#STRask - How Do You Deal with Someone Whose Mission Is to Tear Down Everyone Else’s Belief in Jesus?

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Questions about how to deal with someone whose mission is to tear down everyone else’s beliefs about Jesus, how to help a child or teen who seems liable to turn away form God due to peer pressures, and how to reach a daughter who says she wouldn’t be a Christian even if it were true.   How do you deal with a Christian who has deconstructed and whose mission is to try to tear down everyone else’s beliefs about Jesus? What should parents do to help a child or teen who seems liable to turn away from God due to peer pressures? How can I reach my daughter, who professed to be saved as a child but now is out of church, in a relationship with a trans man, and says she would not be a Christian even if Christianity were true?

Well, Greg, today we have questions about tactics. Okay. And so I'm going to start with a question from Carl. How do you deal with a Christian who is deconstructed, whose mission is to try and tear everyone else's beliefs about Jesus down? Big sigh there. The sad thing is there are lots of people like that. And I guess the question I would ask,

just as a very, very general one, and it can be used lots of different ways with people like this, is why did you deconstruct? What is it that caused you to change your understanding? Okay. Secondly, I think you could ask, why are you so intent on disabusing other Christians of their confidence and faith in Christ? There's one thing I don't understand. understand about atheists, characteristically, is what would give them this zeal, like this fanatical, some of them, religious zeal to convert other people to atheism? From an atheistic perspective, meaning in life is completely manufactured. There's no grand meaning, no metanarrative, there's no big capital M meaning, capital T, truth, any of that. So it's just up to

the individual, so it's kind of an existential approach. You kind of, you make your own meaning. Well, why would an atheist be frustrated that, or be, yeah, be bugged about Christians making their own meaning about Jesus? That's what turns them on, leave them alone. But they are. Many of them are very, very aggressive. Well, that infringes on my rights, they might say, well, wait a little, what kind of rights do you

have as an atheist in an atheistic world? You don't have any rights. And you can't say that if I were nice to you and all that, that's better. You could just say you like it more. Why shouldn't anybody care what you like about in your worldview? Okay, anyway, so this amystifies me a little bit, and I see something here when dealing with progressives. Why would a progressive try to convince Christians that they're wrong? And part of the reason I asked this is because it isn't as if progressives are going to some, all going to something else they think is truer.

They're going to all kinds of different things. You're talking about theologically progressive? Yes, that's right. Theologically progressive. I think that's what he's referring to here. And so, oh, in fact, we've seen some clips when Tim was talking about the issue you wrote the book with Alisa on deconstruction of Christianity. Elisa Childers and Tim Barnett, that they say, oh, you know, do you do whatever you want. You leave Christianity, you can become a Hindu or a Buddhist, you can become whatever, whatever.

That's fine. What you can't become, though, is you can't become a Christian or you can't stay as a Christian. And if it's a crapshoot, whatever, then why not whatever being a Christian? But for some reason, maybe they think that Christianity is abusive to people, the idea. Ideas are abuse of hell and obedience and, you know, moral hostility against sexual behavior outside of marriage. Okay, well, I can say, well, they're saying that's bad, all right, but so now they're releasing them of that. There may be some rationale like that. But anyway, I just want to know what that is.

Why did you leave and why are you so intent on getting others to leave? That's just gathering information, the first step of the tactical. game plan. I think my next step would not be to try to persuade him that he made a mistake. I mean, I'm just talking about myself. Some people would be a lot, maybe more aggressive, but I'm just thinking, this guy's been there, done that, he's already made his decisions. It may be that the reasons that he left were not sound, and I could speak to some of those things. You misunderstood something, or there's actually an answer for that problem or something. That might be a direction I go. But I think what I'd be most concerned with is strengthening

those Christians who he is talking to and trying to dissuade them of their confidence in Christ. That's where I'm going to go. I've said before my concern, in my life, especially lately, these later stages, is not for the lost, which I would take this progressive to be. It's for the church to protect him from the world outside and the wolves within. and there are a lot of wolves. And so my efforts would probably be more spent trying to work with those if I had access to them

or people come to me, ask questions like on this show or call in on the other show, and want to know how to I deal with this challenge that may be a progressive Christian, which, by the way, is a kind of contradiction in terms but we'll live with it for the moment. Progressive Christian is laying on them. the challenges that they're making.

That would be my approach. It's hard to know how open the person would be to having discussions about evidence. But I just, I mean, there was somebody who had a, he actually had a YouTube channel about his deconstruction. And he ended up coming back around because he was convinced by the arguments. And he actually has changed his entire website now to be for Christianity. Yeah, good for him. And so it's hard to judge this by just the little bit we have here. It could be that it would be fruitful to answer questions and have a conversation, but it might not be.

And so I really like your idea, Greg, of catching the people who are around him and maybe even saying, why don't we all get together? And you can ask me your questions, and I'll answer your questions. And then they won't get to the point where they're walking away because they'll have their questions answer that he's raising. Elisa Childers went through this whole process, and she didn't lose her faith, but she was really challenged by a progressive Christian. That's why she wrote the book. Another Gospel tells her story and then how to deal with those issues. So that one, and then the deconstruction of Christianity would both be books that would help with this. Here's a question from Jenny.

