kids might say, well, why is there
so much evil in the world? Could God exist? A
good God exists if all this evil is in the world,
(29:25):
thinking that, you know, maybe if God is truly good,
that he would eliminate all the evil, and if he
was truly all powerful, then he had the ability to
do that. So is he not all powerful? Is he
not all good? Well, you know, to respond to our
kids with just an intellectual, factual information response to that
might be missing a little bit of the point. It
(29:46):
might not quite be answering the question that they're asking.
This might actually be coming from a personal experience associated
with it. Maybe they have a friend at school who's
had to go through something really difficult. They're just a
really good person, But why does their mom or their
dad have to pass away, or why does their sibling
have to be terminally ill? You know, how could they
(30:10):
have to deal with all of this evil? And so
we need to ask these types of questions to our
kids to kind of get under the surface of the question.
Itself to figure out where is this question coming from.
Let's address the root of the question and talk about
what they're really asking and maybe read the reason why
they're asking it, because it might be more than just
(30:32):
an intellectual type of doubt or question. It might be
more emotional that we have to kind of get under
the surface and address what they're really asking instead of
some sort of oversimplified, surface level type of response.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
So, as we've talked about some of these don'ts, I
think maybe some parents listening, especially parents of middle school
or high school students, they might feel a little overwhelmed,
maybe nervous. I know they're thinking, Okay, don't freak out,
don't dismiss their questions, don't oversimplify. But I think in
the next section of the article, you give them encouragement
(31:10):
and a little bit of comfort, because I don't think
we want to overwhelm people and think that they're doing
a bad job parenting through these very you know, challenging situations.
So you kind of say in a positive way, like,
don't be afraid to say I don't know. So tell
us why this kind of honest response can be a
good thing. You were just talking about evolution I mean,
(31:31):
there could be parents out there saying, you know what,
I just don't know how to review that. That would
I would be overwhelmed if my kid came home from
school and said, well, why wouldn't Christians believe in evolution?
So tell us why not being afraid of saying I
don't know would be a good thing.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, these questions certainly can be scary, especially if we
don't necessarily feel like we are equipped. You know, what
if we don't know the answer, or you know, we
might be thinking, well, what if I give the long answer,
and what if answering my answer just actually makes things worse. Well,
the good news is that it's okay to not know everything,
(32:09):
and it's okay to say I don't know. You know,
we need to just be honest in those situations, and
sometimes that's just the best thing that you can do.
We don't I mean, we don't want to lie to
our kids. We don't want to make up some sort
of answer on the spot, and so being honest can
build trust. And so what we we don't want to
(32:32):
do is, you know, feel this need to spontaneously concoct
some sort of answer on the fly, not sure whether
or not it's really true. But at least I'm answering
my kids questions. Well, that's eventually probably going to get
found out, you know, even if we just want to
get out of an uncomfortable situation. You know, sometimes we're like, oh,
(32:55):
I'm overwhelmed by this because I don't know the answer,
but it's okay, just just be honest and say I
don't know. You know. As Christians, of course, we're called
to tell the truth and not to lie to our kids,
you know, and not knowing an answers doesn't justify being
dishonest or especially telling some sort of outright lie. And
(33:17):
so if we don't know, then we can just be
honest because that honesty builds trust and it might actually
in some cases surprise our kids what you don't know? Well, yeah,
but you know what, that's okay. We're we don't have
to know all the answers all right in that moment.
But what we don't want to do is try to
(33:38):
make up those answers, because, like I said, if it's
you know, not necessarily true, what happens when they find
out the truth? You know, what happens if we try
to say something like going back to the evolution that
you know, if there's no why are there still apes today? Right? Well,
that's not the question. And if our kids, you know,
(33:59):
if we just come up with some sort of quick
answer like that, because this is something that we oh,
this will be a good answer, let me just throw
this out there, well, they're going to feel lied to
and betrayed as soon as they find out, oh, that's
not what evolutionists actually believe. So they believe that there's
a common ancestor and we don't actually come from what
we know to be apes today. So they'll even feel
(34:21):
maybe a little bit betrayed in that sense, and so
they will feel like maybe we're hiding something. Maybe that
sense of trust will be broken. And so being honest
and just saying look, I don't know the answer to
your question is just something that, like I said, it
could surprise him a little bit. But in the end,
(34:42):
I think they'll appreciate the honesty and know that they
don't have to know all the answers right away either.
But when they can see the confidence in parents that
you know what I don't. I might not know the
answer to that question, but it doesn't shake me. You know,
I can figure that type of answer out, and I
(35:04):
have a confidence in my faith even when I might
be lacking absolute certainty or absolute knowledge in every area.
