Putting Children First: The Consequences of Adult-Centered Choices

A parenting dilemma sparks a deeper conversation about family structure and what children truly need to thrive. In this episode, we examine how cultural shifts—especially around marriage, parenting, and identity—impact kids, often in ways that go unaddressed. Drawing on the organization, Them Before Us, research, personal stories, and a biblical framework, the discussion challenges the idea that “love is all you need” and explores the importance of both a mother and a father in a child’s life. We also consider how Christians can respond with truth, courage, and compassion in a culture that increasingly prioritizes adult desires over children’s well-being.

Transcript

Why Courage Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

On today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

The second thing that that comes to my mind is something that I confess that uh I am somewhat ashamed of that I'm not so good at myself. But it's it's courage. The courage to actually talk about these things. Even people on the other side of uh of the issue have have remarked on how amazing it is that with the Obergefeld decision, support for same-sex marriage in the United States flipped within about a year uh when they did the polling, went from like 40% uh for and and 60% against to 60% for and 40% against or something like that. But still, when they do surveys, there's there's still a significant portion of the United States that says this this should not be. And part of the reason it's not more, you know, that that figure that's opposed isn't bigger is because the people who are opposed to it who say this is wrong, this is not good, have been so cowed that that they're not talking about it. Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Our world today presents people with complicated issues of life and death, marriage and family, health, and science. It can be a struggle to understand or deal with them. We're here to help by bringing good information and a fresh biblical perspective to these matters and more. Join us now for life challenges.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Hi, and welcome back. I'm Krista Potritz, and I'm here today with pastors Bob Fleischmann and Jeff Samelson. And today we're gonna talk about children and marriage and specifically the tension with traditional versus untraditional marriage. And so, Jeff, you had kind of brought this topic to our attention today. Do you want to maybe start talking about some of it?

A Divorce Story With Two Moms

Putting Children Before Adult Wants

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Yeah. I thought I'd uh lead with something that uh I um I came across in the uh the Washington Post. There's a uh weekly uh parenting advice column, and this is from March 25th. The headline is during lead up to ex's monthly visits, my 10-year-old is so mean to me. And uh the letter begins, Dear Megan, I'm dealing with difficult behavior related to anxiety in my 10-year-old. We have been through a lot of emotional growth over the last few years, following a family separation and divorce, and all over again after his other parent moved out of state. His other parent visits about once a month, and the week leading up to the visit is marked with increased disagreeableness, rudeness, and finding any small reason to argue with me. I'm proud I can now recognize this as anxiety, anticipating a transition, and keep myself regulated and my heart open. I try to give him opportunities to express those feelings outright, but it's hard for him, and his go-to is just to be mean and sometimes even aggressive. He craves control, and these visits mean his schedule is set for him in many ways, where they stay, who they see, etc. But he also needs to learn that adapting and doing things he doesn't want to do is part of life. How do I validate those feelings and let some of it go given the circumstances? While shutting down the aggression and avoiding becoming his punching bag. It's hard to know that he feels so stressed inside, and it's also hard to accept this treatment, especially given I'm the parent who stayed and sees him through the tough stuff. For what it's worth, he sees a therapist but doesn't really share the deep stuff. He avoids feelings talk as much as possible, though I do try the strategy of talking in the car on a bike ride to make it feel less intense. Now I'm going to stop reading for a second here, and I think just about everybody reading this kind of has this picture in their mind. Maybe they're thinking of people they know who might be in a similar situation, and they're thinking, oh, okay, well, this is probably what I would advise in this situation, or yeah, that's it's terrible what happens with divorce, and I can understand that. But but then the next line. He has a good relationship with his other mom. But I know he feels a sense of disappointment and sadness about her relocation, which is triggered regularly. He's a very perceptive kid. We talk openly about all the things and we're very close. Why is he so mean to me? Signed punching bag. It's not until that second to last line there we realize oh, this is not a traditional marriage. This is two moms who had a relationship, got married, and got divorced. And suddenly it's a whole new set of issues here. Because we're not just talking about, okay, yeah, there's mom and there's dad, and at least the kid, even though mom and dad are separated, still has a mom, still has a dad. But this is a boy who has never had a father, and he's 10 years old. No wonder he doesn't know how to behave in this moment, because he's never had the things that a father is supposed to bring to the home, and all he's had is two moms, and apparently one of them decided to move away. And there's just so much more here. And I I I will not read the uh columnist's response, but I will tell you it does not address this issue for for someone who's sensitive to this kind of thing, which I would hope we all are, to realize that there is a much, much more fundamental issue here than how this 10-year-old boy is being mean to the mom who stayed. There are decisions that were made ten, eleven years ago that have doomed this child, hopefully not permanently, but at least now, to living a life that will never be complete in the way that God designed it to be complete. I brought this up just because this is precisely the kind of thing that a group or a movement that has um uh come on the scene recently uh is is trying to draw people's attention to this group called uh Them Before Us, and they've started a uh campaign that they're call calling the Greater Than campaign. And basically what this is, it's is they're saying we need to correct the societal mistake that has been made of advancing adults' desires over children's needs, and uh specifically saying in allowing same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption and you know, all those kinds of things as well, and a lot to do with surrogacy and things like that, that this has been an abandonment of society's responsibility towards children, and that we need to be putting children first before us as adults. And the greater-than campaign is the idea that what's important for children is greater than what's important to adults.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

I suspect uh at the heart of this is the commodification of children. You know, in other words, we begin to choose when I want to have a child and when I don't want to have a child. We as a nation want the right to even terminate the life of a child in the womb rather than letting the child be born. The child really is subordinate to the desires of the parents, and that's not to be confused with who's in charge, but the idea is that uh biblical concept has, you know, when children come into the pictures, scripture is always talking about your focus is to be on the children, the training of the children, the way they should go, and so forth. But really what we're seeing today is a is a a seismic shift into really what mom or moms or dad or dads want, and the child is is almost become a pawn in the game. And it this is this is even far beyond the the ramifications of divorce. I mean, this has gotten to be to the point where even when you get uh discussions about whether children can choose their gender, choose their pronouns, all that kind of stuff, it's kind of like no, everyone's a separate human being. You have no responsibility beyond yourself. It's your life, you make the choices you want. And it's and it's a it's a bankrupt philosophy, uh, and it's a bankrupt psychology. And so now, you know, we have a society that's scrambling trying to prove that no, no, no, we're okay. We're okay if we do this. And I think a lot of times Christians sometimes get kind of drawn into it. They like, well, to each their own, you know, it's not for me, but you know, uh, but no, when you create, and this is, I mean, this is something that went on back. I remember when they were working to legalize assisted suicide, you know, when Jack Kavorkin was doing his thing back in the early 90s, the whole idea was, well, it that's what they want to do, okay, that should be fine. But no, no, no. When you create a society that accepts a mentality that at some point you should be able to just get rid of yourself and your own life, it permeates, it trickles down, it touches other lives, and then pretty soon you know you have a life that's not as productive as it used to be, and you become burdened with it. Well, now translate that to children. You've got children who, you know, really, if you can decide what you want to be for yourself, then I can as the parents. And there's no sense of responsibility to anybody else. That's problem number one, no sense of responsibility to anybody else. And secondly, no standard as to what's right or wrong. And so what is wrong with the way you're thinking, it's not based on a reliable standard. It's based on a notion.

