Practical Advice for Parents of Deconstructors

Does truth exist? Because you have faith, does that make this book clear? Does God exist. So when someone says there is no truth, if you apply the claim to itself, what should you say? Is that true? They don't think Christianity's true. They're talked out of it! You know why they're talked out of it? Because they've never been talked into it. Cross-examining skeptical and atheistic views. Welcome to Cross Examine with Dr. Frank Turk. Ladies and gentlemen, are your kids walking away from Christianity. Is the culture bearing down on your household so much that you don't know what to do, you don't know where to turn, you don't know how to keep them in the faith. Or maybe they've already deconstructed and they're gone. What can you do and what does the secular mindset think and how can you counter it? We've got the experts here to talk about this today, my friends Elisa Childers and Natasha Crane of Childers and Crane, the new law firm. It sounds though. It does. We should consider that. That's right. Actually, you may know that we together do a conference called the Unshaken Conference, and it's coming to Tucson, Arizona. When are we doing that? September twenty third. September twenty third in Tucson, and where do people go to get information about that? You can go to unshakenconference.com and the tickets are on sale, and then we'll be in Nashville on November 4th. All right. And for people that want to bring this conference, and we'll tell you what it's about as we go, as we address those questions I just brought up. They can go to what website and actually request the conference come to their church. Yeah, it's the same website, so unshakenconference.com, and there is a link there where you can fill out a form and you can tell us a little bit about your church and we'll get back to you and let you know if it looks like it could be a good fit for us to come there. And we're excited to have that opportunity because we've already done a couple of conferences and we keep hearing online from people who are saying, Hey, come to our church, we want you to come here. So now we're making a way for people to actually submit their church for the process. So for twenty twenty four, go to that website and we'll see about coming to your church. If uh it's possible venue wise and location wise, we'd love to come there. Now we're here at the cross examine instructor academy right now, Albuquerque, New Mexico. And Alisa, you did a presentation yesterday on deconstructionism, and you started out by saying that you thought deconstructionism or the the idea that people were deconstructing from the faith, and we'll define what that means here in a minute, is the greatest problem facing Christianity. Wha why do you why do you say it's the greatest problem? I think it's the greatest threat, I would say, because deconstruction is a methodology. It's a process. It's not actually a destination. There are lots of different destinations people can end up in. But what deconstruction is, is really an all-out all-out assault on the gospel. So in all of my research into the way that deconstruction is manifesting online and as it's connected to its postmodern roots, what we see happening is that in that movement, it does not matter where you land. It doesn't matter what you end up believing. So you could become an atheist, you could become a progressive Christian. You could become uh a new age uh you know adherent or something like that. It does not matter just as long as you do not b remain evangelical. Now who said? Where does this come from this is just I tell you Yeah so it's all over social media. It's I would say it's largely a social media driven I almost don't even want to call it a movement. In fact, um our friend Tim Barnett and I just finished writing a book on deconstruction that will be coming out in January. And we're defining it less like a movement because it's really not like a bunch of people moving together toward a similar destination. It's more like an explosion out from a singular starting place. And that singular starting place is doctrines that define the core gospel. Anything that would make Christianity exclusive, but primarily, and this is where Natasha's work in interacts with what we're doing. Primarily it's a shift from the authority of the Bible and even objective truth, saying, look, I know there's an objective reality about God and I just want to know what it is. I'm gonna search for that truth. That's not what it is. It's a shift from that authority to the authority of the self. And really so in the deconstruction explosion, theological terms and ideas are not considered based on their truthfulness or, you know, is this true? Is this what God says? but they're evaluated based on how the person thinks they're making them prosper or not prosper. Are these doctrines Helpful or harmful? Are they leading me toward wholeness or are they oppressing me? And all of that is decided really based on the self, not rooted in objective truth. So it's all meology rather than theology, which is It is. It is. Well, how is this any different than the prosperity gospel? Well th the that's a good question. I suppose that the difference would be that people who adhere to the prosperity gospel, most that I know would still say, Hey, the Bible's my authority. Now, I think they're interpreting it incorrectly and they're actually abusing scripture and it's a false gospel. But with deconstruction, again, they don't care where you land. If as long as you do not believe the Bible is your authority. In fact, it's interesting, Frank, as I was writing the book, I've actually changed my position on this because in my first book, I described my faith crisis as deconstruction. And I don't use that word to describe what I went through anymore because I always wanted to know what was true. I didn't want to just find something that made me feel more whole or something like that. And so I I actually in the book I say I'm not calling that deconstruction anymore, because deconstruction is really a postmodern process. I think it's it's the result of postmodernism in the culture. But what if someone were to say That what makes me feel whole. And what helps me live my authentic self is to follow the scriptures as written and properly interpreted. Then they will tell you you are not deconstructing. And they I we actually cite examples of that in our book where somebody would say, Hey, I'm deconstructing, but I'm using scripture as my authority. They they have graphic memes mocking that kind of idea. So they they would tell you go back to the beginning, you're not doing it right. then they're