There's so much truth to the Christian worldview that something
that I don't know is not going to undermine my
entire faith, and for our kids, it shouldn't do that
for them either, and so communicating that honesty with them
(35:26):
will build that same type of confidence in their own hearts.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
So one of the things that you say in the
article is that if you're ending the conversation with I
don't know, you don't want to be dismissive. You don't
want to make it seem like you're brushing them off
or it's incomplete, and in saying I don't know is
being honest, But also just to kind of say it
tritly would be missing an opportunity. So tell us a
(35:52):
little bit about that. Why don't you unpack that? What
do you suggest that parents do from there once they've said,
you know, that's a good question, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah, that's really the beauty of all of this is
of having that relationship built with your kids and being
honest so that they can they know that they can
trust you. That honesty that builds their trust and confidence.
But like you said, that should not be the end
of the conversation. If you end the conversation there, you're
(36:22):
really missing an incredible opportunity because really that simple I
don't know. Yeah, it's honest, that's great. It's building that
trust and that confidence. But it should always be followed
by you know what, I'll look into it and get
back to you. You know, and then you go and
you do the research, you figure it out, you continue
(36:42):
the conversation, and you know, like I did some of
this with my own son's question about the ice age
and human survival and stuff, and I kind of looked
up some resources to kind of get a better understanding of, Okay,
what timeframe are we looking at here, How does this
play into the history of the human race and where
(37:02):
that would fall and how they would survive? What is
the ice age? What is the timing? And so I
had to I did that, and I promised him that
I would. I said, I will get back to you,
I will look at this. I went to online, I
went to certain people and found out the information that
I needed to be able to respond to his question.
And so it's important that we take that time say
(37:23):
not just I don't know, but continue it by saying
I'm going to look into it and get back to you.
Now that being said, what would be even better, and
this is where the incredible opportunity comes in, is that
you would look into that together, where you say, well,
I don't know the answer to that, but let's research
(37:44):
this together, and let's read this book together to find
some answers. Let's go to the Bible together to see
what the Bible says about that. And it's an incredible
opportunity because not only are we growing in our own
knowledge and relationship with the Lord, but our kids are
(38:07):
also right alongside us, growing in their knowledge in their
relationship with the Lord. And then, of course along the way,
you're also strengthening that parent child relationship. It's not just
a relationship and knowledge and understanding of the Lord, but
you're also building that family relationship and doing this together
and building that trust for the future that when mom
(38:29):
or dad says, you know what, I don't know they
answer that question, they can be like, oh, that's okay,
and maybe next time they'll say, hey, can we look
into that together. Let's do this together, And it's a
good habit to set up in our lives, in our
families is to have a certain go to perhaps a
certain website that we go to, or certain resources that
we're familiar with, and say, hey, let's look into this
(38:52):
together and have it as even an expectation for our
kids to bring up and where there might be looking
into things and have their own questions and say I
want to figure this out as well, and then choose
to do that together as a family.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Well, in the last section of your article, you talk
about the final don't, which is don't be passive, and
you like in doubts that students would have to the
little Baobab trees in the children's story The Little Prince.
I don't know if people are familiar with that story.
It's they'd probably be familiar with the illustrations of the story,
(39:28):
if not the story itself. It was written a long
time ago, the nineteen forties by a French writer and
it's narrated by a little kid. So tell us a
little bit about that story and how are doubts like
that from The Little Prince.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, I'm a high school French teacher, so we actually
just read through this in my French class together. And
so as we came across this part, it just really
stood out to me and it's a great little story.
Is written by Entoine de sent Ex Superi and published
in nineteen forty three. And an interesting fact is that
this book was actually has been translated into more languages
(40:08):
than any other book in the world, except for, of course,
the Bible. But just a fun little fact. But yeah,
it's the story of It starts off with a pilot
whose plane has broken down in the Sahara Desert, and
then all of a sudden, this little prince a child
shows up and out of nowhere in the middle of
the desert, and he's apparently come from a tiny little
(40:30):
planet where he loves sunsets and he can just move
his chair a few feet to see another sunset, and
he says, once I saw forty four sunsets in one day.
And it's just a beautiful little story. But he talks
about all of his adventures that he has gone on
through his travels after having left his little tiny planet.
(40:51):
He's gone to see different other planets, you know, and
he's telling the pilot all of these stories of visiting
the planet with the king and the lamplighter and the
drunkard and the vein man, and just talking about his
own planet before he has come to Earth. And so
he has a little rose on his planet that he
loves and he cares for, and he takes care of
(41:13):
his planet. But the soil on the Little Prince's planet
is infested with these seeds of the baobab tree. Now,
if you've never heard of a baobab tree, you would
probably recognize them if you saw a picture. It's this
tree that's found in parts of Africa in Australia, and
they have these massive trunks and they're very symbolic of
(41:36):
what you think of when you think of a lot
of African trees. But they are actually been also sometimes
called the upside down tree because if you look at
the root system, it's it's very wide, big root system.
