Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 523 | How to Biblically Teach Your Kids About Sex & Gender | Guest: Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Today we're talking to Hillary Morgan Ferrer, founder of Mama Bear Apologetics. Hillary's organization is dedicated to providing resources to moms who want to raise their kids with a biblical worldview. We discuss many different aspects of parenting: how to compete with the secular world, which would love nothing more than to raise your child for you, and what to do when you're not sure how to teach your kids about Scripture. We also talk about how to navigate the increasingly complicated topic of gender and sexuality from a biblical perspective and end with some encouragement for people who aren't sure they can or should have kids. --- Today's Sponsors: Patriot Mobile shares your values & supports organizations fighting for religious freedom, constitutional rights, sanctity of life, and our Veteran & First Responder heroes. Patriot Mobile has plans to fit any budget & their 100%, US-based, customer support team provides exceptional customer support. Go to PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE or call 972-PATRIOT & get your free activation with the offer code 'ALLIE'! Fundrise provides access to diversified portfolios of private real estate to ALL investors with their industry-leading, easy-to-use platform. See for yourself how 150k investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate at Fundrise.com/RELATABLE. Good Ranchers has upgraded their website to handle the increased traffic that's been generated from the 'Relatable' audience as more & more of you choose to support American farms & farmers. And they have a limited time offer right now: go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE & you'll get 10 FREE bistro filet medallions with your order! Plus, save $25 on every box of mouth-watering American meats for life when you subscribe! And when you use promo code 'ALLIE' you'll get free express shipping. --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. I've got an awesome conversation for you today with Hillary Morgan Fair. She is the founder of the organization Mama Bear Apologetics. She has written two books, Mama Bear Apologetics, and now she's got a number.

new Mama Bear Apologetics book, specifically in regards to talking about sexuality and gender with your kids. She's awesome. The organization is awesome. I know that a lot of you have read the books and you've gotten a lot of wisdom from it. So she's got a lot of advice for us today, a lot of encouragement for moms, want to be moms, for aunts, for grandparents. If you are a mentor in any way, a teacher, if you are discipling in any way, the next generation, this conversation is for you. So without further ado, here is Hillary. Hillary, thank you so much for joining us. We have been wanting to have you on for so long. Can you tell everyone who may not know who you are and what you do? Yes, my name is Hillary Morgan Ferrer, and I am the founder and the Mama Bear in

chief of Mama Bear Apologetics. And we are a ministry that is aimed specifically at moms, trying to teach them apologetics, which for some of you may not know what's, that is, it's just given a reasonable, rational defense of the Christian faith. And so, a lot of times we teach our kids what to believe when it comes to the Bible, but not why we believe it. And so for them to have a firm foundation, I think about Hebrews, one where it says, you know, faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Now, of course, it has different translations. But sometimes people pick faith in apologetics against each other. And I'm saying, no, like, if you looked at this definition, anything that makes you more sure, anything that makes you more certain

is actually increasing your faith. So we're doing it from the perspective of science, from history, philosophy, archaeology, just whatever it is in this world that actually reaffirms the Christian worldview. That's what we're teaching kids how to do so that they can really stand up and say, no, I don't believe Christianity because this is what I've been raised in. I believe it because I actually think it's true. The more your kids think that it's actually true, the more grounded and the more fierce they will be for their faith. So you just released a book on how to talk to your kids about the apologetics of Christian sexuality. But you wrote a book a few years ago now, Mama Bear Apologetics. Tell me, and you kind of just articulated it, but what was the need

that you saw when you decided to write that book? Was it that you looked around and you saw, wow, a lot of moms want to teach their kids apologetics, but they don't know how? Or was it kind of an increase in some of the questions that kids are having now about some of, you know, the secular ideology that in a lot of cases is being pushed upon them in a new way through media, social media school and all of that, a combination of it, or what was the thing that drove you to write the first book? Yeah, so we actually had a publisher come to us after we'd been doing the ministry for about a year and say, we want a mama bear apologetics book. So I started looking at what was currently out there.

And a lot of what was currently out there really went through, here's a question, here's an answer. Here's a question. Here's an answer. And as I was looking at it, I'm thinking all these questions are coming from somewhere. One of the things that we really like to do is we like to burrow deep down underneath the question to say, what is the worldview that is fueling this question? So the idea of, you know, can science disprove God? That's like a big question that sometimes kids have. Well, that assumes that someone has a naturalistic perspective, meaning that the natural rule,

world is all we have, or from the scientism perspective of the only way for true knowledge is through science, that's a whole worldview right there. And if they have already bought into this worldview, well, then yeah, can science disprove God? But when you start looking at that worldview, that worldview, we don't treat it as true for lots of different things in our world, but we also address things like postmodernism in there. The question, it's like we can't even begin to tell our kids that Christianity is true unless they believe there's such a thing as truth. And so we've had that completely eroded away from us. And furthermore, now we've had emotions. Emotionalism is what we call it, come in and say, okay, well, maybe you can know truth, but it's all based on your emotions. And the more

you feel it, the more true it is. So it's really getting to the crux. I compare it. When you're just kind of answering the questions, I think those are really, really important because kids need those quick answers. But I call it like that game at the arcade, the whack-a-mole, where one comes up and you whack it and another one comes up and you whack it. And it's like, it's just this never-ending process. But if we can start them out on a worldview that actually explains reality and kind of bypasses a lot of the questions, it's like the questions won't even make sense if you've already taught them the correct worldview. Yes, that's absolutely true. And I love that comparison of whackamol, because really that's not how we want our kids to approach all of these issues,

because when I think of whackamol, I think of kind of being directionless and distracted and just reacting to the different problems that are popping up. But like you said, if you lay that foundation, then the questions kind of start to be answered themselves when you think about, okay, I don't know this or I've never heard this before, but here's what I do know. And I realized, and this is not something that I learned growing up. I didn't learn catechisms growing up. I was raised in a Christian home and I went to a Christian school and went to church and all

of that. And I'm so thankful. I do think that that leads a foundation for me. But I think some of the very foundational apologetics questions about who I am, what God made me to be, what it means to be made in God's image, what that person. is that it's attached to that, what belonging is that it's attached to that. I don't think I really ask those questions or knew the answers to those questions. And I do think moms are waking up now realizing, oh, these are basic questions that I really have to be able to answer for my kids.

Yeah. In fact, we talk about how a lot of times Christian parents are intending to teach a Christian worldview, but what they're doing is they're teaching from a Christian worldview, but they are not teaching a Christian world view. And I know that sounds like I'm split in hairs. Yeah. But think about it is like the teaching from a Christian worldview is teaching from the assumptions that they already have. Maybe their knowledge that they already have about what the Christian worldview says. And it's like they're kind of expecting their kids to just pick up on what that whole story is. Because the Christian worldview really makes sense of reality from beginning to end.

and it's got something called teleology that's in it. It's something that we use in biology a lot. It's this idea that things are created for a purpose and the end goal was in mind before it was created. Like someone didn't invent a printer and be like, whoa, it prints stuff. It's like they set out specifically to create a printer. They had an end goal in mind. When we look at the Christian worldview, we see from beginning to end that before the

foundations of the earth, God had a plan for the salvation of mankind and everything that we see is working towards that, all of our pieces of reality, including the effects of the fall. How do we see the effects of the fall? How do we see examples of what good design there still does exist? Because if we say that, oh, this effect of the fall, that means God's a bad designer, well, we ignore the fact that we live in a fallen world. Or if we take something that's fallen and we say, well, that's how God intended it to be. Again, we've negated the idea of the fall, but we can see both of them. We can see what God intended and how we, we've deviated from it. And so going on towards redemption and then later on into redemption,

this whole story makes sense. Once you put all those pieces together and we can't just be teaching all these little pieces, our kids need to know what the whole story looks like and how everything they experience fits into that story. Yeah. And I think that's something that is missing from a lot of Christian education today. Like I said, I got a Christian education. I'm very thankful. for that, but it was teaching from a biblical worldview, which is better than teaching from a secular worldview certainly. But honestly, it wasn't until I read, maybe it was mere Christianity that made me start thinking about where does all of this come from? And what about the questions that people outside of the biblical worldview have about truth? C.S. Lewis answers a lot of those

questions very beautifully in mere Christianity, but also, and I'm sure you've read, well, I'm assuming that You've read Love Thy Body by Nancy Piercy. That's another great book that talks about teleology. And I love that you're breaking that down for parents, how we teach what seems like a very confusing and adult concept to kids, not just why we should, but why it's absolutely necessary for laying that foundation. Do you think that some of the questions that parents are wrestling with today are more complicated, more difficult and in some ways more dangerous than moms have had to in the past?

Absolutely. So when people say, how is this sex talk changed? I'm like, how much time do we have here? This idea of, you know, it used to start out with, you know, when there's a mommy and a daddy. Well, now we have, we've gotten rid of the idea of there even being mommies and daddies. Okay, so maybe we'll start out when there's a man and when there's a woman. Wait, hold on. We can't even teach that anymore.

and it's like we have to go back into what is male and what is female. And because our society is telling our kids that these are social constructs that if we can make them and we can unmake them, then kids have no concept of that our bodies have a purpose. They have a teleology. Our sexuality has a purpose. It has a teleology. Marriage has a purpose.

A teleology. Family has a purpose. It has a teleology. And if we mess with any of these things, we are really messing with the image of God. There was a quote from John Piper in a book that my husband gave me while we were dating because this is what nerds in love give each other on dates for birthdays and stuff. But it was called Sex and the Supremacy of Christ.

And it's kind of a compilation of essays that were done from a conference that he'd done. And one of his main points, he said he had two main points. And that is that our sexuality and our ability to see God correctly are intricately intertwined. and you cannot introduce a deviation in one without introducing a deviation in the other. And likewise, he said, you know, on the same line of thought, if you already have a deviation in one, you will have a deviation in the other. And it's, you know, we'd love for it not to be that way, but from all our experience, that's what it looks like.

And in fact, you even look back at all the rules about sexuality in the Old Testament. What do you see time and time again that when Israel started going the way of like, Asherapoles and the temple prostitution, like whenever they got away from the biblical view of sex, they didn't just get promiscuous. They got pagan because their view of God literally changed by having that distortion and their sexuality. And that's something that we just don't teach anymore because I think a lot of us don't even realize it. We have kind of absorbed what the culture says that sex is about consent and pleasure and that's it. That's our only two things that we can use about if something is moral or not consent and pleasure. But we've completely distorted

the image of God just by distorting our sexualities. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Alley, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort, we ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and

unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. I think it's easy for moms. It's certainly easy for me as I am, you know, raising kids right now and we're not to the age quite yet of having all of these conversations, but we are to the age of, you know, where my two-year-olds, without us really having to explicitly teach her these things notices the difference between men and women, between mommies and daddies. And actually, one of her favorite things is to go around when she's at a park, see the boys, see the girls, see mama, see dada, you know, mama is a woman, daddy is a man. Like, I don't even remember

T. I honestly don't even remember explicitly teaching her these things, but it's natural. And it breaks my heart thinking about one day in the hopes of trying to defend her against unbiblical teachings and unscientific teachings about male and female that I almost have to confuse her with talking about some people don't believe these things. And it's easy for me to be nostalgic about a time when it was just easy. It was just easy. And it was assumed. Everybody was on the same page.

But at the same time, I'm thankful that it has caused me. to have to think about the why behind these things. It's not enough just to be able to say, well, here is what we are. But I have to wrestle with the teleology, which makes me more faithful. It makes me more thoughtful. It makes me dig into God's word more in a way that maybe our parents, you know, 90s, 80, 70s didn't really have to do. And maybe they weren't stronger for it. But now I feel like I am stronger in my faith and my thoughtfulness because I'm having to think through these things for a kid. So in that way, it can kind of be seen as a blessing, right? And you're kind of in the privileged class right there in the sense that I have friends that

are up in Washington, up in Oregon. And when they go to the, these are strong Christians. And when they go to the playground, the first questions on the playground between parents are what pronouns does your child use? Oh, goodness. And this is something that it's like, for kids that aren't even in school, this is things that they're inviting right there. And so they're really being forced to. to grapple with it in real time. But I would encourage you with one thing about when to be talking with your kids about this. And there's a psychological phenomenon that I have yet to be able to find the name for.

