Author: admin

How Do We Know Jesus Existed?

(This is post #5 in my “65 Questions Every Christian Parent Needs to Learn to Answer” series. Sign up to receive posts via email to make sure you can answer each one!)

If you grew up in church, you may never have considered the following question: “How do we know Jesus actually existed?” I admittedly had never considered it before an atheist dropped the following comment on my blog last year:

“There’s not a shred of evidence that Jesus ever existed. Check it out for yourself.”

My “atheist extremist” radar went up at such a seemingly crazy claim. How could someone think Jesus never even existed as a person in history?! That said, I had no idea how to respond. I had always assumed Jesus existed and wasn’t prepared to offer any “evidence” to support my lifelong assumption. Off I went to research.

To my surprise, I learned there are many people who make an extensive case for Jesus being mythical. This wasn’t just the one-off view of a random person who landed on my blog. If you Google, “Did Jesus exist?”, you’ll see hundreds of thousands of pages on the topic (see this site as one example).

With Easter coming, it’s a great time to preface any discussions with your kids about the resurrection with a question of foundational importance: how do we even know Jesus existed? If you can’t answer that on your own, this post is for you.Continue reading

3 Perspectives Every Child Needs for Their Spiritual Journey

I’m not a big TV watcher. In fact, the only guilty TV pleasure I have is watching Dateline NBC. I’m fascinated by the true crime stories and seeing how seemingly typical people get involved in crazy things.

Dateline recently featured the tragic story of Ian Thorson, a young man who got tangled up in a cult, eventually leading to his death. Thorson was born into an affluent East Coast family with all the trappings of opportunity. He was a laid-back surfer who went on to graduate from Stanford University. After graduation, he surprised his family by postponing a career and deciding to travel the world in search of “deeper meaning.”

While abroad, he got involved with a renegade Buddhist monk who promised enlightenment in return for total devotion. Through a long series of events, this eventually led to Thorson participating in a desert cult experience which resulted in his death (the full story is here).

Ian’s story pained me, as I marveled at how such an intelligent young man went so off course in his search for spiritual fulfillment.

I write a lot on this blog about how we need to equip our kids with specific Christian knowledge and experience to spiritually prepare them for the world. But as I watched Ian’s story, it reminded me that there are three spiritual perspectives that are critical for every child to have as well.

First, our kids must have a sense of spiritual priority.

A lot of young people like to adopt the glamorous-sounding label of being on a “spiritual journey.” But all too often, that spiritual journey is really a euphemism for “I don’t really want to commit to any stifling religious rules and doctrines so I’m going to just keep floating through life until I come across something that feels fulfilling.” It’s critical that we communicate throughout our Christian parenting that there is nothing more important than deciding what you believe.

How do we give our kids a sense of spiritual priority?Continue reading

What is the Difference Between Absolute and Relative Truth?

(This is one of 40 key questions I address in my new book, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith. If you’re a parent, grandparent, church educator, or other special person in the spiritual life of a child, please check out my book for guidance on having the most important conversations about faith given today’s secular world.)

I was driving with the kids recently when my son announced that he had seen a black, red and yellow bird on his side of the car. My daughter Kenna immediately corrected him.

“Nathan, you are NOT right! The bird was black and red. It did not have any yellow. You are wrong.”

Nathan screamed back at her, “No! I am right! The bird DID have yellow on his bottom.”

Tired mom syndrome kicked in here and I entered the fray with this disingenuous response: “Guys! It doesn’t matter. Sometimes people see different things. Everyone can be right at the same time.”

Fast forward to the following week. My other daughter, Alexa, came running into the kitchen screaming, “Mommy! Kenna hit me!”

Kenna walked in behind her with a casual shrug. “No I didn’t. Now stop talking about it. We can both be right. Sometimes people see different things.”

I couldn’t believe it. My lazy response from the week before had totally confused my daughter’s understanding of truth! I had given her the idea that no one is right or wrong about anything, and everyone can be right at the same time.

As obvious as it may seem that there are many things which are true or not true (Kenna hit Alexa or she did not), this very basic understanding of truth – fundamental to Christianity – is under attack today. Kenna’s not the only one getting confused.

The Big Mix-Up: Absolute and Relative Truth

Whatever bird my kids saw was either 1) black, red and yellow (as Nathan claimed), 2) only black and red (as Kenna claimed), or 3) something else altogether (if they were both wrong). But contrary to my lazy “everyone can be right” response, the bird simply can’t be all of those things at the same time.Continue reading

Are Christians Indoctrinating Their Kids?

My last post, “The Number One Sign Your Kids Are Just Borrowing Your Faith,” went a bit crazy online! To date, it has been read by over 47,000 people and has been shared over 10,000 times. I’m thrilled that it resonated with so many people, and I hope it will encourage a love for questions in the spiritual lives of more families.

One (presumably atheist) commenter on the post, however, thought my encouragement of deeper faith discussions means I think kids need to be more “indoctrinated.” The accusation that Christians are all indoctrinating or brainwashing their kids is so common today that I want to address it here and give you a basis from which to confidently respond when you encounter it yourself.

For context, here is an excerpt from the comment (this is verbatim from the original; please excuse the grammar and typos):

“The younger generations know things the older ones are either ignorant of, or in denial of, and are thus turning away from religion at a fast pace. That has nothing to do with not enough indoctrination, or it being real enough to the kid because they were just borrowing their parents religion. . .that making your own choice, and starting to think is inevitable. Too bad that higher analytical skills has to be so tied to ditching religion. Stinks huh.”

The Number One Sign Your Kids Are Just Borrowing Your Faith (and Not Developing Their Own)

The other day something reminded me of the popular 1993 book, “The Celestine Prophecy” (anyone remember that?). “The Celestine Prophecy” is a fiction book that discusses ideas rooted in New Age spirituality. The book sold 20 million copies and practically spawned its own cult-like religion, with groups popping up all over the country to study the insights and apply them to life.

I discovered this book when I was fresh out of high school and was enamored by it. The insights were exciting (“there’s a reason for every apparent coincidence!”) and it proposed interesting ideas about spirituality that seemed totally plausible to my young mind. I couldn’t stop talking about it. I told all my friends about it. I started paying attention to how the nine insights in the book applied to my life. I suddenly felt life was more meaningful.

The problem? I was a “Christian” but it never even occurred to me that these New Age ideas should have been immediately rendered false by the beliefs I claimed to have. My faith was so shallow that the first exciting philosophy I encountered after high school swept me off my feet – without so much as an inkling that it was in conflict with everything I had been taught.

When I randomly remembered this book last week, I marveled at how I had developed such a shallow faith, despite the fact I had gone to church for 18 years and grew up surrounded by family members who deeply loved the Lord.

A Borrowed Faith

In my family, faith looked like spiritual “parallel play.” Parallel play is the stage young toddlers go through where they enjoy being near other kids, but don’t actually interact with each other yet. They’ll play blocks side by side, but they won’t find ways to play blocks together.

My family members would individually read their Bibles, go to church every week, participate in prayer chains, and humbly remind each other that plans would only happen “Lord willing.” Those were the spiritual blocks they played with next to me.

Meanwhile, I went to church, was at least mildly interested in what I heard, felt confident that if I died I would be saved, prayed occasionally on my own, went to church camps, attended youth nights, and freely told anyone who asked that I was a Christian. Those were the spiritual blocks I played with next to them.

But we never spiritually played together. Without that deeper engagement, my faith simply remained shallow and was based on living out a copy of what those around me were doing.

I left home with a completely borrowed faith.

I had never made it my own, but not because I rejected it in any way.

Many parents are brokenhearted when their kids reject Christianity in the teen years. I would suggest that many other parents are lulled into a false sense of security when their kids appear to toe the line of faith until they leave home. That faith often amounts to little more than borrowed beliefs which will soon be shattered.

Make no mistake: a borrowed faith leaving home can be just as dangerous as a broken faith. The result is often the same, just delayed.

When I originally started this post, I planned to call it, “10 Signs Your Kids are Just Borrowing Your Faith.” As I thought through the signs I can see in retrospect from my own experience, however, I found they all really pointed back to just one sign. So here it is:Continue reading

My Week in Atheism: New Must-See Film for Christians (Interview with John Christy)

A new movie titled “My Week in Atheism” came out today – it’s a MUST SEE for Christians, and especially for Christian parents. I had the opportunity to see a pre-release copy and I couldn’t recommend it more.

“My Week in Atheism” is a documentary about a friendship caught between the two opposing worldviews of atheism and Christianity. As devout Christian John Christy and atheist activist David Smalley travel together to secular conventions, university campuses, and a live talk show, they struggle to maintain a close friendship while protecting their beliefs. Along the way, viewers experience first-hand the most common conflicts between Christianity and atheism today.

Here’s why I love this film so much for Christian parents. We grew up in a vastly different environment than our kids are facing today. The internet has enabled statistically small groups of people like atheists to sound disproportionately loud. The number of people who have a basic belief in God but are spiritually disinterested is far larger than the number of atheists, but those people have no motivation to promote their disinterested beliefs. Atheists, on the other hand, are highly motivated to promote their passionate beliefs and today have a platform for doing so. The problem is that the typical Christian parent in our generation didn’t encounter the atheist worldview so readily growing up and is unprepared to address it now with their kids – meanwhile, it’s the most predominant non-Christian influence our kids will have.

That’s why this film is so important. Many parents don’t have the time to learn about atheist arguments against Christianity from extensive reading. But in just 110 minutes of this film, you’ll powerfully see a very representative sweep of those arguments and start getting up to speed not just for your kids, but for your own faith and Christian witness to the world. If you have teenagers, it’s a no-brainer that you should sit down and watch this with them ASAP.

You can order a DVD of the film for just $7.99 on the website My Week in Atheism or rent it online through Vimeo for just $4.99. There’s a trailer you can check out before you buy.

I had the great opportunity to interview John about the film and I want to share with you his thoughts on the experience and what it can teach us about Christian parenting.

John, thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview. Can you tell us how the concept for your film was born and what you hoped, as a Christian, to accomplish in making it?

For a few years I had been reading atheist books and getting a handle on atheist arguments, but it was all book knowledge. About two years ago, I began listening to an atheist podcast called Dogma Debate with David Smalley. I emailed David and mentioned some differences I had with his historical information on the formation of the biblical canon. He asked if I wanted to come on the show and talk about it. That was in May of 2012 and since then I have been on his show several more times, leading to a close friendship. We get along really well, but we have this one glaring difference that keeps us divided: he is an atheist and I am a Christian. It leads to many conversations between us – both on the air and off – that get very heated. Continue reading

What Key Arguments Are There for God’s Existence? (Part 3: Moral Argument)

(This is the third post in my “65 Questions Every Christian Parent Needs to Learn to Answer” series. Sign up to receive posts via email to make sure you can answer each one!)

Today is the third and final post answering question #1 in the series: What key arguments are there for God’s existence? I wrote previously on the creation and design arguments. In this post I’ll explain the moral argument.

In its simplest form, the moral argument for God’s existence is the idea that 1) there is an objective morality – moral standards that exist outside of personal opinion – and that 2) the best explanation for the existence of that objective morality is the existence of a moral law giver (God).

This argument is particularly important to understand and be able to explain given our culture’s increasing claims that no one should force “their” morality on anyone else.

Let’s look briefly at the two parts of the argument.

1. Objective morality exists.

We all have a moral intuition which immediately tells us that some things are wrong regardless of opinion – for example, stealing or torturing someone for fun. It seems we are “pre-wired” with that moral understanding.

That said, the existence of objective morality is one of the most challenged Christian ideas today. Christians are frequently accused of trying to impose “their” values on others. If there really is an objective morality, however, Christians aren’t representing their personal values, but rather universal values that apply to all people as given by God.

There are three main objections to the Christian claim that an objective morality exists. Let’s take a brief look at each one.Continue reading

A Case Study of a Christian Turned Atheist

In my next post, I’ll be returning to the 65 Questions Every Christian Parent Needs to Learn to Answer series. But I wanted to spend some time today to give you a “case study” that demonstrates the importance of getting serious about spiritually preparing our kids for the world.

It comes from a comment I received recently on my post, 8 Reasons Why Kids Don’t Want to Go to Church, from someone who grew up in church but turned away from Christianity as an adult. I decided not to publish it as a comment on that post because I wanted to address it here without the commenter’s name attached.

This person’s comment includes several points of popular rationale for leaving Christianity. It’s (unfortunately) an excellent example of the worldview competing for your child’s heart and mind.

Below is the person’s comment, with my responses to you, as a Christian parent, in red italics.

*****

Doubting the existence of god (especially the biblical god) should be number one on the list, not number seven. [He is referring to the list of 8 Reasons Kids Don’t Want to Go to Church.] Within that category might include a deistic belief in an unknowable god or in a god that doesn’t resemble a personal monotheistic god such as a “cosmic consciousness” held by branches of Buddhism. The point is Christianity is but one of vast number of beliefs and god concepts. [Yes, Christianity is one of a vast number of beliefs and “god concepts.” So is atheism. The number of competing ideas says nothing about their relative truth. Our kids need to not only be aware of the many religions/worldviews in existence today, but how they relate to Christianity, and why they logically can’t all be true.]

