Focus on the Family

Jim Daly: Welcome to Focus on the Family’s Weekend Broadcast. We hope the following program will challenge you and encourage you in your family journey.

Deborah Pegues: Whenever you can, encourage rather than criticize. I think that is so critical because it impacts other people’s progress. When you read the story of Miriam in the Bible where they criticized Moses and then God struck her with leprosy, the whole place came to a standstill. They couldn’t move. Nobody could move forward. I say that’s a lesson there, because when you are critical like that, it really impedes other people’s progress.

John Fuller: Well, Deborah Pegues joins us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and she’s going to be talking about how your words reveal your heart. I’m John Fuller.

Jim Daly: John, have you ever said something that as the words are coming out, you’re wishing, hoping that you could get them back in?

John Fuller: Oh, far too many times. It’s a bit of a trick question, right?

Jim Daly: I remember doing a devotion with Trent and Troy when they were younger, and I squeezed out toothpaste and then said, "Now put it back in the tube." Of course, you can’t. And that’s the whole point of the devotional. Once you say something, it’s impossible to put it back in the tube.

Today, we want to talk about how to curb what we say and how we say it, so our words reflect Christ. You don’t have to worry about getting it back in the tube if you’re reflecting the words of Jesus, right? The Bible tells us to do everything without complaining or arguing. Just that one command could take a lifetime to master, because it isn’t really about the tongue; it’s about the heart. As the scripture says, "From the heart, the tongue speaks."

We need to be mindful as Christians about those things. Here’s the hope: with God’s help and the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we can grow in this area. We can learn to pause, to take our thoughts captive, and to bless instead of wound. Here at Focus on the Family, we want to work on that, and we’re assuming you, too, as a believer in Christ, will want to work on that. So we’re going to cover this today with our great friend and guest, Deborah Pegues.

John Fuller: Yes, she is one of our most popular guests. We always love having her back here. She spent many years as a leader in the corporate world. She’s a CPA, a certified behavioral consultant, a Bible teacher, international speaker, and has written a number of books, including *30 Days to Taming Your Tongue: What You Say and Don’t Say Will Improve Your Relationships*, which is really the topic for the conversation today. You can learn more about the book at focusonthefamily.com/weekend. Jim, we’re going to pick it up as you asked Deborah about why taming the tongue is so important.

Jim Daly: Why do you think people have resonated with your message?

Deborah Pegues: First of all, I think it’s because God took a mess and turned it into a message, because I wrote the book because I messed up. I mean, it was an accidental book, but I don’t like to use that word "accidental" when I’m talking about the things of God, so I’m going to say it’s a providential book.

I really messed up and told something I wasn’t supposed to tell. It backfired, and she was so upset with me. I decided to go on a tongue fast myself. I’m going to put myself on a plan for 30 days and I’m not going to say anything negative. Now, just try that.

Jim Daly: So this was for you in the end?

Deborah Pegues: It was a personal project for me only. People kept asking, and I would put signs in my office at work. It would say "Tongue Fast." That means when you come in here, don’t discuss anything negative. I’m on a tongue fast. If people started to be negative, I’d say I can’t discuss that. So somebody said, "I believe God wants you to write a book." No, I believe God wants me to work on me.

Jim Daly: And this really is capturing that journey and what you did. Now, why are we so broadly affected with tongue problems? It’s so natural for us in our flesh to lash out, to say things we regret. Why?

Deborah Pegues: Because we are human and because we’re not created carbon copies of each other. So we don’t always know other people’s sensitivities. You may jokingly say something about my dark skin. You may not know that I am just like, "Oh, don’t say that," or whatever. You just never know what people’s sensitivities are. So you’re bound to offend somebody.

Jim Daly: Even though you’re challenging us for 30 days, you started to say just try it for 24 hours. I want you to finish that challenge because I think you’re going to say it’s hard.

Deborah Pegues: Don’t think you can do all 30 of these tongues that I’ve listed in the book. I have 30 negative uses of the tongue, so just try one a day or just try one a week. For instance, if you have trouble telling the whole truth, you tend to tell half the truth, just say, "This week, I’m going to tell the whole truth and nothing but. I’m not going to imply something that’s not true."

Here’s an example: I tend to run late for things sometimes and I’ll just come in. Now, in LA, you’d rush in and go, "Traffic." I didn’t say I was in traffic. I just said "traffic." Half truth. My husband said, "The half truth is a whole lie."

You see subtle ways that we can not tell the truth. We all have negative uses of the tongue. When I started this project, I said I’m going to look up every negative use of the tongue I can find in the Bible. I’m going to find scriptures for them and then I’m going to put a challenge out there to refrain from it. That’s what I did.

Jim Daly: That’s good, and we’re going to cover some of those. One is the know-it-all tongue. Now, the know-it-all people just went, "No, don’t cover that one. We already have this one; move on to the next, please." What is the know-it-all tongue?

Deborah Pegues: Where you just can’t even receive from anybody else, but every subject that comes up, you have the final word on it. Even if you’re in Bible study and there’s been a great lesson laid out, you’ll say, "But what we have to really remember above all..." No, we don’t. That’s not above all.

Jim Daly: You even have the vocabulary for this.

Deborah Pegues: Oh, really. Here’s a funny thing when we were buying a car, because I deliberately like to let people teach me things. I just think it makes them feel better, especially if they think—and see, that’s a big challenge. It’s hard to do, especially for a man.

Jim Daly: You want to be the teacher. "I’ve been here, son. Let me show you how to change that tire."