violating their premise. They're violating their Their goal that I have to believe something that's gonna somehow help me. What if the scriptures help me? What if I Well yeah, and it's obviously there's a lot of contradictions, but the premise, the understanding. Contradictions? Yes. Are you kidding me? Believe it or not. From the progressives? Yes, well, yeah. Okay. But the premise really is that In deconstruction, they've already decided that the core beliefs, anything that would be exclusive like judgment, heaven, hell, uh the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, they've already decided that this is what they call toxic theology. These, in their view, are doctrines the church came up with to control people with fear. And that's again based on postmodernism. It's the assumption that a truth claim like that is a power grab. And so the church is just doing that to try to keep people under control. Natasha, uh as you evaluate this kind of movement, you notice that those statements that Elisa just made are all moral statements. I mean, they're saying, well, the church is trying to keep people under control. That's wrong. Well why would that be wrong? If Christianity or just basic theism isn't true. Why would that even be a problem? If if basic theism isn't true, then you have no grounding for determining what is good or bad or right or wrong. So they're not thinking about how to ground their beliefs. They're just using their own definition of what is helpful or harmful. Comes back to feelings being the ultimate guide for your life, right? If I feel like this is going to be helpful, I'm gonna hang on to this. So it's not necessarily that they're throwing out the entire Bible. They're just saying, I'm gonna decide what I find to be helpful in this. And so I think that that's a common misunderstanding that people have about deconstruction when they think that people are just tossing the Bible completely. It's not that. They're tossing the notion that this is authoritative, that this is God's authoritative word for all time, and they're saying this is kind of reflective of man's best ideas about God over time, but we're getting better and better. We're understanding more and more as we're better meaning what kind of better. Well, they would say that we're learning more, we're becoming more enlightened morally better. Morally better, even though they don't have the objective basis for determining what that is. Friends, do you see how if you just use the principle of the law of non contradiction and you try and discover whether someone has a grounds for what they're saying. uh you can point out that this really can't be true. they're trying to do here. Uh, I mean to follow feelings over objective reality, well, that's what the entire culture's doing, isn't it? In fact, that's where your book is so insightful, I think. Uh, Natasha, it's the the book Faithfully Different, and after the break we're gonna unpack that a little bit because the mindset that people have, the secular mindset, and you've identified four basic ideas that people have who are secular uh this has creeped into the church as well. When you understand this mindset, then you can really evaluate why people come to the conclusions they come to, whether it's about scripture, whether it's about a decision they're gonna make with their life. uh w whether they're gonna side more with descriptions or side more with their friends on a given issue, it's what you uncover in faithfully different. So when we come back from the break, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna uncover that and you're then gonna have a track to run on if you are trying to help your young person or friend. or a relative, uh evaluate what really is true, and you'll be able to understand why they're doing what they're doing. You're listening to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. My guests are Elisa Childers and Natasha Crane. We're back in two minutes. Don't go anywhere. To I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist with me, Frank Turk on the American Family Radio Network, my guest today, Elisa Childers and Natasha Crane, and together we do a conference called the Unshaken Conference. Right now we're in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and just before the break, we were talking about The secular mindset. Why do people who are not Christians do what they do? And even now some people who claim to be Christians have this mindset. And it's beautifully unpacked in a book called Faithfully Different, which our guest here, Natasha Crane, has written. Natasha, there are four basic Principles that the secular world or the secular mind seems to govern themselves by what are they? So secularism ultimately is about the authority of the self. It comes back to the fact that people have all kinds of different beliefs, but at the end of the day, there's this commonality amongst them that is, they come back to themselves to determine what is true about reality, what is good or bad, right or wrong, harmful or helpful. And so in Faithfully Different, I talk about the fact that it might seem hopeless to actually identify, you know, well, what's the commonality there? Okay, everyone has the authority of the self, but how do you actually see that in culture? But there are some things, some tenets of secularism that are very common to everyone who looks to the authority of the self. So the first one is that feelings are your ultimate guide. If you're not looking to God as the external authority through him and his revealed word, then you're gonna look to yourself. It goes without saying, right? It's feelings. It is the whole follow your heart thing, like you talk about, Frank. And after feelings are the ultimate guide, you have to say, well, what are they leading you to? If they're guiding you somewhere, what is that? Well, that's to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate goal from a secular perspective. And that's a really important thing, I think, for people to understand, because even Christians sometimes think, Oh, well, doesn't God want me to be happy? Well, God has bigger plans, bigger priorities for us. It's not that he wants us to be unhappy, but we might have a lot of circumstances we don't think. are great or that are making us happy that are for our good so that we can know him and we can love him and love others better. But from the secular perspective, that happiness being the goal leads people to say, Well, as long as I'm happy, then things are good. Then things are morally okay. So that's the mindset. It's kind of like this is the end, whatever means I have to get there is going to be okay. So then that leads to the third tenant of secularism, which is that judging is the ultimate sin. So the first two kind of relate to how you live your life. That third one is about well, how do I see other people? amongst all this. Well, if you're somebody outside of me, you better not come along and tell me anything about how I'm gonna live my life. That's judging, that's judgmental. And from the secular perspective, that makes no sense because if I'm my own authority, you don't know what my feelings are. You don't know what makes me happy. So how can you possibly Judge me. And then the fourth one is God is the ultimate guest. A lot of people think that secular culture is godless. They say, oh, everybody's just atheistic today. That's not true, actually. 