We no longer live in closed monotheistic Christian cocoons. Multiculturalism and the information age expose us to a hugely diverse range of ideas and beliefs; many in stark opposition to Christian doctrine. [Well said! If you’re a Christian parent, please read these two sentences over and over and over. If you think it’s enough to simply teach your kids the core beliefs of Christianity without worrying about how to appropriately defend those beliefs (apologetics), please take what he is saying to heart. It’s our responsibility to know the tough questions being asked and to proactively engage our kids in discussing answers from a Christian worldview.] Continue reading

What Reputation Does God Have in Your Home?

I knew the night was coming that I would have to tell the kids. I dreaded it deeply.

My cousin Kim had died.

She was in her early 40s and had metastatic breast cancer. She left behind a loving husband and two children.

We had been praying for her every night for months. As we followed her journey through her husband’s online journal, we celebrated high highs and low lows. At many points, it seemed she would be victorious.

We praised the Lord.

At other points, the very improvements for which we had praised the Lord were wiped away in an instant with the devastating results from her latest tests.

We prayed with all our hearts for improvement again.

After 18 months, she turned a corner for the worst and it was clear she wouldn’t make it. She passed away in December.

That night, we shared what happened with our kids, who still aren’t old enough to really understand what death means. They listened with wide eyes as I explained how God doesn’t always answer prayers the way we hope, and that everyone must pass away at some point. It was Kim’s time to go to Jesus.

Nathan interjected with shaky hope, “But at other times, God DOES answer our prayers, right? Like how he made TJ all better!”

My heart crumbled.

TJ was a friend of the family. He had died not long before but we hadn’t told the kids yet. He, too, had cancer. And for him, too, we praised God for apparent healing that turned out to be only a temporary improvement.

At that moment, I couldn’t even speak. I didn’t have the heart to tell Nathan that God didn’t actually answer those prayers in the way we hoped either. I simply nodded and quickly moved on.Continue reading

What Key Arguments Are There for God’s Existence? (Part 2: Design Argument)

(This is the second post in my “65 Questions Every Christian Parent Needs to Learn to Answer” series. Sign up to receive posts via email to make sure you learn to answer each one!)

Today, I’m continuing to answer question #1: What key arguments are there for God’s existence? My last post described the creation (“cosmological”) argument. Today I’ll describe the design argument.

But first a quick note. If all this is new to you and it looks overwhelming, I want to say two things. 1) It’s actually not overwhelming – I’m writing these posts with a person brand new to these concepts in mind. Give it a try. 2) In the last hour, I’ve wiped stinky bottoms, cleaned snot off faces and issued two time-outs. I’m a normal parent entrenched in daily duties, just like you. If I can learn these things, so can you!

So here we go.

What is the Design Argument?

Quite simply, the design argument states that a designer (e.g., God) must exist since the universe and living things show evidence of design by an intelligent source.

The most famous explanation of this is the “Watchmaker Analogy” given by William Paley in 1802. Paley stated that if you found a watch in an empty field, you would of course conclude that it was designed and not just the result of random formation. Similarly, when we look at the universe and life, it is natural to conclude that there is a designer since we see how precisely formed they are.

The Key Question: Are We Looking at the Appearance of Design or Actual Design by a Designer?

Almost all scientists – atheists and theists alike – acknowledge that many aspects of the universe and life have at least the appearance of design rather than the appearance of unguided, chance formation. Even famous atheist Richard Dawkins implicitly acknowledged this when he said, “Biology is the study of complex things that appear to have been designed for a purpose.”

The question is whether the universe and life simply have the appearance of design (but actually are the result of a purposeless, unguided process) or if they demonstrate actual design by a designer (e.g., God).

This isn’t a straightforward question. Where do you draw the line objectively? What are the right criteria for determining that something came about by chance versus design?

It’s important to understand that making scientific judgments about nature is not a simple matter of common sense. Our perceptions of nature often don’t match reality. For example, the sun appears to circle the earth, but we know from science that the earth actually circles the sun.

For this reason, the design argument is scientifically specific today. It’s not just a claim that the world in general looks pretty amazing, so it must have been designed. Design (or lack thereof) is discussed specifically in the context of 1) certain areas of biology and 2) the “fine-tuning” of the universe.

The scientists who promote their findings in these areas as evidence of design are part of what is called the Intelligent Design movement. These scientists don’t specify who or what the intelligent agent is, but state that some features of the universe and of living things are better explained by an intelligent cause than by an undirected natural process. This is compatible with a Christian view, but is based entirely on scientific evidence rather than scripture. Intelligent Design refers to a scientific theory, not theology.

Let’s look at one specific case of design proposed by the Intelligent Design movement so you can get a feel for what I mean by “scientifically specific.” This one is frequently discussed and is detailed in Stephen C. Meyer’s book, “Signature in the Cell.”Continue reading