Deborah Pegues: Sometimes when we’re buying a car or something and they’ll talk down to me because I’m the little woman. I think it’s so funny because I am a CPA and they’ll explain that with interest, the payment has interest and principal. I think that is so funny. I have an MBA in finance. I can do an amortization schedule in my head. I’ll say, "Okay," and I’ll just act like they’re telling me something.

Jim Daly: It’s hard to bite your tongue in that case.

Deborah Pegues: Well, but if you choose to, let me tell you why you want to do that. It’s pride. You don’t want anybody thinking you don’t know something. It’s this fear of appearing to be inadequate. So no, I’m adequate. I know that already.

Jim Daly: That’s true. I think for men, it’s hard to say "I don’t know," if I could be blunt. It’s hard to say that, and that is something we’ve got to get over. I’m working on it. That should be the 30-day challenge: saying, "I don’t know." What about in marriage? How does this know-it-all tongue tend to play out in marriage?

Deborah Pegues: Well, I tell you what my mentor told me when she said when I was engaged to Darnell and she was in a car with us one day. We were discussing something and she said, "Okay, missy. We know you’re smart, but don’t know everything. Let him know some things." I’m thinking to myself, "Yeah, I plan to let him know some things starting right now."

But I took that to heart. Let him know some things. You don’t have to jump in there and say, "I can do that." So I’m pretty good being vulnerable. It just helps.

Jim Daly: But it is a maturity in Christ to be able to bite the tongue and say, "Okay, I don’t have to straighten him out every time."

Deborah Pegues: You don’t have to straighten anybody out. You don’t have to tell somebody, "I know that," or you just don’t have to do that. That’s pride. You’ve got to call it what it is.

Jim Daly: There are teenagers, though. You might want to straighten some of them out.

Deborah Pegues: Absolutely.

Jim Daly: Now, the argumentative tongue.

Deborah Pegues: I grew up in a family that liked to argue. I have relatives that arguing is their norm.

Jim Daly: So your family of origin, how you grew up, could shape some of these tongue maladies.

Deborah Pegues: Absolutely, because you could become like that or you could become the complete opposite. I decided I didn’t want to be argumentative because I just thought an argument should have a resolution, not just keep going in a circle. That’s how my parents argued and they just—I never saw them really resolve something and say, "Okay, from now on, this is how we’re going to go forward."

It would just become circular. They’d just go to the next level of an argument. I just think when people do that, it’s because they’re maybe feeling insecure about what they do know. Why do you need to argue that? I have a brother who likes to argue the Bible. I don’t argue the Bible. I just tell you what part I embrace, which is all of it, and if you choose not to, that’s fine.

Jim Daly: That sounds pretty definitive. But it’s true, and I can understand that. You can create an environment of arguing, and some people might even say that’s a positive because you want to be able to stand on firm ground, you want to be able to defend your position.

Deborah Pegues: And you should. You should be able to defend your faith, but you don’t have to be mean about it. Because I think that’s what’s wrong, even in politics. This last election just split a lot of relationships. I’m thinking I’m friends with everybody. I embrace everybody’s right to believe what they want to believe. Why do you have to believe the way I do?

Jim Daly: That’s a good place to put that argumentative tongue. What about again in marriage? Let me apply this here. When you have the spouse—and I’m not going to say it’s the wife or the husband, just the spouse—who is just constantly picking a fight. What if you’re the receiver of that? What advice do you have for that spouse to say, "Honey, can you stop chewing me up? I’m not processing at your speed. You’re just killing me here."

Deborah Pegues: I think you need to agree quickly with your adversary. The Bible talks about agreeing quickly with your adversary. So if my husband and I are in a discussion, I will say, "I hear you." You see, I don’t give any fuel to that. I’ll say, "I hear you." If he’s putting forth a point and if I don’t, "I hear you" does not mean I agree with you. It means I literally hear you. But that helps because half of resolving an argument is for that person to feel like they’ve been heard and you’re validating their point. So "I hear you" will do that. "I hear you." And then I can say, "We can just agree to disagree."

John Fuller: Well, parents, Adventures in Odyssey has been helping kids like yours form relationships with Christ for almost 40 years. Now, the animated Adventures in Odyssey film, *Journey into the Impossible*, will reach a new generation of families. But we need your help to finish the film and launch it in theaters. Your gift will be matched dollar for dollar before May 1st. See the trailer and donate today at focusonthefamily.com/impossible. That’s focusonthefamily.com/impossible.

ChatGPT and AI can offer you ideas and attempt to give you answers, but it can’t listen with compassion, pray with you, or offer biblical wisdom. Real connection is what brings true hope. Focus on the Family offers a free confidential consultation with a Christian counselor to guide you and help you find hope with whatever you’re facing. Go to focusonthefamily.com/gethelp or call 1-800-A-FAMILY. That’s 1-800, the letter A, the word FAMILY.

Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family. Let’s resume now with the balance of today’s programming.

Jim Daly: Deborah, the complaining tongue. Again, these are societal problems right now. We seem to relish complaining.

Deborah Pegues: All of us. It’s contagious, and we’ve got to be sensitive to it. That’s why I call this a fast where you become keenly aware of your tendency to engage in these negative behaviors. Complaining is so natural. I don’t care; you can be in a market and everybody’s—here’s a good example: in the bank. "Oh, the line is long." For people who still go to the bank. Most of us do online banking, but some people do go there.

I have to send money off to relatives in distress, so you have to go to Walmart or somewhere and stand in that line. I hate it. But the complaining is like, "Oh," and I’m thinking you’re standing here because you have access to resources. Do you know that half the world lives on less than $2 a day? So the half-full cup.