90% of people in America still believe in some kind of God or higher power. But what is not okay today is to believe in a specific God who has revealed himself, who has revealed Who he is, who we are, how we should relate to him. That's what's dangerous because that threatens the authority of the self. So all God can be is a guess, a very good guess of whatever you believe him to be. But then he stands comfortably in the distance away from what we want to do. You mentioned that sometimes Christians are guilty of this too. How often do we say we might say to our Kids as they grow up. We just want you to be Happy. Yeah. What does that even mean? What how would you define happiness? What is that? Is that a a feeling that you have? Is that a a a mindset is that I get whatever I want when I want it. I get to do whatever I want to do with whom ever I want to do it whenever I want to do it. Is what is that? What does that even mean? What do you what do you think the secular culture means by happiness. Well I think very often when secular culture is talking about happiness, they're talking about fleeting feelings. Maybe the fulfillment of a romantic relationship or that perfect day at the beach. In fact, I there I don't know if you guys saw the show The Good Place. Did you ever watch that show? It was about hell. And so in this in the show, they're in this place called the Good Place and they think they've gone to heaven and it's you know ice cream every Tuesday. It's been a while since I watched it, but it's kind of like this Disneyland type of thing. And then you find out that they're actually in the bad place because those things don't really fulfill and and the that kinda starts to turn on 'em. And I think that's an interesting kind of metaphor for our culture because it it's just it's like these fleeting feelings, but the Bible describes what we might just say biblical happiness is more of a deep abiding joy that is always there, no matter what the circumstance. Of course Cory Ten Boom is famous for living this out as she was in the uh concentration camp in World War Two. And yet she found this deep abiding joy amidst all of that. And it was really more her sister. Remember that I don't know if you remember the scene from the book where her sister says that she was thanking God for the fleas because there were these horrible fleas. And she just let God use that in her life as something to draw her closer to him, make her depend more on him. And so I think in the Bible, it's more a deep abiding joy that is not dependent on circumstances, where in secular culture happiness is dependent on circumstances. If you're not happy in your marriage, Get out of the marriage. If you're not you know, if you don't have the greatest career that you're your biggest dream, then go live on your mom's couch until you can make that happen. And it's it's sort of this backwards thing. And you know, I think about my grandpa who worked three jobs his whole life to provide for my grandma and leave her a paid for house. And I mean, was digging ditches his ultimate dream as a little boy? No. But his focus was on his family, on her. And so he had this deep happiness with the work that he did, no matter what it was. Natasha, the these four principles that the world governs themselves by. feelings, happiness, judgment. And God being a guess. uh has also filtered into the church a bit, hasn't it? Uh the we just talked obviously about the feelings part of it or the happiness part of it. How how do you think the feelings govern so much of what people do when they read the Bible because I know people that'll just open the Bible And they'll pull a verse out of context. And if it makes them feel good, that's what God wants from me. And it has nothing to do with what the the text is actually telling them. Right. Well I think that we have done a poor job in the church in general of teaching people how to read the Bible. And so when people go to the Bible if they even open the Bible, when they go to it, they're asking the question, what does this say to me? There's so many Bible studies that are designed that way that it's just saying, you know, how do I apply this to my life without asking first some really important objective questions. Questions about what does this say about God? What does this say about mankind? What does this say about our relationship? What does this require of me? We're not asking those kinds of questions. So if we're not asking the right objective questions going into it, it's all going to be about a subjective interpretation of how do I think I can apply this verse to my life. And if we're not doing better in terms of Bible study, then that's gonna lead us astray because we're just going off of our feelings about the text instead of understanding what does the text say. And then if we read a text out of context. And uh it doesn't come true like we thought it should. Who do we blame? Mm-hmm. Right? Right. We wind up blaming God and he never said that. Right. Right? Our expectations are based on fact Hillary Morgan Ferrer is here as well at the we're right now at the cross exam instructor academy and she was speaking yesterday about How many people uh who may say they're Christians Read the Bible or They think something about God, God promises them something, even though the scripture doesn't say that. And when God doesn't come through, who do they blame? Yeah. And she in fact she was talking yesterday about some lady who was trying to be healed of a certain And she read a verse out of context and when that didn't happen, she became a bitter atheist. And so parents, if you're out there, you need to teach your kids not only that the Bible is true, but how to properly interpret it. uh and not just use it as a fortune book where you pop it open one day, point to a verse and go, I'm claiming that. That's right. Yeah. Right. Because that just feeds right into this secular