The Eric Metaxas Show - John Stonestreet & Brett Kunkle

Episode Date: March 10, 2020

Can the cure for a culture in decay be found in “The Student’s Guide to Culture”? Authors John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle are here to explain.

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I tell all my relatives to take it. relief factor.com. I probably shouldn't blow my cover, but I often sit up in a tree and look down on people, not just literally, metaphorically too, meaning that, yes, I judge them from my high altitude secret purge. In fact, I can see you right now and I'm totally judging you, because I'm up here in this, whoop, whoa! I'll tell you, it's amazing that we managed to have him miced up for that. Yeah.

Hey, it's Tuesday, and you know what that means? I don't know. It means yesterday was probably Monday. I'm just, I'm guessing. I don't want to be right all the time. But yesterday we talked about marijuana, Mary Jane, hemp, wacky, weed, call it what you will. And we came out against it. Cannabis.

It's bad. And we talked yesterday to our bishop friend from New Jersey, who is basically on a campaign against it. God bless him. If you want to see the video, go to our YouTube channel, the Eric Metaxus show. Yeah. But holy cow. This is a guy who's living in the middle of it. And anyway, I just thought we'd mention that.

That was yesterday. Today and the rest of the week, we've got an extraordinary week. Are you ready? Buckle your seatbelts because we have, oh, my gosh. We have Ken Star, the Ken Star. We have Bob Woodson talking about the 1619 project and why it's really not good history. Right. He's got an answer to that, the 1776 Coalition.

We have the wife of. Chris Pratt. She goes by the name Catherine Schwarzenegger Pratt, and she just happens to be the daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah. He will pump you up.

That Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh, that one, oh. Yeah. And so we have the daughter of Schwarzenegger, the wife of Chris Pratt. She has a beautiful book. I was reading it yesterday about forgiveness. Amazing.

I mentioned Ken Starr. We have Ken Fish coming up. We love Ken Fish. haven't had him in a while. But today, Albin, yes. Today we've got my man, John Stone Street. Everybody knows I love John Stone Street.

He and I became friends through Chuck Colson. We did Breakpoint together. He is now running the Colson Center for Christian World View. And he and his friend Brett Conkel have written a book called the Students' Guide to Culture. They did the Practical Guide to Culture for Adults. This is the Students' Guide. And we're going to be talking to them. I hope in both hours today if they can hang out because they're just, they know this subject.

and we need to hear from them. Before we tell you, we're going to do another feature now and again called This Day in History. History. History. We're going to do this day in history today. Okay. But before that, I want to mention, we have good news. We have raised $20,000 for food for the poor. Those of you who have given thank you, the way to give is go to metaxis talk.com.

Most people give that way. There's also a phone number. In a minute I want to play a clip. But I want to reiterate that Guatemala is the place in the Western Hemisphere where they have the worst malnutrition. Now, you think about this, we don't think about malnutrition anymore, do we? But in places like rural Guatemala, not only do they not have food to feed their kids, which is horrible, but they also don't have clean drinking water. Tremendous problems.

Well, what happens people in the West from wealthy countries like America because, we believe in helping others through no benefit to ourselves, we go there and we find these people and we make their lives better. If you're any kind of a Christian, you don't need to be a Christian to do the right thing, but if you are a Christian, you're commanded to do the right thing. So we always want to find, on this program, organizations that we can work with that we really trust because everybody's looking for a way to do something good, but where, how? Well, we'd like to to think that we do the work for you and we find these places. So we found food for the poor.

We've worked with them before. They're tremendously reputable. They say that for $320. Now, we don't ask you to give that if you can't. We ask you to give whatever you can. It doesn't matter. But they say that for $320, they can leverage their resources such that an entire family of four is provided with food for one year and water for life

because they need to dig wells and drill wells because these people are, I don't want to tell you, they're collecting rainwater and dirty barrels. It's really horrifying. So if you think about it, I was just thinking, you know, going down the list, if you live in a place like Dallas, let's say, this would cover like $320 as like, you know, steak dinner for two or three people and a nice bottle of wine, that's it, right? If you go to Walt Disney World, it gets you three one-day tickets, you know, like $320 doesn't go that far here in America, but in a place like Guatemala, it literally can feed an entire family

of four for one year. Hard to believe, but I want to say that the reason we work with food for the poor is because they can leverage things. They work with people all around the world to get donations of rice and beans and other staples, and they're able to get these things into, far into these rural areas. We had Tom Trout up on the program. We'll replay that at some point this week. Well, he talks about, you know, you fly to Guatemala from like Miami, which is where food for the poor is based. And it's like a two hour and change flight. But then you get there and then you got to drive three to four hours way up into the mountains to reach these people. They're totally isolated. So unless we do this, I don't really like to think about it,

but they're suffering from malnutrition and all kinds of diseases. So it's up to us. So I want to ask you if you would join us. We've raised $20,000. Our goal is 40. Yes. Anything you give, we're grateful to. And I should say that every week, we are announcing a winner. When do we announce our winner this week? On Friday. On Friday. Did we announce one last Friday?