The Research Claims Under Scrutiny

SPEAKER_00 9:33

And well, Bob mentioned how there are a lot of Christians today who have just been kind of like, oh, well, you know, it's not bothering me and seems to be okay. And part of what prompted this or has has helped this along with with Christians in in our society, most most Western societies today, with same-sex marriage has been the idea of like, well, maybe we don't approve of it, but there's no real harm done. These people want to live the lives that they want to live. And one of the articles that that uh prompted my uh particular attention to this was also from the Them Before Us uh group. Uh it's entitled uh Exposing the Rigged Research of the Same-Sex Parenting Movement. And it calls attention to a um a study uh that was before the Obergefell ruling that uh from the Supreme Court that legalized uh same-sex marriage across the U.S. And it there's a Cornell University uh study claimed that 75 out of 79 studies show that children of gay or lesbian parents fare no worse than other children, which just happened to be ready on the eve of that Supreme Court decision. And that the message is unmistakable. 75 out of 79 studies say no difference, therefore the science is settled, the debate is over, and the research supposedly proves they're no harm. But this article uh goes on to point out in great detail that that 75 out of 79 is just bad science and the claim itself is nonsense. In fact, the studies will show when you get to actual good studies, scientifically verifiable and everything like that, it shows the exact opposite, that children are harmed growing up in same-sex households. In fact, they mentioned even one study where they actually, you know, whereas children, you know, in same-sex households where the parents weren't married did poorly, they did even worse when those were same-sex parents were married. And it was just, you know, it's like, wow. And it's like, boy, you'd you'd hope that if this had been publicized back then that you know it might have made a difference. I don't know that it would have. But I think it's sure helpful information to have now to recognize that these were lies. And there are plenty of people who believe this. They're they're convinced that the the science is on their side. Uh, and so a first step is saying, well, actually, and uh going to evidence like this, articles like this, and and saying, well, see, actually this is the case. And so what you thought was a done deal really shouldn't be a done deal, and maybe something we should try undoing.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

You know, when I went onto the Kernell uh website and I looked I looked at what they wrote and then I wrote over the or I examined the way they portrayed it. It's very attractively done. It's kind of clever the way they did it. Cornell even acknowledges, if you bury into the fine print, you know, that the studies really aren't they're not large studies. Let's just say you would not want to base your cancer treatment based on the way that they they did these studies, you know, because they were small studies, they were they were biased studies and so forth. But what was interesting is in the fine print they do say that, they do acknowledge it. But then at the uh the bottom, kind of like their concluding statement, nice bold letters, kind of what you you just said, the conclusion that, well, 75 out of 79 studies say uh really no difference. And of course you're going, no, no, you just got done saying that that your entire framework was doesn't really support the conclusion, but you still point the conclusion out, which is a thing called in research is called confirmation bias. And we all do it, you know, we all kind of develop a bias and you begin to look for it. So we saw it during questions about vaccines and and and uh so forth, where you know different sides are looking for you know endorsement of their position, and once they find an endorsement goes up, uh they'll post it on their page and so forth. And that's kind of what happened here is that you get this mentality that, you know, there's a couple and they're happy together, they happen to be the same sex, they want to be husband and wife, they want to have children, and of course we're moving, those of you who are following technology, we're moving it in the into the direction with surrogacy and IVF and all that kind of stuff, that same-sex couples can have children. There might even be the day where we could just simply take cells and reduce them back into their uh pluripotency level, and they could actually have the same genetic child, the identical genetic child as as the one parent. And I mean just all of this crazy stuff. They're all moving in that direction, and of course the one victim of it all is the child. And we c and the other thing, so so that's one thing. There's a confirmation bias, but there's the other thing, and that is so um the conclusion is that there's no problem. Based on what standard? No problem based on what? Uh living for the world? Living for non-traditional marriages? Well, okay, you could find those studies and support it, but we were all created to glorify God. That that's so we live by a different standard. And so when Christians read this kind of stuff, even if the studies were all right, let's just say they were all correct, and they were done on a huge scientific level, and there was virtually no difference, except for one little problem, and that is this is contrary to the will of God. And the only way that you could get around it is to start rewriting the Bible, kind of doing a Thomas Jefferson version of your own Bible. You know, you pull out the parts you don't like, you keep the parts that you like, and you've got your own Bible.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

That's a very popular approach to the Bible, by the way. Yes, it is. It's not ours, but it's a popular one.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