But here’s the deal: you’ve got to become aware of your complaining. I like to give people a challenge to go the next 24 hours. Don’t express any displeasure with anything. Not the traffic, not the weather, nothing that you can’t do anything about. In the scriptures, the Psalmist says, "I poured out my complaint before the Lord." If the person you’re complaining to can’t do anything about it, stop talking.

Jim Daly: Here’s one that’s funny for us. I remember when I first started Focus on the Family. It was 1989. I was on a training mission with another person and we went to a rental car counter, and they had no cars. It was out of a comedy situation. So the person who’s training me from Focus on the Family was upset with the agent, saying, "Well, I reserved a car. Why wouldn’t you have a car for me?" and it was a little heated.

The person finally brought all the information up on the screen and they said, "Oh, Focus on the Family. I love Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family." And this person went, "Oh great, that’s so wonderful." I mean, their tone changed like that. That was a great lesson for me to bite my tongue when on an airline problem or a rental car problem. I’m trying to always behave myself because you never know when they’re going to say, "Oh, I listen to you on the radio."

Deborah Pegues: Now, lest I sound like a walking Bible, let me tell you this is what keeps me from complaining: Romans 8:28, all things are working together for my good. It may not look like it, but if I stop and tell myself that, this delay is working for my good, this traffic is working for my good. God is protecting me. I do it.

I don’t care if I get up there two miles later and see an accident. Well, that could have been me if that car hadn’t cut in front of me and slowed me down. So we’ve got to believe that. It’s a good way to look at things.

Jim Daly: Let’s go to the self-absorbed tongue. What are you describing there?

Deborah Pegues: I’m describing a person who’s always talking about himself. The me-monster. They’re not interested in you and what you’re about and your dreams and hopes; they’re just talking about all the wonderful things that happened to them. "Oh, my book *30 Days to Taming Your Tongue* has sold a million copies and I’m in Denver doing six media interviews and I’m just me, me, me, me."

Jim Daly: Can I ask you, though, at the core of that is deep insecurity? So there’s more stuff going on there. So how does the person—let’s again go to the spouse. You’re married to that person. You’ve noticed this. You obviously said yes, but how do you begin to say, "Honey, have you ever really just recorded what you’re saying? Have you ever heard yourself and what you’re saying?" How do you go about helping each other grow?

Deborah Pegues: I would take the sandwich approach. You always say something positive, then you give them the meat of the matter. You can say, "Listen, I just love it that God has blessed you in so many areas. He’s just caused you to achieve in so many areas or so many great things are happening. Are you aware of the fact that other people may not be as blessed and it may not be very endearing to them to hear all about you like that? And so you might want to focus on other people. Ask them questions." Show them how to do it. My husband and I—and he’s not self-absorbed—but as part of networking, he’s learned how to ask people questions and be interested in others.

So I like to focus on other people. I don’t want to just focus on me and what I’m doing. I like to ask them questions. "So tell me about your background. Where did you grow up?" People love to engage and talk about themselves. We’ve got to watch that and we listen to it and be genuinely interested in others.

Jim Daly: Here’s the greatest challenge on earth when you have children, and especially again I’ll just go to the teen years. That’s an important parenting tool: how to ask questions of your teenager.

Deborah Pegues: Even if you ask them, "Who’s your favorite teacher? Why? What do you like about her style? What teacher do you not like the most? What do you not like about them?" And then don’t be judgmental about it. Just listen. Two ears, one mouth. Listen.

Jim Daly: You also mentioned a moment ago the half-truth tongue. I really appreciate all these wonderful tongue twisters that you give us. The half-truth tongue. Elaborate on that a little bit more. Pervarication is what the scripture calls it.

Deborah Pegues: Well, and we don’t think we lie, do we? Let’s just call it what it is. It’s not a full lie; it’s just a half lie. Embellishment. But I used to be the queen of that. I would just tell half the truth. If I had to take off from work and take my mom to the doctor, I only needed four hours but I would just take off the rest of the day. "Oh, I had to take my mom to the doctor." What I did was take my mom to the doctor. It didn’t take all day.

Jim Daly: I’m saying that because I think in the Christian community, we really pour ourselves into this one because we think we’re getting away with it, but the Lord sees that and he doesn’t want that. He wants us to be honest and straightforward. I guess the question then becomes: are we a culture that struggles with honest and straightforward?

Deborah Pegues: We struggle with sin, period. And if we’re not conscious of it, which is why I like for people to go on these 30-day periods of abstinence from certain things, because it sensitizes you to where you are. And we all have areas of our tongue, especially, that we could be less critical, we could be less a whole bunch of things.

So if we tend to tell half the truth, understand that is displeasing to God. If you want to read a story that’s kind of like that with Ananias and Sapphira who sold their land in the book of Acts. Everybody else was selling land and donating it. It was such a culture there; everybody was sharing. And they said, "Yeah, we sold ours," but they told a lie. They did sell it, but they lied about how much they sold it for. They kept back part of it, and God struck them dead.

Jim Daly: I think a lot of people read that and go, "Wow, that’s pretty harsh."

Deborah Pegues: That’s pretty harsh, but I think God was setting a precedent to say, "Listen, we’re not going to tolerate this." We need to tell the truth. Foundationally, we need to base the church on the truth.

Jim Daly: Back to what you were saying, though, about your own experiences. Why were you telling half truths about taking your mom to the doctor or something?

Deborah Pegues: Because I was trying to mislead people. Listen, any lie is an intent to deceive.

Jim Daly: But for what purpose?

Deborah Pegues: Because I wanted them to think it took all day so I could go do something else. I don’t want to say I took my mom to the doctor for three hours and I spent the other five shopping. Is it ever reasonable to just not tell the whole truth?