We did. Yes, we did. We did. All right. Well, then we're announcing another one this Friday. Every week, we take all the people who've given that week. We throw it into a barrel, and everyone who's given gets an equal chance. So it doesn't matter what you give.

If you can only give $20. But I also want to say that there are families that say, well, $320 is a little steep. but it's $27 a month. So it's a great way to teach your kids where your values lie because $27 is not a ton of money. You can get the kids to put in part of their allowance or part of their earnings if they have a job and say, we're all as a family going to give $27 to feed a family of four. It helps your kids and you understand how wealthy we are, how blessed we are. And the scripture says very clearly we're blessed to be a blessing, right?

So we have a quote here just to make this more real for you. It says that there are folks in remote villages, I mentioned to you, in remote villages that takes hours to get there. Kevin Anderson is a general manager of the Salem Music Network down in Nashville. He just went on a trip. A lot of Salem folks have gone down to do something with food for the poor. He went on a mission recently to Guatemala. Let's listen to Salem's Kevin Anderson. I can only pray that you feel half of what we felt today,

but what I was able to feel when I was in that place today, doing some of the things that we were able to do. I would invite you to get engaged with this and to make the call and to go to this website and to do whatever we're asking you to do today to get engaged because there are folks living with dirt floors and exposed wiring and all the things that you would never dream could occur and people would actually live in.

These folks are living in it. and we can do something about it. Well, I guess that's the issue, right? This is no pressure, folks. I don't want to be a pain on anybody's neck, but I know that we're all trying to do good in the world. And this is a way that we'd like to tee it up for you. It's very easy to do,

and when you think about what you give and how far it goes, I think this is a safe bet if you're trying to be a good steward of God's money. It is the best way to find it is just to go to our website, metaxis talk.com. Mataxis talk.com. You see the banner at the top. Or you can dial this number.

I will repeat it. 844-863 hope. 844-863 hope. 844-8-6-3 hope. We've got a lot more coming up. We've got John Stone Street in a few minutes. But, Albin, what about this day in history? History, history.

1876, okay? That's when on this day, Alexander Graham Bell, he made the very first telephone call. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Yeah. 1876. That's it. Do you mean to tell me that just 11 years after the end of the Civil War,

Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call, and it was today? Yes, it was. And now most people think his first words were Watson, come here, I need you. Yeah. But we've uncovered the real, what really happened when he made that first call. I love it when we go a little deeper. That's my thinking on the program. As you know, I write historical biographies.

I care about this. I thought I've heard recordings. of this, but evidently you've got the real thing. Okay, here it is. What a bummer. What a bummer. Holy cow. All right, we got to go to a break.

When we come back to Great John Stone Street, don't go away. Hey there, folks. Yes, yes, that is Boston. Yes, don't adjust your radio. That was Boston. I'm Eric Mataxis. It's the Eric McIxas show. We play the hits that the young people are demanding.

They say, we want more boss and more Ello, more Super Tramp. And you know what? who are trying to reach that generation, and that's why we play that music. I'm speaking of trying to reach that generation, I'm sitting here with my old friend, John Stone Street. I am not that old. And my new friend, Brett Conkel, they have a book out called The Students' Guide to Culture. Gentlemen, welcome.

Welcome. Now, I want to introduce you a little bit more properly than that. If I know people, I tend not to say anything except they're my friend. Brett Conkel is the founder and president of Maven, a movement to equip the next generation to know, truth, pursue goodness, and create beauty. There's no Oxford comma there after goodness. It should be there. I just want to tell you.

You want to reach young people. You need to straighten that out. You have more than 25 years of experience working with junior high, high school, college students and parents. Again, no Oxford comma. We need to fix that. You are in Southern California. That much I know, you've been surfing your whole life.