There's this just this, I think, push too of all a child needs is love, right? Like just just loving parents, uh well, whoever that is. And then it does seem like now that the research or you know, some people like are just trying to prove that. Like we just want to prove that all you need is love and all you need is a loving home, and all you need are are loving parents. And um, I think one of the founders of this group um that's them before us is Katie Faust. And I've heard her on YouTube and just different things too talk about stuff, and um, and she's very, very fascinating. And she uh was raised, um, I believe with a lesbian mom or um, you know, a uh and a partner or two and um and so has that experience from it. But one of the things that I found really interesting in listening to her talk was she said, you know, there are really three things that sociologists have agreed on. And I mean, even if you remove just the whole same-sex parenting aspect, um, there's three things that generally people have agreed on for a long time. Um, the first being that biological parents are invested in a way that that other people aren't, like with their children. And the the second being that um, you know, there are differences in parenting between a man and a woman, and you know, the woman maybe being more nurturing and compassionate, and the man, you know, providing that security and discipline, and that when that is done well, that's that is best for the child to have both of those influences. And then the third thing that is, you know, good for a child, or the third thing that uh impacts a child is uh parental loss. And so however that loss comes about, like whether it is a parent dying, a parent leaving, a divorce situation, and how that is very traumatic for the child. And she um, you know, says too, like that basically with these when people are advocating for same-sex parenting, they've taken all three of those things and just thrown them out the window and or and say, well, that doesn't matter in this situation. In this situation, all that matters is love. And um, and I just found that really interesting too to just hear her explain that because you know, we we as Christians who and like what Bob was saying, uh I mean, you know, if if nothing else for us, it's that this is the way God intended, right? Like this is God's design. But God's design is because it's good for us. Like there is so there, there's there's there's good in God's design. And and that's just really, really neat.

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SPEAKER_00 18:09

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SPEAKER_02 18:54

Well, the the studies consistently point to a very strong worldview, which is you replace truth with a worldview concept of love. And of course, the world concept of love is not the biblical agape concept of love, it's the it's the concept of falao love, which is more which is still loving, compassionate, emotional love. It's not all a negative. But the world's concept of love is further tainted with kind of a an almost like a necessary reciprocal thing. In other words, I love you as long as you love me back, I love you as long as I get some some benefit or pleasure from it. And the moment that that disappears, then I don't have that parental love anymore, which parental love i involves commitment, which is, I think, a very strong component of agape love, you know, and that is that you are committed to it, and that's you know, that statement, uh, Krista, where you said biological parents have a vested interest. You know, that's that's my flesh and blood in involved here. And and of course w we begin to lose that. And and the world constantly is wanting to twist the way it looks at things in order to get away with the things it want to get away with. I remember early on, right you know, after the legalization of abortion, there were reports of a rise in child abuse. And the argument was, well, the reason that there's a rise in child abuse is we've just gotten better at reporting it. And nobody wanted to to deal with the question of uh you know, did uh the ability or the legalization of being able to kill your unborn child have a negative effect on appreciating child. Well, logic would tell you that if I could have killed you before and I didn't, and now I got you and now you're not what I wanted, that shouldn't I at least be allowed to treat you the way I want to treat you? I mean, there is a hard cold logic to it that nobody wants to talk about. But the thing that I'm troubled about is when the world even says, well, love is what's what we're all centered around is that no one's ever asked to define love and upon which standard do they define love? So love for you means I want to love somebody as a spouse who happens to be the same sex. And love for someone else means I need to beat you with a strap until you comply. Now which love is the right love? Or are they both right, just subjective? You know, and what makes one kind of love right and one kind of love wrong? And lacking an objective authority, it's becoming a wild west. And you see it in everything. And I can see a perfect storm of the combination of technology and and the ability, procreative technology, you know, IVF, surrogacy, uh, stem cell research, all the kinds of things that we can do that begins to mess with and alter uh reproduction. production, and then you throw in CRISPR, the ability to cut and splice and dice, and then moving from curative to enhancement technology. And now you throw in AI, and then you know, uh back in the the back quadrant, you've got quantum computing coming, which is going to just massively increase um the speed and computational ability to accomplish things. And then you throw in latest advancements in creating a three-dimensional skin and so forth and artificial life and all of this kind of stuff. You start throwing all that into the mix. Who's going to get their way? Who's going to finally determine that my version of love is better than your version of love? Like Krista said, you know, we were designed this way because God said it's for your own good.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

And we're having trouble accepting that yeah this um and both of you talked about this this this elevation of a defective idea of love is part of how same-sex marriage got accepted not just legally but yet societally and even largely among Christians. You know it's just like oh well you know as long as they love each other and they redefined marriage that way. Marriage just became the way the two people who are really close to each other show that they love each other. It's the ultimate commitment there. And I think it's Ryan Anderson in his book Truth Overruled made made the point that the difference is that they're treating marriage as something that is different in uh degree from other relationships. I mean there's there's love, you know yeah we love each other as friends and then there's oh we really love each other and that's marriage. But marriage is actually different in kind from every other relationship. It's in a completely different category and it's not based on love. If marriage were based entirely on love, then every arranged marriage that has ever existed would not be a real marriage and nobody's going to argue that. Or you know and for that matter when two people fall out of love, you know, then suddenly they know they no longer have a marriage even if they're not you know it's it's just a really messed up way to try to define it. But it's a convenient one because it feels good for the people who are taking advantage of it and it feels good for everybody else who gets to say hell wow I'm so accepting I'm I'm so open-minded and everything like that that I I don't have a problem with whatever they want to do. And this way I don't have to worry myself over it. Well I'm sorry as Christian citizens of a of a nation we should worry ourselves over it. Well okay be concerned because Christians don't worry. But um this is something that should matter to us. And I I have not seen it in print anywhere. I haven't done a deep dive to to know if it's true or not. I suspect that one of the reasons for the timing of this movement is a hope that if they can get something before the Supreme Court it will be while the court is composed as it is and they'd have more of a chance of getting a favorable decision rather than wait until there've been a changeover in injustices and that would be less likely. That's just a suspicion on my part. But there's still an urgency regardless because the longer this goes on, the harder it is to undo it. People will have come to rely on the fact that people of the same sex can get married and they have children and things like that. And uh you know i if if we were to undo it it would be very difficult. That's not to say it shouldn't be done, but um it would still be uh very difficult and the sooner it's done uh the less trouble it'll be.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

But you know one of the consequences of this is kind of almost the marginalizing of the Christian view of things. To the point where it it went from being prominent and predominant to being hated. At this recording of this podcast, Artemis, the spacecraft is coming back from circ you know going around the moon. And just before uh it entered into the darkness the one of the astronauts quoted scripture and so forth. I was reading this morning the hatred that was spewed by the atheists who felt that that was just terrible and horrible and so forth. And see you you have to understand that when the world is is promoting its idea of love they they they are doing it with the tools that they have which is an evil inclined heart that's naturally opposed to God. So don't think that their version of love is well you've got your thing, I've got my thing. You know sometimes Christians foolishly talk that way but the other side isn't thinking that way not at all because if you don't buy in bookline and sinker to their view of things, you are now classified as a threat. And we see that the Christian position seen as a threat to free speech, to free living, all that kind of stuff. This is the marginalization, you know, because they're saying well the only thing holding children back from being fully adjusted and accepted in society are the closed-minded views of and a lot of times they fill in the blank with religion or Christians or Muslims even and stuff like that. But the reality is they they need to squelch any objective standard so that everyone can do what they want and then they think that everyone doing what they want is going to work. And there is no evidence whatsoever. Find me I challenge anybody and I and if you are the kind looking to to send hate mail this is it. Send it you prove to me from history that you let different people all choose for themselves what's right and wrong. Prove to me that that works there isn't I I'm a history buff I know of no example where that works.