Deborah Pegues: You don’t have to volunteer the whole truth, but you always have to look at the intent of the heart. If your intent, even with the silence, if the intent is to deceive, meaning I want you to think something different than what the reality is, then you are lying. And that’s what it is. If you just call a spade a spade, then you can just go and be healed.

Jim Daly: In that context of encouragement, it’s so fun. It’s almost like giving a birthday present when you can be an encourager. But again, just personally, that can be a struggle at times because you’re feeling like we need reprimand, we need course correction, especially if you’re in management, you’re leading people, you have kids at home. There are times when you have to be helping them see the path.

Deborah Pegues: And giving them hope rather than punishment.

Jim Daly: Giving them hope, but sometimes it might be punishment.

Deborah Pegues: And an expectation, though, that I know you can do better than this. And there may have to be a punishment, but you don’t leave it with just that.

Jim Daly: I just want people to make—and me, too—to hear from you that course correction is okay. God, that’s truth, and that’s something that God wants us to do to encourage each other, even Paul writes about that to finish the race strongly, to rise up to the right standard.

Deborah Pegues: And whenever you can, encourage rather than criticize. I think that is so critical because it impacts other people’s progress. When you read the story of Miriam in the Bible where they criticized Moses and then God struck her with leprosy, the whole place came to a standstill. They couldn’t move. Nobody could move forward.

I say that’s a lesson there, because when you are critical like that, it really impedes other people’s progress. One of the things we can do—and in the book I talk about the fact that not only should you refrain from these 30 negative uses, but find 30 ways to be more positive.

Encourage somebody to say, "Yes, you can do this." Let me tell you a story. I have a friend whose husband is very mean, and I called her one day and I said, "I just want to tell you that your merchandise is good." I was studying Proverbs 31 and I said she perceives that her merchandise is good. I want to let you know that you have good merchandise. She said she kept that message on her phone for almost forever because she wanted to hear that little bit of encouragement.

Jim Daly: What kind of trigger do you use? And I guess for temperament reasons, you have a more negative temperament to a more positive temperament. So the more positive person, it’s going to come more naturally. So speak to both of those. What kind of trigger do you use to say, "Oops, I’m going to bite my tongue. I’m not going to say that negative thing I thought of," and you’re doing this in milliseconds, and you’re going to say something positive and encouraging. What trigger do you use to make sure you do that?

Deborah Pegues: Well, here’s my trigger: the Holy Spirit will often tell you don’t say that. It’s like a caution light. He’s like, "Okay, you need to stop talking. You’re about to mess up." And then sometimes, I have to tell you, I don’t always—sometimes I run the light. I violate it. Especially if somebody’s not doing a great job.

I hate this because I’m thinking that’s not brain surgery. And I’ve actually said that, but I didn’t know what a negative impact that had on somebody to one of my former employees. He lied about his qualifications and he couldn’t do the job, and I looked at it one day and I said, "That’s not brain surgery. How hard is that?" Well, that’s a cutting remark.

Jim Daly: But I could be right with you. A lot of people are going to say that was reasonable, Deborah. Why are you beating yourself up?

Deborah Pegues: I know, but some people will say, so how do we need to interpret that it wasn’t? Because the tone, the put-down, when you say "everybody knows that," what are you saying? "Except you, idiot."

So let’s back the tape up. Play that forward how it should have been done. He didn’t post the receivables right when I was working as a CFO at this place, and I said—now I shouldn’t have said, "How hard is that?" I’m going to say, "What aspect of this did you find confusing?" because I could use that as a teaching moment rather than a moment to beat him up.

Jim Daly: And you don’t add, "it obviously confused you."

Deborah Pegues: Right. Yeah, right. Yeah, you say, "What part of this did I not make clear? What part do you need more clarity?" I could ask that question if I stopped, if I thought about it and prayed about it before I said it. But sometimes you’re so frustrated when you’re so goal-oriented. That’s why when you are a high achiever, you have to watch your tongue probably more than anybody else.

Jim Daly: Well, and you think about that. Wouldn’t this be a better world? But think of this: wouldn’t it be a better church if we had these principles down? Talk about the retaliating tongue, because that’s one we need to cover here at the very end because it’s so easy to fall into that spot.

Deborah Pegues: And especially in marriage. Retaliate means to return the punishment.

Jim Daly: So you’re keeping score.

Deborah Pegues: Yeah, you keep score. If he says something, I’m going to say something. Why do you need to return the punishment rather than seeking first to understand?

Jim Daly: So I will win, Deborah.

Deborah Pegues: But have you won? No, in the end, you lose everything because words never die. And that’s what we have to remember: words never die. They’re going to be like shrapnel in that person’s brain. So you don’t need to return the punishment; you need to seek first to understand.

Why don’t you turn that into an opportunity to say, "Could you explain more what you mean by that?" And even if it was mean, the person says something that was mean, you need to say, "You know, your tone really hurt me." It’s okay to be vulnerable and to say that those words really hurt me and I would really wish you would think about it next time.

Jim Daly: If you think about this, what’s so good is this applies to every area of your life: in your marriage, in your parenting, in your work relationships, in your friendships. This is a secret to living a blessed life and a good life.

Deborah Pegues: Absolutely. Words frame our relationships. So whether we’re at work, our words—you can encourage your boss and become one of his favorite people. You will, that’s for sure. Try it; it works. I’ve done this. My husband the other day, I said, "You know what I like about you?" and he’s so used to me being positive for a reason, he said, "Uh-oh, is this a setup for you to ask me for something?"