What would you suggest to parents who have a child slash teen who they think is liable to turn away? from God for a time at least, maybe in actions, think peer pressures, desires to fit in, etc., if not completely. Obviously, not freaking out is one thing, but any other insights? Well, not freaking out is a really big part of this. And I remember Sean McTowell telling me about the period of time he had in his own life. Here is this son of probably the most famous Christian apologists in the world, Josh McTowell. And he went to his dad when he was a teenager. He says, I'm having doubts. And his dad didn't freak out.

And his dad said, you know, that means you're concerned about truth, and that's a good quality. And I think that if you apply yourself and look for the truth, you're going to find it in Christ. Okay. Now, Sean had already warned me. And then I talked to Josh on the air, and he told the same story. So I had double warning. And when I face something like that in my own family, I did not react well. So this is where you really, and it was Jenny made a passing reference, don't freak out.

Well, that is not easy to accomplish. And so I would say, yeah, don't freak out, but you might. This is a bigger risk than you think, for one. And a big part of my approach now in that situation is not to convince my daughter of my view. and I've said this before on the air, but to convince my daughter of my love, and I think that's the first step, and sometimes you set things aside.

But I think the process of bulletproofing your kids is a process. It takes time and involvement. Natasha Crane has written a book, actually a number of them, but the first one was keeping your kids on God's side, and that has to do regular kind of information.

Having, I think, Christian Smith, who wrote that book in 2005 on, you know, on the deplorable state of Christian teenagers, he did another study, and he said that one of the most powerful indicators, almost deterministic, he said, that children will follow in the faith of their parents is if their parents live their faith out authentically and consistently. So that's another piece to the puzzle. Keeping your ears open to the dialogues and what concerns there are. I mean, probably surprising, it isn't like I'm always having spiritual conversations with my children. I have a 21-year-old or an 18-year-old.

But when occasions, especially with one, when occasions present themselves, I'm going to talk about this because of her openness to that kind of thing. And I find myself now being able to more aggressively disciple than I have before. But the key is to start early. And I tell people with young kids, be sure to have a spiritual element built into your daily life. and start before they could ever remember not having it early out. Maybe it's just reading a Bible passage after dinner and having meals together is really important, although very hard to accomplish. And, you know, a lot of people aren't successful in that, so I'm just saying.

Or it's easier, too, if you're homeschooling kids, because you can make that part of curriculum and move through there. Natasha Grain, C-R-A-I-N. She's got like four books or three books. that are little vignettes. I mentioned the first one, keeping your kids on God's side, little vignettes of instruction

that you can use with your kids. So you build these details into the lives early. Now, that really never happened in our home. I'm just being transparent about this because, for a number of reasons, but it was, when we would have these try to have times together,

it was like every demon in town decided to take up roost in our living room, you know. So, but there are different ways to accomplish this, and I'm just encouraging people to start early, early, and make it consistent. And, you know, if dad can't do it, then mom should do it when dad's away. You have this kind of agreement, and that will help. Now, what if you missed all of that? Well, you can still live consistently as a Christian, and you can still give wise counsel in conversations about things that come up in light of the truth of scripture and the wisdom that God gives us about how life works.

I would also say if you're worried that your child is going to give into peer pressure and have a desire to fit in and it's not going to be strong enough to stand against the crowd, I think, you know, I read so many books about Christians over the ages who stood up for him and didn't give in, particularly behind the iron curtain. And the horrible things people suffered, you could read, Live Not by Lies, or Tortured for Christ, or any of those things. And what I found is that the people who were strong enough to stand were the people who thought Jesus was worth more than all of these other things. More than people's affirmation, more than fitting in, more than their stuff. more than their position, more than their comfort.

I think what you need to do is cultivate a love and appreciation for Jesus and who he is, his goodness, his love. And one way you can do that, well, you can demonstrate it in your own life when you place him above other things and you give up things for his sake or you suffer for his sake or any of those things, they will see that. You can read books with them about people who gave up things and in the end felt like they had more than the people who didn't give up those things. And that can be really inspiring, just seeing it in other people because this takes a while to cultivate, and sometimes it helps to see it in others, even if you don't quite get it yet yourself.

So all of these books about Christians from the past and missionaries and what they suffered and went through, all of these stories, I think, can be very inspiring and put the child on the right path. Right. The other thing you can do is... Corey Ten Boom. Yeah, Corey Ten Boom. She's another one. The hiding place. There are so many.

There are so many out there. But you can also read through the Bible. and then as you're reading together, make your goal to point out what you learn about God in that passage. So when this happens, what do we see about God? What do we see about His faithfulness and His grace and His goodness and His love and His mercy and His justice? What do we see about the people who suffered from Him? Why did they do that? How did they do that?

You can actually be really intentional about building up their understanding of God's character. their trust in him, their love for him by looking at who he is in the Bible. And so that's what I would recommend reading through these stories together or talking about them. They're movies. There's all sorts of things. Another example would be Elizabeth Elliott and Jim Elliott and that whole story. There are so many stories about... What is the name of that book?