Why Kids Need Mom And Dad

SPEAKER_00 27:58

The only example I could think of where would be somebody living all alone on a desert island. But even then it's not going to work out very well because you're going to make bad decisions. Yes. Yeah because because we're sinful people I and and getting back you know to the children again that's uh that's I think when we recognize and you know particularly as as Christians but I I I think you know you can certainly make you can make a a secular argument for this as well that embracing same-sex attraction and going all in on that that reflects something that is wrong something that is off it's not the way we're supposed to be it's not the normal it's not the design you know the good design that God gave us it's just going to get more wrong when you solidify that with with with the same sex marriage but then what happens when you entrust a child to somebody who has already taken the deep dive into wrongness that's not the situation where you want to say oh okay yeah I think that's a good place to play put a child. And none of this is to say that by the world's standards at least you can be gay and be a good father. You can be a lesbian and be a good mother. You can be responsible you can be loving you can look out for your child put your child's interest first. But one thing that cannot ever be true is a gay man cannot be a good mother and a a lesbian woman cannot be a good father. And children to the extent that it's possible should have both this is not to condemn situations where people end up in single parenthood. It's not to say that there isn't a place for adoption in in cases where otherwise the child is going to linger in a in a in a foster home or orphanage or something like that. But to deliberately deprive children of a mother or a father simply to satisfy your desire to have something that you think you ought to have. I mean that that that that's cruelty. We can't justify it in any legitimate way. One of the other articles that that uh had it prompted this for me was um uh he he talks about manufactured orphans as a result of these these relationships because this is particularly true in a really bad way in cases of surrogacy because then the mother is the actual biological mother isn't even in the picture. Or then maybe you've got two mothers because you've got the one who carries the child and you've got the one whose egg it was. And in both cases that child when when he or she grows up is told well yeah you know there were two women involved but they have nothing to do with you.

What Christians Can Do Now

SPEAKER_01 30:43

They were all okay with the deal we made as Christians I do think like most people probably listening to our podcast are are bothered by it. And so so now what? Like what what to do from there?

SPEAKER_02 31:01

I want to pitch for something that's going to sound uh frustrating to a lot of people and that is Christians and the church need to display their faith, need to proclaim their faith, uh need to always be pointing to what life is really all about glorifying God, praising God for the gift of salvation through Christ. And the and the problem is is that it doesn't produce the kinds of things that makes the world all excited this morning was the news that our Supreme Court in the state is going to have one more very liberal judge on it and the the s state Supreme Court's view on abortions pretty much tanks for a while, you know, it's just going to be a problem. It's a problem if you were trusting that human beings were going to be the solution of everything. If you have a court an entire court full of nothing but evil inclined corrupt judges, if you have an entire legislature full of evil inclined corrupt representatives and senators, and you had a nation full of Christians who who boasted that my God is the true God who saved me through Christ, do you think it would make a difference? I think it would make tremendous difference. But but the problem is you know there I was watching there were the liberal churches were mobilizing getting out the votes so that we could be sure to get our liberal judges and legislators in. Some of the conservative activist churches were trying to mobilize their people to get it in and everything. Judicial Rooney rulings, you know I've lived long enough to see them flow with the wind. I mean they just they go this way then they go that way and they come back this way then they go that way and of course if you can't get legislatures to s to flim flam on it, you can get uh judges to do it and if you can't get judges to do it, there's always the executive order out you know you can try all sorts of things. The problem is is that we've always had the solution in every home, in every nightstand in the hotel of Gideon's Bible, the solution's always been there, but we just have never felt empowered enough to do it. And yet it's the gre it's the one thing and we're told in scripture you don't fight with the world's weapons. You know you've got you've got a higher calling and I don't I don't know why. I and I sometimes I'm embarrassed that that there were times for the last number of decades where I haven't imagined strategic worldly action to bring about change.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Yeah I in answering the question what to do about it, you know obviously pray. It's first step for always and a a continuing step always. The second thing that that comes to my mind is something that I I confess that uh I I am somewhat ashamed of that I'm not so good at myself, but it's it's courage, the courage to actually talk about these things. Even people on the other side of of the issue have have remarked on how amazing it is that with the Obergefell decision, support for same-sex marriage in the United States flipped within the about a year when they did the polling, went from like 40% uh for and and 60% against to sixty percent for and forty percent against or something like that. But still when they do surveys, there's there's still a significant portion of of the United States that says this this should not be. And part of the reason it's not more, you know, that that figure that's opposed isn't bigger is because the people who are opposed to it who say this is wrong, this is not good, have been so cowed that that they're not talking about it. Well everybody's for it, you know, I can't actually say anything about it. You know and and there are court cases and such in various places where you know people get in trouble for taking for taking this stand. But we as Christians have to be willing to to say the right thing about the right issues and things like that. It doesn't mean you go looking for trouble. It doesn't mean you can't be diplomatic or tactical or strategic or whatever in the things that you say and who whom you say them to and in what context or whatever. But at least be willing to take a stand and say, you know no, I I don't think that's a good idea. I think there's this was a mistake and and by the way here's my evidence for this and this is why I believe this and and you don't have to say this is me shoving religion down your throat. Here's all the stat you know the actual statistics, the data that supports this and here's the historical argument that shows that this is an aberration that should not be continued. We need to be educated and be ready to talk about it. And only after we've made some progress there can we really seriously expect to see you know legislation and court opinions and things like that going the right direction.