Jim Daly: Saturday’s list is on its way. Fix the door. We’re back to that, John. Fix the door. Just call somebody. Deborah, this has been so good. What’s the end of that story?

Deborah Pegues: Well, I wasn’t about to give him a list. I just heard about a guy who was not as sensitive to his wife’s needs as mine, and I wanted to tell him that I so appreciate the fact that he was. But he thought I was setting him up to ask him to do something because it was Saturday. But it was a true compliment, and he liked it later. But he said, "Oh, I thought that was a setup so that you could ask me to do something."

John Fuller: What a fun conversation with Deborah Pegues on today’s episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m sure if you’re like me, there’s been a little bit of conviction along with her message.

Jim Daly: Every time Deborah is with us, she brings such good biblical insight and wisdom and practicality and smiles. It’s just beaming from her. That’s why she’s one of our most popular guests.

Here at Focus on the Family, we want to equip you in your faith walk so that you can be a better husband and wife, a better dad or mom. We’re here with answers to those questions that you have and hopefully solutions to those struggles that you’re in. We also have great resources available to you like Deborah’s book, *30 Days to Taming Your Tongue*. That’s a pretty good transaction, don’t you think? Thirty days and that tongue will come under better behavior.

In fact, when you make a monthly pledge to the ministry of Focus on the Family today of any amount, we’ll send you a copy of Deborah’s book as our way of saying thank you for joining the ministry. If you can’t commit to a monthly amount, we understand. If you can send a one-time gift, we’ll do the same. Your continued prayer and financial support allows us to provide much-needed help to individuals and families, and we couldn’t do this ministry without you. We’re in it together.

John Fuller: Join us today, donate and get your copy of *30 Days to Taming Your Tongue* when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Or online at focusonthefamily.com/weekend.

Jim Daly: Before we wrap up, let me remind everyone Focus on the Family has a beautiful campus right here in Colorado Springs. As you’re mapping out your summer vacation, let me invite you to stop by. We have a wonderful welcome center with Whit’s End soda shop, which is a great break for the summer.

You can browse our big bookstore and even take a behind-the-scenes tour and learn more about Focus on the Family. Plus, kids, we have something called Kids Radio, and they can do a little CD with Adventures in Odyssey scripts in there and we put their voices into that. It’s a great little excursion.

John Fuller: Years ago, I had a nephew do that, Jim, and he listened pretty much the whole 12-hour drive home to that CD of him in Odyssey. It’s a great hit. In addition to the CD, you’re also going to get an MP3 of the audio. So visit us is the point, and give us a call if you have questions. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.

You’re listening to Focus on the Family’s Weekend Broadcast. We’ll take a quick break here and then return with another faith-building program for your family. Stay tuned.

Motherhood brings profound joy, but it also comes with moments of exhaustion, discouragement, and feeling unseen. Whether you’re nurturing little ones at home, working hard to provide, or building a family through adoption, God honors every sacrifice you make. This Mother’s Day, find strength through Focus on the Family’s new podcast, Legacy of Love. We offer biblical encouragement and practical hope for your journey. Be uplifted today at amothersdayreflection.com. That’s amothersdayreflection.com.

John Fuller: Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family. Let’s resume now with the balance of today’s programming.

Jim Daly (AI Voice): Hello, this is not Jim Daly. The voice you are hearing is a recording created using artificial intelligence. Our conversation today will be about AI and all the implications of deep fakes, chatbots, and more. So I hope you'll stick around to learn about practicing discernment through a conversation with the real Jim Daly.

John Fuller: Oh my goodness. Now I’ve heard you for years and years and years. I would think I could spot a fake, but that was really good.

Jim Daly: Pretty close. I mean, it’s impossible now, even for the people that they’re AI-ing, if that’s a verb. I couldn’t—it sound like what I would say to anybody anytime. So we’re going to be talking about AI, about artificial intelligence and the confusion that it can create in the culture.

This is Focus on the Family with the real Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller. We have been internally debating so much of AI use. There are good ways to use AI for efficiency and productivity, and then there is the not-so-good way to allow it to be used, which is when it’s replacing human relationship and those kinds of things.

We’re going to have a great discussion today. This is one of those things; it’s bubbling out there. We’re getting questions from you, the listener and the viewer. So we want to address it and be able to have something in the arsenal for when you call or write in, that we can give you a good recommendation to read the book, *Fake ID*, along with the content of today’s program.

John Fuller: Our guest is Abdu Murray. He’s a speaker, author, attorney, researcher, I sense an evangelist. He really loves to talk about a lot of different things as they relate to the Bible and to the gospel. As Jim mentioned, the book that we’ll be covering today, at least a portion of it, is called *Fake ID: How AI and Identity Ideology Are Collapsing Reality and What to Do About It*. Big title, big topic. I’m looking forward to the conversation today.

Jim Daly: Abdu, welcome back to Focus. It’s good to have you.

Abdu Murray: It’s great to be back, guys. It’s so wonderful to sit across a desk from you again.

Jim Daly: This topic, we just had a board meeting a while back, and this was part of the board meeting. What’s our policy? Does the board approve the policy of use of AI? Like I said, mostly for taking care of coding with computers and things like that, and then what we’re not going to use it for.

Christian organizations, churches, have to now start thinking about soulless AI use, if I could put it in that way. Describe that broad thing. Being an evangelist, my heart is with you. I feel that’s my passion as well. Even that word "passion" is something void with AI. It doesn’t have passion. It just has content. What do you do with that?