I'm just going to call it the founder's principle. I have no idea if that's the name of it or not. But I've talked to psychologists and they all agree this is a real thing. And that is the first person to introduce you to a concept automatically becomes the expert in that concept. So like my friend Alisa Childers did this with her daughter. I think when Dylan was like maybe eight or nine, ten somewhere around there and just asked her what she knew about different kind of sexualities and had she heard of homosexuality. And at the time Dylan hadn't heard about it. And so she just said, okay, well, this is kind of what it is. If you hear people talking about it and you have more questions, come to me. She got there early and she got there fast. And to this day, her daughter will ask her question. She invited that conversation. And she established, herself as the expert. She grounded her in God's truth, but she also said, these are some of the other ideas that are out there. When you encounter them, come to me and we'll talk about it.

And yeah, until this day, Dillon Phil is totally comfortable talking with Elisa about these things. And how do we know, and I'm sure you adjust this in your book, but I think some parents struggle with when to introduce those kinds of concepts to kids, because you don't want to confuse them when they're just, you know, making sense of the world and when they're just developing language, like, I'm not going to teach my two-year-old that some people go by they, them. She's just figuring out plural and singular and things like that. But at the same time, like, you want to get there first and you want to lay the foundation. And so how do parents know when it might actually be more harmful than helpful to introduce kids to other ideas?

and when it's actually necessary to make sure that you're the first one, you know, influencing them in regards to those issues. I would say it's always going to be earlier than you think. And the main reason I say that is because this is absolutely in the dating cartoons right now. Amy, the one who is a contributor to this book, she and I went on to the Mama Bear Facebook page and asked all the women on there just kind of crowdsourced and said, have you noticed any LGBT characters in your kids cartoons? And I kid you not, within less than an hour, we had 150 comments. So these are in cartoons. And so as soon as your child starts watching cartoons, they're going to start seeing this stuff.

And so it's like, you know, but I would agree with you on one sense of the idea of really going into the details. There's a verse that I've already always liked that was from Song of Solomon that says, do not awaken love until it's so desires. And that sense, I think sometimes sexuality really is like an on-off switch that, like, once it's on, it's on. And this is why childhood sexual abuse is just creates such harm because it turns on a switch that was not supposed to be turned on. So we don't want to give them all the gruesome details.

So one of the things that I talk about in the book is creating categories because as your kids are growing up, they're trying to kind of filter what you're teaching them. and they're putting it into categories. So right now the concept of sex is in the category of things, you know, I'll just say the secular category is things that dating people do or things that guys and girls do when they get a certain age. If we establish a category of something that is so powerful that it can create and it can destroy, we can talk to them about all these categories, nuclear warheads, certain

prescriptions, you know, a really big dog on a leash, you know, all. All these things, anything that's powerful enough to create or destroy or that is so powerful that it can be harmful if misused, all of those need to be guarded and guided. So all those things that we talk about being protected, you know, you really protect and guard nuclear warheads. The Mona Lisa is behind glass and way away from the tourists because not only is it powerful, but it has value, which is one of the other categories that we want to say, things that are so valuable that they require protection.

Because once you start introducing these categories into our kids' heads, later on, then when you're having the sex talk, you can say, remember things that are so powerful that, you know, if they're not used correctly, they can destroy, that's where a sex fits in. Or you know about your body, how we talked about things that are so valuable that you have to guard it, that would be your body, because what you do with your body matters.

But we're establishing these categories, the correct categories, really early on without having to go into all the, you know, nitty-gritty details of what sex is. Yeah. You know, I was thinking about, I was thinking about this yesterday. There is obviously a desire by Christian moms to make sure that our kids know this stuff and are being disciples in this way. I also think that there is a fear, an understandable fear of every parent. It doesn't want their kid to stand out. That doesn't want their kid to be bullied. They certainly don't want their kid to be seen as as hateful or to be the one who is different. And especially if you've got those friends whose kids are in public or even private school in these more liberal

schools, the kid who says, yeah, I'm not going to give my pronouns at the beginning of class, or sorry, I'm not going to call this boy a girl, or I'm going to stand up for biblical values in anyway, but certainly in regards to so-called gender identity and sexuality, I think parents fear that their kid is going to be seen as hateful. That's the last thing that she wants your kid to be seen as. You don't want your kids to struggle making friends to be rejected by friends' parents or siblings or whatever. So what's your encouragement to parents who want their kids to be so firmly established in this? They want them to be loving. They want them to be truly compassionate as the Bible defines these things. And they're afraid of their kids being excluded or maligned or even punished

by the school if they do stand up for these biblical values. Yeah, and that's one of the things that I think preparation. We can't change what's going to happen. Like I mentioned in the book that being called a goody-goody or a Bible thumper or, you know, all these different things, that's maybe what we had to deal with back we were in high school or a nerd or a prude, whatever. That's not what they're being called now. They are being shamed out of their Christian beliefs by being called hateful,

hurtful, monster abusive, you know, all the things. Pro suicide. I mean, the worst things that a person could possibly be, you are called if you just say a man is a man. That's hard for us as adults, people who are firmly established in our beliefs and have our community and have our identity. But how, I mean, think about being an adolescent where it's already difficult dealing with peer pressure. I mean, that's just such a vulnerable place for kids to be. Yeah. And this is where I think so. I used, I used to use the word persecution. I had someone point out to me like, that's not, let's not use that word. We don't want to downplay the actual persecution that's going on, you know, over in third world

countries with pastors that are being beheaded and all that stuff. But one of the things that I do think we need to be preparing our kids for is hostility preparation. Yeah. Being prepared to have a hostile response. So that's one thing. Now, sometimes kids, you know, sorry, just let me say, let me say on the persecution point, because I know people do push back on that and I have pushed back on it myself, but I believe

it's First Timothy. Sometimes I forget the references as they come to my head. I mean, we're told that all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. So Christian in America, Christian in China, persecution might not be the same. But I mean, we're also told that, you know, all of the struggle that we go through in the name of Christ is building for us in eternal glory that far outweigh them all. So that is slander or slaughter. So I just want to say, you know, I know people push back against that word persecution. It is a spectrum. It looks different. Everyone who desires to live a life of godliness in Christ will be persecuted in some way. That's just my take on that. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Okay. No worries. I just use the word hostility preparation.

Yes. Just because I feel like that's a little more accurate of what we have going on. So I think preparing our kids for that because we really need to be preparing them to live in exile. because culture is not reinforcing our beliefs right now. And so we need to know what it looks like to live in exile. And it's going to be different than when we were growing up in the Judeo-Christian worldview was kind of mixed in with a lot of things. You know, sure you had kids partying and drinking and doing whatever, but, you know, you could avoid it for the most part.

So I would say that. But also, I think preparing kids to know that other viewpoints exist. Because one of the things that I've noticed is when you have a kid that's really super sheltered and all they know is what their parents have taught them and what all their church friends know. When they encounter a different worldview, their first immediate instinct, and I've seen this so many times and I'm sure I've been this person, is, oh my gosh, who would believe that? That's so dumb because they've never heard it before. And so part of being compassionate is knowing to expect that there are other worldviews that are there. And okay, now that we know that,

how do we engage it with compassion and with love without compromising truth? Because I think we're seeing a polarization taking place that either people kind of are wielding the hammer of truth and they're kind of coming off like clanging gongs or in their desire to be loving. They're just compromising truth. And so if there's any kind of balance that we need to be teaching our kids, it's how to do those at the same time to be uncompromising about truth and uncompromising about loving the other person. And so we go into that a lot in the book of like how do we do this in on the playground and in the real world where we have a lot of frankly crazy ideas out there what about parents who maybe feel secure insecure in their own faith and they think who am I to disciple my kids I don't even know I don't even know what I'm talking about but they look at the craziness that's going on in the world they're like well I know I don't want my kids to learn that but I don't even know where to begin when it comes to this stuff, even in my own faith. What's your advice for them? That's kind of what we created this ministry for. A lot of people assume that we do kids apologetics and like, you know, kids this and kids

that. And we don't. I always let people know our demographic is moms and for a couple of different reasons. Number one, several years ago, right before I started Mama Bear apologetics, I had a friend of who made it clear to me, there are these large swaths demographics of women who will not read something unless it's by a woman for a woman. And so I thought, oh my gosh, then who's getting them the apologetics? But the books are specifically for, and just all our resources are specifically for, have kind of a two-fold purpose, is to first equip the moms so then they can turn around and equip their kids. So first we want to make sure that the moms understand what we're talking about, breaking it down into a really practical language. I think sometimes when it comes to

male teaching and female teaching, guys kind of get out their separate boxes and they're like, well, I'm in my apologetics box right now, or now I'm in my work box and they can just close those boxes and put them aside. But women, you know, what they say, were like that plate of spaghetti. Everything mixes up. We need to see how something's practical. How is what I'm learning going to affect the conversation I have with my neighbor on the playground or with my neighbor at church or With my kids, it's like we want to know how is this information useful and practical and how do I present it to someone else? In fact, one of my colleagues, Mary Jo Sharp says that a lot of times when she's doing an apologetics conference, she finds that the men come because they're trying to answer their own questions.

