Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome back into the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Your co host Will here I'm joined by Joe and Jack Wilkie. Really excited to get into today's episode as we are talking about obstacles to keeping kids faithful. Keeping young people faithful, that's obviously a passion point really for all three of us. It's something that we feel like the church can do a lot better job of. And so we want to talk about what are some of those common obstacles to keeping young people faithful. We'll get into that in just a second. One thing we did want to let everybody know about is that our very own Jack Wilke has got a debate coming up. I do believe it's his first. I think it's the first debate for any of us three on this podcast. So Jack, just as we get started, if you want to tell everybody a little bit about that and then we'll get into the episode.
[00:00:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll be debating baptism for salvation with a guy named Jeremiah Nortier. Calls himself the apologetic dog. So I guess my turn to take him for a walk on Iron Sharpens. Iron Radio. So it'll first be streamed on the ironsharpensradio.com website by audio. But then the YouTube video will be up a day or two later. So keep an eye out for that. It's March 19th and 20th if you want to catch it live. It's a two day debate which will be an interesting format.
4 to 6pm Eastern on Iron Sharpens radio. Iron Sharpens ironradio.com so you're not doing
[00:01:27] Speaker B: the same debate twice, right? It's, you're splitting over.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:31] Speaker C: Yeah. Cuz with the ad breaks for, for live radio it really kind of cuts down on how much we can get into in the first day. But yeah, so it'll be, that'll be cool.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Two days there and there's no like other feed that we can get it through. Are you, are you gonna like live stream this for us? Just me and Will, so we can,
[00:01:48] Speaker C: I mean you can listen to the audio. Sorry. But yeah, I'm not quite sure.
But yeah, it's, it's very much terrestrial radio but they do have an online element and it'll be on that podcast. But if you want the video on YouTube, that'll be up a day or two later.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: So best, best of luck to you. But mainly best of luck to Jeremiah. Joe and I, Joe more for sure, have been in plenty of verbal disagreements with Jack before on this podcast and it's not fun. So I wish, I wish Jeremiah the best of luck.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: That's what I told him. I said, you're gonna destroy Guy, because I. I debated you all the time growing up, and it stung. I hated doing that. Jack's a good debater. So, you know, you've never formally done it, but we used to say, you're going to be a lawyer when you grew up, because, yeah, you can debate, like, the best of them.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: So I appreciate it. We'll see how it goes.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: It's going to go well. Yeah.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: All right, guys. So again, as I kind of previewed at the start, obstacles keeping young people faithful.
We talk about keeping young people faithful a good bit on this podcast.
We could pull up any statistic we want online.
Christendom in general, Church of Christ specific. Our numbers are getting smaller.
Our youth retention rate is low. But even apart from statistics, I think, anecdotally speaking, all of us can just point to people that maybe we grew up with, people in our youth group, and you can just see the dropout rate, the people that are no longer faithful is just way higher than it should be. And so what we wanted to explore with this episode is what are some of the obstacles that both maybe parents and churches just in general, what are some of the obstacles that we have to deal with to keeping kids faithful? Keeping kids faithful to God, to raising them up to a faithful life of discipleship to God.
And so, yeah, guys, I don't know if you have any introductory thoughts. We all have our own lists. We brought.
Each of us brought a list of three, as we like to do with these episodes, sometimes with not really any collaboration, just kind of see where the conversation goes. I think Joe was gonna get us started first, but before he does, guys, I don't know if you have any introductory thoughts to kind of this discussion.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: We took very different routes we were gonna reveal on air, but we decided, like, hey, just make sure we're all on the same page, kind of same ballpark. And all of us took different routes. So you're gonna get nine different things. And, yeah, they may zig and zag a little bit. You may go, well, that's conceptual. That's more practical. That's kind of. The point is we wanted to see where it took us. So my three are in the similar vein.
To be honest with you. Everybody kind of knows where we stand on a lot of these things that we do think, such as? I think public school is one of the biggest obstacles to keeping kids faithful. I didn't put that on my list. None of us. I don't think put up that on our list.
That's huge. But people know where we stand on public school. They know that I think it's from Satan, basically, and that it's. It is one of the biggest obstacles. There's a lot of those things. We tried to go a little bit different than maybe what you'd expect from us. And so, Jack, any introductory thoughts before I jump into my first?
[00:04:41] Speaker C: It is kind of funny, in trying to avoid rehashing certain things, we ended up with very different lists. I was kind of worried, like, oh, we're all going to show up with the same 1, 2, 3. Not at all, actually. So there's overlap some, but we came at it from different angles, so I'm excited to get into it.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: All right, so my first is lack of parental involvement. Lack of parental involvement. And what I mean by that is, you guys love me for saying this. I think this goes all the way back to beginning with poor attachment.
And I think it kind of builds all the way up.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: There's my buzzword. No way.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: You know, last. Last year, we had the. The backbone as our word of the year. It's gonna be attachment.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Attachment, definitely.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: Because that's all I want to talk about.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Well, the problem is only one of us says it, so I don't think it's gonna come up as our.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: That's true, but I think I say it enough for the three of us.
But lack of parental involvement.
We talked about this on the podcast before that. That video that went around, I think it was Tennessee kids singing Rocky Top, the Georgia fan, right? And you know, the kid, what was it, 10 year olds or something? And the kid's just standing there, like, with his arms crossed. He's not doing it. He's letting everybody know, just refuse to sing it. And, you know, I think about my kids, and I always told my kids, we're going to hate the Detroit Red Wings. Like, it just is what it is because we're Colorado Avalanche fans. Mortal enemies. Maybe not as much these days, but, like, that's just what you do, is you raise kids in a certain way, and it takes involvement. It takes you paying attention. It takes you sitting down and watching games with them. Like, I guarantee you, that kid has watched more Georgia football than most kids. Like, that's just what the family does. They're involved in that way. You think about the lack of, you know, eating around the table these days. That was a staple for so many American Christians for decades. Like, this is just what you did. You had, you know, mom cook the meal and you'd sit around the table, maybe you talk, maybe it was a fast thing. It doesn't matter. You guys were together.
That is like rapidly going. You hardly ever see that these days. You see people that gather around the TV or kids that are going in a million different directions. And so kids, parents can't be involved in their kids lives near as much then yes, we already mentioned public schools, but you send your kids to public schools for seven, eight hours a day, then they come home and they do homework and then they have, you know, things that they want to do with the youth group and things they want to do with their friends. And by the time you boil it down, how much influence can a parent possibly have when they're involved in the kid's life like an hour a day?
And we have Christian parents, strong Christian parents, that their kids aren't faithful. It's like, why is that? Well, maybe it's because you can't be near as involved as you need to be in order to create faithfulness. That takes a steady stream of being around the kid, talking to him, reasoning with them, you know, instilling these deep desires in them for Christianity and things like that.
We don't have time for that. The other side of the coin here. Before I get your guys thoughts along with the lack of parental involvement, it's really tough to set clear expectations when you're not involved with your kid very much.
You don't know what's going on in their lives or maybe you do, but it's kind of from a distance. You don't have that deep, that depth of relationship to be able to call them out on certain things or to be able to kind of expect certain things. And so the expectations are just insanely unclear in so many homes of what they're supposed to do. I sure hope they're going to stay faithful. Like why isn't that a strong expectation?
Why isn't that something that the parents like? I know my kids staying faithful. Well, you can't say that. So many kids walk away. It's like we need to be more confident in saying yes. What I expect of my kid I think is going to happen because we are.
I know my kid, I'm involved in his life every single day, every step. You know, when you look at The Shema Deuteronomy 6, when you rise up, when you walk, by the way, when you, you know, when you lie down, like every part of the day should have parental involvement, looking at that. And instead we have the end of judges where everybody does what's right in his own eyes. And you see that in so many Christian families where the kids doing his own thing, the parents doing their own thing, they all have their own program going on. And the lack of involvement and cohesion, and I initially put that as lack of family cohesion, as my first one. The lack of cohesion in a family is destroying us. And the way I look at it is that's on a parent's. That's why I changed to parental involvement. But a family that is a family structure like truly they are. They are friends through and through. They, you know, they get along with one another and the parents are involved with one another with the kids, and the kids actually tell the parents about what's going on in their lives.
That the fact that we've lost that is why we're losing so many kids.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: That's what I was going to ask Joe, full disclosure, my first one is very, very similar to this one. And I've got some actually hard numbers to go with kind of this idea of like how much time do parents actually give away when it comes to being with their kids. But I wanted to dig in, Joe, on your word involvement, because obviously I fully agree, like I said, mine is very, my first one is similar to what you had here. But when you, when you talk about lack of parental involvement for our listeners and maybe just for. To kind of further the discussion along, what do you foresee or what do you see as kind of the definition of that? Like, what does it look like for a parent, what does it look like for a parent to actively not be involved with their kids or maybe not be involved with their kids enough, as opposed to a parent or multiple parents who are very involved with their kids? Like, is it just spending time? Is it just discipling them? Like, what, what, what do you see as kind of, if we're talking about an obstacle, how do we clear that? Obstacle, I guess is the way I'll
[00:09:53] Speaker A: ask that I look at it as face to face contact talking, things like that, where the kid and the parent are engaging with one another. Because yeah, we can be in the same room, but you know, little Johnny's on social media for 30 hours a day type of thing.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Right. And family movie night four nights a week is not exactly involvement. Right, that's kind of what I was saying.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. And so the involvement to me is you're talking to your kid, you're sitting across the table, there's no screens, there's no half distractions. You know, dad's not taking the bazillion of one work calls where it's like every single night. His family, Family is, yeah, they kind of have bad. They kind of don't. I'm talking like engagement involvement. Once again, it goes along with the idea of cohesion and structure. Like, we're together in this and it's really tough to say we're together when everybody's sitting on the couch and everybody's on their phones. That's not involvement. That's not. We're talking like, you know, what your kid is going through, you know, their struggles, you know, the bullies they're facing, you know, the, the porn that they are, you know, that they have recently started struggling with, like, you know, these things to be able to say, hey, what's going on? Let me talk to you. And we transition from discipline disciplinarian into mentor. We don't do that very well at all as parents. And so we go from disciplinarian to either friend or just gone. And kids at 18 are like, well, my parents know nothing and therefore I'm going to go to the, you know, college and learn so much. And even if they have a good relationship with their parents, the parents can never then go back at 25 and be like, I expected better of you. Why in the world are you not in church? And instead it's like, I'm just really hoping he's going to come back. Like, where did the expectation and the involvement in a kid's life to be able to call it out and be like, why are you not in church? What's going on?
That's what being involved and having face to face conversations gets you later in life is. You can call on that and still maintain the mentorship, especially into the 30s, before the friendship stage hits, to be able to call them to a higher standard. And instead at 18, we lose them. And because the parents haven't been super involved to begin with, it's really tough to get involved when the kids outside your house.
So this 18 is killing us. This idea that they're adults at 18 when they're really coming into their own right around 18, 21.
But the idea that the parents can't then go back and call on a depth of relationship to say, what are you doing? And why did you make this decision? That's killing us.
[00:12:08] Speaker C: Well, why don't you throw your, since you said it's related, throw yours in here and I'll kind of put my comments on both of them.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that sounds good. So my first one that I put was portfolio diversification. With our time people. You make a big deal in the financial world about you got to diversify your portfolio, right? You don't want, you know, one income stream, or if you're investing, you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, essentially. So you try to diversify as much as possible.
We do that with our time now more than anything else. And the way that I kind of answered this question, as I was kind of sitting down to brainstorm obstacles, keeping kids faithful, a lot of it was just kind of like, what do I foresee as the obstacles I'm going to deal with to keep my own kids faithful? I know that doesn't apply. What I deal with might not apply to everybody else, but for the most part, I feel like this one absolutely applies.
It's pretty simple common sense that the more time you pour into something, the more fruitful return that you're going to yield.
And so this ties, obviously this ties in with Joe's, but if we're going to.
The more diversified that our time portfolio is going to be like, I got to put this much time into work, obviously, then I got to put this much time into sports practice or taking my kids here, or then I got to put this much time into being on the city council. Then I got to put this much time into maybe, you know, being involved in. With a ministry at church. And then I got to. You run out of time. You just run out of time. And I think we can romanticize the, you know, couple hundred years ago, Prairie days or whatever a little bit too often. But you think about what all do they have to spend their time on?
They went to, as far as the men goes, they went to work, came home, spent time with their family.
It was dinner time with the family. Obviously, they had church on Sundays about it. Right. We have so many different options. And so that just kind of leads to the question of, like, for Christian parents, how much time are we actually investing into our children? How much time are we investing? So I put some numbers down. Joe's right. I didn't put public school down on the list, but I do think I'd be. We'd be remiss if we didn't at least put a little bit of numbers behind this. This what I call the public school problem. So I did a little math here of just how many hours you lose with your kids if you're there in public school or I guess private school as well. But if specifically public school, the whole way through K through 5 let's assume they're there for. Let's assume you're away from them for eight hours a day.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: K through five, 180 school days. Eight hours a day. It's 8,640 hours.
Sixth through eighth grade. I added an extra hour. I said nine hours. Why? Well, there's certain extracurriculars at that point. Most of them time with friends, whatever. So nine hours a day for three years, 180 days a year, 4860 hours, nine through 12. I went ahead safely, felt like up that to 10 hours more extracurriculars. They're driving themselves to school now at that point. So there's. You're not. They're not riding with the parent. 10 hours a day, 180 days of school for high school years, 7200 hours.
So the total. And that's not including homework, to Joe's point, that's not including, you know, that's basically taking into account one extra hour a day for extracurriculars or maybe two. 20,700 hours from kindergarten to 12th grade. That is a total of 862 days, 2.36 years that you. That we lose with our kids if we're sending them away for their education.
One last piece of math here of their waking hours. So I called it 16 hours a day from age 5 to 18.
They have 75,920 of those hours from age 5 to age 18. 16 hours a day of waking hours, putting them in school, that's 27%. That's over a fourth of their time is gone that you don't get to spend with them. And so I felt like, again, we'd be remiss if we did not bring that up as an issue, but even homeschool families can run into this. But I'll tell you, man, to me, the biggest obstacle to keeping kids faithful and the reason I put this, number one, I mean, for me and my family, I plan to homeschool, but I still think this will be a challenge.
We got to invest time into our kids. We just absolutely have to. When they're young, are you playing with them? Are you teaching them things? Are you reading books to them? You know, those things that I try to do every single week with my kids when they're middle aged, are you doing family worship with them? Are you educating them? Are you trying to. To grow their passions? And then, of course, when they're older, are you shaping them to Joe's point, are you. Are you talking to them? Are you having conversations with Them? Are you asking them questions? Are you challenging them? Definitely comes into play as they get older. And so all of these things just take time. And so just. My overall point is we have so many other things that parents feel the need to spend their time on, to put their time into, especially with how much harder it is to make a dollar these days. I see that as a huge challenge. So related to Joe's first one. But, Jack, what thoughts do you have?
[00:16:55] Speaker C: I like that you used investment terminology, because that's really what it is, is you're telling your kids that they matter. You're telling them what things matter, where your family's time is invested in. I've been trying to think about this in a way to write on it, and I haven't quite formulated it yet.
This is where there's this disconnect, where I know there's so many people when we talk about public schools and some of these things, they just roll their eyes like, oh, they're on that again.
You don't understand. To you, this is a single issue. To us, it's a puzzle piece. There's this broad puzzle of generational faithfulness, of we have to do this. And the way I'm trying to think about illustrating this is you have to think of yourselves like the Royal Family. And I don't mean like those. Those goofballs over in England now who have no. Like, there's no class there. There's no anything like that. But, like, literally, like, hey, if you were gonna prepare your kids to run the country after you were dead, you don't have a king where he's like, oh, I guess my son decided to be a painter. Like, that's not. No, no. Like, dude, you've got to run the country, and I've got to get you ready, and I've got to put you in the training for that. And I've got to make sure that when I die and hand a country to you, you're ready to handle it and not get killed by another military and not mess everything up and lose everybody. You know, like, make everybody starve to death. Like, you've got real responsibility. They have to think in ways generationally, like, we've got to hold the fort on this.
Christians don't think that way. They think that's probably fine. You know, it's not going to keep them from going to heaven. Like, no, no, no. You've got to be thinking about how your great grandkids are going to be pillars of the church and is what you're Doing the best way to get them there. And so when you question us, like when people roll their eyes at us on that, it's like, I know you are, because you're not thinking of it in these generational terms. You're thinking of it as a single puzzle piece and going, how big of a deal could it be?
It's a really big deal, all of this. And so not to make it all about public school, but to all of your points there, Will, every puzzle piece in your life needs to be oriented towards how am I going to stay faithful, how am I going to get these kids faithful, how am I going to make it to where they know this is what we do so that they raise their kids to be faithful. And when you say, well, kids have free will, they get to do whatever you want. My parents had kids who had free will. All four of us are doing exactly that. Will's parents had kids with free will. All of their kids are doing exactly that. Plenty of Christian families have done that. And yeah, their kids had free will, and yet they kept choosing to go on with it. The king's son has free will. Sometimes they go bad, but a lot of times you'll see that dynasty where they pass it down generation to generation and do a good job because they know what they're doing and they do it with intention. And so the points you guys are bringing here are so key to that of understanding, hey, your family has a legacy to pass down. You have a responsibility here more than just, well, I hope they go to church on Sundays when they're 28 years old.
That's not good enough. And all of these things that we talk about circle back into that. What is your long term plan? What are your goals here? Are you really taking this seriously or is this a single goal, a small goal that you have? You got to think bigger.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Well, and what, that's a great point, Jack. What is the objective? Is a question that should be answered by parents. Like, is the objective, man? If they can, if they can kind of be a member of a church and are there two or three times a month and, you know, believe in God, that that's, that's faithful, man. If that's the objective. Sure, you know, I would say that.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: But it happens a lot.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: It does happen a lot.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Right. And, but, but again, for most people, are they going to articulate. Yeah, no, my objective is absolutely not just that my kids are going to, again, kind of be spotty attenders and show up. No, they're going to be active members of the church, they're going to raise a faithful family and they're going to have faithful kids. Like articulate that. Is that the objective? Because if so, as we just kind of went through that, that public school analogy, most high schoolers.
And again, this is generalizing two hours a day with their, you know, with their, with their parents, you know, conservatively speaking. And so what is that? 14 hours a week out of 168. Like, that's just not a lot of time investment going into it. And so, yeah, what is your objective? Obviously has to be answered here.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: I was trying to find a video that I saw a couple days ago on X and I was devastating. And this guy's like, this is the reason to leave social media, you know, to get off of your devices, because it broke down school, it broke down sleep, it broke down from 18 to 90. You know, with, in college doesn't take up a ton of time, but with work and everything else, 18 years old to 90 and he shows all the months, it's like, yeah, it's not as many months as you think.
The social, I kid you not, the, the screen time and social media use, if it continued from what the average 18 year old is using all the way through, literally was like a third of his life.
A third of your life or maybe like a quarter of your life from then on is going to be taken on screens and social media. It was devastating to look at. It was like, oh my goodness. And you know, it seems like it's hyperbole and things like that. It's like these are raw statistics. And I've been around kids where this absolutely fits, where screens are everything. So if it's not public school, then so many times it's just the devices and what are they being indoctrinated by? You're on TikTok, you're on Instagram shorts, you're on YouTube shorts, whatever. And these, these indoctrinations. Why do you think so many kids are trans these days? Because TikTok is a hotbed for LGBTQ issues. And so it causes kids to question their identities. Well, that's because the parents aren't involved. TikTok's raising the kids. So, yes, and this starts at a very young age where the parental involvement, as I said, all the way back to attachment, when mom is looking at her phone and they've done studies on this, when mom is looking at her phone and not making eye contact with the baby, the kid actually forms anxious attachment. I don't know if mom's going to pay Attention, I don't know if mom's going to be here. So it really ruins the attachment of the kid. And the kid actually starts to shut down their emotions. They suppress their emotions at a certain point. And so because they recognize it's neglect, mom isn't here, mom isn't paying attention. So parents, from day one, if you are not involved with your kid and if you are not thinking about the future and thinking about, man, this kid, I am everything to this kid. So me being on social media for four hours a day as a mom, even as a stay at home mom, where I'm not engaged with my kids and I'm not involved with my kids, you are taking active time away. That is going to set up the rest of their future. And what messages are we sending to our kids when we aren't super involved and when we're on our devices all the time and when we're working 247 and that hits me on the toes, you know, steps on my toes, where, yeah, sure, work comes in. What messages are we sending to the kids? I don't matter quite as much.
Well, what I want them to know is you matter more than anything.
But we are Christians and Christ matters, you know, more than anything. Christ matters. But, like, you're going to be a Christian. I pray for my kids all the time. To your point, Will, I want you to be Christian warriors for Christ. I want you to do big things. I want you to raise faithful families. We pray for their spouses, we pray for their futures. We pray that they stay faithful and not just like, please go to church. It's like, I'm not expecting you. That is a given. Yes, you will go to church. You are going to be an active member in the church. I pray that my kids grow up. I got three boys. They're going to be elders. That starts on me. That starts on the engagement that I have with my kids every single day to get that into their brain and to help them realize I'm expecting big things of you. Parental involvement is huge. So sorry. I could stay on the soapbox all day, but, Jack, we got to get to your first one.
[00:23:53] Speaker C: Yeah. You also put a few more on the attachment scoreboard. I see what you're trying to do there, but I had to come back around.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: I can't just waft it out there, float the balloon. I got to explain why it's important.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: Just baptized now what?
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But you've got those like in second Timothy four, ten where Paul talks about having loved this present world deserted him.
That's a different one, I guess, you know, but as part of that, like you care more about the world than you care about God and his opinion. So it's just that pride of like I want to be seen a certain way. And I think that's the peer pressure issue.
The kids that, that you have your kids spend their time around, but letting your kids know it's, it's not all about you. It's okay, you know, if Other people don't think you're cool. What man, what God thinks about you matters most. And so that pride and the fear of man is. Is my first one.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: That's a great one. I love this.
To me, this is such identity. You know, this. This is so much about identity and helping kids create a stronger identity before they leave. Because where does that come from? Where does peer pressure and the idea of I need to be cool, I need to be whatever is. You don't know who you are internally.
And we'll throw out. Yeah, we throw out the platitudes like, well, just how to have it grounded in Christ. Like, what does that actually look like? To have your foundation or to have your identity rooted in Christ, where you know who you are and you're not just blown by the wind and you're not just hoping. Jack, as you talked about lust of the eyes, less flesh, boastful pride of life, right? Like, that is obviously in the Bible for a reason that goes all the way back to the garden. Pride is a massive, massive problem that we have. But so much of pride, in my opinion, is we don't know who we are and we don't know what it means to be rooted in Christ is, you know, and have our identity there. And so, once again, to me, it goes back to parents really working on their kids and making sure they're involved enough to know this is who we are. Identity is formed. It's kind of like an onion. There are multiple layers to that.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: But.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: But having Christ at the core means Christ is every part of our life. He shows up in our schooling and he shows up in our, you know, of course, us going to church and how we act with one another, how we act in public and how we. And so it starts to understand, like, this is. This is you. You are solid at the core. You don't need to be cool like everybody else. You don't need to search for the pride of everybody else. Because we boast in Christ. Go into 2nd Corinthians 12. We boast in Christ, but we have to be able to explain that to these kids that are walking away to say there's so much more to life than being cool to somebody else, because that passes. That just. That shows up today and is gone tomorrow. Being able to really help them understand identity in Christ is key.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Well, I want to zero in on the pride thing for just a second. To me, it very much comes down to, do you raise your kids to have a heart for themselves or for a heart for God? It's Basically what it comes down to. I'm reading that book, Joe, that you recommend, Parenting, by Paul David Tripp, I think is his name.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: 14 gospel principles. I just started in. One of the point. One of the points he makes is that you have to view yourself as a parent, as an ambassador, not as an owner of your kid, with the main objective of raising your kid to have a heart for God.
To me, it's either that or they have a heart for themselves. You know, they go through life. You know, how can I enjoy myself? It's about me. Obviously, narcissist is kind of thrown out a little bit cavalierly these days, but still, like, the world revolves around them. You see kids like that, Right?
That. That is a. To Jack's point, just a huge obstacle to keeping kids faithful as opposed to raising them with the understanding, this life is not about you.
It's not even about me as your parent or about other people. It's about God first and foremost. And you. You know, you come. Come after that. And so. But yeah, a lot of. A lot of people are raised. A lot of young people are raised with the how can I enjoy myself? It's about me. So this is a great, great addition, Jack.
[00:29:31] Speaker C: I'm just gonna spoil the last Narnia book here. So if you're a parent listening or, you know your kid, you don't want it spoiled here. I'm giving you a warning on that. But in the last one there, essentially, they go to heaven, but Susan's not there. One of the four original siblings. And, well, why isn't she there? And they say, well, she is no longer. She doesn't love Narnia anymore. Or, like, doesn't identify with Narnia, whatever the phrase is. And basically, she got into being cool. She got in and says, lipstick and fashion and parties or invitations, that kind of thing, or whatever. And she had gotten to the point where she treated Narnia as, like, some game they played as a kid. And, oh, you guys, in your imagination kind of thing, just totally denying it. And. Yeah, that's from a story. I know people like this in real life that look back on. Yeah, I know. Church was fun. Oh, yeah. That whole Jesus thing. Yeah, I know. But, like, I'm above that now. And that's something you also see down here in the south is, like, people leave their hometown and, like, oh, I've got that affection for those backwards rednecks. Like, who do you think you are? That, honestly, is kind of despicable. There's an honor your father and mother level of this as well, where you kind of think, oh, I'm just so much smarter than my parents who believe in that. You know, we did that Ex Church of Christ episode. Go read that subreddit and how those people feel about the people who raised them, about their Bible class teachers and like, oh, boy, those. Those nice bumpkins. Like, no, man, you have no clue. And that really is something that you have to be.
Unfortunately, people raise their kids with a confidence and a swagger and a sense of pride, and they use that to turn around and look at mom and dad like, yeah, I'm better than you.
You need to be kind of working that out of them from an early age. That you don't run the world. That, as Will said, it doesn't revolve around you, it revolves around God. So that's my first one is pride and the fear of man.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: We have to average 5 minutes per to get out on our time limit.
[00:31:18] Speaker C: And we start to overlap, so we'll be able to cut down some of them. Joe, what do you got for number.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: My second one is it's lack of parental diligence. I went with the parental route because I think that parents are, you know, can be the biggest help or the biggest obstacle. So let me.
[00:31:31] Speaker C: Attachment, right?
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. You're getting it. You're getting it. So lack of parental diligence. And here's the difference. Yes, the involvement is face to face time. The involvement is engaging with them.
The diligence is sticking with it. The diligence. So this is perfectly illustrated by. By the talk that perfectly illustrates my point. Instead of having a dozen, two dozen talks along the way and kind of help.
[00:31:54] Speaker C: You mean the birds and bees talk?
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Correct, the birds and bees. The talk, quote unquote, you know, birds and bees. Instead of having half a dozen or I mean a dozen or two dozen or whatever talks throughout the kid's life, as we're kind of explaining a little bit more conceptually and, you know, yes, the physical element, but then we circle back around to the emotional element that comes up with sex. And then we think about the spiritual element and as, you know, the mystery that Paul talks about in marriage and what all this looks like in Song of Solomon. We get into the beauty of sex and things like that.
We have one talk. We hope that it sticks around. We hope that the kid kind of understands it. Most of the time, the kids finding it through porn, finding out how to, you know, finding out what that looks like. It's lack of diligence. Well, I did My job, we had to talk. Therefore, you know, my hands are clean. I wash my hands of a type of thing. Like, I did enough.
The diligence is consistently sticking with them throughout life, throughout time, and being diligent in how you present certain things. Going to, you know, a Bible function, a Bible camp, or going to, you know, we're looking for kind of the big moments. It's the day to day little moments that make all the difference. So, yes, it's the involvement. But more than anything, the diligence is about.
We are diligently learning the word of God. It's not like we open the Bible, you know, one time a week. Like we're diligently open the Bible. It's not like we memorize scripture. Well, we memorized a couple scriptures throughout, you know, from 0 to 18. Like, we're diligent about, you know, our memorization of scripture. We're diligent about our prayer life. We're diligent about so many things we do. We're diligent about going to church. It's not just, oh, well, we can skip some times. Like, no, we're diligent about this. Like, we are not going to skip church. We talked about it on the podcast before. That was a big thing for our family is like, I traveled for hockey. We went out of state. We did, you know, I played in a lot of different places at fairly big tournaments for, you know, as a kid.
We wouldn't miss on Sundays. And the teams. Are you kidding? You know, we're out of state. You can't, you, you got to be able to be here. Like, we're not missing church.
Sorry. Even if that is, my parents paid thousands of dollars to take us out of state. We're not missing church. That's diligence. That's to say it matters more than anything else. And there is no, like, well, because we're out of state, this one, and because it costs us a lot of money, we're gonna make sure that we're actually at the hockey game. It's like, no, God comes first. You got to be diligent in everything that you say and everything that you do. And that's where the hypocrisy to some degree comes in, is a lot of parents will say one thing and do something different. Kids are paying attention. Kids are noticing. They can talk a good game at church, but if you come home and there's zero diligence of opening the word, zero diligence toward prayer, you're flying off the handle screaming, at your kids, whatever it may be. And it's like, hold on a second, you're projecting something and presenting something to the world. In one way, you're not that way at all. And so diligence is broad ranging for me, the same way that involvement was, you know, as I talk about cohesion and such. But the diligence is. Do you say what you do, you do what you say you're going to do and do you actually stick with it or is there a ton of million or one in, you know, 1 million caveats to oh, well, why we didn't have to do it today or man, we just didn't get around to it, those type of things.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Consistency is what, is what comes to mind.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Consistency.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: I think that pairs very well with diligence. I mean, how do you, how do you lose weight? How do you become a healthy person?
Is it doing a, running a marathon once a quarter or doing a Spartan race once a quarter or, you know, doing a slim fast diet one month out of the year? No, it's every single week. You know, work, exercising, eating well, day to day.
[00:35:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: That's the, the not fun part. Right? How, how do you, I mean, really, for anything. How do you get really good at playing a musical instrument?
You practice every day, right? The, the diligence and so this common sense, the consistency. Joe, I love this point because I think sometimes we can.
The day to day kind of disciplines and diligence and, and just kind of consistency can kind of feel mundane. It can kind of feel, to your point, we can get to that later. That's really not that important.
But man, from the time that kids are young, getting them into, into the habit of. No, this is, this is what we do. We do it every day, we do it every week, Whatever it is, not skipping church, to your point, or doing family worship at night for as many nights as you can, or hey, we're going to memorize scripture, we're going to, you know, whatever it may be, doing it consistently, doing it diligently, to your point, I think is instrumental because otherwise you think about what message it sends. If you do something sporadically, what message it sends, you know, not to throw shade at it, anybody I know, but there's just people like this that are like, oh yeah, I'm on this diet, or oh yeah, I'm, you know, doing the gym. It's like, yeah. And then I didn't hear about it too much, you know, for, I'm not gonna hear about for the next two months. But today you're all about it, right? The message it sends is you're not really taking it that seriously.
The more sporadic you are about stuff, the less serious that you clearly take it. And so as opposed to for your kids, communicating the message like, no, this is something we do every day, every week. This is, this is just part of our life. That diligence, that consistency sends the message like, no, this is very serious to our family. So it's a great one. I love it.
[00:36:42] Speaker C: There's an old quote that says, the secret of success is constancy of purpose. You come back to like, what is our purpose? You got to stick to that. And so just one more example before we move on discipline of kids. When I've disciplined one of the kids for the same thing 30 times in the last two weeks, that 31st times, like, man, do I really feel like I'm really being hard on them? Well, they're still doing it. And so, like, that's. You got to stay with that and just giving in and okay, well, I'll give the kid what they want. And that kind of thing, that's the kind of thing we're trying to avoid, is that that doesn't fit the purpose. So that's a good one here. All right, Will, what do you got for.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Yeah, my number two, again, try to see it through the lens of like, man, what am I gonna have to deal with? I put navigating the social media question.
Navigating the social media question. I was originally gonna put navigating, like devices essentially, but I feel like for young kids, that's fairly simple. Like, it's really simple to not stick your kids in front of a tablet. It's fairly simple to not give your 10 year old a smartphone. Like, sure, I'll have to navigate, like, what age am I gonna give them a phone. But again, when they're in my house, Internet restrictions and stuff, I don't want to say it's easy, but I feel like it's fairly simple. Social media, I feel like, is a whole different animal to me there. I have how Church of Christ is it that not only do I have three points here, I have three points within this point that I want to give here for you. There's. I have three main concerns with kind of social media and kind of navigating that with my kids. Number one is, is influence.
They're going to be exposed to other. You know, the earlier they get social media, they're going to be exposed to other people's ideas.
Mentioned Reddit threads, like, man, those can Just be an absolute disaster.
Not to mention YouTube and just kind of just negative influence. Right? We worry about negative peer pressure influence face to face. You can get a lot of that through social media. Second concern obviously is addiction. Pornography just becoming screen addicted obviously TikTok like there's just so many opportunities, outlets you might say for young people to get addicted to especially again pornography or something. So that's a concern. And then the third one that I have, just self focus, man, that's probably not more than addiction but man this is a major concern for me is like social media more than anything feeds this self focus.
You know, posting about yourself, everything you do in life you see through the lens of a social media post. What caption can I have? What cool pictures can I post? How can I let other people know how awesome my life is? You know and it kind of gives people the, it gives young people the false pre premise of like man, other people should care what I think. Like man, you are so insignificant. Like and social media to me just feeds the self focus. So again, how do we navigate social media? This might be one of the lesser ones, but I do, I have seen kids that just go astray for any number of these things. Again, influence addiction or just becoming too self focused. And so yeah, that question of like do I just not let them on it at all until they, you know, are out of my house and then it's just free there, it's free game. Do we introduce it slowly? I just think there's a lot of potential hard harm that can come from social media.
And so navigating that I see as kind of a big challenge.
[00:39:44] Speaker C: Yeah, those are all valid points. I look at it like man, I'm at a point in life, obviously with the work I basically have to be on there.
What would life be like if I was one of those people that just never really engaged, never really got onto it? It'd be much different and I don't know that it'd be worse. And so I think about with my kids, you know, kind of warning them like yeah, this can be kind of fun. But as you say, the self focus is a really big thing. You know, you're crafting a life, you're making yourself a brand and that's just ridiculous. I mean that's not healthy for anybody. And yeah, this whole like the concept of an avatar, like this version of yourself you're putting out there, it's not good.
Yeah, I don't know. That's one I'm not excited about my kids getting older and getting to that. And so for parents who have made decisions on that, on the comments, whether on YouTube or Focus plus, wherever you're getting this, I'd be very interested to see what have you decided? How have you navigated this? Do you let them have it? Do you have a certain age and then they can just do what they want? Do you have like these apps or that? Because this is a big one and this is one that, as you said, the influences lead people astray.
And as I've said before, people get loyal to Internet strangers they've never met, and they end up more loyal to them than to their parents, their church, family, that pride of like, oh man, these people will all adore me if I just do this. I mean, the kinds of things that get people out there protesting in the streets and all that, like, look at me, I'm one of the good ones. These people don't care about you, but they're playing to a non existent audience. It's really weird, the psychology of it.
[00:41:18] Speaker A: Yeah, man, this is a great point. This is a great point. I was actually gonna ask that question of, do you guys plan to let your kids use social media?
Because this is so idealistic right now. And yes, I'm a young parent member's gonna, oh, yeah, you know, it's ridiculous you even say so, like, wait until you're older. There's a big part of me that feels like just putting the kibosh on it, being like, it's not good. The same way that I'm going to put the kibosh on alcohol. Things like that. Like, no, that's not what we do. We're just not going to do it. I'm wondering, yes, we're on social media. I'm not on very much.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: I was going to say, how do you navigate that, though? With like, I'm not going to tell my kids don't drink alcohol and I'm, you know, have a wine bottle or in my, you know, drink. So how do you navigate that, you know, both of y' all being on social media?
[00:41:59] Speaker A: And where this would go wrong is kids could go nuts with it. You know, once they have the opportunity for social media, it'd be better to have that con, that, that conversation and the confines, you know, at home where they kind of understand safe use and things like that. But on the other hand, you might
[00:42:12] Speaker C: be able to show them, hey, this is a waste of time. Like, if you introduce them the right
[00:42:15] Speaker A: way and I'm trying to pull away from it, there's where happen to be as much as this sounds crazy, we are somewhat public figures and so being on social media and especially like even for this podcast, there's an element where yes, my time on X is not very much, but it is to kind of figure out what's going on in the world.
Okay, from that standpoint, maybe, but other than that, yeah, I don't have a whole lot of use for social media and I'm okay if they kind of see it the same way.
[00:42:38] Speaker B: Just I'm a decade plus away from this. But I think my plan right now, because I don't plan to kick my kids out at 18 or anything like that and so I would imagine that I'm going to still have a heavy influence on them at that point and beyond. But really keeping keeping them off of social media till 17, 18 ish. I the reason that I would maybe want to allow them. One thing I am going to do is preach the preach that it's overhyped.
Just kind of let them know like, hey, it's not as much as it's cracked up to be. Sure, it's cool, there's cool features and whatnot, but it is incredibly overhyped. Let them know that. But then also the reason why I could see the argument for introducing it while they're still in your home or while you still have influences because you will have influence over, you know, the way they see it, the way they use it, versus all right, you pay for your phone, you can download whatever apps you want. Free, free game, right, like that that I see is even more harmful. So that's. That's my plan. I'm a decade away. That might change, who knows.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: Hey folks, you've probably heard us talk about Focus plus and the Deep End. If you're wondering what that is. Focus plus is our subscription service available through Patreon.
Every week, members get all kinds of Christian content for your walk, including daily devotionals, a sermon of the week, and our understudied teaching series, which Joe and I lead through obscure and less covered books of the Bible like Leviticus and Revelation. We also have the Deep End, of course, which is our bonus segment exclusively for Think Deeper listeners, where you can submit your comments on an episode and we will respond and have a bit of a Q and A each and every week. That drops every Friday. So if you're interested and want to know more, check that out. Go to patreon.com and search focus or go to focuspress.org/ alright, so my next one is pretty related to this and that's just worldly pleasures in general. I was thinking about first. John 2:15. Love, not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the father is not in him.
Social media can be part of it, whether it's sexuality, porn, things like that, whether it's substances, whether it's just the joys of the world. And this is the thing I really want to key on. This starts really young, where kids start living for pleasure with a video game, with certain toys, with friends or whatever it may be, where they just think their whole life is about. There's an old Jerry Seinfeld bit about, when you're a kid, Halloween is the greatest day of the year because you spend 365 days going, get candy, get candy, get candy, get candy, get. You know, like, that's what kids live for, is snacks and for video games and things like that. They need to be taught to live for duty. They need to be taught to live for others. They need to be taught there's more in life than just what feels good in the moment. And you see kids that don't have impulse control. You see kids, Joe and I, we talk about this a lot. Like the couple of times where whether people have been sick around the house or whatever, and you kind of get lax on the movies or whatever, or if the kids get a hold of video games, and after a day or two, they turn into little monsters, because everything is just about, hey, get out of my way. You're standing between me and a good time.
And you see kids raised this way, and then they reach adulthood, and what do they want all the time having a good time. And they either fill that with porn, they fill that with substances, they fill that with just staring at the TV their entire lives, you know, just parked on the couch eight hours a day, that kind of thing.
That's the kind of thing I really want to shape my kids away from, is like, man, these things are all dessert. You have a. Every now and then, if it's watching a movie, if it's playing a video game, if it's that kind of thing, that's great. But we don't live for that. And I mean, sports can be one of those things, too. There's a lot of different things like that where kids just start living for the good time. And that's what leads them away from the church. That's what leads them to not be Bible students, not be servants of others, not be engaged in worship, because they can't help but look down at, you know, that kind of thing. So yeah, worldly pleasures is again, a broader concept, but it's one that you really have to start fighting very early.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: There's a brain chemical called creb that we talk about an addiction that creates desensitization. And so you need more and more and more, right? It is, it's the idea of tolerance. If you used to get using alcohol again, if you used to get drunk from two beers or whatever, now you need nine because your body has tolerate.
And that's from, you know, increasing, increasingly going toward pleasure and trying to fill everything with pleasure. And so we talk about this.
Well, yeah, we talk about doing a 90 day reset where it's like, especially for, for porn addicts, sex addicts, where you take off 90 days of all of that. And it's intended to reset the dopamine response because we're dopamine. Like we want the dopaminergic things, we want the things that are going to raise that as much as possible.
But then we need more and more and more. And so you see the kids, it's like, man, they used to just love playing 30 minutes of video games. Now if you take them off before five hours, they throw a fit and it's because their body has acclimated to that.
You got to cut those things off. And it's interesting what happens when you see when addicts do this. They start appreciating a sunrise, they start appreciate reading a book. They start appreciating, you know, just a really good meal. And before it's like, man, I have no pleasure for anything until it hits a certain threshold. You see this with kids, they have no pleasure until they're in front of a screen or whatever it may be. And it's like we are actually taking away the beauty of life when Jack, to your point, we're just chasing pleasure all the time because it takes more and more and more and more. Like every single day. There are pleasures, there are beauties, there are things that we should take time to stop and really appreciate. And that's what makes life good. It's not just the desserts as you talked about. So this is a great point.
[00:48:08] Speaker B: Yeah, not much to add. I know we gotta keep moving, but you know, just training them not to live for the next dopamine hit. I mean, obviously playing outside or something that's still playing, but, you know, that's something that, you know, man, I want to push my kids outside as much as possible. Obviously they're young right now and community as well. Like getting to. Getting to spend time with their friends doesn't always have to be in front of a screen. In fact, you know, go out and play ball, go out and climb trees, whatever it is. But, yeah, go out and touch grass, as they say. But this is a good one, Jack. Good one. All right, Joe, you're number three.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: Alrighty. Number three. A lack of parental spirituality.
And the key thing that I put underneath this is you can't give what you don't have.
You cannot give what you don't have.
So if a parent doesn't have a walk with God, if a parent doesn't have a.
If they don't open the Bible themselves, if the kid doesn't see you praying, if the kid doesn't see you not just going to church, but paying attention in church, worshiping, you know, singing out
[00:49:05] Speaker C: to God, being a part of it,
[00:49:06] Speaker A: being a part of church, engaging in Bible class, asking questions, making comments, signing up for the next potluck or whatever it may be that you need to do.
You can't give what you don't have. So this idea of what will keep the kids faithful, like, are you giving at your best? Does your kids see the open Bible in the morning as you prioritize God, does your kids see you do family worship at night? Does your kids see you, once again get on your knees in prayer or have prayer be the first thing? Man, I just heard of a car wreck. Let's pray about it. I'm trying to work on that myself. But does your kid see your spiritual walk? Kids will imitate so much. And so if you turn on sports or you turn on the news every night or whatever it may be, that's what kids will learn to do. And if you're on social media all the time, that's what kids will learn to do. So, yeah, it goes along with the involvement. It goes along the last one. But this is the. Once again, you can't give what you don't have. If a parent doesn't have a strong walk with God, how in the world is he ever going to pass that on to his kid? There's nothing to pass on. It's like having an empty jug of water and trying to pour water into the kid's water bottle like there's nothing there. You can't give what you don't have. And I think there's so much of this in the church where parents kind of feign or fake spirituality. And I'm not trying to call people out or be a jerk, but, like, truly, I think There's a lot where they don't really open the Bible at home. They're not really praying at home. They're not really living any of these things at home. And what.
[00:50:23] Speaker C: Going back to the thing like earlier, the Christianity is just the puzzle piece. It's just one part of life.
[00:50:29] Speaker A: Right, exactly. And so to me, this is a key one is your kid needs to see you living out your spirituality in every way. If he sees you cuss somebody out on the road with road rage, if he sees you cheat somebody in business, like that matters.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: Never sees you open your Bible at home.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: Correct. If he's never seen.
[00:50:47] Speaker C: I'm gonna roll mine in with this. Because you're getting on some of it there. Apparent sins. Because one of the other things you see a lot is hypocrisy. Mom and dad were in church every time they did have the Bible open. And dad was a rage monster. Or mom was always reading her mommy fictions, which are, you know, porn for women or things like that.
Yeah. Or that they were just. She was the gossip lady or whatever it was, or she was the angry one, you know, the. Or dad just. He would take us to church and then come home and we would never see him again. He'd just be back in his room, you know, in his office, whatever, and not talk to us. And you see people grow up and like, yeah, I don't believe in Christianity because of the hypocrites. And a lot of times they mean mom and dad. That's what they're talking about. And so mom and dad sins, those kind of things trickle down. And so the spiritual laziness you're talking about, that needs to be something that's out of our lives. And again, the Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And then right after that, teach your kids, you got to get your walk with God. Right.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: Part of that is because, you know, I can hear people. Oh, so I got to be perfect. No, it's not about being perfect. What it is about is being very self aware of the things that you struggle with. Of being, you know, not having a blind spot to your anger issue or your.
Yeah, like whatever it is that you struggle with for women, gossip or you know, the just obsession with entertainment or whatever it is. Like, you can't be blind to that because if you're self aware enough to know, obviously, then hopefully you're going to be working on. But then also once your kids reach a certain age, like being open with them about it, like, yes, I Know, I struggle with this. This is something that, you know, I'm working on. As opposed to presenting the perfect model to your kids. Oh, yes, this is, you know, perfect Christian here. But then, like, but you do this and you don't acknowledge it. Like, you might not even know about it, for instance. And so that's, to me, where, you know, just to combat anybody who might say, but. But parents can't be perfect and all these things. No, but you also should be held to a higher. You should be holding yourself to a higher standard. You know, you should not have the we're all just sinners mentality. Like, no, sure, you're gonna have things you struggle with, work to fix them. You know, that's the other thing is don't just be satisfied. Like, oh, yeah, I just. I have a cussing problem. What are you gonna do, you know? Like, no, fix that. Fix that. If you have a short fuse, if you. Well, man, I just lose my temper sometimes. Figure it out. Like, I think that's. That's. At the end of the day, that's. No, you don't have to be perfect, but you need to be aware enough of the things that you struggle with to actively work on them and acknowledge them to your kids. That'll combat a lot of the hypocrisy, accusations.
[00:53:13] Speaker C: And that is a great way, going back to that point about the constancy to purpose, to tell your kids, hey, I'm trying to teach you to act like Jesus. And I didn't. Right there. And so, hey, I'm just a serious. This is not me putting an unfair weight on you. Everybody in this family is pulling in that direction, including myself, and I expect myself to do it. And. And so I'm not asking you to do anything I'm not doing. I'm not gonna lead you anywhere that I'm not going myself. Yeah, like that owning. Because you're gonna make the mistakes, you're gonna stumble, you're gonna do things wrong.
Using that opportunity to point the kids back to, like, yeah, I. I want to do right too. And so I'm right there with you in this struggle. And so that's why I'm here to help you with it. I mean that if you won't do that, as you're saying will, that's where the hypocrisy accusations come in.
[00:53:58] Speaker A: And I think that's where first John, one walking in the light makes such a big difference. Like, your kids need to see you walking in the light. Walking the light doesn't mean you're perfect, as we've talked about before, it means you're bringing your sins into the light. You're living openly, you're living honestly. And when you can talk to your kids exactly as you guys are talking about, that makes such a difference. It's Paul calling out, man, I got a thorn in the flesh. I asked God to remove it three times.
My grace is sufficient. You know, Christ's power is perfected. In our weakness, we're pointing to the gospel. We use our sins and our mistakes to point toward a grace that we can't even begin to fathom. You know, how good God is.
And so we use ourselves initially to help point the kids to the gospel. And then we start bringing their sins in and pointing to their need of Christ, their need for Christ in the gospel. It all ties in, but it means we have to live openly and honestly, be open with our sins. So, Jagger, great point.
[00:54:45] Speaker C: I know we got one more to throw on here, but I'm going to just real quick. Your marriage is a really big part of this, too. If mom is constantly undermining dad and won't submit, your daughters are going to learn from that. Your sons are going to learn from that. If dad is treating mom poorly or if dad's just. Yes. During his entire life, the kids are going to learn from that. And so that is something you. Again, you don't have to have a perfect marriage, but you do have to have a marriage where you're trying to model what the Bible says to do, or your sons and daughters are going to end up shaped by what you do, and that's going to be an obstacle to their faithfulness. That brings up a question I want to throw to you guys very briefly, because I know we're going to run out of time here. Are the obstacles to youth faithfulness any different for boys and girls?
[00:55:25] Speaker B: I would say generically speaking, no. As you get into the specifics. Yes, absolutely.
That's my short answer.
[00:55:32] Speaker C: Sorry. Yeah.
[00:55:33] Speaker A: Like a parental diligence. Yes. Or to my. Or whatever. You know, the consistency like that's going to affect both of them. But the way that the dad talks to the son, the way he takes him up, you know, or trains him up and what they're raising them to is way different.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Like. And for all of mine so far, like, you know, the social media thing or the time investment, that parent. Like that. I think that applies to both.
Where the specifics get. Where you get into the specifics is where that differs. Jack, any thoughts to your own question there?
[00:56:02] Speaker C: Yeah, I Mean, I could see where some of them, like the one I mentioned about kind of the fear of man thing, girls are very much more open to persuasion, like the. The peer pressure. But boys are too boys. It might be the pride thing more, but it just kind of depends. It's very case by case. And so I just wanted to see what you guys had to think about that. All right, I know we got one
[00:56:19] Speaker B: more, but, yeah, and you moved off. Man, I have so many thoughts on the marriage point. Like.
But, like, no, it's one of those, like. Yeah, if you don't get along with each other and you don't look like you. You like each other, then, yeah, that's gonna have a pretty negative impact on your kids.
[00:56:31] Speaker C: And then you walk into church and you're the power couple. Like, your kids are going to see straight in your breath.
[00:56:36] Speaker B: Yeah. All right, my third one, I feel, like, appropriate one to end on here. I put as far as an obstacle to youth faithfulness, visionless leadership. Visionless leadership. To me, this applies to church leadership. This applies to parents, of course. Proverbs 28:19, where there's no vision, the people perish, of course, is very well quoted. I'm using another analogy here.
If a business, an organization had a just monumental task in front of them, right? Something that was going to be a pretty big challenge for them to achieve a goal, to hit a project, to complete, whatever it may be, right?
There would be intense planning going on, meetings, right? There would be intense brainstorming, plotting, budgeting, and then there'd be constant reevaluating. There'd be quarter by quarter, updates, revisions again, more and more planning, and. Okay, well, let's fix this. Let's tweak this. There'd be weekly disciplines. There'd be monthly disciplines to. All right, you know, are we on pace, Right? Are we on track? You know, what do we need to change? And just constant, constant planning and reevaluating all those things.
Do we do any of that with our kids? Whether that be from, again, a church leadership perspective or a parent perspective. Because raising children to be faithful to God is one of the most monumental tasks that there is, in my opinion, of taking a kid for 18 years or however long they're in your home and shaping them, molding their free will. To Jack's point earlier in the episode, shaping and molding their free will, shaping and molding their behavior, shaping and molding their heart to get them to. To be a faithful disciple of God. That is a monumental task. I mean, it's something that Israel repeatedly struggled with in the Old Testament, right? God's like, hey, teach your kids so they don't forget. And they forgot. Like it's just, that's just what they did time and time again.
So it's a monumental task. A business would, would, would just, it's a no brainer again. Quarter by quarter, updates and plans and meetings and all these things.
Do we do any of that with our kids or is it kind of like, okay, let's see where the day goes. Okay, well we're dealing with this right now. Let's just kind of navigate it day by day.
Do we even have a plan of action? Do we even have a strategy? That's where the vision less leadership comes in. Again, from a church perspective, we, we've decried that before. That we scream about youth faithfulness and it's like, what's our plan? Well, send them to lads to leaders and make sure they come to youth devos. Like that's not a plan. And then for parents it's the same thing. Right. Just seems to be an extreme lack of leadership. And so to me, where these tie to each other is that a vision less church will enable vision less parents. Obviously in the day it's on the parents to make sure that their kids are faithful. We talked about that a ton. But I think if you're a part of a church that does not have a vision, then you will mirror that and it just once again becomes a day by day fly by the seat of your pants as opposed to. No, We've got this huge task before us. We better plan and we better figure out how we're going to do it and we better constantly reassess, reevaluate, tweak, change things if needed. I feel like a lot of times leadership is not doing that. So that's, that's, that was my third obstacle.
[00:59:33] Speaker C: That goes back to the. Oh, sorry. Well, just briefly, that loud kids thing we talked about last week, like churches should be involved in helping parents and for some reason, like that's just kind of one of those. Well, I hope they get saved and if they do well, we'll be around to put them in the youth group or like that. As you say, not much of a plan.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: Well, I was just going to say, Jack, you mentioned earlier, multi generational faithfulness.
There are like stages to this of yes, the long term vision of 250 years thinking about faithfulness. There's the vision of just this year. What are we hoping to accomplish this year? Even just this month or this week? What do we need to do in the next 10 years or by the time the kid gets out? So I think there's. To your point, Will, like having a vision for not just super long in the future and not just today, but incrementally all along the way. What are we trying to accomplish here? By the time that Harrison leaves the house, he's seven. I got, you know, I don't know, 11, like you said. I hope he doesn't leave at 18. I'm hoping that maybe he can do college from home, whatever it may be. But we'll explore that as we get closer. Let's just say it's 11 years.
Okay? What do I want him to know by then? Can we lay out the vision for what that ought to look like, what he ought to look like as a young Christian man? Man by 18? And then can I lay out the vision for what he should have accomplished by 60, 70, 80 years when I'm long gone? Can we think about what that should look like for him and how we can best set him up? Because that does start now. And so I think you're right that this is such a key point, and it goes along with the culture point we talk about a lot. It goes along with a lot of things, but it's like what we decide to do as a family, what we decide to do as a church.
The vision statements that churches have. Some churches do that I find to be a little more.
I don't know what the type, what the right word would be, like, kitschy, maybe. Just. I'm not a huge fan of the vision statement. So we're going to have this. We're going to have that. It's more of the direction, in my opinion, of this is where we're going.
[01:01:20] Speaker B: A strategy, A plan.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. A plan is. You're talking about, like, the plan to get there, rather than we just hope this is going to happen, like. But how Brass tax year. What are we going to do to get there? And I think a lot of parents that they sat down and just had a weekend to themselves, if they could get their kids watched and they just made a plan for what this looks like?
So let's talk about how do we navigate these particular struggles and obstacles coming up? You know, what is our plan with the kids? How do we navigate xyz? I think it'd be huge. It's a great point. Jack, any other thoughts for Will?
[01:01:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, just so much of this comes down to expectation. And when you set expectation. We've talked a lot about Parents, if you say, well, I expect the kids to do this, well, that brings you into the involvement. That means you've got to figure out how you're going to help them meet those expectations. And without the expectations, the parents don't have to make that kind of consideration. The church doesn't have to make that consideration.
That's where it all has to start. And that goes back to what we've been talking about with the generations. I expect these kids not only to be members of the church, but to raise members of the church. And again, I'm not taking away their free will. All that garbage people throw at us. It's okay to expect this, it's okay to desire this. It's okay to tell our kids, this is what we want you to do when you grow up. This is what we're helping you towards and all of those kinds of things.
Because here's the other thing. We haven't been doing that, and how's that working out for us? So I really don't want to hear the critiques from people who are okay with maintaining a status quo where most of the kids leave the faith. Like, sorry, you guys don't get to talk anymore. You just don't. You're done. And where you, you've.
You don't get to fail that many times. And then keep being, keep controlling the narrative. You're done. And so you got to start thinking about these things, whether it's public school, whether it's family divos, whether it's male headship in the home and the dad, setting the expectations and communicating to the wife and then working together, set the. All of these kinds of things we talk about. And people go, ew, like, sorry, how's it working out for you?
At the end of last year, we had our start of this year. The biggest challenge is facing the church. I said youth faithfulness is still number one. And until we figure it out, we should not really be dealing with anything else. And so I'm glad we did this episode. And I hope these obstacles are things that help parents, help churches, help people think through. What are we doing about these obstacles?
[01:03:29] Speaker B: Nothing to add. I mean, it's just something that we're going to be navigating for the next decade. And yeah, we just, we. We're passionate about keeping kids faithful. And so I appreciate all these, appreciate both these guys putting their list together. And as was already said, we'd love to hear your thoughts, specifically if you've navigated some of these and come out strong on the other side. With social media or the time investment or dealing with the worldly pleasures, pride, any of the stuff that was covered. So we'd love to hear. And then, of course, if you have any others that would make the list, we want to hear that as well. So, guys, I think we're going to wrap right there. We'll look forward to talking to our deep thinkers on what is it Friday for the deep end and everybody else in a week. Talk to you then.
[01:04:18] Speaker C: Foreign.
Hey guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars, and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.