And then we come to my friend John Stone Street, who's the president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, the host of Breakpoint. We hosted that together for a season. Chuck Colson, of course, hosted that for basically our whole lives. And now you're running books and you're the head of the Colson Center. So this book, tell me about we had you on, I don't know, sometime in the year to talk about another version of this book. Tell us about that. Yeah, so basically we're trying to help those that are helping the next generation navigate culture.

So that book was called A Practical Guide of Culture, has written to parents, grandparents. parents, mentors, teachers, educators. Because culture's changed, if you haven't noticed. I mean, things that were unthinkable yesterday or unquestionable today. The undercurrents have fundamentally changed kind of how we live together, what we think is normal. I mean, we've seen that even in this presidential election season. We see it on media every single day. And that book was pretty well received because it was basically kind of a handbook to walk through some of the major ways the culture has changed. So that was called a practical guide to culture. This is called a student's guide.

Yeah, so a lot of people ask us to take kind of the content of that and write it to a high school level. So because we're so hip with the youngsters like you, we were able to pull that off. I'm down. That's why I did all the work on the student version. Yeah. So, okay, so the student version, it's aimed at 15 to 25 year olds. Yeah, 15 to 25 year olds, high school students, college students. I think it's something that actually a junior higher could pick up as well because when I talked to junior higher,

and middle schoolers across the country, they are facing these issues as well. And so we cover, kind of help them give a basic understanding of culture and a Christian's relationship to culture, and then hit the difficult issues that they're facing, like gender identity and sexual orientation, and then what are the key tools that they need to navigate this kind of world that we live in. And I think, you know, when you talk to young people, and I think what John pointed out is so key, what's normalized for them is actually kind of radical for older audiences. When I talk to older audiences about drag queens or drag queen story hour, there's a look of shock on their face. When I talk to students about that stuff, they shrug.

It's like, yeah, that's normal. It's no big deal. I think that's a really profound thing. We talked about that with technology all the time, right? That we're the immigrants, they're the natives. I actually have not heard that. That's good. It's pretty profound.

We are the immigrants. We are the immigrants. to this kind of, you know, to iPhones, you know, to the smartphone era. And they're natives. In other words, they've never not known a time frame when that wasn't just a deep part of their lives. But that's true on so many issues. It's true on all the letters of the acronym. I mean, we're still kind of getting used to things.

What acronym? The acronym. The acronym that continues to expand. I mean, all the issues that having to do with... Yes, all the issues having to do with sexuality. But I've never heard that. term. See, you guys are hardcore insiders on this world of culture and stuff. So, you know, you're, you're familiar with a lot of stuff that I'm, I'm just a normal person. And I,

not really that normal, but I'm not, you know, when you mentioned the acronym, I've never heard that before. But that's a great way of putting it because the letters are just piling up. They're just piling up. And it's quicker to say acronym than to say LGBTQ whatever. Right. And again, every time a new letter is added for us, we kind of go, whoa, well, you know, and we think through it or whatever. For another generation, for the rising generation, it's as normal as, you know, rock music was to our generation, right? I guess, but John, let me ask you, you know, speaking as an ignoramus here,

it seems to me so utterly fundamental that there are two genders, they're two sexes. Like everybody knows that. The moment I have said that a moment a rooster lays an egg, I'm willing to have a conversation on this. But before that, everybody knows they're men and women and that, you know, some guys want to dress up as women or some women want to look butch, want to be guys. Fine. But that's never going to change the fact that there are two sexes, they're two genders.

And I think most people are kind of quiet about it. They know that's true. They're not really that confused by it. They just think, you know, to each his own in America, we're hyper tolerant and we let that go on. but I don't think many people are really convinced that there are many genders. I think what we're seeing, though, is that younger people are convinced that there are many genders, or even that gender is malleable and changeable, right? So we have reports coming out of the U.K. all the time of what's been called rapid onset gender dysphoria.

In other words, it's what the cool kids are doing nowadays. And so the rates, I mean, one report just a couple weeks ago, out of a town in the U.K., the rates of students reporting gender confusion or gender dysphoria have increased by several hundred percent, not doubled, not triple. But isn't that the point? Like, it's just a trend. It's like a thing. It's like dressing goth.

It's like whatever the trend de jour was in every generation there are these trends. Yeah, except if you're a psychiatrist, you're not allowed to teach kids what reality is. If you're a college professor, you are forced then to go along with the ruse and, you know, refer to someone by chosen pronouns or lose your job. If you work in adolescent health, you have to go along with, which is what I would completely agree with you, Eric, is a trend, you know, and is not grounded in reality.

