Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - November 15, 2021


Ep 523 ｜ How to Biblically Teach Your Kids About Sex & Gender ｜ Guest： Hillary Morgan Ferrer


Episode Stats

Length

42 minutes

Words per Minute

190.5531

Word Count

8,180

Sentence Count

425

Misogynist Sentences

12

Hate Speech Sentences

14


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey, guys. Welcome to Relatable. I've got an awesome conversation for you today with
00:00:15.640 Hilary Morgan Fair. She is the founder of the organization Mama Bear Apologetics. She
00:00:23.340 has written two books, Mama Bear Apologetics, and now she's got a new Mama Bear Apologetics
00:00:28.740 book, specifically in regards to talking about sexuality and gender with your kids. She's
00:00:35.600 awesome. The organization is awesome. I know that a lot of you have read the books and you've gotten
00:00:39.520 a lot of wisdom from it. So she's got a lot of advice for us today, a lot of encouragement for
00:00:44.400 moms, want-to-be moms, for aunts, for grandparents. If you are a mentor in any way, a teacher,
00:00:53.240 if you are discipling in any way the next generation, this conversation is for you.
00:00:58.120 So without further ado, here is Hilary. Hilary, thank you so much for joining us. We have been
00:01:05.960 wanting to have you on for so long. Can you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what
00:01:11.160 you do? Yes. My name is Hilary Morgan Ferrer, and I am the founder and the Mama Bear in chief of
00:01:17.780 Mama Bear Apologetics. And we are a ministry that is aimed specifically at moms, trying to teach them
00:01:24.320 apologetics, which for some of you may not know what that is. It's just giving a reasonable,
00:01:29.380 rational defense of the Christian faith. And so a lot of times we teach our kids what to believe
00:01:34.820 when it comes to the Bible, but not why we believe it. And so for them to have a firm foundation,
00:01:40.600 I think about Hebrews 1, where it says, you know, faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain
00:01:46.100 of what we do not see. Now, of course, it has different translations. But sometimes people pit
00:01:51.320 faith and apologetics against each other. And I'm saying, no, like if you look at this definition,
00:01:56.580 anything that makes you more sure, anything that makes you more certain is actually increasing your
00:02:01.480 faith. So we're doing it from the perspective of science, from history, philosophy, archaeology,
00:02:07.600 just whatever it is in this world that actually reaffirms the Christian worldview. That's what we're
00:02:13.000 teaching kids how to do so that they can really stand up and say, no, I don't believe Christianity
00:02:18.120 because this is what I've been raised in. I believe it because I actually think it's true.
00:02:22.300 The more your kids think that it's actually true, the more grounded and the more fierce they will be
00:02:26.560 for their faith. So you just released a book on how to talk to your kids about the apologetics of
00:02:31.840 Christian sexuality. But you wrote a book a few years ago now, Mama Bear Apologetics. Tell me,
00:02:39.440 and you kind of just articulated it, but what was the need that you saw when you decided to write that
00:02:46.520 book? Was it that you looked around and you saw, wow, a lot of moms want to teach their kids
00:02:51.140 apologetics, but they don't know how? Or was it kind of an increase in some of the questions that
00:02:59.000 kids are having now about some of, you know, the secular ideology that in a lot of cases is being
00:03:04.720 pushed upon them in a new way through media, social media school and all of that, a combination of
00:03:09.980 it? Or what was the thing that drove you to write the first book?
00:03:13.460 Yeah. So we actually had a publisher come to us after we'd been doing the ministry for about a
00:03:18.200 year and say, we want a Mama Bear Apologetics book. So I started looking at what was currently
00:03:23.400 out there and a lot of what was currently out there really went through, here's a question,
00:03:27.760 here's an answer. Here's a question, here's an answer. And as I was looking at it, I'm thinking
00:03:32.080 all these questions are coming from somewhere. One of the things that we really like to do is we like
00:03:37.200 to burrow deep down underneath the question to say, what is the worldview that is fueling this
00:03:42.380 question? So the idea of, you know, can science disprove God? That's like a big question that
00:03:47.680 sometimes kids have. Well, that assumes that someone has a naturalistic perspective, meaning
00:03:52.100 that the natural world is all we have. Or from the scientism perspective of the only way for true
00:03:59.600 knowledge is through science. That's a whole worldview right there. And if they have already
00:04:03.920 bought into this worldview, well, then yeah, can science disprove God? But when you start looking
00:04:09.160 at that worldview, that worldview, we don't treat it as true for lots of different things in our world,
00:04:14.580 but we also address things like postmodernism in there. The question, it's like, we can't even
00:04:20.620 begin to tell our kids that Christianity is true unless they believe there's such a thing as truth.
00:04:27.280 And so we've had that completely eroded away from us. And furthermore, now we've had emotions,
00:04:33.760 emotionalism is what we call it, come in and say, okay, well, maybe you can know truth,
00:04:38.080 but it's, it's all based on your emotions. And the more you feel it, the more true it is. So
00:04:43.020 it's really getting to the crux. I compare it when you're just kind of answering the questions. I
00:04:48.560 think those are really, really important because kids need those quick answers. But I call it like
00:04:53.560 the, that game at the arcade, the whack-a-mole, where one comes up and you whack it and another one
00:04:59.440 comes up and you whack it. And it's like, it's just this never ending process. But if we can start
00:05:04.040 them out on a worldview that actually explains reality and kind of bypasses a lot of the
00:05:09.800 questions, it's like the questions won't even make sense if you've already taught them the correct