And a lot of times the women come because they have someone else who has a question that they're trying to help. So I'd say when you feel insecure about not knowing stuff, I think that's when fear creeps in. And that's also when avoidance creeps in because you feel like, well, I can't do it. So I'm just going to stay away from that. And I don't think that we have that luxury anymore, especially with the amount of repetition that is going on within just the broader sexual agenda. We just don't have that luxury. So mama's equipping yourself first.

That is the first thing. And then within the books, we take different ways of here's some games you can do with your kids to now break this information down into kid language so that you can have these conversations. And, you know, like all good teachers know, you just need to be one step ahead of your student. Yeah. You don't have to know. You don't have to know everything. And I think that is super encouraging and super equipping for a lot of people. And we also have to realize that, you know, the secular world, whether it's social media, media, the cartoons that you're talking about, some of the curriculum that we are seeing in schools, like they,

are not worried about whether or not they are experts before they're going to indoctrinate and disciple your child. Like the secular world is keen on disciplining your child and shaping their ideas and shaping their thoughts about identity and sexuality and morality, how the world works. And they are banking on the fact that parents don't feel like experts. They're banking on the fact that parents are delegating the responsibility of discipleship and education. solely to, you know, YouTube and teachers and things like that. And we're even hearing from some politicians that parents should not be in charge of their child's education, that leave it to the experts, which are apparently these teachers and administrators and, you know, teachers unions and

things like that. And so some parents might actually have internalized to that without realizing it. They might have actually believed, well, the state knows better. Teachers know better. Even Sunday school teachers know better. All of these, you know, entities, people might be, they might be, in some cases, you know, really great people, especially, you know, church and things like that. It's still not the primary responsibility of anyone other than the parent to educate kids on the things that matter. Yeah. And this seems like it's almost a relic of the industrial revolution while we started outsourcing everything. We now outsource the discipleship of our kids. We now outsource the education of our kids. And I would just say that, you know, not all the stuff that the secular world is doing is super-duper brilliant and convincing our kids through really sound arguments. Honestly, much of what I see going on is repetition. In fact, there's a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by, I believe his name is pronounced David Connaman. But he has a phrase in that book that I have all over this book just because I keep saying, if there's something that you need to remember, this is it. And that's that the brain has a hard time distinguishing between that which is familiar.

and that which is true. So meaning that you hear something enough, eventually you just accept it as true without any good reasons. And so that's why we included that is true. That is true for adults too. That's not just kids, man. Thomas Sol just on that, Thomas Soul, he has a similar quote. He says, some things we believe are true because they're demonstrably true. Some things we believe are true because we've heard it a lot.

And that is the exact same principle. So that's very true. Love Thomas Saul. We have an afterward in the book. It was going to be a chapter, but I felt like chapter 13 was like a really good stopping place. But it's an afterward. It's about a chapter long, but it's titled, things to repeat to your kids until they want to gag. And it's this idea that lasting maxims, it's like these are the things you keep repeating over and over again. Because really repetition isn't like good or bad. It's just a tool like anything. And it burrows things. so deep into your brain that they just pop up organically whatever you're doing. And if we can take the Christian worldview and be repeating it so many times that our kids are like, oh my gosh, you've said that so many times. That's kind of when we know we've done something right, because with the amount of repetition that I see going on in the world, and especially like all to say from what I studied this last year with this book, the National Sex Education Standards, you have so much repetition that is going on that is talking about gender, you know, how to, gender, gender expression, gender expansiveness, all these different things that we need that voice of the