But don't people have the guts to say I won't go along with it, fire me. I mean, I have to say that if we're worried, look, you and I've talked so much about this, the spiral of silence. Chuck Colson, you know, popularized the phrase of the sociologist in 1930s talking about Nazi Germany, that everybody's like, well, I got to go along or I'm going to lose my job, so I'm going to say whatever. Hey, folks, like there's a time to stand and to say I'm not going to say whatever. I mean, I'm just kind of amazed how people don't seem to have any actual convictions or they don't seem to trust God is going to take care of them.

They're just going to do whatever they need to do. And I get in some cases how that might be the case. You have to. But I just don't understand why everybody's just falling in line like somebody's got a gun to your head. Yeah, well, I actually think we need to confront that. the fact that most believers, Christian leaders, don't have the courage to confront this and speak out on it. And I think this is where the church really needs to come to grips with the social costs of our views. So we hold views that are going to fly right in the face of the culture.

We're going to get a lot of blowback. And I think we need to start conditioning the church and now young people to expect that. We have this view that we're, you know, Christians are to be loving and that just means great. and kind and affirming, which is certainly part of it. But to truly love people in the culture, it requires, in the way of Jesus, speaking the truth also. And that's what a lot of Christians don't have. And frankly, they're not familiar with Jesus's life in the New Testament. In John 15, where Jesus says, hey, if the world hates you, right, you should expect that because they had to me first. And I think a lot of young people are growing up in the church with no

no inkling that holding unpopular views, true views, is going to get them a lot of blowback, and so they're not ready for this, and so they just go along with the culture. And secondly, they've never been trained intellectually on any of these issues. They just think, to love means to affirm, and therefore desire satisfaction, whatever desire my friend has, I just got to go along with it because that's what loving means, and that's what Jesus would do, but they've never thought carefully through any of these issues, And the parents and the adults and the church leaders haven't thought through these and carefully so they're not able to equip young people to navigate this whatsoever.

And so I would say it's more than a trend. I think it's what we say in the book is that it's ideas. Ideas, a worldview, has consequences. Right. And that's what we see playing out is young people embracing a certain ideology about whatever it might be identity, gender, sexuality, and then they're starting to live that Yeah, and to be clear, I mean, we deal with more issues than just the acronym, but that's the one that's in all of our faces, right? And I kind of was like you, Eric, in the sense that I thought, look, there's going to be enough dads of, you know, junior high girls in soccer, you know, that are going to say, I don't want a boy beating up my daughter on the soccer field and they're going to stand up.

But what we've seen is that that hasn't actually been the case. Well, right, we're going to have to go to break here. But, I mean, it gets to the genuine, the general feminization of men that if you're not going to stand up and fight for that, I mean, if my daughter has to raise a dude on the track at the track meet, I should raise hell. I mean, the idea that I'm just going to be like, I don't want to get in trouble. I mean, are you kidding, folks? That's like where you've got to say, man up. We'll be right back talking to John Stone Street. Brett Conkle, the book is a student's guide to culture.

Hey there, folks. That's Chicago. I'm Erica, Texas. And I'm sitting here with John Stone Street, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview and Brett Conkle, founder and president of Maven, maventruth.com. And we're talking about your book, a student's guide to culture, which we're trying to get in the hands of every 15 to 25 year old in the country. But even some younger kids can deal with this. Some bright 13-year-olds can deal with this book. Yeah, they have to deal with the book. We start the whole, idea of culture for students by helping them be aware that there is such a thing as culture. I mean, culture is this word that's thrown around all the time, hardly ever defined.

But what we fail to realize is just how normalizing culture can be. There's an old Chinese proverb that says if you want to know what water is, don't ask the fish, right? Because the fish don't even know they're wet, right? And what water is to fish culture is to us. And that's something that we just don't recognize or realize unless we intentionally stop and go, wait a minute, why is this normal? What am I taking for granted? And on a whole host of issues, man, the moral norms have changed, the fundamental ideas about things have changed, about who we are, about what's right and wrong, what's the good life, you know, that sort of thing.

and unless we realize what it is that we're dealing with, that we're actually dealing with culture, that's kind of step number one. I think the analogy we use in the book is really helpful. We talk about the ocean and cultures like the ocean. You know, we are, but this is an ocean we can't get out of. We're submerged in and we splash that water around on each other. We influence each other that way.