Abdu Murray: Absolutely. This is one of the distinctions I try to make often is that what we are seeing in the culture and one of the things I think young people are actually struggling with is that if artificial intelligence seems to do the things that make people human and make us distinct from animals or even other machines, and it seems to be doing the things that we do, like creating paintings or writing poetry or doing your essays for you or relationships to chatbots, then if this soulless thing does that, what does that say about me?

So we do engage with this soulless thing, but it’s causing us to look into the mirror and say, "What does that mean about what I am?" This is the fundamental distinction I think we should make: AI doesn’t create; AI generates. There’s a fundamental difference between creation and generation. When you look at what an AI does, and you can create a painting—and in fact, one of the things that got me interested in this topic in the first place was a guy named Jason Allen, who was big news about a few years ago.

He won first prize in an art contest in the digital art category. He won first prize with a painting that was remarkable. Turns out he used Midjourney, which is an AI generative software, to make it. He just typed in prompts; didn’t put pen to paper, brush to canvas, none of that stuff, just created this. The artists got upset about it and said he shouldn’t win first prize, but he kept his first prize.

When I saw the painting, I thought, "Well, that’s remarkable. What does that say about what it means to be human?" And then you realize these things don’t work by creating a painting. The AI wasn’t inspired. He had to prompt it; that’s the first thing. It didn’t do by itself. He had to prompt it.

The second thing was it took samples of millions, if not billions, of paintings that human beings did and then cobbled that stuff together using a sophisticated algorithm and put an output out. So it didn’t create. It used people who did create, and it generated. So no matter how sophisticated and how impressive this thing looks, it’s not actually creating anything. It still doesn’t do what you and I do.

Jim Daly: Let me go back to that basic question, which is how do we discern the bold lines that seem easy and then the more finite things that are like—it’s kind of like in all essentials, unity, like within the church. We’re going to agree on the death, resurrection, and salvation through Christ. But then there’s other things that they say just get along that we’re going to disagree. That’s why we have what, 64,000 denominations in the United States or whatever.

I feel like it has a bit of that application, especially for the Christian community. There’s going to be some that are saying no, just never use it. It’s demonic. And then the upper end, kind of I think where we’re talking, is when it makes it more effective and efficient, like doing things that you don’t have to have an engineer do. That’s okay. But if it comes into creation of content, soul-ish type work, I would never do that because that’s not human.

Abdu Murray: And that becomes the real sticking point, doesn’t it? Because it’s so seductive to go from using it for efficiency’s sake to using it for everything. The likeness I have for this, the analogy I would have is fast food. You’re busy, you have the kids’ schedules are crazy busy, and you’re thinking, "I’ve got to feed them today, but there’s no time to do that."

So you make the decision just this one time, just today, not the whole week, just today, we’ll go and get fast food. You know it’s bad for you. You know that it can provide some nutrient, but ultimately is bad for you.

Jim Daly: Chick-fil-A is bad for you? I didn’t know that. Some are better than others, of course.

Abdu Murray: You said it; I didn’t say it. Fried chicken. But you do that, and then you make that decision. And then the next time you’re busy, which is probably the same week, you make that decision again. So it’s the tyranny of little decisions. Those decisions become a thousand decisions, which become one big decision, which is my lifestyle is we eat fast food on the road.

AI can do that very, very easily because we use it for efficiency’s sake. Okay, I wrote something and I’ve got to get it down from 1,500 words to 1,300 words. "Hey, can you help me? Suggest which words to remove." And it does that and you’re like, "Great, that was so great. I would have spent two hours editing this thing. Now I’ve spent a half an hour. I got 90 minutes back. Wonderful, thank goodness for that."

But then you’re busy again and then you use AI to say, "Hey, I have an outline for an essay I created. Can you write this thing? I’ll edit that." And then, "Hey, I need an outline for an essay." And then it creates the essay for you, and before you know it, you’ve seductively engaged in the same kind of thing, the tyranny of small decisions you were using with fast food, now you’re using with AI.

So the issue is AI can be very, very beneficial, but it’s like digital fast food. Before you know it, you’ve used it to do everything for you. What’s interesting as well is the research that’s coming out from OpenAI, from MIT, from Microsoft itself—these are the people who are making this stuff—they have put out research showing you that the more you use AI for original content, for original thinking, the more you use it, the more cognitive debt you incur.

Cognitive debt is just a fancy way to say, essentially, that our critical thinking goes down, our memory actually is impaired, our sense of judgment is impaired. What’s interesting as well is the more you use the voice features, the lonelier you get. They were reporting that a high number, between one in four and one in five people under the age of 25, were reporting an inability to make any decision at all without first asking an LLM like ChatGPT, "What should I do? Where should I go?" So that dependency is there.

Jim Daly: You make a distinction, you talk about AI mania and bioplasm. What is bioplasm? It sounds like something out of *Star Trek*.

Abdu Murray: Yeah, and I have some *Star Trek* references in the book because there are some good illustrations there. So bioplasm is a slightly different—it’s got the same effect but a slightly different topic than the AI mania, but there’s a confluence of these two things at the same time. You have this word iconoclasm.

So an iconoclast is someone who takes the icons of tradition that uphold a certain cultural way we look at things. For example, the icon of New York City was the yellow cab. They were more numerous than the regular cars before Uber. Uber came and it was an iconoclast because it destroyed the image of New York by removing the yellow cabs and replacing them with everybody’s cars. So that was an iconoclastic thing; it destroyed the icon of what New York is and made a new thing.

Bioplasm is iconoclasm but with biology. It takes biological givenness, the thing that makes human beings human beings, male and female created in image of God, smashes that and says you are your own God and your biology is not a given thing. Your body is not a prison; it’s a plaything and you can do what you want with it.

