Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast

Jim Daly / John Fuller: You have invested all these years, all these countless hours in prayer and discipling your child, and now they're asking questions. I'm John Fuller here with Dr. Danny Huerta who leads our parenting team, and uh yeah, what to do when your kids ask questions? Focus President Jim Daly and I spoke with two guests who are very passionate about Christian apologetics, understanding and defending the faith, and explaining it, Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. Let's listen in. And Lisa, just to dial in a little more practically, I have a young adult with me who is online, and it seems like he really is seeking his theology from these various online prophets and speakers, and I don't have an issue with some of them, but how do I talk with them about actually there is this Bible thing, and this contradicts the Bible?

How do I How do I engage him on that?

Alisa Childers / Dr. Danny Huerta: Mhm. Mhm. Well, that's a tough question because a lot of times you have to do a little diagnosis to figure out how much truth someone is actually seeking for because when I had my faith crisis over 10 years ago, I remember hearing arguments, and then I'd hear the counter argument, and then I'd go seek out the counter argument to the counter argument. And sometimes on one question, it would be years of even reading scholarly literature to try to get to the bottom of the answer to the question. The problem with TikTok theology is you have videos where somebody takes 20 seconds to deconstruct the Christian worldview, and typically how that goes is they present a fact that they assume the church has kept from you.

It's usually a fact that people have known for a long time, but they'll present it as if it's new. Now, you probably never heard this, and the church doesn't want you to know this, and here's what you should conclude based on this information. And so they lead to a skeptical conclusion, and so that leads the person who's watching the video to go, wow, truth has been kept from me. The church doesn't want me to know about this.

Jim Daly / John Fuller: Mhm. And they they get distrustful then.

Alisa Childers / Dr. Danny Huerta: That's right. And then when with the attention span of social media, they're not going to probably do the deeper work of figuring out what the counter arguments are and the back and forth of the debate because they're moved on to the next TikTok video with the algorithm, more of those types of videos are going to come into their news feed, and before you know it, they're in an echo chamber and completely brainwashed.

Tim Barnett: Mhm. Mhm. So these deconstruction theologians are planting the seeds of doubt, the seeds of skepticism in these videos. And as Lisa just pointed out, they're using hashtags like hashtag evangelical, hashtag ex evangelical. And if you watch one of these videos, the way the algorithm works is you're going to end up seeing a video just like it. And all of a sudden, that one doubt becomes a whole lot more. And the students are wondering, is any of this true? And so it's really important that when we have young people in our homes who have access to social media especially, we're talking about what are the kind of videos that you're watching.

Um one of the things I do with my ministry is called Red Pen Logic with Mr. B where we take a red pen to a lot of the social media nonsense out there. I'm responding directly to those TikTokers and those Instagram reels. They're, you know, 1 minute and I'll give me 2 minutes and I'll respond to it. And this is really helpful for young people especially because they can watch the challenge and see, wow, feel the weight of it. This is pretty compelling until you hear the other voice, until you hear the response.

Jim Daly / John Fuller: Maybe Yeah, it'd be good to link to that so people can tap and go check that out. That'd be awesome. I want to hit once again cuz we're flying pretty quickly here, and I just want to make sure people are grabbing this. So restate the doubt that you have that there's healthy deconstruction and bad deconstruction. It's just poor in every circumstance.

Alisa Childers / Dr. Danny Huerta: Mhm. Awesome. Mhm. Yeah. Right. Well, and so I know there's probably people hearing us say that that go, wait, I'm deconstructing, but I want to line my life up to the Bible. I want to know what's true. And so the one thing we do want to acknowledge is that there is so much confusion around this word. So our opinion is that people are actually using this word incorrectly as I did. I actually correct myself in our book because in my first book I talk about my deconstruction, but when I started to talk about my deconstruction online, deconstructionists would come into my comments and say, you didn't deconstruct.

And I would say, okay, tell me say more words, right? And they would say, well, because you still have toxic theology. And I thought, okay, so so this isn't about breaking it all down, you know, in a literal sense deconstructing it. This is about coming to a very specific conclusion, and basically what that conclusion is is getting rid of these what they call toxic, uh harmful, abusive beliefs. It's very intolerant. In fact, a perfect example of this I just saw in that hashtag just this week as I cuz I try to stay up on it, a a woman who is an atheist now grew up in the church, deconstructed.

She's a big platform in the deconstruction space. And she basically said to all Christians, and then she did an obscene gesture, but then she said, but to progressive Christians who are tolerant, who have gotten rid of these toxic beliefs, you're cool, like you're okay. You know what I'm talking about? You're okay.

Jim Daly / John Fuller: Yeah. Intolerant. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Social affirmation.

Alisa Childers / Dr. Danny Huerta: Yeah, and so it's very very intolerant toward maybe what we would call conservative theological beliefs. And in fact, sociological research has borne this out. There's been uh studies published showing that progressive Christians actually feel more unity with atheists and Buddhists and people of other worldviews than they do the conservative Christian. We are the bad guy.