and I think we have to narrate that for our kids. I think this is one of the most helpful tools that we can use in raising the next generation is just narrating what's going on around them. So they can begin to explicitly see. So for instance, we can all pull out our smartphones and we've got smartphones, right? Now, whenever you ask a young person, and like 99% of them have smartphones as well, you ask them, hey, how much time did you think about that purchase before you actually? actually bought it. How long did you spend just deliberating on the nature of a smartphone and how it's going to impact you? Of course they look at you like you're nuts. Of course they didn't. This is just come to be expected. This is just the water they're swimming in now. Everyone's got one. It's been normalized. If you don't have one, you're actually weird. If you think carefully about it, that's kind of weird as well. You just get it. And that is how culture just so powerfully shapes us. And that's the water.

are we in all the time. Now, if we think of it in terms of the ocean, right? The ocean, there is, there are waves in the ocean, there are undercurrents in the ocean. They're actually dangerous parts of the ocean, just like there are dangerous parts of the culture. And this is where I think adults, Christian adults, need to think more about appropriate protection of young people. Because now you've got, you know, two-year-olds who are swiping right, you know, from the get-go. and they're being conditioned by the ideas of the culture and the technology of the culture. And I think we have to give some more thought to what do we need to do in terms of protecting kids. Now, that's not our long-term goal.

I think we need to distinguish the short-term protection from the long-term goal of wanting to send them back out into the culture to be courageous, to stand for the truth, to be ambassadors for Christ. But in order to get to that long-term goal, there better be some protection that we give early on because what we're seeing is that a lot of young people are simply going along with the culture. And they're walking out of the doors of the churches. Well, that's a fact. And it's why I'm glad for both of you and your ministries and glad for the books that you're writing. This one is a student's guide to culture. So we talked about, I've never heard this before, the acronym, right, the LGBTQ stuff. That's at the heart of everything

because in a funny way, it's new and it's everywhere, and it kind of touches on everything. It touches on is the Bible true? Is the biblical view true? And one of the things I've tried to do on this show, I've had a number of people like Christopher Yuan, and, you know, a lot of people who have been in the gay lifestyle, who have seen the horror of it and who've come out of it, and they're talking from the other side, because I think you have to introduce young people. If you really care about young people, you have to understand there are a lot of young people

genuinely struggling with same-sex stuff or whatever. And the culture is telling them, if you've got a flicker of same-sex attraction, you're gay and you need to go with it, which is a total lie from the pit of hell. It's garbage. You'd never say that. You know, it just doesn't follow.

But people need to be courageous and say, because I love you, I want to tell you the truth. I want to expose you to the stories of people who have been through this and who've come out the other side. And, you know, you talk about the culture, those stories, apart from places like this radio program,

nobody is telling those stories. I mean, people like Christopher Yuan, and I can't remember, I've had a number of wonderful people on this program. Rosaria Butterfield, I've had on a number of times. These are people that aren't supposed to exist in our culture. That's what I'm saying. You don't know they exist because they're not. Women who regret their abortions, siblings who wish that their parents hadn't.

There's a whole group of people that are left out of our culture, and that is part of that reinforcing of the normalization. One of the things, I think one of the ways that Christian parents have missed the conversation on the acronym, if they've had it with their kids, and too many haven't had it. But is kind of treating it all in moral terms. Like, this is right, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is right? Of course we have to do that, right, because there are real moral decisions and real moral consequences. But what we have missed, as a culture has dramatically shifted on these things, it hasn't just shifted morally. It's shifted at a much deeper, more fundamental level.

We're talking about what's right and wrong. The culture's talking about identity. We're talking about morality. They're talking about who we are. Right. We're going to go to a break, and we're going to pick that up, talking to John Stone Street and Brett Conkel. The book is A Student's Guide to Culture.

Hey there, folks, that's Fleetwood Mac. I don't want to stop listening to Fleetwood Mac, but I'm trying to do a talk show here. And I have my friends from the other part of the country from the West, John Stone Street from Colorado, Brett Kunkle from Southern California have come here to talk about their book, A Students' Guide to Culture. Can either of you tell us the story about what happened to Jason Collins in the NBA? Do you want to tell it?

