And we are live. Welcome to episode 30 of To the Unknown Pod, part of the Thank God for
Bitcoin podcast. My name is Jordan Bush. I'm the executive director of TGFB Media, which
exists to help Christians understand and use Bitcoin for the glory of God and the good
of people everywhere. I'm joined by two of the three island boys right now. I'll let them
introduce themselves and then we'll tell you where the remaining lost island boy is.
So go ahead, guys.
Hey, I'm Ryan Finley.
Yeah, father of six, entrepreneur.
Yeah.
Out of Oregon now.
Used to be on an island.
Go back as much as I can.
I'm Matt Purvis, longtime pastor and entrepreneur on the Big Island, Hawaii.
And what's the other thing?
Third space guy, you know, cafe, all that kind of stuff.
Good to have you back, Matt.
it's great to have you back matt and look the lost boy has been found it's it's incredible
uh yes matt welcome from your your trip to to italy with your family for way too long having
lots of fun over there without us making us very jealous with all the pictures that you're sending
uh ash welcome introduce yourself wow we're already live okay let's go
Oshawa Hawthorne, dad of eight, live in Portland, Oregon, and happy to be with you guys also.
I help lead Brains Labs.
All right.
So we are here again.
What we do basically every week is we spend time on the internet, mostly on Twitter.
And so the goal is basically take things that we found or take things that we found that
provoke thought and then come back here and discuss them and try to be good stewards of
those thoughts and the time that we spend on the internet. So today we had a couple of things that
spurred thought about parenting. And so this episode, very controversial, controversially
titled, uh, the staggering failure of modern, uh, modern American parenting, I think is what I called
it. Um, and this stems from a tweet that was sent by Anthony Bradley, who's a professor, I believe
it Hillsdale, if I'm not mistaken. Uh, let's, is it not? Oh, Acton, the Acton Institute. That's
where it is. Yep. Positive. It's Acton. Uh, here we are. So Anthony Bradley used to work for the
King's college, done a whole bunch of things. He shared this tweet. Wow. I just found 18 research
articles showing that youth ministry is ineffective. 40 to 50% of youth group kids walk
away from church after high school. Alternatively, the data shows that close relationship with parents
predicts faith persistence. So what are churches doing? So we want to talk about this because this
is something that, I mean, all of us, I believe all of us grew up in Christian homes, maybe except
for you, Matt. Matt, did you grow up in Christian home? Okay. Yep. So all of, okay. So everybody
except for Oshawa, there you go. Oshawa is the pagan. Thank you. I'm glad we can clarify that
and remind everyone for all of eternity,
Oshawa was a pagan.
And so we want to kind of talk about this
because all of us who did grow up in church,
we could probably look back and just number on,
we need multiple appendages.
We would need multiple family members
to have enough fingers on which to count
the number of people who we went to church with
or school with who are no longer walking with the Lord.
And so we want to talk about why that is, why that isn't,
what are some of the reasons that that can be excused that in some cases might be legitimate,
but we would argue in most cases are not. So I'm going to open things up and I believe,
Ash, it was you who shared this one. So I'm going to allow you, you or Ryan,
this was one of the two of you, whoever shared Anthony's tweet, feel free to kind of
take the take the lead here well i'll i'll start us out um so his his point is is in this this tweet
and there's a previous one of just kind of asking the question why if we know this doesn't work so
the the data has been there for like since we were in high school youth group of knowing hey
this high percentage of evangelical youth leave the faith after leaving high school.
Often it's related to going to college, but not always.
And so if that's the case, and we're still putting all of our resources into doing youth ministry the same way,
like why, this is totally insane.
Why are we doing this?
and my suggestion, I was just having a long conversation with another dad in our church
over this weekend is, well, let's start with the end in mind. Let's rethink how we're doing it
and let's ask the question, okay, why are they falling away? And then, okay, then what do you
need to change in order to avoid those things. So I would argue that it all comes back to the
father and the home life. And I believe that's what the stats show, that the efforts of the
church to entertain the kids and in fact, outsource, kind of create discipleship welfare
for the family, right?
Dad's not providing.
So the single mom needs the welfare money
to meet the needs.
Well, whether or not dad is present physically,
well, he's not leading spiritually.
So the church has to make up for that.
And the church just can't do that
because formation happens in the home primarily.
And so beginning with the end in mind,
we need to rethink discipleship of men and how you equip men to lead their homes in things like
family worship, things like presence and relationship and proactive discipleship.
But then also you need to rethink education because I think that's the other piece. You
can have a genuine Christian family and a dad that's really trying to do the right thing.
and at the end of the day,
if they're in a public school system
that is especially designed to kill a biblical worldview
and to rob children of their faith
and they're getting six hours a day of that indoctrination,
then it's an uphill, potentially losing battle
because you're working against all that.
And then even if you somehow are able to cultivate faith
in your home against all the pressures of public school,
then you send them off to a state university.
Now, here you have an entire machine
just built around the purpose of destroying a biblical worldview
in the lives of young people.
And so now, okay, you're going to have to work against that.
And then we're surprised when young people fall away
or at least become so compromised with a secular mindset
that though they're still church attenders,
they now feed into this whole lukewarm, ultra Marxist, socialist kind of segment
of the church that has lost the heart of the gospel
and no longer has the salt and light of preserving our culture against ungodliness.
So that's what I go back to.
It's the dad, it's rethinking education, and you work back from there.
Let's do this.
Before we, because I mean, I may agree with you,
but let's just outline the problem.
What are just the bad fruit?
So what's outline that?
So Bradley talked about 50% of the teens, you know, 50% of teens are walking away.
What are some of the other things that we see, the other downsides?
Oh, Ryan, you're muted.
Here we go.
You're unmuted now.
Yeah.
I would say that the fruit's not just that 40 to 50% of youth group kids are walking away.
I think it's actually higher than that.
And like, just from my own experience, it could be as high as 70%.
And that's the problem.
We shouldn't accept a failure rate at all, like any failure rate.
Like we should be like moving heaven and earth to figure out what in the world is going wrong.
And literally everything's on the table outside of like the core tenets of the gospel and our theology or how our theology works out.
I was talking to my wife the other day
And I was like
A fisherman would not accept
A 50% failure rate
In losing their fishing boats
They would
They would literally do anything in the world
To stop the loss of a fishing boat
And yet
My entire life
Again, I'm 44 years old
So for five decades
We've had this extremely high loss rate
Of young
Young men and young women
Walking away from the faith
After high school
and that's insane it's just full stop that's absolutely crazy and like um why i i was talking
with the boys a little bit why do i think it keeps perpetuating like why do we keep doing the same
thing and hoping for different results i think it's almost like an irrational optimism like hey
you know what my predecessor if they failed they didn't contextualize or they didn't do like they
didn't teach like it was it was too fluffy we got we're gonna go deeper but at the end of the day
I 100% agree with you, Osh. As the dad goes and as the mom goes and as the home goes, so goes the family. And then I would also add it's the health of the family, but also it goes hand in hand with where are the children spending their time each and every day.
uh and i made a post earlier today that we uh we overestimate the impact of 15 minutes with our
kids and we underestimate the impact of 10 hours with pagan peers or in a pagan environment like
oh it'll work out all right i spent 15 minutes with them and we read a bible verse and it's like
dude like being in a being around very very spiritually unhealthy people is really really
bad for a person. Like I look back at my life and I'm like, wow, dude, like the stuff that I went
through and the stuff I was exposed to, it's like extremely destructive. And so that's got to change
like, and yeah, it was. Yeah. Yeah. So let's, I mean, let's, so let's give some, I'll play devil's
advocate, right? I don't actually believe this, but like this, this is going to be some of the
pushback that you're going to get is, well, um, you know, again, so what you're, so you, are you
saying that parents have absolute control over the end product of how their kids end up. That's
going to be the first thing you hear. And the second thing you're going to hear is, okay, now
that's, you could, so you could have some Christians who, you know, might be, they might
answer that one of two ways, but then I'm going to heighten it here. So, uh, I believe all of us
here would be Calvinists. Okay. So we are people who believe in the sovereignty of God, believe
that ultimately at the end of the day, uh, we don't choose God. God chooses, you know, God chooses us.
This could be a podcast for another episode.
But as people who believe in the sovereignty of God, I would imagine there's a big part of this pushback that would come and say, listen, God is the one who calls.
And so if God is only calling 50% of these children, who are we?
How are we to object with what God wants to do?
So there's two potential objections, and I'll let one of the three of you figure out how you want to answer.
Great Maybe start with the first one Start with the first one and then we can yeah and we go from there The first one was are you saying that parents have absolute control over the end product of how their kids
of whether or not their kids become Christians, to be able to put the blame on the parents for the failures that we're seeing in terms of the statistics?