mindset that first of all the Bible's written all about me. It's everything in there is about me. It's it's the authority of self rather than the authority of God. And uh God's lied to me now because it didn't come true. What what I thought the the Bible was telling me actually isn't the case. Yeah. Alicia How are you seeing deconstruction affecting young people online and in places you speak? Oh goodness. There's the fallout from this explosion is just there's no even way to measure it. I everywhere I go, Frank, even here at CIA I've had two Two people tell me uh a story that I'm gonna tell you that I hear just about every time I go and speak to audiences all over the country. And I what it looks like is that an older couple will come up with tears in their eyes. They'll say, my adult child has deconstructed. They've said we are toxic. They say that they grew up in a cult? and they've rejected us. And in some cases, Frank, they say they won't let us see our grandkids because we are toxic people to them. And so the fallout of that is just incredible. But here's what I'm also starting to see. I'm starting to have young people. Raise their hand in Q and A's and say, My parents. How do I honor my parents? But maintain my faith and not compromise my faith. That's a tough spot to be in too. Well, I uh you know, that that's something I love to have a conversation more one on one, but I I think that that's a good question to be asking. How do I honor my parents? Because you know, biblically you do want to honor your parents, but ultimately you can't compromise your faith. And so I think that verse that uh often atheists and progressives bring out to sort of use in a in a skeptical way, I think is helpful, where Jesus said, If you want to be my disciple, you have to hate your mother, brother, father. And really what the skeptics will say is, Oh, see, you disagree with Jesus because you don't hate your mother. And they'll try to use that as a to to mess, you know, with your mind about it. But really that word that's translated to hate really means prefer one thing over another. And so Jesus says, if you want to follow me, you have to prefer me even to your mother and father. And so that's the encouragement I try to give the the young person, be respectful, but don't compromise. Let your parents see the peace and joy of the gospel lived out in your life. But Frank, there's another dynamic I see all the time, and that's between spouses. that introduces a whole different uh set of circumstances that require a different response. And that's you might have a wife whose husband has deconstructed and he's trying to pull her into deconstruction. And there are many cases like this. I've had at least Three people tell me that their husband or wife read Glennon Doyle's book Untamed, which we've talked about on this podcast before. and decided to leave their spouse and pursue a same sex relationship, leaving kids behind, spouses behind, and families just in turmoil. And so this ideology of the authority of the self wrecks lives literally. And I see it every day. It's it's heartbreaking when you think about it that Living their authentic cells and In reality, they actually are. Because they're living their sin nature. That's right. Our authentic selves are fallen. I was I was on a radio show one day and this this this host said, Lord save me from my authentic self. And I was like, I wish I thought of that. That's a really good line. Yeah, think about it, ladies and gentlemen. If you just follow your every whim, your every impulse, anything that makes you happy you are not gonna be able to hold down, first of all, a stable relationship. Uh, and secondly, you're probably gonna wind up broken, addicted, and alone and prematurely dead if you follow your impulses. And whatever desire comes across your heart because The heart is fallen. The heart is weak. The heart wants what it wants when it wants it. And if we don't follow the scriptures on that, if we don't realize that Uh we're fallen and we need a savior. We can easily What what does what does John say in First John where he says the uh all that's in the world is the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. As our friend Jim Walls would say, it's just sex, money and power. Yeah. And when we fall into that trap, as unfortunately so many Christians have We can't maintain our sanctification and we wreck our lives. We're gonna talk a lot more with Alisa Childers and Natasha Crane, both of the Unshaken Conference, unshakenconference.com. They also have a podcast together. We'll tell you about that here in a minute. You're listening to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist on the American. Our website is crossexamine.org. That's cross examined with a D on the end of it.org. We're back in just two minutes. Don't go anywhere. If you've been listening to this conversation, listening to this podcast, listening to the Elisa Childers podcast, the Chasha Crane podcast, and you want a lot more. You want to learn more about theology, you want to learn more about philosophy, you want to learn more about apologetics and how to... rescue people in this insane world. You need to go to Southern Evangelical Seminary, S E S.edu. I went there. You're going there, aren't you? I am. I'm a s a current student. All right. Getting ready for my fall class. I'm very excited. Yeah. It's you were saying yesterday as we're here at the cross exam instructor academy that you you wanna make sure you're reading more than you're actually speaking. Why do why did you say that? Well, I it's so it's just something that happens if I'm doing a lot of podcasts on my own or other people's or I'm writing content, I start to feel nervous if I'm talking putting out content more than I'm taking in and learning new things. So reading my Bible every day, uh, having my relationship with the Lord, but also Taking in what's going on and and learning new things about scholarship, I just feel like I that's the only way to stay sharp, because otherwise you're just gonna be recycling your old stuff. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And uh there's so much new material coming out from so many different sources. And you have so many great people on your podcast as you do too, Natasha. I mean If if you haven't listened to the uh Natasha Crane podcast or the Alicia Childers podcast, you guys need to avail yourselves of that. There's also a podcast you do together. What's that one? Yeah, it's called Unshaken Faith. And so the difference between uh the Unshaken Faith podcast and say Natasha's mine or your podcast is that our personal podcasts are longer form, maybe about an hour. But the Unshaken Faith podcast are bite sized pieces of cultural commentary from a biblical perspective. So fifteen minutes. where we tackle just whatever's happening in culture. Yeah, and we do it every week, every Wednesday. We're on hiatus for the summer, but we're coming back. Coming back strong in the fall. I've got lots of thoughts that accumulated over the summer. That's right. We have a lot to say. We've we've got some things to say. Let's go back to deconstruction for a minute because Natasha What do you think people who claim that the scriptures are not authoritative? We can just take the scriptures however we want. How do they even know who God is? Well that's a great question. Th I this is baffling to me actually because I never really see anyone have a good answer for this. And I don't know, maybe Elisa's seen people taught to speak to this, but I it's interesting because people will make many claims about who God is and what he wants from us and who we are and what love means, for example. But yet they have no objective basis for doing that. So they can know God exists, we know from natural revelation, from what the Bible tells us, we know natural revelation. People can of course know that God exists and something about his nature. But progressives tend to go much further than that when they're talking about what they believe about God. God certainly wouldn't do this. You know, God certainly wouldn't have commanded this to happen to the Canaanites. God would not have done this. So there are a lot of thoughts about what God would and would not do. But if you don't have any kind of authoritative scripture from this God that you believe exists, how are you going to actually know what that would or would not do. You don't know. You know you don't even know that we're made in his image if you don't have the Bible to tell you that. You don't even know that people are actually made equal. For all you know, God made people with freckles and he loves them more. You literally don't know. It sounds absurd. But that is the practical implications of this. Yeah, Aristotle you don't know. Aristotle famously thought that some people were born to be slaves. He didn't have the revelation. I mean he had natural revelation. We all have that. Uh, but he was under the impression that no, some people are meant to be slaves. And uh so without The the scriptures. uh how would you even know who God is other than you know he's a creator and you know there's certain moral categories that you know Because God has written them on your heart from natural law. So maybe Aristotle got that wrong and he should have said, Yeah, maybe That isn't right that people ought to be slaves, but on the other hand he may have He may have thought, Well, you know, some people are They don't have the capacity that I have, the intellectual that I have. You're meant to be a manual laborer. That's what you ought to do. I mean, he could come to that conclusion, and he did. And yet you have people in the progressive movement now. claiming that they know that the God of the Bible isn't the true God. How do they know that? they know that well I think it's also important to maintain a distinction when we're talking about deconstruction. There's a good amount of progressive Christians in the deconstruction movement or explosion, I guess I should say. But you have to also remember you have secular humanists, you have people who've declared agnosticism, you have people who have declared atheism. They're all in community together. So when we're talking about the progressive Christians that are in that community, I think this is this is me, my commentary. I really think that their whole foundation of their theology is assuming that universalism of some sort is true. Because if g everybody's gonna be fine in the end, well, that means they can be in community with the secular humanist, the agnostic, and not have to tell them they're wrong about God, because it's all gonna be fine. It's all gonna work out. And so I think that is the foundational principle. that allows the progressive Christians in the deconstruction explosion to remain in unity and supportive and and not just supportive in a friendship kind of way, but even supportive ideologically of their secular humanist friends and agnostic friends and even people who are so angry. It's it blows my mind. I see these conversations between a progressive Christian And someone else who just hates God, hates Christianity, hates the Bible, and the progressive is totally fine with that because I I think the underlying principle, they just assume it's all gonna be fine. Maybe I'm not right. This is what I think it might be, but everybody's gonna be fine. This is one of the most frustrating things. that I see about this is that People don't seem to realize that when they're deconstructing from one set of beliefs, they're automatically reconstructing into another set of beliefs and they don't have any support for those beliefs. So you just mentioned something. Where you said every You think these people generally are u universalists, that everyone's gonna be fine in the end, everyone's gonna go to heaven or whatever in the end, regardless of what they believe. Well When they say that, that's a positive belief that they would seem to have to have evidence for. What evidence do they have that universalism's true? Why do they think it's true? Right. Well, and I th m I suspect if I were to ask somebody what you know, what's your evidence for that. They they this is what people have to understand. When you use words like truth and evidence and inference, you know, when when you talk like that with people in the deconstruction explosion, they look at you like you have crossed eyes. In fact, I had a a Zoom call with a deconstructionist as part of my research. And when I was talking to this person. He said, you know, aren't don't you think you're just still caught up in the rationalism of the Enlightenment? See, they're not even having the same conversation. Words like truth and evidence, that's what they're trying to get rid of because they have adopted a postmodern mindset. And ultimately, even the progressive Christians, they're not sure they're right. So they're just giving their best guess about like God is the big guess, right? That's Natasha's line. That's totally true in that movement. So they're they're there when we make claims like Frank, when you and I say, Hey, you know, the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, Jesus paid the price for your sins. They're not even evaluating whether or not that's true. Because they're postmodern, they see truth claims as power grabs, they're just trying to figure out why you would say something like that. They're try well, why would he say that? What kind of system of oppression is he trying to prop up? Or what what s you know system is he defending? Why is he trying to control me? He's just under you need to deconstruct, Frank, and get out of this oppressive system. Unless God exists. There's nothing wrong with power grabs unless God exists. This is what's so frustrating to me about But you're you're you're saying, Frank You're basically telling me that not use my mind to evaluate this because they don't use their mind to support it. Well there's a there's a talking point in the deconstruction explosion that Christians are that that what you see as maybe what we would call the historic Christian gospel that in the deconstruction explosion, that is seen as just an oppressive doctrine that's the result of maybe, you know, white Christian nationalism and this is truly what they say. I know. But but they would say we're getting Jesus wrong but again there's a moral there's a claim. They have to know who the right Jesus is. So what evidence do they have for the right Jesus? I ask you, Natasha Crane. No, whoever. It's like the ol the only thing that they would the only person who can't say, Well, this is what I find helpful and this is what I find to be true is the person who believes that the Bible's true. So basically they would say that it an anything that they come to is okay. Unless you're an evangelical Christian, you've come to the Bible being true, right? That's the one that is the one belief system you can't have under that paradigm. Which is so ironic and contradictory. And they might even say, you know, good for you, that's fine, but you're not A part of this group. But and you're still oppressive. Yeah, and you're still oppressive. Like, for example, I don't know if you guys saw the latest video music video from Derek Webb who used to be the leader. So he used to be the lead singer of Cademan's Call, big Christian band in the nineties and early two thousands. I even remember back in the day playing a couple festivals with them. Well Derek Webb has deconstructed, he's become quite a leader in the deconstruction explosion online. And he's making what he's calling his first Christian album in ten years. And he's calling it a Christian album, even though he does not claim Christianity anymore. And in the movie, this or in the v video, the song is called Boys Will Be Girls. And throughout the course of the music video he's being made up uh as a drag queen. And so at the end of the video he's performing as a drag queen. And he's not a drag queen, as far as I know. But in the he has a quote in the beginning saying, if you want to really say you're someone's ally, you've got to stand close enough to them to be hit by the same stones they're being hit by. So in the mind of the deconstructionists, standing up for drag queens and fighting for LGBTQ rights and the activism that comes along with that is a part of being a healthy Christian. It's in and so they would say that for us to stand against maybe gay marriage or for biblical marriage, they would say that's oppression. You are oppressing people because you're not they don't all have an equal outcome. And this just all brings us back to the critical theories that have come into our culture through postmodernism that inform everything. You got something to say in the top. Well no, I was gonna say like that comes back to intersectionality. I mean that is that is the basics of everything, right? If if you're oppressed in this group, then I'm gonna come along with you being oppressed over here. And now we all have one large group oppression. And that's that's the basis of critical theory in that lens through which everyone is seeing everything today. So it's interesting. I I haven't heard that per se from the deconstruction movement, but that t makes total sense that they're taking away that social justice idea of what is the predominant secular theory of social justice today, and they're applying it to themselves and saying, Well, we've gotta stand by all these other marginalized groups so we can get together and have the new proletariat. Well, N Natasha we were talking I was on your uh podcast talking about the book Correct, Not Politically Correct, and you made an insightful comment about Why some young people might who might be heterosexual. White. Christians might want to claim a trans identity because of intersectionality. Can you unpack that? Yeah, well today it's kind of like victim status is glorified because of this whole oppression and oppressor and oppressed lens. And so people want to have a victim status because if you're not the victim, if you're not somebody from an oppressed group, you're an oppressor. And that makes you morally evil. You're a bad person if you are not one of these identified groups. And so there are certain things you can't change that are not acceptable to identify as, like you can't be a white person who's now going to identify as a black person, for example. So if you can't do that, well, what can you do that's socially acceptable today? You can change your gender. Doesn't mean you can't objectively change it. Right. But it does mean that society will accept that. So now you can take on one of these marginalized identities. You can take on the victim status, and everyone is going to applaud you for being courageous enough to do that. And so it's very tempting, I think, for young people who are struggling with their identity and who they are and what's going on in culture around them to say, I'm gonna go that direction. I'm gonna take on one of these identities that isn't plotted. Now parents, what can you do if your kid comes home and says you're trans or they're trans or Have they deconstructing their faith? What can you say? What can you do? We're gonna cover that in the next segment, so don't go anywhere. I'm talking to Elisa Childers and Natasha Crane, unshakenconference.com. We'll tell you more about that right after the break as well. Back in two. Welcome back to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist with me, Frank Turk. My guests today are Natasha Crane and Elisa Childers. I want to mention by the way we have several online courses coming up. One taught by Shanda Fulbright and myself called Train Your Brain. It's about logic. It's designed for six to eighth graders. And that's with the premium version will take sixth to eighth graders through it, but if you haven't had logic and you're an adult, you can still take this course in a self-paced and you ought to. Logic is necessary to be able to defend the faith in this hostile culture. So check that