It's part of one of your chapter. No, it is. I think it's a really important story. And it actually is an illustration of what I was just talking about before the break. Really, what's happening here is identity. It was one of the first times that kind of rang a bell for me. So Jason Collins, first male athlete of one of the major professional. professional sports leagues. In this case, the NBA announces in Sports Illustrated, he's a gay man.

It was an article that was titled, I'm black, I'm gay, and I'm in the NBA. And he makes this announcement. And he also in that article announces that he's a Christian and that he's a gay man and that he's been able to reconcile the two. And then it was this kind of moment in sports history where people were trying to figure out, hey, is the NBA ready for this? And by the way, this is like, what, five, six years ago? Five or six years ago. Maybe even a little bit longer, yeah. Seven years ago. And so Whenever someone makes an announcement like that, what do we hear in a response? What we heard was Michelle Obama tweeting her support, President Obama calling him. And they were saying things like, you don't have to hide who you are. You can just be yourself. This is President Obama. Yeah.

Claims very openly many times to be a Christian. But his belief, obviously, is not consonant with what we think is the biblical faith. But that's all you hear. It's. that side of things. But listen to the language carefully. They didn't tell him, it's okay. It's okay for you to be a Christian and to do this. What he was told was, this is who you are as a gay man. Right. So we're using these right and wrong languages with our kids. Yeah. But when someone comes out of the closet or makes an announcement about sexual orientation, the entire culture reinforces that that's who they are. It's an identity statement. It's not, we're having this conversation with our kids, if we are, which is a whole other point, on a moral level,

the culture is dealing with it much more fundamentally. And that's why the culture tends to win on the acronym. It's convincing kids of an identity, not just of a view of right and wrong. Well, and that's why we have to expand the categories that we're using and talking about this. Yes, let's talk about the rightness and wrongness, the moral act itself. But then this is a question is being framed in terms of identity. And so I think we can really help young people navigate this particular issue if we think about identity and what identity is rooted in and think about really the nature of something. What is this thing? Because what it is will tell you about, tell you a lot about how it should function.

So for instance, I have an appliance at home, right? All kinds of appliances. We all have appliances. I've got a washing machine. I throw dirty clothes into my washing machine, and 45 minutes later, it's amazing, clean clothes come out if I put the right soap in. Now, I could look at that machine and go, hmm, I wonder how this thing would do with my dirty tools. Like, if I throw all my dirty tools in there, how would this work? Well, you know, seriously, that is an awesome idea.

I have not thought of that. It's incredible, grimy pliers and hammers and just throw them in there. Yeah, give it a try, and I'd love to hear what the results on them. And what we know is going to happen in that situation. Maybe it's not the first time. Maybe it's not the second time. But eventually that washing machine is going to break down. Well, now why is that the case?

Well, because this thing is designed, right? It's a designed thing. It's got a certain purpose to it. And who do you consult to figure out how this thing should function? How should it operate? If I want my washing machine to flourish and give me good clean clothes, well, I've got to consult the designer. Well, if it turns out that human beings are designed things, we have a designer, then that would inform how a human being ought to function and therefore how we ought to flourish. And I think this is part of the language that we need to kind of expand in beyond right and wrong, but talk about identity, talk about flourishing when it comes to these things.

But let's go, you know, when you say a designer, right? I mean, I think part of this has to do with pure logic and what we are not being encouraged to do is think logically, right? Right. In other words, everybody can feel whatever they want, but at some point, logic is going to come in. And you have to say, if we are designed by a designer, then this follows. So let's talk about that because you have a lot of people like Collins from the NBA claiming, I mean, you had Pete Buttigieg and whatever, more and more and more, really, I would say cavalierly claiming that there is no difference between their Christian faith and what they're doing, that the two can go together. And we would say, well, wait a second. There is a. designer. He didn't design us for that. How can they just kind of bat that away? Are they actually, I mean, I guess what a lot of people are saying is that they claim that God created us that way. But I just, I guess what I'm trying to say is if I didn't know what to think on that issue, if I was really open-minded, I hadn't figured anything out, I would say, I don't know, that doesn't make sense to me. Physically, men and women are created to fit together physically

to create life, like that seems obvious. So how do they get this designing thing in there? Where would they, you know? Well, I think, I think this is where with our kids, especially when they're younger, we've got to lay this foundation that you're kind of hinting at here from the get-go. So I think there's a lot of people, like maybe a Collins or whoever, who would say, I believe in God. And I think we can't settle for mere belief in God, right? I think we want our young people not to just believe in God and hope they're right and settle for that. I think we want our young people to know that God is real. And so what that requires is truth. You need to add truth to their belief, right? Because you can believe lots of things, but we want true belief. Again, we don't want mere true belief.