I guess absolute, maybe not.
we don't have absolute control because people have will. Did you notice a message, a word was
missing there? They have will and they have decisions which are real and they have responsibility
for their decisions as individuals, but pretty close to absolute in the sense that parents,
are you really diagnosing and testing yourself to see whether you explain the gospel to them
at age appropriate levels all the way through their raising and that you were there to answer
questions and that you were sympathetic and, um, you know, uh, not to spin off into just my life,
but my life is very busy right now with six kids and I'm trying to learn, I'm trying to shrink it
down. And I'll, I'll add that to a takeaway from my seven weeks in Italy. I'd say that the,
one of the greatest gifts of that time was just being with my kids a lot more,
you know I couldn't be in my business I couldn't be in these things which now I have to catch up but
recognizing intimacy especially with my son but with all my kids that just because I got to spend
more time with them so I'm in the process now of intentionally trying to sell some things move
some things around so that that's an everyday thing and by the way I wasn't like the poster
child of bad before but I see it as much more important than many of the other things that
are going on. So, yeah. And so I would, and go ahead. I would just add with the question about,
hey, are you telling you have, saying you have perfect control and it's like an equation,
do these, these three things and you get these, these three outcomes. So I was involved in a,
in a church that had a lot of pithy statements and it was, it was age integrated and it, it,
It had a high value for family and household and all these things that we would celebrate.
But it was connected to a certain level of legalism.
And there definitely was this idea that, hey, if you make these right decisions,
if you home educate and you do this and this, you are going to get these great outcomes.
And what happens is legalism shoots itself in the foot.
So if you do violence to God's wisdom, how he's made the world.
So simple Proverbs, like walk with the wise and you'll become wise.
The companion of fools will come to ruin or teach a child in the way that he should go.
He will not depart from it.
Discipline a child.
uh right the the the rod yeah yeah yeah the the rod uh right it it it removes folly from the heart
of the child like these are these are ways god has made the world they're they're truth and wisdom
that if you ignore them and do violence to them you should not be surprised that you don't get
the results that you're looking for. At the same time, if you try to turn them into promises or
laws that says, God, you owe me a good child because I did this thing, or you create a culture
that equates, oh, they're having a problem, then they're doing the wrong thing below.
But like it's always cause and effect.
And then that removes the heart.
So it's still, right?
Paul says the aim of our charge is love, which issues from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.
What's the goal of the teaching?
It's love, right?
So that's an internal heart transformation.
and so I would just argue that legalism will always fail
and we're not expounding legalism
these are not the 10 tips
if you just do these things you'll get these results
but we are saying
dude if you ignore these things
you're not going to get good results
now love covers a multitude of sins
and God is sovereign
and he might bring your young person back to the faith
after hours of prayer and years of folly.
But, you know, yeah, like the Jonah story.
There's a shorter distance between A and B
than going through a fish.
You know, I was preaching on Luke 12 this past Sunday,
and it's about covetousness.
And I made the point,
Jesus talks about the man who's
He interrupts Jesus with the crowds
And he's like, help me get more of my inheritance
Help me decide this issue
And Jesus right away brings up this world
Your life does not consist of your possessions
And to relate it to this topic
Covetousness is the most flashlight to your soul
Of the Ten Commandments
Because it's not something you did
It's something that's going on inside.
So I literally had a congregant, this tells you about where I live.
Well, I'm wondering, like, my hot water system isn't working.
And is it coveting for me to want to have, like, my hot water going again?
And I had to say, well, I had to get into a talk on this, the heart.
I said, I can't actually answer that for you.
And Jesus, in fact, leaves it open.
He tells the crowd, you know, I can't remember his final phrase in Luke 12 on that section, but he leaves it with the crowd. It doesn't consist of your possessions. It's more than that. And you are supposed to now examine yourself, right? And then he turns to his disciples and he gives them a greater teaching. So therefore, don't be anxious about your life. God will provide you your food. God will provide you your clothing.
and what's the point I'm making here?
You know, you can't say,
oh, I'm in a war zone
and someone starved to death.
Therefore, the whole Bible is a lie.
Jesus is lying
because he didn't provide for that person's food.
If you think that way,
you'll misunderstand the entire text of scripture.
He's talking about
what is really going on in your culture,
the 99% of the situations he's talking about.