But the pilot describes these as trees as big as castles.
But the Little Prince, he points out that just like
anything that grows, they start out very small, and so
(42:00):
as part of caring for his planet, he has to
regularly pull up these baobab saplings as soon as they
sprout up and are distinguishable from the rose bushes. And
so this is like the seeds of doubt in our
kids' hearts. You know, they start out very small, deep
inside their hearts, and we have to be very proactive
(42:24):
in regularly identifying these doubts and addressing them as parents.
And if we're proactive about it, it can be easy
to deal with, as simple as pulling up the sapling
of a baobab. But if we passively sit by and
allow them to grow unaddressed and unanswered, well, they can
be very destructive and difficult to deal with. Just like
(42:46):
a baobab tree is. Once it is fully grown, it's
huge and you can't just pull it out of the ground,
and it becomes very destructive, you know. According to the
story of the Little princey powerful that he gives, he says,
a bao bob is something that you will never, never
be able to get rid of. If you attend to
(43:07):
it too late, it spreads over the entire planet. It
bores clear through with its roots, and if the planet
is too small and the bao bobs are too many,
they split it in pieces. Now that's not to say
that if our kid's doubts become full grown, it's impossible
(43:28):
to get rid of them. You know, it's of course
going to be a lot more difficult if we allow
them to just fester and snowball and grow under the
surface and never actually address them, you know. But fortunately,
of course we serve a God who works miracles in
the human heart, and so God can do those miracles.
But as parents, we still have that responsibility to do
(43:50):
our part to avoid allowing these doubts to grow in
fester and take root in our kids' hearts. And so,
like the Little Prince says, you know, it's a question
of discipline, and he even says it can be very
tedious work, but very easy. But we have to be
intentional about really identifying those doubts and even maybe sometimes
(44:11):
bringing some of those up to talk about on our own.
But if we can do that, it might be very
tedious at first, but it's very easy work, like pulling
up the sapling of a bow, bob, as opposed to
letting it grow to the point where, man, this is
really hard for parents to deal with, and we've got
a lot of work on our hands.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I knew that Bill was a high school teacher, I
did not know that he taught French. And back when
many eons ago, when I was in high school, I
took ap French and my French teacher collected the little
prints in all these different languages, so that was kind
of fun. So what are some strategies to proactively build
our kids' faith and address their questions and doubts? I
(44:56):
think you mentioned one. If they have a doubt about something,
you know, study it together and have them asked questions.
But what are some of the things that parents can do.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah, it definitely takes that deliberate effort and in some
cases even a little bit of courage. You know, sometimes
we're a little bit nervous about it. How do I
bring this up? How do I address this? What if
it's those one of those tough questions that I don't know?
But then there's also the trust in the Holy Spirit,
you know, trusting the Holy Spirit to guide us and
(45:27):
how we respond, how we research, but also trusting the
Holy Spirit in our kids' hearts to work in power
to bring revelation and understanding about his own word. And
so there's there's a lot of that. But you know,
we also some of those practical strategies are I kind
of briefly mentioned it a second ago, But we can
(45:48):
preemptively challenge our own kids with some of these tough questions,
you know, and preemptively provide them some answers to things
that we know they're probably going to come across that
one point or another. This is a great way to
kind of, you know, inoculate our kids to some of
these bad ideas where we can offer, you know, these
(46:10):
ideas in small doses, in a controlled environment in our
own families and homes, and then work together to find
those answers and build their quote unquote you know, immunity
towards these types of doubts and questions. And so again
it takes a little bit of courage and a little
bit of maybe feeling a little uncomfortable sometimes, but to
(46:31):
actually bring up these ideas. You know, one of the
things that we've done in our family is bring up
some of those important arguments for the existence of God.