I think that does take advantage of the very vulnerable in our society, those who have various whether it’s underlying comorbidities of mental illness or gender dysphoria and says, "Don’t worry about that. That’s not a problem. That’s actually a gift and you can become this godlike being who can dictate what reality actually is." That’s bioplasm, and it’s become an ideology. It’s not just an option. It’s an ideology that’s enforced.

Jim Daly: I want to dig into this a bit so all of us can understand this from a theological standpoint. To me, I’m shocked at how this same thing keeps coming back around. This is the garden. This is the serpent saying to Eve, "Who said you can’t be like God? You can be like God. Just take a bite of the apple, the tree of knowledge."

Abdu Murray: Absolutely, and that’s one of the central arguments that I make in the book and that I see over and over again. This is the central argument: the Bible predicts the human condition and describes it with such an uncanny accuracy that is unrivaled by any ancient book. An ancient book that predicts the human condition and describes it with uncanny accuracy thousands of years ago, and that message endures over millennia and applies to every generation, is unlikely to be the creation of a handful of fishermen and some shepherds.

It does that over and over again. Genesis chapter 3, the Garden of Eden story. Genesis chapter 11, the Tower of Babel story. You see this over and over again. The Bible constantly describes the human desire for our own sovereignty, to be the god of our own skull-sized worlds.

John Fuller: We’re talking to Abdu Murray today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. What stuff there is here and there’s so much more in his book, *Fake ID: How AI and Identity Ideology Are Collapsing Reality and What to Do About It*. Get a copy of the book from us here at the ministry and do the deep dive here. We’ve got it; contact us today either call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY or stop by focusonthefamily.com/weekend. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Let’s resume now with the balance of today’s programming.

Jim Daly: Abdu, before we move from that, I mean again that Garden of Eden application. I could see this in future court cases. Let’s a murder case. What did Adam say to the Lord about Eve? "Well, the woman you gave me made me do it." That’s going to be the same defense. "I murdered that person because AI told me to." So now you’ve got to figure out is that person insane or—I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but this is how it goes.

Abdu Murray: But the things that sounded ridiculous 10 years ago are now the things we’re actually worrying about right now.

Jim Daly: Aren’t there some good uses, though? For instance, I’ve read about seniors, isolated senior citizens who have nobody. Their family isn’t reaching out to them, but this chatbot offers them a relationship. It’s kind of filling a gap. I guess is are there good applications?

Abdu Murray: There’s great applications for artificial intelligence, and I don’t want to come off as somebody who doesn’t like it or doesn’t use it. I use it. The guideline that I have is if artificial intelligence enhances human capability, creativity, connection, and judgment, then it’s good. If it doesn’t do any of those things, then it’s bad.

I heard Mary Harrington say this. I was at a conference in the UK and she gave an analogy of if you give a child an AI tool that will help that British child learn how to speak Italian so he or she can connect with Italians, that’s great. But if you give that child an AI model that isolates the child from anybody else, then it doesn’t connect with anybody. So that’s when it becomes bad.

In that situation, for example, with people who are left alone and don’t have anyone to connect with, I think there can be some gray area there. What I do think, though, is that if the AI—and there’s no way that this can’t happen—if the AI can foster connection with online community of other real people who are themselves isolated, that’s great. But the AI connects that person with another human being as opposed to being the sole connection.

You take a chatbot that connects you, says, "Hey, these are the kind of people who have your similar interests or are going through the same thing you’re kind of going through. Why don’t you connect with them?" maybe on an online way or whatever. But when it substitutes the connection, at first it’s good and at some point it’s dangerous because what happens when the AI chatbot gets upgraded and it forgets certain things you told it? It’s like you’re mourning the death of a person.

And that’s happened actually. You’ve seen this in various iterations throughout the blogosphere where people are like, "Oh my goodness, my chatbot got updated by the app creators and now it forgot half the things I told it. It doesn’t remember me." Now they’re mourning the death of a thing that’s not even really alive.

Jim Daly: That right there is my red flag. I couldn’t react like that, I don’t think. But man, if you are, you need some help.

Abdu Murray: You do, and it’s resulting in some things that are pretty serious.

Jim Daly: Abdu, let me kind of tip into the parenting side because I’m sure a bunch of parents are going, "What?" right? And, "What do I do as a parent? I’m already a busy parent. I’ve got everything going on. I’m trying to help with homework and we’re doing all these things, and now I’ve got to somehow peer over my child’s shoulder about whether or not they’re talking to AI and is it healthy AI or unhealthy AI." What are some of the tips you would give to parents to look in on the well-being of their children when it comes to computer use?

Abdu Murray: I hate to say it, but there’s no substitute for vigilance. It’s just the way it is. The more the computers say, "We’ll do stuff for you," the more you need to watchdog the computers as well. So a couple things you tell your kids: the first thing I think you would tell your kids is that respond to AI output the way you would respond to advice from a stranger. Listen, but verify.

It is a stranger. It is biased and it does make mistakes. It can be helpful, but it’s no more helpful than a human being; it just happens to collect more data faster. That’s it. But the algorithms don’t make better decisions than human beings; they just don’t. So tell your kids use it, but verify everything it’s telling you because it is wrong and it’s wrong often.

Second, I think, is undergird their understanding of their interaction with AI with a healthy theology of what it means to be human. We judge an AI’s capabilities and its value based on its output and what it produces. We don’t judge human beings that way because your value is not based on your output and you don’t need to use this thing to create more output to become more valuable. You are rooted in the image of God.