And so going back to what we're talking about,
it's in the heart.
are you aware that you may be drastically, as a parent, as a family, as a Christian,
you may be drastically sort of been swallowing the Americana propaganda for a long time,
and you don't realize it. And so you're supposed to examine yourself and go,
okay, what is Americana? It's chipper happiness and hope for the future. It's management theory.
it's corporations it's constantly expansive uh growth in numbers and growth in charts and growth
and all this kind of stuff it's finishing your degree and finishing your certificate and finishing
your uh i did this i memorized this you know talk speaking of christianity you know i memorized this
many verses i got my star i got my certificate i got my whatever all this kind of stuff is like pure
professionalism, corporate style, chipper Americanism. And if that's kind of affected
your thinking, you might be like, well, they went through this process. They went to the Bible study.
They went to the youth group and not doing as what Ryan said. And I think offline Ryan took it
even farther, but maybe you can bring that up again. But it's saying you can't look at those
things, you have to look at what's really going on with your kids and what's really going on with
your church culture and also your in-family culture. Am I being more affected by God's
testimony or have I really swallowed the pill of my surrounding culture still holding on to the
cross, but what about the rest of the stuff? And sometimes it's harder to take that deep look into
your soul when no one else can fully answer it for you, your friends can help, you know, but
your church can help and say, have I been providing this kind of culture that comes from the Bible
for my family and my church? I think another thing that I want to, again, on that, like getting at
the same thing that Matt, you're pointing out is like everyone serves a God. And so there's a lot
of people who they don't understand the God that they're actually serving, or they're trying to,
they're either wittingly or unwittingly trying to be some sort of polytheist where, again,
it's not like these people who are just not, it's not, in a lot of cases, these families were going
to church, right? So like they recognize the importance of, you know, obeying God and, you
know, being with his people. And, and so there's some prioritization there, but so the problem is
not just one of neglect altogether, but it's like this polytheism thing where it's like, Hey,
we have a, we have a pantheon of multiple gods. And so, you know, one of our gods is going to be,
you know, it could be sports, you know, like, so we're going to, cause, and you can, you can
identify these by sacrifices, right? Well, where are the sacrifices being made? So like, I knew we,
I mean, when I was growing up, you know, we went to church.
We were in church most Sundays.
But then when I got to high school, we would go to, I did travel sports.
And so there were weeks that we missed.
And I, you know, I wasn't walking with the Lord for a good period of that time.
So I loved those.
I loved those times where I didn't have to be in church and was able to go play sports.
There's other people, though, who, you know, again, they might be, I mean, I live in the south of the southern United States.
and so they're like college football is an enormous thing here like to a degree that is
I mean just idolatrous and insane in in my opinion even as somebody who grew up appreciating sports
I mean there are people who I mean the entire weekend is devoted to the tailgate and then the
game and then after the game and then you know whatever else goes with it and so this will be
you know this will be multiple times a week uh if it's you know some maybe some other sports it'll
be multiple times a week, just hours and hours and hours that are spent with these things at the
expense of scripture reading or at the expense of time spent together at the expense of, you know,
time and energy being sent, being spent forming your kids' minds in active ways rather than just
passive ways. Again, there's, it really comes, a lot of this comes down to priorities and just of
things of, you know, just doing an evaluation of, again, it's one thing, yes, yes, I believe this,
yes, I care about the Lord, I want to honor him, but then just evaluating, but like, okay, where am
I, and this is where using economic language is really helpful, where am I spending my money?
Where am I spending my time? Where am I spending my attention, my love? You know, all of these
things. These are, these are, these are, uh, things that God describes in monetary terms all
throughout the scriptures. And so, I mean, I think your, your loves, like, that's another thing is
like, where, where, where is your passion? Like, what are you actually passionate about? And is
your passion aligned with what, you know, with what God's, what and where God's passion is.
Uh, and so all of it, like, I'm, none of us are going to be perfect at this. There's all of us
are gonna have to varying degrees,
we gonna do this well or poorly to varying degrees But I mean this is something where we can fool ourselves And there a lot of people who fooled themselves and acted like I did everything right And then there there people creating
resources, creating books who are, who, you know, want to affirm that, oh, you know, just, yeah,
you did everything right. And, you know, just, you know, just cause you do everything right,
doesn't mean that they can't get a bad outcome. And it's just, it actually is that way to a far
greater extent than people are willing to recognize to the point, and this would maybe be a verse that
I'd love to bring up, is when you look at the qualifications for a pastor in the New Testament,
I don't have the reference at hand, but one of the qualifications is for a pastor is that his
children are basically walking with the Lord, to put it in certain terms. And so I remember the
first time I really, that kind of hit home with me. It was just like, wait a second. Like, is this,
what a weird thing. If, if it's just this total crapshoot, you know, if like your kids walking
up the ward is just, you know, quote unquote, all in God's hands in, in, you know, in, in a
non-helpful and non-true way, like then, then how in the world does it make sense that part of the
qualification for an elder or for a pastor would be that, you know, the, the spiritual state of his
children. It's just a very weird thing if that's the case. And so, so again, I just, this has been
something that I've, I've, as you guys, I'm sure have just thought a lot about and grown and grown
in and, and just meditated on a ton. And so, yeah, that would be my encouragement to people is just,
you know, just meditate on this. Now, at the same time, we have older people who listen to this,
who people who have grown up kids. Again, we're not, this is, we don't know your situation.
There's mitigating circumstances and everything. And so, again, to Ashwa's point, there's wisdom here. And the point of wisdom is that these are generally true statements. And what we're trying to point out is that there is far more general truth to these things than many Americans in the last probably five decades want to admit if they were to honestly evaluate kind of where their treasure has been and where their hearts have been.
I think that, first of all, you preached part of my sermon just right there from Sunday about,
and Christians should actually be, especially Calvinists, shout out Calvinists,
you should be able and willing to take a thing and think about it abstractly and consider it
abstractly and say, should I believe this or not believe it? That is not a matter of a lack of faith.
That's a matter of being trained mentally by the word of God. Similarly, I should be able to
more, more or less autism. Yeah. Yeah. Reducing autism is going to reduce the Calvinists.
I'm going to make a point that it's the opposite actually in a second. But so similarly, I should
be able to look in the mirror and I think, and do what Jordan said and look at myself and say,
there's a meme like this, you get out there and whatever, that meme, and say, I'm going to look
at myself, I'm going to examine just what Jordan said, my money, my time, my speech, my content
that I take, the movies that I watch, the podcasts that I listen to, what time I go to bed, and
literally say, now here's what I know about this person, me. Now, does that person value God the
highest in their life? Does that person value their family where they should? And momentarily
disassociate myself with the idea that I want to consider myself righteous. I want to consider
myself walking in the right way. And I think that the Bible talks about that definitely as far as
testing yourself. Am I in the faith? Now, I hope we're not going too far astray of Anthony's point
of this is not only an individual thing, but it's a large corporate problem,
showing that there's a measurable problem, which is catastrophic.
And if I can, since you brought up Calvinism first, Jordan, you know, Calvinism is not the philosophical approach to Christianity. It's the opposite. It's to say, wow, it says that? I believe it. I don't understand it yet. You know, in my view, it's the more childlike response to scripture to say, I don't understand how these things could be, but they're so clearly put by my teacher and by my God.
I'm going to believe it and little by little I'm going to understand it more and more and certain
things I won't understand all the way and in the same way there's a simplicity to how we should be
raising our children that maybe it's become so institutionalized part of the answer is bring it
back to the simplicity and I think a lot of times we talk about homeschooling versus public schooling
or even private schooling, that has the same kind of vibe.
How do we get back to the simplicity?
And from there, it doesn't mean you can't build institutions,
but making sure those institutions are supportive
of the simple commands in Scripture.
Even the professionalism in the church,
maybe some of the reason that pastors stay on
when they're no longer qualified
is because they've been professionalized
to where they don't have another gig.
They don't have another thing they can do.
and at the nicest possible, kindest possible level,
someone could become unqualified
due to things outside of their control even.
You know, their wife all of a sudden is sick.
Something happens where they're not qualified
in the moment at least.
And you should still examine and say, is that me?
But it may just be that it's time
to not be leading the flock
and having constant spiritual attack
and constant needing to serve other people in a strong way,
that's the nicest possible way to look at it
is say sometimes you're not qualified just due to your situation.
Have we built a situation where that person can step back
and still be taken care of or work?
And I'll kind of end my rant there,
but the simplicity part is where I'm coming at.
Read and believe the scripture with simplicity.
then you become a Calvinist.
And also look at the things,
look at the commands of scripture
regarding children and raising of children
and maybe build institutions that support that.
Yeah.
Could we connect this conversation?
You guys say something, Ryan?
Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say,
you know, specifically,
I grew up in an environment I grew up in.
all the religious activities were being done.
All the kids that walked away from their faith,
they were going to youth group and Awana and church camp
and everything you could possibly imagine.
And then they walked away.
But there were also some really interesting things.
I also, you know, I went to school in the 80s and 90s,
like grade school, high school,
and a majority of those kids were all in public school.
And, you know, that Proverbs 22, 6,
is to train up a child in the way he should go,
even when he is old, he will not depart from it.
And we always look at that in a positive,
like, yeah, see, just come on, just do it.
Like, keep pressing, keep putting that time into your kid
because then they won't walk away from it.
It goes both ways.
If you don't, if you're not the person
training up your kid all day long,
and instead it's a secular school environment
filled with pagan kids that are like the most rebellious
you could possibly ever imagine, times 10.
like they're also they're still receiving their training and it says they won't depart from it
and it's like why are we surprised and and so at the the discipling is going to happen whether it's
at home or or or in a public school and i'll also throw in the private schools private schools aren't
the end they're not always the answer you can have private schools where 80 of the kids are
unbelievers i would say that's going to produce the same result and from the conversations i've
had, it produces the same result as a public school filled with pagan rebellious kids,
but you're going to get the same result. And the shocking thing is, is when God steps in and
intervenes and plucks that kid back out and says, nope, this one's mine. And that's my story. I was
there. I went to public school. I was the rebellious kid. I was the last person in the world
that any of my peers or anyone that I knew would say, you know, in 20 years, I can see Ryan talking
about Jesus. Like, I was the last one. God just radically got a hold of my life. But it was a
miracle. It wasn't because of a fruit of my discipleship and my training. So, I just, we
can't, last thing, I just say we can't suspend the law of sowing and reaping when it comes to
parenting. And I think we, parents love to take all the credit when, you know, some good fruit
comes out, but then they'll, they'll, they'll be like Adam and they'll blame all the bad fruit on
all sorts of things exterior and not take the responsibility. And I think that's a huge mistake.
I'll do even one better. Uh, I know, I know homeschool kids who again, still went off the
rails. And again, because you get like, even the homeschooling can be done in worldly ways. And
like you, you can be doing homeschool stuff and do doing it in a way to produce bitterness and
anger and all this kind of stuff in your kids. And so now, again, I think there's an analogous
situation between maybe some of the conversation, the equivalence that people are going to try to
draw between left and right violence. I would imagine the occurrence of the Christian homeschoolers
walking away from the Lord is significantly less. The percentage is going to be, but it's not
impossible. Um, but what now in the other, but the only other thing, Ryan, that I would push back on
is what, what you experienced in what, to a large extent, what I experienced was not, was not a,
a failure of the principle of sowing and reaping. It's that I had parents and people in my life
who were sowing and reaping the living daylights out of prayers for my soul for years. And so,
so like, so like that, that's what I'm saying is, but like, there are people I've talked to people
who when they hear about the sowing and reaping framework and what they hear is like, it's all
about my own sowing and reaping. And the reality is that like, I had godly like grandparents and
all these kinds of people who were praying for me and like trying and praying the Lord would,
you know, snatch my soul from Sheol, you know, basically. And so that would be the other thing
would just be to encourage people is what we are not saying is that this is all about you as a
parent and you need to have feel like, you know, you need to feel totally overwhelmed every second
of every day, just over the fact that this is all on you. Like that's, that's a misinterpretation,
a misunderstanding of what we're saying. Uh, at the same time, like this is, you know, God,
God has ways and God has means and there's consequences to our actions. And so we wanted,
we want to be good stewards and, and take, take, uh, take ownership over the responsibility. We
don't want, again, to your point, we don't want to follow the first Adam and just blaming and
passing the buck for his failures. We want to own up to our failures, both to the Lord and to
our kids when we fail them. Again, a lot of this comes down to just to communicating that we are
people under authority and communicating that, again, all of what all of the scripture says,
the scriptures say that we can taste and see that in the Lord's presence, there's fullness of
joy. Like, do your kids, do your kids see you finding joy in the Lord? Like, is there, like,
is there actual joy when you're reading the scriptures and when you're worshiping the Lord
and when you're singing to the Lord? Uh, we were, we were watching the, the Charlie Kirk thing is
why I'm trying not to cry right now. Uh, we were watching the Charlie Kirk Memorial thing, which,
I mean just nine hours just could not believe how long the thing was but uh but just so moving impactful in a hundred ways And I just remember that I was watching and they were singing a number of different songs
And one of the songs, I shared it in the group with the other guys who were here.
