Ethan: 0:00

Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture

0:07

Welcome to Raising Joyful Children in an Angry World. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. I want to get into today and the next couple of podcasts. What I believe is the final battle, the battle for the body that we are seeing across America and the Western world christianity has traditionally Understood. Human beings being human as consisting of body, mind, and spirit. I know there are theologians that divide this a little differently and they combine the soul and the heart and all that, but traditionally, if we think about the body, the mind, and the spirit, we are gonna see that there is a fight on these three fronts. If you recall the temptation of Jesus, Satan. Tempts the body with the offer of bread. He tempts the mind with the jump off the cliff and God will send his angels to catch you. And he tempts the heart in terms of the power I can give you if you worship me. The war for the mind has been going on from the beginning. It is always a matter of trusting God's word to be the source of truth and of wisdom and purpose in our life and rejecting the All that is contrary to it. The war for the spirit is similar. It's trusting our heart to God to redeem and reveal the essence of our soul and who we are versus giving our hearts away to the powers and desires that are toxic to the spirit and that destroy what is good and what is beautiful. And the battle for the body is now in full force. We used to see more of this attack on the mind, trying to argue out what the Bible really meant and we've been in this sort of dystopic society, which is, which is poisoned to the spirit. Always, always looking for what's flawed and always, a view that, Oh, there's nothing that can be done. And the world stinks and it's going to end spiritually destructive material. But now we have seen the battle for the body rise up in America and in the world in a way that I don't know we have seen before. The body, the scripture tells us, is not our own. It is a temple to be filled by God. In fact, we are told as we look at the Christian family, the wife's body does not exclusively belong to the wife. Boy, does that fly in the face of American culture. And likewise, the husband's body does not exclusively belong to him. It partially belongs to the wife and the wife's body partially belongs to him. See the reason for this battle and the reason it is so intense is because our bodies are foundational to our faith and the building of our Christian family and our family's heritage. Now there's a place for folks like Robbie Starbucks and others in their documentaries and social influence. that want to engage in these debates on gender and the body and human sexuality. But I'm convinced for, for the Christian family, particularly raising a family, they are in many ways a waste of time because they, they tend to leave us with a, well, I'm right and they're wrong. And it tends to drain us of our energy. It's good that these people are warning us about tactics, but it doesn't give us a battle plan. It doesn't give us a defense system, which is really what we need. It's not enough to know that the enemy has missiles. You have to do something about it. And so instead, I believe the family needs to focus on how we help our kids fight for the truth and recognize the reality of their body, their gender, and their human sexuality. See, the volume of messaging about the, the missiles that are out there. I'm not sure that it doesn't act sometimes as a distraction because the reality is there are so many messages which are missiles that are being fired and heading towards our family. We've got AI, smartphones, and the world, and what we need Is something, a missile defense system, a message defense system of our own. Ronald Reagan had the Strategic Air Missile Defense, and people sort of like, Whoa, what's this? And didn't believe it would work, and called it Star Wars. And then this year, we watched the Iron Dome protect Israel. It wasn't enough to simply, That's one thing, but it's another thing to have an iron dome to protect them. And so I want to say first and foremost, what we have to do is rid ourselves of any partial compromise regarding God's word on this topic. You're going to have to be willing to be in the minority of opinion on these topics. And you're going to have to give up a care about what the majority or of being accepted by people who are outside of what we understand in the Christian family. We got to keep in mind the majority of the world at one point believed in child sacrifice. The majority is usually wrong. I want to say, secondly, I want us to take a look at GK Chesterton's understanding of the soldier. He says, it's not that we hate the enemy in front of us, but that we love the ones that are behind us. I don't believe this hatred of the deceived or pointing out how awful the deceived are, or the opposite of this, those that try to Appease those that are lost in these lies under this banner of tolerance. I don't think either one of these things accomplishes much too many of the loudest voices in this battle. offer us so little advice on how to defend our homes from these messages and how to instill truth into our kids. See, I believe for parents and grandparents, our role, our primary role is to protect our family by serving our families. God's truth and it's it's not to make people comfortable. It's not to save the world. It's not to win debates It's not to prove that God's truth is right and what those who have rejected it Their truth is wrong. It is this kind of stuff. It gets us so distracted We have to know what to teach in our home What is godly masculinity and femininity? How do we teach this to our children? How do we protect their innocence without leaving them vulnerable to the poisons that easily leak into adolescent curiosity? I think we can look at Sun Tzu, Art of War, as sort of a wake up call, the first statement. He says that, All war is based on deception. The deception in the war for the body. It starts with that old line from the garden. Did God really say that? And if our kids are going to have a chance of being able to battle for the truth of their own gender, sexual identity, and understanding of family, you've got to understand Sun Tzu, The Art of War, and your Bible agree, all war is based on deception. I believe there are four fronts, I'm going to call them, four things that we've got to have necessary into helping our kids understand the body, the gender, human sexuality, and the Christian family. All of this has to be covered by our prayers, because any effort that we make relies on God to open up the heart and the eyes of our kids. But I want to say that these are the four areas that I think we can focus on. The power of nature. God's creation. You will see that scripturally and we're going to talk about that. The power of scripture. That's God's story. The power of family. That is God's gift. And then the power of story itself. God's glory. If you listen to what the people who are battling against our values on this topic, say They will argue against nature. They will, they will say, it's not like the patterns that we see in nature. They will argue that humanity is an exception to nature. They will argue against God's Word. They'll say it doesn't really mean that. You often see the use of tropes. That thing where you take a scripture, or you take a set of words, and then you say, well, this is what it really means. This is the hidden meaning. And you start to leverage and manipulate the scripture to mean something that it doesn't. They will argue that the family is not a gift. No, that's a, that's a curse. We hear these arguments from celebrities. They curse the patriarchy. And I'm not endorsing the patriarchy, but you hear all these kind of comments saying that family structures are a social construct. They are things that hold us back. This is, this is out of playbook. And others, you'll also hear, and this is the one that goes over and over and over, are these anecdotal stories. Oh, this is my experience. My experience becomes what's true. My experience, it trumps whatever you say in the Bible. It trumps whatever there is in nature. So I call these four fundamental areas, because they contain truth. And if we know the truth, and if our kids know the truth, that is what the scripture tells us, sets us free from the deception and the consequences of being trapped by the lies. Warriors must pick their battlefields. The ones they want to capture to win the war. These four areas, I believe, are the battlefields you have to win. And families will have to commit, just like in war, just like in the Iron Dome, resources. That is, your time and your willingness to invest in what is true and divest yourself of what is false. If we think our kids and our families are not vulnerable to wandering into these minefields of lies about the body and gender and human sexuality and what is a family, we're kidding ourselves. Anyone who thinks the family is strong, take heed, lest you fall, I believe would be what the scriptures would tell us. God must control the narrative of our home and our family. God must tell us the story. God will send the messenger to make us a new creation under the preaching of his word and the power of the Holy Spirit That's what awakens the heart of kids however you and I have a Responsibility to put our kids in front of the messengers and the message that God is sending and let them Experience all that God has given them see the prince of this world is seeking to gain power over them you And over us through this use of deception. But our God promises, he's not gonna let that happen. If we will responsibly put our kids under that story that God is telling and let His Holy Spirit open it up. And I wanna look at that through these four battlefields, the battlefield over nature, over scripture, over the power of the family and the power of story. 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