Jim Daly / John Fuller: Yeah, but there might be a reason for that that they've deconstructed their faith to where they're not intimate with the Lord anymore, and they're not believing his word. That's really it, right? That's the only way you can get there.

Tim Barnett: Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Right. There's an irony here where they want you to deconstruct and you're allowed to you're allowed to land anywhere except for historic biblical Christianity.

Alisa Childers / Dr. Danny Huerta: That's right.

Jim Daly / John Fuller: Cuz that's the biggest sin. The biggest problem.

Tim Barnett: That's right. And so we call this an explosion. You're allowed It's just an explosion starts at a single point and then goes everywhere. So some people land in progressive Christianity, some people land in atheism, some people land in Hinduism, wherever. But you're just not allowed to land in historic Christianity. And that's why when you look at the people who have deconstructed, the deconstructions themselves, they have a lot of beliefs in common now. They reject the doctrine of hell. They reject biblical inerrancy. They reject Jesus being the only way, so the exclusivity of Christ. They reject a biblical view of sexuality and gender.

There There's a reason why they have all these views in common, and that because this is where deconstruction takes you.

Jim Daly / John Fuller: Well, Danny, as we like to say sometimes, this is good stuff. And I wonder how you would encourage a parent who is feeling the sting because my child is seemingly rejecting the Christian faith. They seem kind of hostile. So offer some hope to that parent. My sense is the story is never over.

Alisa Childers / Dr. Danny Huerta: It's never over. That 's a good way to say it, John. And I have seen that play out over and over again in my counseling practice and also just with church friends and other people that we've known who have had kids begin to walk away from the faith or completely walk away and then come back. And uh it's exciting to see them come back because it 's much more deeply rooted. They've gone out, they've explored, and it's a normal developmental process that we talked about a few episodes ago. Um teens go to this place of disagreeableness.

So they start to go opposite of what they were used to. Not all of them, but many of them. And their openness, the part of of openness to other what other people have to say or openness to experiences also goes down. And then on top of that, conscientiousness goes down. There's a variety of changes happening in the teen. And part of this is a disorientation towards what do I believe? Is it really real? My parents have always told me this. My friends believe something different. They're in a place of needing to establish a belief system.

And so it's a shakeup of their core person, the way they see the world. And if they continue to see you be steady in your faith and your habits and your pursuit of God and your trust in God and they try to go towards this chaotic side of pursuing other things, but you're being patient with them and you're praying for them, know that God is reaching out for them all the time. That whole dip that I was talking about starts to come back at around 16, 17, 18, 19, little bit later for boys. And you begin to see a resetting where they go, well, mom and dad seem to be right.

And recently I had a conversation with this young man who said, I barely have any friends now because they were all They didn't really care about me. All they cared about were the drugs. They wanted me to do drugs with them because they didn't want to be alone doing the drugs. They wanted to do all these things, and it wasn't out of They weren't concerned about my well-being, and they felt betrayed by some of them. And as they experienced that, it started to reorient them back to, man, this feels so much more right, more much more correct, much more loving.

And so they were going back to this belief system that God is real, God cares for them, my parents care for me. They want me to believe this because they want to be with me forever. And they began to trust it. So I want to put hope in there that there is a dip naturally in all different areas, spiritual perception on money, perception on everything that begins to go against what you've taught, and then they start to reset. And uh the more you pray for them, the more you are continuing to pursue that relationship with God that you've had, the more it's an anchor down the road for your child as they go into their adult years.

Jim Daly / John Fuller: Yeah. And you you won't be able to nag them back into the faith. You've got to model it, maybe even just quietly pray

Alisa Childers / Dr. Danny Huerta: Yeah.

Jim Daly / John Fuller: and let God do his refining work. And I cannot shake the imagery that Jesus gave us of that father in the prodigal son parable, Luke chapter 15. That father was patient. He waited. He knew what was going on. He knew he wouldn't approve of it, but he also knew time needed to kind of do its thing.

Alisa Childers / Dr. Danny Huerta: Yes.

Jim Daly / John Fuller: And that boy came back. So parents, be hopeful that your job is to love like that father in Luke chapter 15 patiently and be ready to bring that child back, whatever the relationship looks like. It doesn't mean there's a rejoicing of faith, but you want to keep that tether of the relationship. You've got to keep that. Now, for donation of any amount, we're going to send you the book from Tim and Alisa called The Deconstruction of Christianity. It is a rich, wonderfully deep book, and it's going to help you have some great conversations with your child about the faith, especially if they're wobbly in their beliefs.

And we've got details about how you can donate and get the Deconstruction of Christianity in the show notes. Also Jim Daly mentioned that we'll link over to Tim Barnett's responses to arguments that are commonplace in social media. Tim's channel is called Red Pen Logic with Mr. B. It's a really thought provoking channel full of helpful responses to cultural issues, and we're going to link over to it in the show notes. Next time Sissy Goff and David Thomas talk about parenting and anxiety. Listen in, and for now I'm John Fuller on behalf of Dr. Danny Huerta.

Join us next time for the Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast.