Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture
Paul:This week we are recording from the road apologies for the sound quality I was really struck by a huge contrast over the weekend. On Friday, I was reading to a kindergarten class, a really sweet group of young children, and we walked through Oscar Wilde's story, The Selfish Giant. And then later in the weekend, Sunday, I read an article in the Times about a world where there's this thing about being deep faked. It was a story about a young lady who had her image stolen by a boyfriend from a previous year and he used the woman's image to do all sorts of horrible movies and disgusting things that were humiliating for her and he did it without her permission. We've heard about this with celebrities, but this was now something that's happening. I try to avoid boogeyman stories when I do these podcasts, but it's really becoming clearer that Christian kids are going to need a rock solid structure to their faith. The world seems to be morphing back into this paganistic morality, constantly putting stress cracks in people's faith. Our cultural Christianity, is not going to be enough. I love Tim McGraw's Always Be Humble and Kind, or maybe you like Leanne Romack's version of I Hope You'll Dance. They're great songs. But they're not sufficient to explain our faith or be understood apart from Christ. James Marriott, the same weekend, a writer from the Times, warned. He said, we can't build a worldview on vacuous moral self congratulations. I fear the current kind of Twitterized creeds of Christianity, coffee cup slogans, fall short of the historic confessing faith. Historic confessions are too often dismissed in our modernity, our zeal to reach the lost, that we fail to realize these statements of faith, the Apostles Creed, which is one we're going to look at over the next few weeks. It's their blueprints, and they're needed for our children to live and benefit of life in the kingdom of heaven. They're the foundation, the mechanics, the lens to see the kingdom. And I hope to present over the next few weeks, uh, what the greats of our faith taught in the creeds, the commandments, and the Lord's prayer. Those are generally part of any catechism hope to borrow from Aquinas, Luther, Pascal, sir. Briscoe recently wrote a really good book on the apostles creed because we're going to have to try and teach our kids a little bit more about their Christianity. We're going to have to strengthen the apparatus that helps them grasp what God is doing in them. Paul writes in Corinthians, you are in Christ who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. But how do we grasp this wisdom and redemption and this righteousness? Well, it's not going to come from the world. It's not going to be by learning some good manners and how to be civil in society. We're going to need a framework, a structure on how to grasp what our faith and our Bible teaches. It's an apparatus that kind of aligns our beliefs as the potholes of the world as we're going down the road, try to knock out our alignment and steer us off of God's path. They're going to help us do what Spurgeon warned. He said, we have to distinguish between What is almost right and what is right? I think the idea that we can hand a Bible stories to our kids, and maybe later a Bible, and they will grab on to it, conflicts with the historical methods of the church. In fact, it's not really the way we learn much of anything. We need the basics. We need the foundation of truth before we can grab on to the more complex. And in our faith, we need to know the themes, the precepts, the big picture, so that the stories of the Bible make sense and actually strengthen what we believe. Stories and creeds, statements of faith, they go hand in hand. As the Lord in His grace opens the eyes of the hearts of our kids, as His Holy Spirit transforms them to new life, all by His grace, our kids need to understand who is transforming them, and what is true, and Regarding our Holy God, see the world and the prince of this world is constantly trying to confuse and rip off God's words This year's NFC Champs the 49ers banner says the faithful and the team Calls its fans the faithful. It's almost like a liturgy The leadership and the owners when they won the NFC championship said, Oh, we could not have done it without our faithful You trusted us and the fans wave their banners with these like soccer scarfs that say faithful on it It's the stuff that it's like a religious experience to these folks and this stuff sells and In a faithless generation that is desperate to trust something outside themselves. And so you see this religious language in the liturgy of sports and sports teams being borrowed. The world borrows from the faith because this is what the enemy does to confuse and lead us to what is almost. Right. That is why we need what we would call a catechesis or a catechism that is to teach and to prepare youth for the faith. The catechisms of Augustine, Luther, all Protestant branches, the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, all use the Apostles Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. I want to start over the next few weeks with the Apostles Creed because I think it really starts with a very foundational. The first words of the creed is, I believe in God, and then the Father, the Almighty. I want to begin with, I believe in God, and what does that mean, and how do our kids grasp it? Dr. Paulson, who I've talked about, who has a podcast called The Outlaw God, who is also going through the commandments and the creed, speaks to, the creed is saying, you recognize that you are not self generating. You must come to knowledge and know what God generates. And so when we start with, I believe in God, this is an enormous concept and to say it is to say something profound. And, and so why would we even believe in God? And so first kind of Aquinas and Pascal, I think, help build the rationale. Pascal says at the simplest, when I see a beautiful watch, I assume there's a watchmaker Aquinas then goes into this, uh, sort of historic view, this sort of philosophical view of cause and effect. And he basically says, you know, every effect has a cause. And so we go through this cause and effect and you keep walking it backwards. And, in order for the cause and effect is so at some point. What you need for the all of life to be in existence is you must have an eternal God Who did not require a cause because he eternally always existed and You either do that or you just believe the world randomly produced all that you see That's why Paul talks about in Romans that all of nature testifies to God. And these couple of concepts about, I believe in God, allow us then to take this to our children and to see things, a couple of things. I think we should learn to memorize it. I think we should have some conversations. But we can walk in when our child has built a Lego car or a spaceship, and we can point out Pascal's argument. Look at those pieces. They didn't fly out of the box and form a car. So it is when we see things in nature. God made them for us. I want my children to believe in God because it makes sense to do so. And I want them to see that they are not self generated beings who create their own moral standards and their own rules. This is the philosophy of the modern world. This is what Ian Rand taught when she said your own happiness is your own moral standard and your own Rational capacity as the only truth that you can trust
There is a history of philosophers like Ian Rand. We could look at Montana Rousseau and all sorts of voices in our culture. That speak to this truth, that your personal happiness is the standard that in which you should. Pursue and that your virtue, your knowledge, your wisdom. Is the only thing you can trust to get you there everything's inside of you. And yet this is the opposite of what scripture teaches scripture would say that philosophy will lead you to becoming a self-serving person. You'll use other people. You'll become enslaved to your own pleasure. And it that's that sin slavery will follow you everywhere you go. It's actually the path. To destruction.
Paul:To believe in God is to say there's something greater than ourselves a Wisdom that is beyond us And that self generated virtue or self generated morals and wisdom is the devil's lie. I like confessing churches that recite the creed, or even churches that confess a series of their statements of faith. We need to recite beliefs. To remind ourselves of what is true, because the world is constantly filling our heads with what is false. We can teach this to our children in so many simple ways. A walk around the block, we see a home being built. We assume there's a builder. We then take that same rationale, and we look at nature, and we point it to nature and say, God made that. God created that. And we'll walk into the creation story a little deeper. But for today, we need to understand. That these creeds and these confessions are something that we have to understand ourselves, and then we try and find the ways, both at the table in discussion and then in the activities of life, that we pass on what we believe to be true and what God reveals to be true about Himself in the lives of our kids. The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong. Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.