00:05:14.480 worldview. Yes, that's absolutely true. And I love that comparison of whack-a-mole because really
00:05:22.280 that's not what, that's not how we want our kids to approach all of these issues. Because when I think
00:05:26.980 of whack-a-mole, I think of kind of being directionless and distracted and just reacting
00:05:32.620 to the different problems that are popping up. But like you said, if you lay that foundation,
00:05:39.860 then the questions kind of start to be answered themselves when you think about, okay, I don't
00:05:45.440 know this, or I've never heard this before, but here's what I, here's what I do know. And I realized,
00:05:51.860 and this is not something that I learned growing up. I didn't learn catechisms growing up,
00:05:56.080 but I was raised in a Christian home and I went to a Christian school and went to church and all
00:06:00.680 of that. And I'm so thankful. I do think that that laid a foundation for me. But I think some of the
00:06:06.540 very foundational apologetics questions about who I am, what God made me to be, what it means to be
00:06:15.520 made in God's image, what that purpose is that's attached to that, what belonging is that's attached
00:06:20.720 to that. I don't think I really, I don't think I really asked those questions or knew the answers
00:06:26.520 to those questions. And I do think moms are waking up now realizing, oh, these are basic questions that
00:06:34.840 I really have to be able to answer for my kids.
00:06:37.560 Yeah. In fact, we talk about how a lot of times Christian parents are intending to teach a world,
00:06:43.680 a Christian worldview, but what they're doing is they're teaching from a Christian worldview,
00:06:47.760 but they are not teaching a Christian worldview. And I know that that sounds like I'm splitting hairs,
00:06:52.220 but think about it is like the teaching from a Christian worldview is teaching from the assumptions
00:06:57.560 that they already have, maybe their knowledge that they already have about what the Christian
00:07:01.860 worldview says. And it's like, they're kind of expecting their kids to just pick up on what that
00:07:06.900 whole story is. Because the Christian worldview really makes sense of reality from beginning to end.
00:07:12.320 And it's got something called teleology that's in it. It's something that we use in biology a lot.
00:07:17.120 It's this idea that things are created for a purpose and the end goal was in mind
00:07:21.680 before it was created. Like someone didn't invent a printer and be like, whoa, it prints stuff. It's
00:07:26.920 like they set out specifically to create a printer. They had an end goal in mind. When we look at the
00:07:32.760 Christian worldview, we see from beginning to end that before the foundations of the earth,
00:07:38.380 God had a plan for the salvation of mankind. And everything that we see is working towards that.
00:07:43.660 All of our pieces of reality, including the effects of the fall. How do we see the effects
00:07:50.240 of the fall? How do we see examples of what good design there still does exist? Because if we say
00:07:55.240 that, oh, this effect of the fall, that means God's a bad designer. Well, we ignore the fact that we live
00:07:59.980 in a fallen world. Or if we take something that's fallen and we say, well, that's how God intended it
00:08:05.320 to be. Again, we've negated the idea of the fall, but we can see both of them. We can see what God
00:08:10.780 intended and how we've deviated from it. And so going on towards redemption and then later on into
00:08:17.320 redemption, this whole story makes sense. Once you put all those pieces together and we can't just be
00:08:24.800 teaching all these little pieces, our kids need to know what the whole story looks like and how
00:08:29.920 everything they experienced fits into that story. Yeah. And I think that's something that is missing
00:08:36.380 from a lot of Christian education today. Like I said, I got a Christian education. I'm very thankful
00:08:42.020 for that. But it was teaching from a biblical worldview, which is better than teaching from
00:08:46.640 a secular worldview, certainly. But honestly, it wasn't until I read, maybe it was mere Christianity
00:08:53.700 that made me start thinking about where does all of this come from? And what about the questions
00:09:00.140 that people outside of the biblical worldview have about truth? C.S. Lewis answers a lot of those
00:09:06.060 questions very beautifully in mere Christianity, but also, and I'm sure you've read, well, I'm assuming
00:09:11.800 that you've read Love Thy Body by Nancy Piercy. That's another great book that talks about teleology.
00:09:17.820 And I love that you're breaking that down for parents, how we teach what seems like a very confusing
00:09:22.520 and adult concept to kids, not why just why we should, but why it's absolutely necessary
00:09:28.160 for laying that foundation. Do you think that some of the questions that parents are wrestling with
00:09:35.320 today are more complicated, more difficult, and in some ways more dangerous than moms have had to in
00:09:42.760 the past? Absolutely. So when people say, how has this sex talk changed? I'm like, how much time do we
00:09:49.320 have this idea of, you know, it used to start out with, you know, when there's a mommy and a daddy?
00:09:54.540 Well, now we have, we've gotten rid of the idea of there even being being mommies and daddies. Okay,
00:09:59.040 so maybe we'll start out when there's a man and when it when there's a woman, wait, hold on,
00:10:03.400 we can't even teach that anymore. And it's like, we have to go back into what is male and what is
00:10:09.600 female. Yeah. And because our society is telling our kids that these are social constructs,
00:10:14.100 that if we can make them, and we can unmake them, then kids have no concept of that our bodies have
00:10:21.360 a purpose, they have a teleology, our sexuality has a purpose, it has a teleology, marriage has a
00:10:27.020 purpose, the teleology, family has a purpose, it has a teleology. And if we mess with any of these
00:10:33.320 things, we are really messing with the image of God. There was a quote from John Piper in a book that
00:10:39.900 my husband gave me while we were dating, because this is what nerds in love give each other on
00:10:43.920 dates for birthdays and stuff. But it was called Sex and the Supremacy of Christ. And it's that kind
00:10:49.380 of a compilation of essays that were done from a conference that he'd done. And one of his main
00:10:54.740 points, he said he had two main points. And that is that our sexuality and our ability to see God
00:11:00.920 correctly are intricately intertwined. And you cannot introduce a deviation in one without introducing a
00:11:08.100 deviation in the other. And likewise, he said, you know, on the same on the same line of thought, if you
00:11:13.900 already have a deviation in one, you will have a deviation in the other. And it's, you know, we'd love for
00:11:19.920 it not to be that way. But from all our experience, that's what it looks like. And in fact, you even look
00:11:24.820 back at all the rules about sexuality in the Old Testament, what do you see time and time again, that when
00:11:31.880 Israel started going the way of like the Asherah poles and the temple prostitution, like whenever they got
00:11:37.740 away from the biblical view of sex, they didn't just get promiscuous, they got pagan, because their
00:11:44.160 view of God literally changed by having that distortion in their sexuality. And that's something
00:11:48.660 that we just don't teach anymore, because I think a lot of us don't even realize that we have kind of
00:11:54.100 absorbed what the culture says that sex is about consent and pleasure. And that's it. That's our only
00:12:00.160 two things that we can use about if something is moral, or not consent and pleasure. But we've
00:12:06.280 completely distorted the image of God just by distorting our sexualities.
00:12:14.140 I think it's easy for moms. It's certainly easy for me as I am, you know, raising kids right now,
00:12:21.180 and we're not to the age quite yet of having all of these conversations. But we are to the age of,
00:12:26.820 you know, where my two-year-old, without us really having to explicitly teach her these things,
00:12:31.240 notices the difference between men and women, between mommies and daddies. And actually,
00:12:34.760 one of her favorite things is to go around when she's at a park, see the boys, see the girls,
00:12:40.420 see mama, see dada. You know, mama is a woman, daddy is a man. Like, I don't even remember,
00:12:46.040 I honestly don't even remember explicitly teaching her these things, but it's natural. And it breaks
00:12:52.580 my heart thinking about one day, in the hopes of trying to defend her against unbiblical teachings
00:12:59.500 and unscientific teachings about male and female that I almost have to confuse her with talking
00:13:04.800 about some people don't believe these things. And it's easy for me to be nostalgic about a time
00:13:11.620 when it was just easy. It was just easy.
00:13:13.520 And it was assumed. Everybody was on the same page.
00:13:15.920 But at the same time, I'm thankful that it has caused me to have to think about the why behind
00:13:23.660 these things. It's not enough just to be able to say, well, here's what we are. But I have to
00:13:29.140 wrestle with the teleology, which makes me more faithful. It makes me more thoughtful. It makes
00:13:33.980 me dig into God's Word more in a way that maybe our parents, you know, 90s, 80s, 70s, didn't really
00:13:40.200 have—didn't have to do. And maybe they weren't stronger for it. But now I feel like I am stronger
00:13:46.180 in my faith and my thoughtfulness because I'm having to think through these things for a kid.
00:13:50.780 So in that way, it can kind of be seen as a blessing, right?
00:13:54.440 Mm-hmm. And you're kind of in the privileged class right there in the sense that I have friends
00:13:59.320 that are up in Washington and up in Oregon. And when they go to the—these are strong Christians—and
00:14:04.040 when they go to the playground, the first questions on the playground between parents are what
00:14:10.100 pronouns does your child use. Oh, goodness gracious. And this is something that it's like
00:14:13.920 for kids that aren't even in school, this is things that they're imbibing right there. And so
00:14:17.860 they're really being forced to grapple with it in real time. But I would encourage you with one thing
00:14:23.960 about when to be talking with your kids about this. And there's a psychological phenomenon that
00:14:29.360 I have yet to be able to find the name for. I'm just going to call it the founder's principle. I
00:14:34.000 have no idea if that's the name of it or not. But I've talked to psychologists, and they all agree
00:14:37.820 this is a real thing. And that is the first person to introduce you to a concept automatically becomes
00:14:43.880 the expert in that concept. So like my friend Elisa Childers did this with her daughter,
00:14:49.660 I think when Dylan was like maybe eight or nine, ten, somewhere around there, and just asked her
00:14:55.440 what she knew about different kinds of sexualities. And had she heard of homosexuality? And at the time,
00:15:00.320 Dylan hadn't heard about it. And so she just said, okay, well, this is kind of what it is.
00:15:06.000 If you hear people talking about it, and you have more questions, come to me.
00:15:10.280 She got there early, and she got there fast. And to this day, her daughter will ask her questions.
00:15:16.560 She invited that conversation. And she established herself as the expert. She grounded her in God's
00:15:23.180 truth. But she also said, these are some of the other ideas that are out there. When you encounter
00:15:28.080 them, come to me and we'll talk about it. And yeah, until this day, Dylan feels totally comfortable
00:15:33.600 talking with Elisa about these things. And how do we know, and I'm sure you address this
00:15:38.200 in your book, but I think some parents struggle with when to introduce those kinds of concepts to
00:15:44.640 kids, because you don't want to confuse them when they're just, you know, making sense of the world.
00:15:50.800 And when they're just developing language, like I'm not going to teach my two-year-old that some
00:15:54.860 people go by they them. She's just figuring out plural and singular and things like that. But at the
00:16:00.420 same time, like you want to get there first and you want to lay the foundation. And so how do parents
00:16:06.940 know when it might actually be more harmful than helpful to introduce kids to other ideas? And when
00:16:14.440 it's actually necessary to make sure that you're the first one, you know, influencing them in regards
00:16:21.620 to those issues? I would say it's always going to be earlier than you think. And the main reason I say
00:16:27.320 that is because this is absolutely inundating cartoons right now. Amy, the one who is a
00:16:33.640 contributor to this book, she and I went on to the Mama Bear Facebook page and asked all the women on
00:16:39.560 there, just kind of crowdsourced and said, have you noticed any LGBT characters in your kids' cartoons?
00:16:47.440 And I kid you not, within less than an hour, we had 150 comments. So these are in cartoons. And so as
00:16:55.520 soon as your child starts watching cartoons, they're going to start seeing this stuff.
00:17:00.180 And so it's like, you know, but I would agree with you on one sense to the idea of really going into
00:17:05.660 the details. There's a verse that I've already always liked that was from Song of Solomon that
00:17:10.500 says, do not awaken love until it so desires. In that sense, I think sometimes sexuality really is
00:17:17.320 like an on-off switch that like once it's on, it's on. And this is why childhood sexual abuse is just
00:17:23.020 creates such harm, because it turns on a switch that was not supposed to be turned on. But so we
00:17:28.880 don't want to give them all the gruesome details. So one of the things that I talk about in the book
00:17:32.940 is creating categories, because as your kids are growing up, they're trying to kind of filter what
00:17:38.940 you're teaching them, and they're putting it into categories. So right now, the concept of sex
00:17:44.340 is in the category of things, you know, I'll just say the secular category is things that dating
00:17:50.760 people do, or things that guys and girls do when they get a certain age. If we establish a category
00:17:56.200 of something that is so powerful that it can create, and it can destroy, we can we can talk to
00:18:02.960 them about all these categories, nuclear warheads, certain prescriptions, you know, a really big dog
00:18:08.860 on a leash, you know, all these things, anything that's powerful enough to create or destroy, or that
00:18:14.580 is so powerful that it can be harmful if misused. All of those need to be guarded and guided. So
00:18:21.540 all those things that we talk about being protected, you know, you really protect and guard
00:18:25.860 nuclear warheads, the Mona Lisa is behind glass and way away from the tourists, because not only
00:18:33.100 is it powerful, but it has value, which is one of the other categories that we want to say things that
00:18:38.920 are so valuable that they require protection. Because once you start introducing these categories into
00:18:44.080 our kids heads, later on, then when you're having the sex talk, you can say, remember things that
00:18:48.740 are so powerful that, you know, if they're not used correctly, they can destroy. That's where sex
00:18:54.100 fits in. Or you know about your body, how we talked about things that are so valuable that you have to
00:18:59.040 guard it, that would be your body, because your body, what you do with your body matters. But we're
00:19:04.080 establishing these, these categories, the correct categories, really early on without having to go into
00:19:10.040 all the, you know, nitty gritty details of what sex is. Yeah. You know, I was thinking about,
00:19:15.080 I was thinking about this yesterday. There is obviously a desire by Christian moms to make sure
00:19:19.700 that our kids know this stuff and are being discipled in this way. I also think that there
00:19:26.680 is a fear, an understandable fear of every parent that doesn't want their kid to stand out, that doesn't
00:19:32.840 want their kid to be bullied. They certainly don't want their kid to be seen as, as hateful,
00:19:38.180 or to be the one who is different. And especially if you've got those friends whose kids are in
00:19:43.400 public or even private school in these more liberal schools, the kid who says, yeah, I'm not going to
00:19:48.960 give my pronouns at the beginning of class, or sorry, I'm not going to call this boy a girl, or I'm
00:19:55.300 going to stand up for biblical values in any way. But certainly in regards to so-called gender identity
00:20:00.360 and sexuality, I think parents fear that their kid is going to be seen as hateful. That's the last
00:20:06.420 thing that you want your kid to be seen as. You don't want your kids to struggle making friends,
00:20:10.320 to be rejected by friends' parents or siblings or whatever. So what's your encouragement to parents
00:20:15.840 who want their kids to be so firmly established in this? They want them to be loving. They want
00:20:22.020 them to be truly compassionate, as the Bible defines these things. And they're afraid of their
00:20:25.960 kids being excluded or maligned or even punished by the school if they do stand up for these biblical
00:20:34.060 values. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I think preparation, we can't change what's going
00:20:40.540 to happen. Like I mentioned in the book that being called a goody-goody or a Bible thumper or, you know,
00:20:45.940 all these different things, that's, you know, maybe what we had to deal with back when we were in high
00:20:49.560 school or a nerd or a prude, whatever. That's not what they're being called now. They are being shamed
00:20:54.800 out of their Christian beliefs by being called hateful, hurtful, monster, abusive, you know,
00:20:59.940 all the things. Pro-suicide. I mean, the worst things that a person could possibly be, you are
00:21:05.960 called if you just say a man is a man. That's hard for us as adults, people who are firmly
00:21:11.500 established in our beliefs and have our community and have our identity. But how, I mean, think about
00:21:17.400 being an adolescent where it's already difficult dealing with peer pressure. I mean, that's just
00:21:22.540 such a vulnerable place for kids to be. Yeah. And this is where I think, so I used to use the
00:21:29.340 word persecution. I had someone point out to me, like, let's not use that word. We don't want to
00:21:33.980 downplay the actual persecution that's going on, you know, over in third world countries with pastors
00:21:39.660 that are being beheaded and all that stuff. But one of the things that I do think we need to be
00:21:44.500 preparing our kids for is hostility preparation, being prepared to have a hostile response. So that's one
00:21:52.160 thing. Now, sometimes kids— Sorry, just let me say, let me say on the persecution point, because
00:21:56.940 I know people do push back on that, and I have pushed back on it myself. But I believe it's
00:22:02.460 1 Timothy. Sometimes I forget the references as they come to my head. I mean, we're told that all
00:22:07.420 who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. So Christian in America, Christian
00:22:13.960 in China, persecution might not be the same. But I mean, we're also told that, you know, all of the
00:22:21.060 struggle that we go through in the name of Christ is building for us an eternal glory that will far
00:22:26.900 outweigh them all. So that is slander or slaughter. So I just want to say, you know, I know people push
00:22:33.280 back against that word persecution. It is a spectrum. It looks different. Everyone who desires to live a
00:22:38.560 life of godliness in Christ will be persecuted in some way. That's just my take on that. I didn't mean
00:22:43.340 to interrupt you. Okay, no worries. I just used the word hostility preparation. Yes. Just because I feel
00:22:48.580 like that's a little more accurate of what we have going on. So I think preparing our kids for that,
00:22:53.260 because we really need to be preparing them to live in exile, because culture is not reinforcing
00:22:58.540 our beliefs right now. And so we need to know what it looks like to live in exile. And it's going to
00:23:03.200 be different than when we're growing up in the Judeo-Christian worldview was kind of mixed in with a
00:23:08.940 lot of things. You know, sure, you had kids partying and drinking and doing whatever, but,
00:23:12.880 you know, you could avoid it for the most part. So I would say that, but also, I think preparing
00:23:20.680 kids to know that other viewpoints exist. Because one of the things that I've noticed is when you
00:23:25.440 have a kid that's really super sheltered, and all they know is what their parents have taught them and
00:23:30.920 what all their church friends know, when they encounter a different worldview, their first immediate
00:23:36.980 instinct, and I've seen this so many times, and I'm sure I've been this person, is, oh my gosh,
00:23:42.380 who would believe that? That's so dumb, because they've never heard it before. And so part of
00:23:47.960 being compassionate is knowing to expect that there are other worldviews that are there. And
00:23:52.960 okay, now that we know that, how do we engage it with compassion and with love without compromising
00:23:58.820 truth? Because I think we're seeing a polarization taking place that either people kind of are wielding
00:24:05.380 the hammer of truth, and they're kind of coming off like clanging gongs, or in their desire to be
00:24:10.460 loving, they're just compromising truth. And so if there's any kind of balance that we need to be
00:24:15.520 teaching our kids, it's how to do those at the same time to be uncompromising about truth,
00:24:20.920 and uncompromising about loving the other person. And so we go into that a lot in the book of like,
00:24:26.740 how do we do this in on the playground and in the real world where we have a lot of,
00:24:32.200 frankly, crazy ideas out there.
00:24:33.680 What about parents who maybe feel secure, insecure in their own faith? And they think,
00:24:43.840 who am I to disciple my kids? I don't even know. I don't even know what I'm talking about. But they
00:24:48.920 look at the craziness that's going on in the world. They're like, well, I know I don't want my kids to
00:24:53.240 learn that. But I don't even know where to begin when it comes to this stuff, even in my own faith.
00:24:58.720 What's your advice for them?
00:25:01.700 That's kind of what we created this ministry for. A lot of people assume that we do kids apologetics
00:25:07.060 and like, you know, kids this and kids that. And we don't. I always let people know our demographic
00:25:12.220 is moms and for a couple of different reasons. Number one, several years ago, right before I
00:25:17.900 started Mama Bear Apologetics, I had a friend of mine who made it clear to me that there are these
00:25:23.480 large swaths demographics of women who will not read something unless it's by a woman for a woman.
00:25:30.480 And so I thought, oh, my gosh, then who's getting them the apologetics?
00:25:34.560 But the books are specifically for and just all our resources are specifically for have kind of a
00:25:40.260 twofold purpose is to first equip the moms so then they can turn around and equip their kids.
00:25:45.980 So first, we want to make sure that the moms understand what we're talking about,
00:25:49.280 breaking it down into a really practical language. I think sometimes when it comes to
00:25:54.580 male teaching and female teaching, guys kind of get out their separate boxes and they're like,
00:25:59.200 well, I'm in my apologetics box right now or now I'm in my work box and they can just
00:26:02.920 close those boxes and put them aside. But women, you know what they say, we're like that plate of
00:26:07.400 spaghetti. Everything mixes up. We need to see how something's practical. How's what I'm learning
00:26:12.680 going to affect the conversation I have with my neighbor on the playground or with my neighbor at church or
00:26:18.340 with my kids? It's like we want to know how is this information useful and practical and how do
00:26:24.240 I present it to someone else? In fact, one of my colleagues, Mary Jo Sharp, says that a lot of times
00:26:29.580 when she's doing an apologetics conference, she finds that the men come because they're trying to
00:26:35.440 answer their own questions. And a lot of times the women come because they have someone else who has
00:26:40.380 a question that they're trying to help. And so I'd say when you feel insecure about not knowing stuff,
00:26:46.740 I think that's when fear creeps in. And that's also when avoidance creeps in because you feel
00:26:50.960 like, well, I can't do it. So I'm just going to stay away from that. And I don't think that we have
00:26:56.480 that luxury anymore, especially with the amount of repetition that is going on within just the
00:27:02.900 broader sexual agenda. We just don't have that luxury. So mama's equipping yourself first. That is
00:27:08.700 the first thing. And then within the books, we take different ways of here's some games you can do with
00:27:13.060 your kids to now break this information down into kid language so that you can have these
00:27:18.900 conversations. And, you know, like all good teachers know, you just need to be one step ahead of your
00:27:23.620 student. Like, yeah, you don't have to know you don't have to know everything. And I think that is
00:27:29.760 super encouraging and super equipping for a lot of people. And we also have to realize that,
00:27:34.900 you know, the secular world, whether it's social media, media, the cartoons that you're talking
00:27:42.700 about, some of the curriculum that we are seeing in schools, like they are not worried about whether
00:27:50.460 or not they are experts before they're going to indoctrinate and disciple your child. Like the
00:27:56.240 secular world is keen on discipling your child and shaping their ideas and shaping their thoughts about
00:28:02.360 identity and sexuality and morality, how the world works. And they are banking on,
00:28:08.780 they're banking on the fact that parents don't feel like experts. They're banking on the fact that
00:28:13.520 parents are delegating the responsibility of discipleship and education solely to, you know,
00:28:21.060 YouTube and teachers and, and, and things like that. And we're even hearing from some politicians
00:28:28.200 that parents should not be in charge of their child's education that leave it to the experts,
00:28:32.520 which are apparently these teachers and administrators and, you know, teachers unions
00:28:36.480 and, and things like that. And so some parents might actually have internalized to that without
00:28:41.620 realizing it. They might have actually believed, well, the state knows better. Teachers know better.
00:28:47.100 Even Sunday school teachers know better. All of these, you know, entities, people might be,
00:28:52.340 they might be in some cases, you know, really great people, especially, you know,
00:28:55.360 church and things like that. It's still not the primary responsibility of anyone other than the
00:29:00.800 parent to educate kids on the things that matter. Yeah. And this seems like it's almost a relic of
00:29:07.240 the industrial revolution. Well, we started outsourcing everything. We now outsource the
00:29:12.840 discipleship of our kids. We now outsource the education of our kids. And I would just say that,
00:29:18.660 you know, not all the stuff that the secular world is doing is super duper brilliant and convincing
00:29:23.740 our kids through really sound arguments. Honestly, much of what I see going on is repetition. In fact,
00:29:29.300 there's a book called thinking fast and slow by I believe his name is pronounced David Kahneman.
00:29:34.820 But he has a phrase in that book that I have all over this book, just because I keep saying if
00:29:39.900 there's something that you need to remember, this is it. And that's that the brain has a hard time
00:29:44.240 distinguishing between that which is familiar, and that which is true. So meaning that you hear
00:29:50.120 something enough, eventually, you just accept it as true without any good reasons. And so that's why
00:29:56.200 we included that is true. That is just that's true for adults, too. That's not just kids, man. Yeah.
00:30:02.280 Thomas Sowell just on that Thomas Sowell. He has a similar quote. He says some things we believe are
00:30:07.800 true because they're demonstrably true. Some things we believe are true, because we've heard it a lot.
00:30:14.280 Um, and that is the exact same principle. So that's very true. Love Thomas Sowell. Uh, we have we have
00:30:22.220 an afterward in the book, it was going to be a chapter, but I felt like chapter 13 was like a
00:30:26.340 really good stopping place. But it's an afterward. It's about a chapter long, but it's titled
00:30:30.160 things to repeat to your kids until they want to gag. And it's this idea that lasting maxims. It's like
00:30:36.640 these are the things you keep repeating over and over again, because really repetition isn't like good
00:30:40.880 or bad. It's just a tool, like anything, and it burrows things so deep into your brain that they
00:30:45.880 just pop up organically, whatever you're doing. And if we can take the Christian worldview and be
00:30:51.260 repeating it so many times that our kids are like, Oh, my gosh, you've said that so many times.
00:30:56.300 That's kind of when we know we've done something right. Because with the amount of repetition that I
00:31:00.500 see going on in the world, and especially like all to say from what I studied this last year with this
00:31:06.600 book, the National Sex Education Standards, you have so much repetition that is going on that is
00:31:14.040 talking about gender, you know, how to gender, gender expression, gender expansiveness, all these
00:31:19.260 different things that we need that voice of the Christian worldview to be repeated just as many
00:31:24.880 times, because that's one of the things we're competing with is who's heard? Which one have you
00:31:30.380 heard more? Because that's the one you're going to default to.
00:31:32.600 And the difference between the Christian repetition and the arguments that we're, you know, making
00:31:39.120 repetitive and the secular dogma and the maxims that we're seeing from that side, it's not just
00:31:44.640 that Christianity is true, and that's not Christianity is beneficial, and that's not. But also because we
00:31:50.580 are actually encouraging our kids to think through critically, the maxims that we are bringing forward.
00:31:56.220 It's not just dogma. It's not just, okay, repeat this. Whereas something like trans women or women,
00:32:01.780 that's illogical. Like that's completely illogical. But if you repeat it enough, same thing with my
00:32:06.700 body, my choice, and you don't equip kids with the tools to think through those things, which
00:32:12.180 they don't. Secular progressivism does not provide tools to critically think at all. They only provide
00:32:18.340 the superficial maxim. But that goes to show whether or not you teach someone the argument behind
00:32:26.060 maxims. If you repeat it enough, it does not matter whether or not they know why that's true
00:32:32.760 or how you came to that conclusion. That's the difference between Christian apologetics
00:32:37.780 and worldly dogma. Not only are we repeating the conclusions, we are constantly teaching how we
00:32:44.900 came to that conclusion, right?
00:32:46.840 Yes. And I think on these ones, we're actually repeating an assumption, because I think the
00:32:51.300 assumptions we talk about in chat, which chapter is it? Chapter four, the difference between logical
00:32:55.880 thinking and emotional reasoning. And a lot of times people are debating what they consider,
00:33:01.440 you know, a fact claim or conclusion, but they're not looking at the assumption that actually comes
00:33:06.640 before. So our very first maxim for the, you know, things to repeat to your kids till they want to gag
00:33:11.680 is what I do with my body matters. So I think one of the proofs that you have a good maxim is that
00:33:17.760 you can apply this in so many different situations. And it's true in all of them. You know, even your
00:33:22.960 child who's too young to understand, you know, piercings, tattoos, or, you know, sucks change
00:33:27.380 operations. You know, why do I have to brush my teeth? Because what you do with your body matters.
00:33:32.040 Why do I have to eat my green beans? Because what you do with your body matters. It's true in all
00:33:37.200 these different ways. And when they hear that over and over again, and then they see things that are
00:33:41.600 just blatantly disrespecting the body, they're going to, that's going to give them positive
00:33:45.520 to think, no, I think what I do with my body does matter. And again, that's an assumption.
00:33:49.860 But I think a lot of times when you have the correct assumptions, then all the fact claims
00:33:53.740 that flow from that far outweigh the ones where it's an assumption that's really not based on reality.
00:34:02.980 What about moms who maybe they feel like they learned all of this too late? They've got a 16 year
00:34:09.840 old daughter or a son, and they feel like they've lost them to the world of TikTok.
00:34:15.520 Yeah, Instagram, their friends at school, and maybe they're just now waking up to this and
00:34:20.860 they're like, I don't have any, I don't have any influence or authority over my kids. I don't
00:34:25.040 have time. Do they have time? Is there a possibility while they're still under their roof to start
00:34:30.380 discipling their kids in this way? Absolutely. In fact, Amy points out a study, I can't remember
00:34:36.420 exactly which one it is, where kids from like 12 to 19 were asked who is, has the highest influence
00:34:44.420 in you in terms of different things. And, you know, friends was really high up there, I think,
00:34:48.980 for some of the elders, but right next to them, number two was parents. Parents are still very
00:34:54.200 hugely influential. And I think sometimes we just assume that we're not. And so we take a back seat,
00:34:59.660 not realizing that our kids really do want us to start talking about these things.
00:35:04.640 One of the best things I would say for if you have a kid that's kind of already been lost,
00:35:08.680 is there's a phrase that I repeat in the book over and over again. And that's,
00:35:13.440 you can't refute that which you don't understand. And so maybe at that point, your goal is to
00:35:19.680 understand how they came to the conclusion. There's a book by Greg Kokel called Tactics that
00:35:25.660 goes through the, why do you believe, or what was it? How did you come to that conclusion? And what does
00:35:32.280 that word mean? Like if someone uses a word like justice, what do you mean by that? Right.
00:35:36.740 Let's define this. And then how did you come to that conclusion? So basically becoming a student
00:35:42.200 of your child's worldview, because once you become a student of their worldview,
00:35:46.140 you're going to be able to pick up on the things that they have imbibed and have become assumptions
00:35:50.920 just because they've heard it so many times. And when you start asking them questions,
00:35:55.360 why do you believe that? And what do you mean by that? They can start reasoning through it and realize,
00:36:00.640 well, maybe I don't know why I believe that. I just kind of assume that it's the case.
00:36:04.180 And in that sense, it's like you present yourself saying, I want to understand you. I want to learn
00:36:09.240 about you. I mean, it's been shown so many times. People like talking about themselves and that goes
00:36:14.220 for everybody. So when you're focusing on having them talk about what they believe and you're trying
00:36:19.860 to understand it, they are going to give you more grace when you start asking questions of like,
00:36:24.840 well, if that were true, then what about this? And you kind of bring them to the logical conclusion
00:36:29.080 that maybe some of these bad assumptions have and you start thinking it through with them. And
00:36:34.340 yeah, I just think that's one of the best things to do. And I know I don't personally have kids,
00:36:40.900 so I don't know the kind of hellfire that would come from this. But I just I still don't think that
00:36:46.060 every kid needs a smartphone. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think that's definitely true. I think that's
00:36:51.800 definitely true. I think my crop of of of moms like that are my age, I was born in 92. So I'm
00:36:59.220 like on the kind of younger half of millennials. I think that we have a very unique vantage point,
00:37:05.960 whereas like the older millennials, ex-ennials who are born in the 1980s, they didn't get their
00:37:11.660 cell phones and their smartphones until they were adults. But, you know, I got my iPhone when I was
00:37:16.900 like 15 or 16. And even though we didn't think the Lord, we didn't have Snapchat or TikTok or anything
00:37:21.700 like that. I'm so thankful. But I have, you know, grown up with this technology. I see the damage
00:37:29.060 that it does. And but I'm also old enough to remember what it was like before these apps,
00:37:35.640 how I would spend my nights reading rather than like, you know, being on TikTok or Snapchat or
00:37:42.240 things like that. And so I think we are very uniquely able to see the harms and the benefits
00:37:48.200 of social media and that we're not naive to what happens when you just give your kid an iPad and give
00:37:55.240 them free range on YouTube, whereas maybe some some older parents, not older, but older than me,
00:38:02.040 they might be a little bit naive to that. And so I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that Christian parents who
00:38:10.080 are my age are a little bit more savvy in this and are taking seriously the need for apologetics
00:38:16.580 for our kids. Final big question that I want to ask you, a question I get all the time and that
00:38:22.900 I've answered before, but I want to hear your thoughts on it. OK, that parents are like, I'm too
00:38:28.220 I'm too scared or not parents, but people who are married are too scared to have kids because they're
00:38:33.840 scared of all of these things that they have to teach their kids and they don't want to have to deal
00:38:37.360 with that. They're worried about their kids being in such, you know, crazy, chaotic, confusing
00:38:42.700 world. What is your encouragement to those Christian parents who are thinking about how having kids,
00:38:48.980 but they're worried about it? I think that their fear is well grounded. I think that raising kids
00:38:56.620 well in this moment, shall we say, is a lot more hands on than it used to be. We used to have
00:39:05.200 society and schools and just a lot of things that were kind of backing us up in terms of our
00:39:11.660 Christian worldview. You have to be intentional about everything. So I would say just, I don't know,
00:39:19.040 this sounds weird, but one of the things I would say is just being OK with not having the same
00:39:24.120 standard of living, knowing that you are going to be trying to be more intentional with your children
00:39:28.820 and whatever it takes to prepare them to become adults in this world that we're growing up in,
00:39:35.320 be prepared to do it. And at the same time, what bigger task could the Lord be giving that is
00:39:40.980 literally shaping culture? And for the parents who think that, oh, you know, being a parent,
00:39:45.900 it's not that big of a deal. You know, it's not changing the world in this way or that way.
00:39:50.840 No, you are shaping culture. These are the kinds of things that the Lord is going to say,
00:39:55.040 well done, good and faithful servant for all the mundane things that you think don't matter.
00:40:00.100 And so, I mean, you know, of course, it's a choice for everybody. You know, my husband and I don't have
00:40:06.080 kids. It's more for health reasons than for other reasons. But being able to slow down your life in
00:40:12.860 order to be intentional about everything, I think, is a must have. And so it's just kind of
00:40:17.200 preparing yourself for what you might need to give up a little bit in order to be an intentional
00:40:22.120 parent. Yeah. And I think if the world needs anything right now, in addition to the gospel,
00:40:28.100 it is kind, strong, thoughtful, wise children who will turn into brave, courageous, wise,
00:40:34.840 discerning adults. The last thing we need is fewer people who represent those characteristics that I
00:40:40.700 just described. And, you know, God doesn't place us on the timeline that He places us arbitrarily.
00:40:46.620 He doesn't just kind of scatter us like dust across the span of eternity. He is intentional.
00:40:53.160 He is purposeful. God is not an arbitrary, capricious God. God is purposeful in all that He does. And if
00:40:59.520 He placed us here in the now, He places our children at the specific point in eternity that He wanted to
00:41:06.960 place them. And I believe He equips generations exactly how He wants to equip them, how they need to
00:41:12.060 be equipped. And so we can thank Him for His sovereignty and all of that. That includes in
00:41:16.840 when we were born and when our kids were born. He's going to give us the tools to do that. And
00:41:20.700 He is specifically using Mama Bear apologetics in that unique way to equip the saints for the work
00:41:28.980 of ministry, as Ephesians 3 talks about. Thank you, Hillary, for everything you do. Can you remind
00:41:34.420 everyone where they can find you?
00:41:35.880 Yes. So one of the things I've learned from doing this ministry is that everybody spells
00:41:41.220 Mama differently. So ours is, if you want to find us, the actual one, it's M-A-M-A, Bear,
00:41:47.940 apologetics.com. You can find us on Twitter, which I'm rarely on that because I think it's a cesspool
00:41:53.940 of culture, but we're there. And Amy will probably be the one responding to you. I'm on Instagram,
00:42:00.920 which I started this year and I love. And we're still on Facebook. We have a great community on
00:42:07.600 Facebook. And so just if you want to get involved with us anywhere there, and then the book is
00:42:12.420 available on Amazon, I think target.com. The first book is now available in Hobby Lobby.
00:42:18.360 Awesome.
00:42:19.960 So yeah, you can just kind of find us anywhere. And if you want to contact us about anything,
00:42:25.100 we have a contact page on our website and we've got podcasts and we've got blogs. The podcasts have
00:42:32.800 been a little slow right now because I'm recovering from major surgery and the book. But if you're
00:42:39.200 backlogged, if you haven't listened to them, you've got several that you can go listen to there. So
00:42:42.820 we're trying to provide as many resources as possible.
00:42:46.520 Yeah. Well, we will include those links in the description of this episode. Thank you,
00:42:50.760 Hillary, for taking the time to come on. I really appreciate it.
00:42:53.820 Thank you, Alibeth.
00:42:54.660 Thank you, Alibeth.