It's the song called The Blessing.
And so it just repeats, you know, just the idea that may the Lord bless you and keep you.
it's Deuteronomy six, the blessing of parents for children in Deuteronomy six. And so I'm sitting
there, I mean, just bawling my eyes out and I have, I have kids on either side of me and I see
out of the corner of my eye, my 10 year old, he's just like looking at me and he's just like watching
his dad, his dad cry. And then like, you know, he kind of leans in on me. And, uh, and so it's
just like, Oh, what I'm not trying to do is glorify that as the only kind of, you know, the only kind
of emotion, but like, do you care about the Lord to the degree that it's evident to your kids
in a way that's not just exploding on them when they do something that's wrong?
Like, is there a positive passion that they see and a positive joy in and love for the Lord?
I think for a lot of the people that I know who I think back and look at their lives and them
walking away, Christianity, the sum total of Christianity for them, at least the emphasis
of it was much more on the things that you're not doing.
You know, like, and again, some of that could be, it could be well motivated.
Like we don't, I don't want my kids to fall into this.
And so we focus and we talk a lot about the negative side of things, but that is just
such a trap to fall into.
That is an insufficient accounting for, you know, what it means to be a Christian.
I think you just summed up, I agree with you on the, I think the homeschooling is a more ideal environment to teach and train and disciple your children.
But it's not like it's not a foolproof thing because, like you said, if there isn't this gospel air in your home where it's like the joy of the Lord isn't there, you can't fake that.
You can check off the boxes and have your little program and your wife is on board and she's teaching the kids and you're keeping them from negative environments and things like that.
You're putting them in a positive situation.
But like you can't fake a love of the Lord.
And like that gets picked up by the kids 100%.
And so there has to be a genuine, there has to be life to our faith.
And our kids will pick up on it.
And there is no, oh, I'm just going to fake it.
Dare I say in big families, which we encourage and Charlie did too,
there's a danger too of getting worn out by the later ones.
And I had a chance when I was in Italy a couple weeks ago, we met this pastor's daughter a couple years ago.
She stayed with us in Hawaii, and we do work exchange, and we use that for ministry.
And a lot of young people come through our home, and we got to meet her in Italy, of all things.
And she was the youngest of a homeschool Christian family, and right now she's not walking in the faith.
And her testimony, more or less, is like that.
you know, like by the time she was born, the parents are kind of like tired and worn out and
old. And like, she didn't get a sense that like, I would like to be like my folks when I grow up,
you know, and I can say that was true for me too. In so many ways, my parents modeled,
I wasn't homeschooled, but in so many ways, my parents modeled good things,
but I never thought as a child, I want to become like my parents when I grow up. And that's a
really sad thing to say. And it's not even that they were so bad. It's just, I didn't see something
that I wanted to be like, you know? Um, and so it took years and miracles. And I think it just,
to your point, I, I credit my grandma's prayers probably daily, I think with my salvation. Cause
it was a miracle, you know? Um, so, so yeah, I'm not sure where I was going with that, but, uh,
And yeah, I guess just what Ryan was saying, seeing in your folks that joy in the Lord and the repentance and the relationship between husband and wife and stuff like that.
And I had a stark example of that.
And in her life, my opinion, which is true of many other Christians I've known, is there's not really a better worldview to live in than the Christian worldview.
so so often and maybe someone watching this you kind of just set it to the side you know i can
think of my brother-in-law who came back to the faith and his testimony like he didn't really find
something that like disproved christ he didn't really find a better way you just kind of set
all that to the side because it was too much and you didn't get it and you didn't like it and you
didn't want to be it and you just don't think about serious things for a long time and and when
you come back around to it, the gospel is not just about the cross only. It is a full answer to
all the questions of life. What are we here for? What went wrong? What should we hope for in the
future? What can we do to help bring that about? Teleology, ontology, and all the other things
are contained in the biblical worldview. And there isn't anything that comes close to answering
those questions as what God says in the word of God. So yeah, I pray that as we have more kids
and you're on four now, is that right, Jordan? Five. Okay. I wasn't sure if it was four or five.
Yeah. Congrats. But, um, so we, we're what the world would call large families and, uh, God forbid
that I run out of energy or I fail to, um, I fail to assess that like these things were okay when I
had two, but now I can't do that when I have six, you know, and not being sensitive to our situation.
God forbid that that would happen.
Yeah, I want to, it brings to mind real quick, it brings to mind Hebrews 2.1.
It says, we must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we've heard so that we do not
drift away. And there's another verse where it talks about people who've drifted away from the
truth. And, and I remember hearing a sermon one time from a pastor who was like, I remember he's
basically said, it's like, how do you drift from the truth? He's like, no one's like, no one drifts
away from the truth that the sky is blue. Like you don't drift away from that truth, but the,
the, the gospel is, is like, it's the truth is a person. And so you can drift away from a person,
Your relationship with a person can degrade over time through neglect and stuff.
And so that's kind of what we're talking about, what we're getting at.
So I know we need to end.
I think this has been awesome so far.
I wonder if I could just throw out an idea and some topics for next time that'll get people's interests and get us kind of thinking.
because though we haven't mentioned Bitcoin yet on this call,
I think it actually is very key to the issue.
If you go, so Anthony Bradley is recognizing,
here's this issue, young people are falling away from the Lord.
So that's the effect.
What's upstream of that?
Where is that issue coming from?
And I would argue that fiat monetary decisions and debasement
and worldly fiat influences like feminism
and how the economics and the feminist ideology interact
to tear apart the biblical family.
And if you either go into a ton of debt as a college student,
particularly as a gal,
and then you get this corporate kind of ladder mindset
that now maybe you get married, but you don't want to have kids or you have kids, but you're
going to send them to daycare because your career is very important. And why is it important? Well,
because you got into a big mortgage and you bought into a consumeristic lifestyle. But why did you
do that? Well, it's because of fiat money printing and consumerism. And then maybe even you're
actually really frugal, but money just doesn't go as far as it used to go. Well, that's also
monetary debasement. And so you need two incomes in order just to pay the simple bills and have a
simple lifestyle. And so everything is pushing to divide the family, outsource education to the
state, outsource discipleship to the church, because mom and dad are so busy and they're both
working jobs and they're just trying to make ends meet and life is too difficult. And saving for
retirement is just a dream or maybe uh maybe you're wealthy but again it's all going to consumerism
and to a a type of lifestyle that you think you need to attain to uh and meanwhile i mean i i think
of i saw this uh this post from years ago of uh the charlie kirk assassin and it was him with like
his gaming headphones on sitting at his computer and and the the comment from the parents it was
like a facebook post from the parents saying now that so-and-so has his all his computer accessories
he wants we hardly see him anymore yeah yeah yeah yeah like look at him look at how he's got his
gaming thing on and he's got and it's like look where that led mom and dad look where that led
yeah well and also the post like the fact that they would praise that is just an admission that
they're not taking responsibility.
Well, it's out of my control.
He's just ended up.
He just ended up.
This is his path.
He's a free spirit.
And it's like, dude, from the beginning of time,
parents have not wanted to take responsibility
and nothing's changed.
And again, it's the attitude and the standard of,
well, this isn't that bad, right?
It's like, this isn't that bad to be on the computer.
Look, there's nothing inherently sinful
or wrong about being on a computer, right?
Computers are just neutral, right?
And it's just, it's completely missing a humongous part of just the reality of how life and how life works and how education works and how people are formed. And so, yeah, it's just a lack of intentionality and understanding, which we can be sympathetic to and still uncompromising in saying that this is a problem and something that people should take really seriously.
we have to cut off there
I am actually going to be with my family and going to get
pictures taken so that's why
I'm looking way better dressed than all
these guys here we
appreciate you we appreciate
exactly raising the standard
here guys we're raising the standard
okay you guys can slum it
I did
I did man I never do this so
so now we are
grateful for you guys and your continued support
if you have found this helpful like subscribe
leave a review and all the places where you can do that.
We will see you on Thursday with a special guest.
We'll have Jim and Tim with us, Ashwa and I,
and then a special guest who we will,
actually we'll mention right now, Scott Yenner.
Scott Yenner's a professor.
He's a really thoughtful guy,
done a lot of stuff in the area of family and culture and politics.
And so he's going to join us
and we're going to have a really good conversation with him.
So we'll look forward to that on Thursday.
We'll see you all on episode 31 to come of To The Unknown Pod.
Ryan, Matt, and Ashwa, thank you guys.
Appreciate you.