Something for Glory. Through Gates of Splendor, I think. There you go. So there are all sorts of stories about people who suffer. for Jesus. And you can't, John Erickson Tata, we talked about her recently. So you can read them and you can see what they went through. And so even though, even if they haven't developed that love in themselves yet, they are still aspiring to it because they've seen it and now they've seen it modeled. They've seen it modeled. They know it exists. Even if they're not quite there yet, I think that can be

really powerful. You know, I just thought of something else too from a parenting perspective. is I think it's really important to monitor the friends that your children hang out with. Now, you have to be careful about that because the older they get, the more latitude is properly afforded them. But I think I have a little bit of a resistance to this because of growing up in the 60s and 70s and high school in the 60s then college in late 60s, early 70s, and just the ethos then is do your own thing. Fala, la, la, la, la, la, live for today, you know, and all of that other stuff.

So there's part of me that it grates against me to try to get into somebody else's life and say, you know, you should be hanging out with this person. At the same time, I'm a boomer. I'm an early boomer in 1950, and that means I really am cut from doing. different cloth, so I'm competing in that with that inside of me. And talking to your children about the people they make friends with, for birds of a feather flocked together. Who's that? I mean, it's like Benjamin Franklin, I don't know, but bad company corrupts good morals. That's from proverbs, I think. And a number of other proverbs that are kind of like that. If you can talk

to your kids and say, honey, you don't want to hang with this person, because as you hang with this person, you are going to be like them. And this person is not a noble individual. And that's so judgmental, but that's parenting. And it doesn't have to be shaming anybody, but just making it clear. And especially if kids are a little bit younger, then they'll follow they're more likely to follow. If they're more influenced by the culture, they're likely to push back in teenagers. They're always going to be kind of hard in this.

But you can monitor their friendships in some measure and say, you know, we're not going to do this. We're not going to have this person open or whatever. But that's one way of doing it, but you can't be caustic when you do it. Got to be gracious but firm. Well, I'm going to throw another question out there. This one is from Chris.

And this one is about the other side of the last question. My daughter professed to be saved at the age of 12, but now she is 19, out of church, and in a relationship with a trans man. She no longer believes in God and tells me she would not be a Christian, even if Christianity were true. How do I reach her? I'm sorry for chuckling because this is a sad situation, but I'm chuckling because of something that Jesus said, that might be apple. to a circumstance that seems utterly hopeless. And Jesus said, these kind cannot come out without prayer and fasting, you know. You also said, what is impossible with men is possible with God.

Yes. So there are times when we are left with a solitary enterprise. That is, we can't engage. These don't want to engage, even if we're true, they don't want it. Because something else is guiding them. And Jesus talks about this in John Chapter 3. After 316, where he makes this great statement, he says, what, 17 or 18, but the light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

All right? That's what's going on here. When somebody says, even if it's true, I'm not going to follow, I'm going to do what I want to do. And that's the long and short of it. That's a tough spot. So there's not much you can say there. And this is why, yes, it's true. There are lots of people in circumstances like this that God has turned around. I mean, history is filled with testimonies like that. However, what is our role? Maybe our role is just to be steady in our views and godly in the way we live and pray that God would bring someone else

to their life that would make a difference in their life. And I prayed that regarding members of my own family. And because to some degree, you do what you can do, and then you're squeezed out, especially in this circumstance. But serious prayer is something you can do. I think about Christopher Yuan's mother who prayed faithfully for him. Yeah. Out of another... Who would have thought that he would be saved? Yeah, yeah. Out of... Is it out of a far country? Yes. Yeah, his autobiographical work. And we know Angela and Christopher and what a powerful woman in prayer she is.

And that is the thing that made a difference in Christopher's life. It's so obvious when we look back on it in this record of it out of a far country. I think it's important to remember that it is as easy for God to save this woman. as it is for him to save the person who does everything right all the time, who's legalistic. We are all in rebellion against God. We are all. And we all need God to change us. So he can change her heart.

And I think if you go into your prayer, knowing that he may or may not, but he has the power to and he is good. And we can trust him to do the best thing for. everyone. So I think prayer is the way to go here. I think the problem is that she has different loves. Like you said, she loves what is evil. But what I know for sure is that eventually those things will let her down. And eventually, it might go well for a while for her,

but eventually seeking the wrong things will cause destruction. in her life in one way or another, and that's when you need to be ready. For Christopher Yuan, he ended up in jail. Prison. So be ready for when that happens, and it might be in a big way, it might be in a small way. But as you're praying and you're praying for God to change her heart, just be faithful and continue to model loving the good and being merciful and gracious. and reflecting his character.

But it's so hard because I can imagine that is a very hard situation to navigate. So my heart goes out to you, Chris, and I just pray that God will enable you to be faithful in prayer and not give up. Well, thank you, Carl, and Jenny, and Chris. We appreciate hearing from you. And you can send us your question on X with the hashtag STR Ask, or you can go to our website at STR. We look forward to hearing from you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.