The column cosmological argument that I brought up earlier. We
talked to our kids about that, you know, talk about
how things don't just pop into existence without some sort
of cause, you know, make it in a way that
(46:52):
they can understand. Of course, it's going to depend on
how old they are, but you can also talk about
the fine tuning of the universe and the human life
and the specificity specified complexity of DNA, and you know,
you can talk about the existence of the moral argument
for the existence of God, so how we all have
(47:13):
this innate sense of morality, and so you are preemptively
like you're supplying them with these tools, but even sometimes
asking these important questions that they might come across at
some point, because we can shelter our kids up to
a certain point, right we you know, eventually, whether we
are there in public schools or private schools or even
(47:35):
home school we can only shelter them from these ideas
for so long. They are going to come across these
and whatever media or news or books that they read
and everything you know is out there, it comes from
a particular worldview. And so if we can identify that
and teach the Christian worldview. That's also also with other
(47:58):
beneficial practical thing that we can do, you know, creation, fall, redemption,
and restoration and what that looks like and how that
plays itself out. But it all depends on building those
relationships with our kids, and we should be the ones
starting some of those conversations to developing routines in our
(48:19):
home and our families. You know, some of this might
take place around the dinner table. Maybe maybe that's the
best place for you and your family to have these
meaningful discussions. For some and this is a lot of
times for us, is at bedtime. You know a lot
of younger kids especially, you know, they always like to
delay their bedtime, and so this might be a legitimate
excuse or reason to do that to bring up some
(48:39):
of these questions and have these important conversations at that time.
Maybe try to get to start bedtime routine a little
bit earlier so you can work in that time. Other times,
it might just come driving in the car. You know,
my son and I we've been going to the gym
to work out together, and you know, I've been thinking,
what are some things that we can talk about, ways
I can disciple and ways, you know, some important conversations
(49:01):
that we can have while we're driving to and from
the gym together. You know, sometimes we would love for
this to happen organically and just kind of naturally, and
sometimes it will and that's great, But even if it doesn't,
it's not always going to but that's okay. We have
to be intentional about it, and it might be a
(49:22):
little awkward. It might be a little uncomfortable at first,
you know, from your teenagers especially, you might get some groans.
Oh man, my dad's going to talk about this again
right now, you know. But how many times as parents
do we have to deal with some of those types
of growans in much less important types of situations. I
think this warrants that a lot more. But one of
(49:42):
the things I wanted to share too is that you know,
nobody's going to do this perfectly, but we have to
do something in laziness or neglect to do this, it
just carries too great of a risk for our kids
in their future in the faith. And so going back
to the Little Prince, there's just a big, strong warning
(50:02):
that he gives as he kind like seems like he
kind of like just looks off into space. But he says,
sometimes there's no harm in putting off a piece of
work until another day, but when it is a matter
of baobobs, that always means a catastrophe. I knew a planet,
he says, that was inhabited by a lazy man. He
(50:24):
neglected three little bushes. So it just gives us that
warning of like, hey, look, it might seem like a
little thing, these little doubts, these little questions. But if
we neglect those, it can be like that planet of
a lazy man that you just know that it can
be so destructive if we just sit back and neglect
what they need.
Speaker 1 (50:45):
I think you said, well, I have boys. So when
we were going back and forth to school before the
driving years, that was a good opportunity to talk about
a lot of spiritual things. And I remember one time
one of my sons said, Mama, this is weird. Nobody's
parents does this. I said, well, what, we're bad parents.
They should be doing this. And so I think you
(51:07):
just persevere in that even if your kids think it's weird,
why are we talking about this? Or why do you know?
Why are we doing this? So I think it's a
good thing to do. And then you start when they're
really young. I mean, that's the counsel i'd give. I
mean I started when I was really young. My oldest
who's an adult now, he had questions when he saw
when we were out shopping and he saw, you know,
(51:28):
Buddhist statues at world market or whatever, and had questions.
And he had quite a lot of different kinds of
apologetics questions and we just answered those is the best
we could, you know, for a first or second paray
who's asking those questions. And I think that's a good
thing to do, that we don't shirk away from the
questions that they're asking. So what about parents who have
listened to this podcast and say, well, you know, Melanie
(51:51):
works in apologetics, builds interested in apologetics. I just feel
really ill equipped to answer anything spiritual or apologetic in
nature if my kids have questions in doubts. So what
kind of counsel would you give parents who are thinking
that right now? Like, I don't know about this, I
don't feel equipped at all.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
Well, first of all, that's normal. There's I mean, I
think that's kind of par for the course, and unfortunately
I don't think that's a good thing. But it's normal
that parents don't know what to do at that moment.
But kind of the classic apologetics first is one Peter
three point fifteen that says, but in your hearts revere
(52:31):
Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer
to everyone who asks you to give the reason for
the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness
and respect, you know, says always be prepared to give
an answer to everyone. Well that everyone includes giving an
answer to our own kids. But it will require number
(52:54):
one of course, knowing the Word of God, knowing our
Bible and being familiar enough with it and so and
if we're not, then yeah, we definitely need to study
the Word of God to be confident in our understanding
of the Bible scriptures, to be able to go into
depth with our kids on that, but also knowing some apologetics.