Christian worldview to be repeated just as many times because that's one of the things we're competing with is who's heard, which one have you heard more? Because that's the one you're going to default to. And the difference between the Christian repetition and the arguments that we're, you know, making repetitive and the secular dogma and the maxims that we're seeing from that side, it's not just that Christianity is true and that's not. Christianity is beneficial and that's not, but also because we are actually encouraging our kids to think through critically the maxims that we are bringing forward. It's not just dogma. It's not just, okay, repeat this,

whereas something like trans women or women, that's illogical. Like, that's completely illogical. But if you're repeated enough, same thing with my body, my choice. And you don't equip kids with the tools to think through those things, which they don't. Secular Progressivism does not provide tools to critically think at all. They only provide the superficial maxim. But that goes to show whether or not you teach someone the argument behind maxims. If you repeated enough, it does not matter whether or not they know why that's true or how you came to that conclusion. That's the difference between Christian apologetics.

and worldly dogma. Not only are we repeating the conclusions, we are constantly teaching how we came to that conclusion, right? Yes. And I think on these ones, we're actually repeating an assumption because I think the assumptions we talk about in chat, which is it, chapter four,

the difference between logical thinking and emotional reasoning. And a lot of times people are debating what they consider, you know, a fact claim or a conclusion, but they're not looking at the assumption that actually comes before. So our very first maxim for the, you know, things to repeat to your kids till they want to gag is what I do with my body matters. So I think one of the proofs that you have a good maxim is that you can apply this in so many different situations and it's true in all of them. You know, even your child who's too young to understand, you know, piercings, tattoos or, you know, sucks change operations.

You know, why do I have to brush my teeth? Because what you do with your body matters. Why do I have to eat my green beans? Because what you do with your body matters. It's true in all these different ways. And when they hear that over and over again, and then they see things that are just blatantly disrespecting the body, that's going to give them positive thing. No, I think what I do with my body does matter. And again, that's an assumption.

But I think a lot of times when you have the correct assumptions, then all the fact claims that flow from that far outweigh the ones where it's an assumption that's really not based on reality. What about moms who maybe they feel like they learned all of this too late? got a 16-year-old daughter or a son, and they feel like they've lost them to the world of TikTok, Instagram, their friends at school, and maybe they're just now waking up to this, and they're like, I don't have any, I don't have any influencer authority over my kids. I don't have time. Do they have time? Is there a possibility while they're still under their roof to start discipling their kids

in this way? Absolutely. In fact, Amy points out a study. I can't remember exactly which one it is where kids. from like 12 to 19 were asked who has the highest influence in you in terms of different things. And, you know, Friends was really high up there, I think, for some of the elders, but right next to them, number two, was parents. Parents are still very hugely influential.

And I think sometimes we just assume that we're not. And so we take a back seat, not realizing that our kids really do want us to start talking about these things. One of the best things I would say for, if you have a kid that's kind of already been lost, is there's a phrase that I repeat in the book over and over again, and that's, you can't refute that which you don't understand. And so maybe at that point, your goal is to understand how they came to the conclusion. There's a book by Greg Kokel called Tactics that goes through the, why do you believe, or what was it, how did you come to that conclusion and what does that word mean? Like if someone uses a word like justice, what do you mean by that?

Right. Let's define this. and then how did you come to that conclusion? So basically becoming a student of your child's worldview, because once you become a student of their worldview, you're going to be able to pick up on the things that they have imbibed and have become assumptions just because they've heard it so many times. And when you start asking them questions, why do you believe that? And what do you mean by that? They can start reasoning through it and realize, well, maybe I don't know why I believe that. I just kind of assume that it's the case. And in that sense, it's like you present yourself saying, I want to, I want to understand you.

I want to learn about you. I mean, it's been showing so many times. People like talking about themselves. And that goes for everybody. Yeah. So when you're focusing on having them talk about what they believe and you're trying to understand it, they are going to give you more grace when you start asking questions of like, well, if that were true, then what about this?

And you kind of bring them to the logical conclusion that maybe some of these bad assumptions have. And you start thinking it through with them. And yeah, I just think that's one of the best things to do. And I know I don't personally have kids, so I don't know the kind of hellfire that would come from this. But I just, I still don't think that every kid needs a smartphone. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think that's definitely true.