out. Many other courses, if I At least you have a course with us. An online course. On progressive Christianity, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So uh you guys can all go to crossexamine.org, click on online courses, you'll see it there. Okay, in this final segment, I want to talk about some practical things you can say or do. When say a a young person, maybe your daughter or your son comes to you and says I'm no longer a Christian. Christianity's toxic. And then if we have time, they come to you and say, I'm trans. What do you do? Okay. Let's let's that's a big question. Let's start with uh deconstruction. What do you do? Okay, so uh If if your child comes to you, I would evaluate different Scenarios is How old is your child? If your child is a minor, you have a lot of power. If your child is a minor and they're deconstructing, I would say number one, get them off social media. complete blackout on social media because that's where this is fostering and flourishing. Make sure they're in church consistently. Make sure you're living out the gospel in front of them consistently with family devotion time. And and you don't have to be perfect. It means also repenting to them when you blow it, letting them see what a real Christian lives like. So that would be for a minor child, but say it's an adult child. It's really important to understand what's happening with your an adult with your adult child. First of all, they're probably not gonna tell you they're deconstructing. That's the thing you gotta realize too. That's not like they go to their parents and say, Hey, I'm deconstructing. You're probably just gonna start hearing them maybe back off from you a little bit. Maybe on social media you'll see them saying things like, Hey, this is toxic. Look for words like toxic. even abusive, oppressive, the doctrines that they were taught. Maybe they think they grew up in a cult. And if that's the case, you need to understand that they do not think you are a safe person. So you're not going to be able to have a conversation of persuading them back to the faith through any kind of logic or Or something like that. So in phase one of that, I would say it's okay to back off. Try to just stay in their life. Try to let them see the joy and the peace of Jesus in your life, because I guarantee you when they get to the bottom of the deconstruction thing, which I don't think we've even seen collectively yet. We're gonna see people come up completely empty and they're gonna come back to you and they're gonna see the joy and peace of Jesus on you. So it's okay to not try to convince them right away. Just try to stay in their life. And I think one good piece of advice with any of these issues is to not freak out. Don't freak out. Right. Yes. Because if you freak out, I mean Especially if it's a minor. Is your kid ever gonna come to you again if you just totally blow a gasket? And cry, you get real dramatic, you yell. That's not gonna help. Yeah. And and some parents may have already done that and they're listening and going, Oh man, I've blown it. Now my kid's never gonna come back to me. But I just want to speak to that person and say It's okay if you've blown it, give it a little time, come back and repent to your child. Look, I totally blew that. Can we have a do-over on that? I mean there's so much grace in that and and modeling that for them too. So don't feel like if you did blow it or if you cried or got upset. But but if you haven't had that opportunity yet, do try to just kind of take a breath. ask some good questions and just give your permission, yourself permission to listen and understand first. So are you saying that If you were to ask the question in a nice way. You know, honey, I'm just trying to figure this out. Are you saying that If Christianity was really true, if Jesus really did come to earth, live a perfect life in your place. Died a brutal death. In order to forget. be able to take his your punishment on himself. and forgive you and give you his righteousness for nothing, because he loved you. Are you saying that if that were really true, you would not follow him? I think it would depend on the relationship. If you have the type of relationship with your adult child where you could sit down and reasonably ask a question like that, maybe. But you what you have to understand what's going on is that child has already decided the idea that I'm a sinner is toxic. So for you to present the gospel message of Jesus dying on the cross that they've heard all their life, they they know the message, they've already think, oh dad's brainwashed because he thinks he's a sinner. He thinks that he's got this fallen nature and that's toxic. That's abusive, oppressive, and toxic. And the church is just trying to control people by telling them they're broken. So there's so much going on under the surface with stuff. It wouldn't help to point out that they think It's a sin to be To be an evangelical Christian to be. It might. Again, it depends on the relationship. It might, but it I I would just say to parents, if there is conflict and you sense your child trying to disconnect from you, that might not be the best time to pull out that question. Maybe a little bit down the road if you can get that relationship back restored a little bit. Natasha, what about the trans issue? You mentioned before the break that I guess there is a difference between people that truly have gender dysphoria. and people that have what we now know as rapid onset gender dysphoria that probably comes from social media more than anything. If you think it's the second rapid onset gender dysphoria, what what might you do as a parent? Well first you need to get Frank's new book, the correct not politically correct third edition, where which will take you through a lot of these things and help you out. Um but you know the Rabbit onset gender uh dysphoria is where mostly adolescent girls are basically being influenced together to do something like we were talking about before the break in terms of taking on this victim identity. And so this is a very difficult one because if they've gotten to the point where they're already considering this and they're coming and they're telling you this, you need to ask a lot of questions like you always encourage people to do, Frank. to understand where they're coming from with this because overwhelmingly they're ha struggling with some kind of mental illness. Overwhelmingly this is coming from a place of struggling with being on the spectrum in a lot of cases, having some kind of abuse in their past. There are a lot of things that are going on. I think the hardest thing for parents in this situation, honestly, is the fact that there are very few trusted sources that you can go to to get help. Because if you take your child to someone who is a so-called expert in this area, they're going to tell you you need to affirm this, that this child needs a transition, they're going to encourage them to go ahead with it. So unless you're going to someone who is going to treat this this specifically from a Christian perspective, they're just going to affirm whatever the child thinks. And that's gonna put you in a very difficult situation. And in many states, it's illegal for them to do anything other than affirm. Right. So you actually have to go along with this. And so I think this is a very difficult situation. So similar advice in terms of going with a social media blackout. getting your kids away from that is really huge because that is where they're finding the community that they feel so appealing. So so many of these girls are going online and they're finding people who are saying, oh, you're so courageous and this is so great. If you come to this community, this is the love you're gonna feel. They're finding something that's going to fill this void that they have had. You need to cut them off from that so that you can pour into their lives and be that. instead of what they're getting online that's driving them toward that. So you want to ask a lot of good questions about why do you think that you are another gender and how did you come to this conclusion. The same things that we always talk about, but just I really want to emphasize to parents that you have to be so careful with who you are taking them to to get them help for these underlying issues. It's it's just a really difficult situation, I know, for every parent. We and and you talk about in the book too about the emotional blackmail that comes a lot of times where people will say, If you don't allow your child to transition, they're gonna take their own life. You're going to have blood on your hands. And and that's difficult because I know of parents who were told that they refuse to do anything and their child actually did take their own lives. I I can't imagine being in that situation. But I think as Christians we have to understand that the mental health issue that underlies this is what is driving kids to even contemplate those things in the first place. They need help for those things. no matter what the solution is not going to be to try to be another gender, which you can't. You objectively cannot do this. And if it I just wanted to add one quick thing to what Alisa said too earlier about you know taking it making sure you're taking your kids to church. That's so important. At the same time I think parents need to be aware that a lot of youth groups, I've heard this from parents. are actually fostering some of this kind of conversation that kids, especially if they're in public school situations where there are groups of trans identifying kids, they come into youth group and thank God that they're there, but there's influence that's actually happening within the church, within youth groups. Ask your kids what they're talking about in Youth Group, not just what the teachers are teaching, but what are other kids saying? How are they communicating? How are they part of the conversation? What are they talking about? You will learn so much, not just about deconstruction, not just about trans issues. but about what's going on in their school environment and much more. And so church is not always, especially youth groups or teen girls, is not always the safe place that you would hope it would be. There's a lot of people. Yeah, and that's a great point because especially when you have younger youth pastors who haven't been properly trained. They're likely to be more influenced by culture. One example. I went to speak at a very conservative church and I brought my daughter with me and they had a little youth going on at the same time. And I said, Do you want to go to the youth? And she said, yeah. And she came back and this was when she was a bit younger and didn't really know about pronouns yet. She goes, Mom, they asked me what my pronouns are. And I didn't know what they meant. And so that was when we had our first talk about pronouns, but she was first asked for her pronouns at a conservative church by a young youth pastor. My pronoun is your majesty. She tells people her pronoun now is Yeeha. And the sad thing is they take it seriously. And she'll they'll call her ye all day. I'm mocking you. All right. Um and and I I just wanna make one comment on what you said, Natasha, 'cause Uh you said, Well, the emotional blackmail that goes on, you know, you can have a living daughter or a dead son. Well it turns out that if you do transition them which is impossible, but if you try the suicide rate is worse for these people. Uh, especially 10 years down the road, they have a suicide rate 19 times higher than the general public. So that's not the solution either. There's an underlying mental health condition that needs to be addressed. They need psychiatry. They don't need hormones. They don't need surgery. They need psychiatry. They need prayer. They need counseling. We're running out of time. What it? This is a great program, having both of you on to talk about this. Tell people again how they can have the unshaken conference come. Two. their church. Where do they go? So just go to unchickenconference.com. There is a banner link right there on the site. You click on that and there's a very brief form that just asks for basic information and we'll get back to you if it seems like your church is a good fit. Alisachilders.com is your website. NatashaCrane.com and Crane is C-R-A-I-N. Okay, get that right. And uh also the podcast Unshaken Faith podcast. Yeah. If you subscribe now. We're coming back with new episodes in the fall, but subscribe now so that you'll be notified when that first episode comes out in the fall. And the Natasha Crane podcast, the Elisa Childers podcast are the longs of the U.S. Super creative names we came up with for our podcast. I don't know how you guys did that. I don't know. Work tart on it. Uh-huh. You need to go to the Frank Torrent podcast now. Yes. To complete the set. You need to. Well it's been great being with you guys and great being with you as well, ladies and gentlemen. Go to their websites, check out their podcasts, also check out the book Faithfully Different. check out the book uh Another Gospel and Live Your Truths and Other Lies. Live Your Truths and Other Lies. It's the most recent one, and there's more coming out soon. So great being with you folks. Lord willing, we'll see you here next week. God bless.