Apologetics is simply being able to make the case for
(53:18):
Christianity and being able to answer some of these questions.
And again you're not always going to know the answers,
but that's okay. But if we take the time to
do a little bit of studying of apologetics, which again
can sometimes feel overwhelming because there's a lot of information
out there. But if we start somewhere and are willing
(53:40):
to just do a little bit of research, a little
bit of studying, then it can make a big difference
for our kids and even for us. If we start
off by taking some bite sized bits and kind of
just looking up maybe one question at a time. You know,
some parents might be thinking, well, I'm not smart enough,
or you know, I've heard that before I've heard you know,
(54:01):
I don't know enough of this. I don't have the
time maybe to study this. Well. Number One, we have
to kind of decide what's important to us, because I
think we all would agree that our kids and our
kids faith and continuation in the Christian faith and staying
in the church, that's a pretty important thing, if not
the most important, And so it's important for us. You know,
(54:22):
if we're overwhelmed, know that it's normal. But know that
you don't have to know everything all at once. You
can start small, find one little thing, take one small
step that you can manage. You know, maybe that's digging
into a website, maybe that's listening to a podcast. Maybe
that is picking up a book like Mama Bear Apologetics
(54:44):
that's geared towards parents specifically, or something of Natasha Krane's,
or something that is geared towards talking with your kids
about these specific things. But just take some sort of step,
because once you take that step, then it may makes
it a little bit easier to take the next step
because you have a little bit of knowledge underneath your belt,
(55:05):
and before you know it, you'll you'll have all of
you know, a lot of little things build up and
add up to a lot of valuable information that will
not only strengthen your own faith but also your children's.
And so going back again, like, nobody is going to
do this perfectly, but we all have to do something
(55:26):
because at the end of the day, you know, our
kids faith. As parents, we need to take ownership of
what we can do to build their faith and make
them secure in that so that they don't go out
into this world and all of a sudden are overwhelmed
by something they never expected to see. And so, but
another word of encouragement with all this is, you know,
(55:49):
we trust the Holy Spirit. But at the end of
the day, our kids, they are still their own people.
They make their own decisions and they choose on their own.
But we we have to do our best with the
time that we have with them, trusting in the Holy
Spirit to work in their hearts to give us the
words and our love for kids, our kids should really
(56:11):
motivate us to do whatever we can. And I'm going
like I mentioned Mama Barr Apologetics, well, Nancy Pearcy and
wrote the forward for that book, and I love what
she says. She says, the best motivator for apologetics is love.
We need to love our children enough to listen to
them and do the hard work of finding answers to
(56:32):
their questions. And so it's so important we love our kids.
And there's nothing stronger than a loving parent armed with
a knowledge of apologetics and committed to their kids into
offering them a reason for the hope that is within them,
(56:52):
doing that with gentleness, doing that with respect, and especially
with love.
Speaker 1 (57:00):
Well, you've given us a lot of thought as parents,
and so now on something a little bit lighter than
our discussion today. I want to end with a fun,
rapid fire question for Bill. So, Bill, summer is coming up.
Would you rather be at the beach to go swimming
or at a lake?
Speaker 2 (57:17):
I would rather be at the beach. We live in Michigan,
so it's a great no sharks, no salt, lots of fun.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
Well, thanks Bill for being a guest again on the
Postmodern Realities podcast.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
Thanks again for having me as a joy.
Speaker 1 (57:34):
You have been listening to episode four hundred and forty
seven of the Postmodern Realities Podcast. Today's guest was Bill Westers.
He has written an online exclusive feature article for the
Christian Research Journal. His article is called five don'ts for
Christian Parents, and you can read his article completely free.
We don't have a paywall at equip dot org. That's
(57:57):
e qu ip dot org. You won't want to miss
out on subscribing to the other podcasts from the Christian
Research Institute. We have the Bible answer Man podcast, which
is published Monday through Friday, with the best of the
week on Saturday. It's hosted by CRI President Hank Handagraph
(58:18):
and is available wherever you get your favorite podcasts. In addition,
Hank has a podcast called Hank Unplugged. Hank takes you
out of the studio and into his study to engage
in free flowing, essential Christian conversations on critical issues with
some of the most interesting, informative and inspirational people on
(58:39):
the planet. And you won't want to miss out on
the brand new podcast from the Christian Research Journal. Christian
Research Journal Reads presents audio versions of Christian Research Journal articles.
It was a print incarnation of almost forty five years.
It's now on the web as you know, with new
articles every single week, so you won't want to miss
(59:02):
these audio articles of some of our most popular and
most accessed articles on our website. Equip dot org.
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