I think that's definitely true. I think my crop of moms, like that are my age, I was born in 92. So I'm like on the kind of younger half of millennials, I think that we have a very, unique vantage point, whereas like the older millennials, exonials who are born in the 1980s, they didn't get their cell phones and their smartphones until they were adults. But, you know, I got my iPhone when I was like 15 or 16. And even though we didn't thank the Lord, we didn't have Snapchat or TikTok or anything like that, I'm so thankful. But I have, you know, grown up with this technology. I see the damage that it does. And, but I'm also old enough to remember

what it was like before these apps, how I would spend my nights reading rather than like, you know, being on TikTok or Snapchat or things like that. And so I think we are very uniquely able to see the harms and the benefits of social media and that we're not naive to what happens when you just give your kid an iPad and give them free range on YouTube. Whereas maybe some older parents, not older, but older than me, they might be a little bit. bit naive to that. And so I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that Christian parents who are my age are a little bit more savvy in this and are taking seriously the need for apologetics for our kids. Final big question that I want to ask you. A question I get all the time and that I've answered

before, but I want to hear your thoughts on it. Okay. That parents are like, I'm too, I'm too scared, or not parents, but people who are married are too scared to have kids because they're scared of all of these things that they have to teach their kids and they don't want to have to deal with that. They're worried about their kids being in such, you know, crazy, chaotic, confusing world. What is your encouragement to those Christian parents who are thinking about having kids, but they're worried about it? I think that their fear is well grounded. I think that raising kids well in this moment, shall we say, is a lot more hands-on than it used to. to be. We used to have society and schools and just a lot of things that were kind of backing us up in

terms of our Christian worldview. You have to be intentional about everything. So I would say just, I don't know, this sounds weird, but one of the things I would say is just being okay with not having the same standard of living knowing that you are going to be trying to be more intentional with your children and whatever it takes to prepare them to become adults in this world. that we're growing up in, be prepared to do it. And at the same time, what bigger task could the Lord be giving? That is literally shaping culture. And for the parents who think that, oh, you know, being a parent, it's not that big of a deal, you know, it's not, you know, changing the world in this way or that way. No, you are shaping culture. These are the kinds of things that the Lord is going to

say, well done, good and faithful servant for all the mundane things that you think don't matter. And so, I mean, of course, it's a choice for everybody. You know, my husband and I don't have kids. It's more for health reasons than for other reasons. But being able to slow down your life in order to be intentional about everything I think is a must have. And so it's just kind of preparing yourself for what you might need to give up a little bit in order to be an intentional parent. Yeah. And I think if the world needs anything right now, in addition to the gospel, it is kind, strong.

thoughtful, wise children who will turn into brave, courageous, wise discerning adults. The last thing we need is fewer people who represent those characteristics that I just, that I just described. And you know, God doesn't place us on the timeline that he places us arbitrarily. He doesn't just kind of scatter us like dust across the span of eternity. He is intentional. He is purposeful. God is not an arbitrary, capricious God. God is purposeful in all that he does. And if he placed us here and the now, he places our children at the specific point in eternity that he wanted to place them. And I believe he equips generations exactly how he wants to equip them, how they need to be equipped. And so we can thank him for his sovereignty and all of that.

That includes. And when we were born and when our kids were born, he's going to give us the tools to do that. And he is specifically using Mama Bear apologetics in that unique way to equip the Saints for the work of ministry as Ephesians 3 talks about. Thank you, Hillary, for everything you do. Can you remind everyone where they can find you? Yes. So one of the things I've learned from doing this ministry is that everybody spells mama differently. So ours is if you want to find us, the actual one, it's m a bear, apologetics.com. You can find us on Twitter, which I'm rarely on that because I think it's a cesspool of culture. But we're there. And Amy will probably be the one responding to you. I'm on Instagram, which I started this year, and I love. And we're still on

Facebook. We have a great community on Facebook. And so just if you want to get involved with us anywhere there, and then the book is available on Amazon, I think Target.com. The first book is now available in Hobby Lobby. Awesome. So yeah, you can just kind of find us anywhere. And if you want to contact us about anything. We have a contact page on our website and we've got podcasts and we've got blogs. The podcast have been a little slow right now because I'm recovering from major surgery and the book. But if you're backlogged, if you haven't listened to them, you've got several that you can go listen to there. So we're trying to provide as many resources as possible. Yeah, well, we will include those links in the description of this episode. Thank you, Hillary,

for taking the time to come on. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Alie Beth. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.