We want true belief that's also backed up with good logic, reason, and evidence. And what that will do is that will really ground their convictions about God, his nature. Because what they'll discover is if we give them that kind of training early on, talk about, hey, here are the reasons why we believe God exists, here is the kind of God that exists. These are all, you know, God is a feature of reality, whether you believe him or not. It's, he's objectively true. Then that will, filling that those details out will then inform these other details. We're going to have to go to a break. Really important conversation with John Stone Street and Brett Conkel. The book is a student's guide to culture. Hey there, folks, it's the Arkma Taxis show.

I'm talking to my friends John Stone Street and Brett Kunkle. The book is a student's guide to culture. Brett, you have five kids. John, how many kids got now? Four. But just four? Just four. I love the fact that you guys are living it.

Like, you are living this, you are raising kids. How old are your oldest kids now? My oldest is 25. Say what? I have actually two grandkids, two granddaughters. That is not possible. He colors his hair. That is not possible.

I became a granddad when I was a nice. No, then I have two high schoolers. I have an 18-year-old son, a 17-year-old daughter, a 12-year-old daughter, and an 8-year-old son. So we kind of run the whole gamut of child development. And John Boy? 14 is my oldest daughter, 12, then 10, and then an eight-year gap before a 2-year-old boy who's making a life super-interest. When you had a son, I was just like so excited to think of you. He runs the house.

Yeah, I knew this was going to happen. I was thinking like this is a little John Stone Street. He's, it's so cute. And what's his name? His name's Hunter. Hunter. Okay, so you guys are raising nine kids between you, not getting grandkids. And this is real, right?

So you're having these conversations. I think, you know, the Colson Center has gone a long way to try to get parents up on this. I wasn't familiar with Maven, M-A-V-E-N, MavenTruth.com, which is what you head up, Brett. But this is a conversation lots of parents are having right now. And we were talking about how you have to have to lay the foundation for kids about design. Because we were talking about, when you talk about the gay thing, I remember when I first heard, I don't know, was it 11, 12 years old. And I just remember being aghast. And I remember when I kind of had explained this to my daughter that she was like, to look on her face, she was like kind of a look of horror.

It was sort of weird and stuff. And I think that, you know, we need to love people who are different than we are, but we also need to be honest. And that, to me, is the difficulty because we're being told, excuse me, shut up. We don't want to hear you. But if you love people who are struggling, don't you have to do your best? Yeah, you have to. I mean, I remember the turning point from me when you kind of realized culture shifting on this. I was running a youth camp, and these students heard one of the individuals that you talked about,

who had come out of that lifestyle and had found redemption and a new life in Christ. and it's a wonderful testimony. And they came up to me just one after the other, and they were trying to have advice to reach their friends. And they were like, I have a friend who's gay. I have a friend who's lesbian. And I remember thinking I would have never said that as a kid because it was so, first of all, if there was someone,

it would have been rumors. No one would admit to it. And they certainly wouldn't have been our friend, right? Which is our fault. But at the same time, the normalization. Now, I think fast forward even that was 10 years ago or 15 years ago. So fast forward to now, and you've got commercials. I was, you know, walking down the jet bridge to get on my Delta flight.

And they're among the pictures. There's, you know, two men snuggled up in first class with their champagne, you know, a picture there. And just how many different places that it's encountered and never pointed out. And honestly, I meet too many parents, Eric, that say, well, I'm just hoping my kid won't notice, you know, this gay moment in this movie or this scene and this. And I'm thinking if they don't notice, then that is a sure sign that they think it's normal. And that's what we mean when we talk about the intentional land of the foundation. And I just want to say that, you know, when we were kids and when nobody would talk about it, or you would demonize those people if they were weird or something like that.

We have to say again and again, that was wrong. There is no doubt about it. That's just the opposite end of worldliness. It's just the same thing. And now everybody says it's great. and that's not right either. But we have to have the ability to speak truth into this because there are people whose lives depend on this. And if they don't hear somebody say, no, you don't need to move in that direction. It doesn't matter what you feel. You don't have to follow your feelings.

God has a plan for you. We have to say that over and over and over again, if we actually care. And if you don't care, fine. We're at the end of an hour, John Stone Street and Brett Cuncle. I will keep you here for hour two. The book is a student's guide. to culture.