Practice Hard Talks At Home

SPEAKER_02 35:44

But I'll tell you the the spiritual maturity to have that courage doesn't come from sitting in church one hour a week and then kind of leaving it there. It's taken for us a lifetime of study and then still feel like a coward by times. But it's a lot easier to to campaign for the way of the world because everyone has an evil inclination. But not everyone has has experienced the rebirth of Christ. So you know the numbers are probably against you. So so it's going to feel and everything in scripture says it's you're you're going to have troubles, you're going to have trials, you're gonna have tribulations, but you need the courage and the reality is you're not wrong. You are right and you're right not because you've got these brilliant analytical skills, you're right because God's word declares it to be right. But it's really a test of your confidence in God. I do think Christians have trouble navigating life in a representative form of government. I think I still I keep thinking that whenever I I I read what I I see from fine Christian people who write with hand wringing whenever we lose an election or a uh a referendum, you know, and it's kind of like woe is me, all is lost, but we'll keep fighting, you know, that kind of thing you still have the winning formula but I think we gotta learn how to to do it. And I I do believe you need to to know this information. You need to get it out there. But it's not a method of just what to do it's also um the methodology of how you do it. Are you building a bridge or you're building a wall?

SPEAKER_00 37:26

Yeah and I'll I'll just add to my comment and and building actually on what Bob's saying, if you're looking for the place to start, it's probably not going to be on Facebook. It's it's probably not going to be going and testifying before Congress. Good place to start to get comfortable talking about these things is in your church and with other Christians or whatever, you know, to actually be to the point of saying yeah you know that that decision really was bad, wasn't it? You know, isn't it good that great that we know the truth about this. Isn't it wonderful that we we can support children and families in this way. To get used to talking about it there is the really good thing that it is that God has given to us. And when you get more comfortable with that, you're gonna have more comfort and courage talking about it with other people as well.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

And and hearing Jeff say that just reminded me of the podcast we did with Clark Schultz and Stella Zarling. I I still hear Stella's uh talk about because I said uh in that podcast I said so so Clark you know does this incredible sermon wonderful sermon and then congregation goes home and it gets undone at home you know just people not doing it I said how were you able to avoid that and and Stella's talking about meal time was hour and a half, two hours and they would all sit around the table and they would talk about these very controversial issues and you know if you come off kind of self-righteous with oh the answer is simple you don't abort children or you don't have gay marriage or anything. And then the parents would would throw out the contrary arguments to see how uh the family navigated it and and I think that you know we need a safe spot uh in our homes and in our congregations to have those kinds of conversations so that we can feel bold.

Closing And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_01 39:09

I mean when I Bob loves it every time somebody talks about being a devil's advocate. I do I do I do the moment you think it's easy then I like to have somebody throw a spin in so no I I mean I think that's all really true too and when we get comfortable talking to like you said in our churches with our own people with our own families about these things where people can challenge arguments and we can kind of falter a little bit but also um you know get stronger in that that is going to make us stronger when we go out into the world as well. So well thank you both for this discussion today and we uh thank all of our listeners too and if you have any questions on this topic um please please reach us at lifechallenges.us we'll see you back next time bye thank you for joining us for the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources please consider subscribing to this podcast giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

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