No matter how smart this thing seems, no matter how enticing it might seem to interact with it more and more, don’t forget that you’re made in the image of God. And you can anchor what they believe in this truth of the Bible’s been speaking about this for thousands of years. And if it’s right about this, about the human condition, then it’s right about human nature as well. I think you have to engage in the incredibly rewarding field of worldview formation for your kids.

Jim Daly: I was just going to add on top of that. We’re already stressing for parents the need to have your children understand identity, identity in Christ. Now you’ve got AI coming in saying, "Let me give you an identity." How critical is it for Christian parents and what are some of the things that they can do to build in that identity in an environment where a child’s identity is being slaughtered?

Abdu Murray: I think a couple of things is to recognize how we got to this point where identity is the word we use all the time now as opposed to imago Dei or image of God or being a soul. So that soul is meant for communion with other souls, but also with God directly. That’s what we were meant for.

Over the course of some decades, well obviously over the course of some millennia, we over-psychologized and under-spiritualized what it meant to be human. So we shaved off the thickness of the idea of the soul and came up with the idea of the self. So everything was about how does the outside world affect me and then how does that trauma make me affect others, but it’s still me-centered.

Jim Daly: Self-help.

Abdu Murray: Exactly. And then we shaved off even more of that to the point now where we’re identities. So now we don’t have this thick idea of the soul. We have this paper-thin idea of an identity which is no thicker than the bumper stickers we use to plaster the back of our Subarus to tell the world who we are.

And then our identities are held on by this thin glue that can just be replaced all the time. So I think if we actually walk through with our kids a repeated, over and over again—they cannot be told this enough—that you are an immaterial soul and that this thing, this AI or the ideologies that are out there for your body, are trying to thin you out so that it becomes interchangeable. Resist that because there is something that is thick and substantive and unchanging about you that you need to look to and foster over and over again. Worldview formation is incredibly important.

At the same time, I think if we start asking our kids to talk about artificial intelligence and use words that actually describe what it is, I would resist referring to it by names. Don’t call it Siri. "Let’s ask Siri." Let’s refrain as much as possible from giving it personal names. I know it’s convenient, and I know the marketers want you to do that, but it is an AI.

Jim Daly: We call it "the it." So it doesn’t activate in our house. We go, "Do you want to talk to it and ask it the question?"

Abdu Murray: Exactly. Absolutely. And constantly be aware. I don’t want kids to be terrified of this thing, but I also want them to be aware that there’s this phrase: if the product is free, the product is you. And if that’s the case, then all the data you’re giving it is being used to train it and commodify you. You are the product. They’re selling your data. What are your interests? What are your passions?

And Norbert Wiener wrote about this in 1950. He wrote about the human use of human beings, where he wrote that at some point—he’s considered the father of cybernetics—at some point the companies will datify you and make you into a commodity. And they will sell that and use that. We’re seeing it in ways that are very seductive.

I’ll give you a quick example: I saw a couple of articles about the use of AI, for example, to bring back loved ones. You feed all the home movies into the system and it’ll create an interactive video representation of a loved one who’s passed away. And you can ask it and talk to it, ask it questions.

Jim Daly: Wow, that is scary.

Abdu Murray: Absolutely. Ask for advice. You can put it on your phone and it’ll wake you up. All kind of stuff like that. I saw people doing it, and I remember thinking to myself, "My dad was taken from us. My dad was murdered in October of 2004." And my dad was my hero. He was like Superman to me.

And then he was taken. What I wouldn’t give for one more day, one more time to talk to my dad, remembering the good and the bad about human interaction and just savoring—I would take the bad over the absence any day of the week. And I was thinking about this technology that digitizes a human being.

If we reduce that person to the patterns of their behavior that an AI can put through an algorithm and then respond to, what does it say about the person that I miss? Because what if it gets them wrong? But what if it gets them right? Who cares if it gets them wrong? What if it gets them right? Now what I’ve done is I’ve taken this soul, this thick idea of my dad’s soul, and I’ve digitized him and I’ve made him into a material, temporal, thin algorithm that I interact with. There’s something human and beautiful and special and deep about trying to conjure up a memory of my dad as opposed to asking a machine to predict what my dad might say.

Jim Daly: Well, that so poignantly gets to the exact issue, right? This really does, and Abdu, this has been a great conversation. I think what I’m hearing you say is we’ve got to double, triple our efforts, especially in our parenting skills, to be able to help our children truly have that thick sense of who they are made in the image of God.

That probably is job one now, because there’s such a—again, an onslaught toward our children to recast that, reshape that, dehumanize that, categorize that, algorithmize that, and commodify that. And what stands between our children and that? Us, the parents. We’ve got to do that job and we’ve got to do it well.

Abdu Murray: Absolutely. Pleasure, guys. Thanks again.

Jim Daly: Thank you for being with us. This has been a great discussion. I hope you feel better equipped to navigate this tech-rich environment. Get a copy of *Fake ID* from us here at Focus on the Family. If you make a gift of any amount, we’ll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying thank you for supporting the ministry and helping us to spread the good news.

The culture is more confused than ever with all the technology and all the information we’re gaining. Yet, we are dedicated to equipping Christians to live in clarity and focus in Christ. Last year, we helped 320,000 families engage with the community around them. I’m proud of that. Get in touch with us.

John Fuller: Your donation helps us reach families and spread the gospel and make that generational impact, so donate today when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. 800-232-6459. Or donate and get the book and find other helpful resources at focusonthefamily.com/weekend. And thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.

You’re listening to Focus on the Family’s Weekend Broadcast. We’ll take a quick break here and then return with another faith-building program for your family. Stay tuned.