What We're Still Talking About 06: Discipleship Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura Wifler: We're interviewing Hillary Morgan Ferrer and Amy Davison from Mama Bear Apologetics. You might recognize their names as the co-hosts of the Mama Bear Apologetics podcast and the co-authors of Mama Bear Apologetics Guide to Sexuality: Empowering Your Kids to Understand and Live Out God's Design.
Hillary is the founder and Mama Bear-in-Chief of Mama Bear Apologetics and has her master's degree in biology from Clemson University and is working on a master's degree in apologetics.
Amy joined the Mama Bear team in 2019 after graduating with her Master's in Apologetics from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2018.
Mama Bear Apologetics helps moms discern truth and lies in science and culture and provides accessible apologetics resources for busy moms. We're excited today to talk with them about discipleship and how to grow in teaching our children about worldview and apologetics. You can find their books anywhere books are sold and learn more about their work at mamabearapologetics.com. With that, let's get to the show.
Well, Hillary and Amy, welcome to the Risen Motherhood Podcast. We're so glad you're here today.
Hillary Morgan Ferrer and Amy Davison: Thank you for having us. Haha, jinx. [Laughter]
Emily Jensen: It's always fun with four people on the call. We get lots of talking, lots of conversations.
Laura: We're okay with crosstalk. It's fine. We are thrilled to have you guys here. We have both just really benefited from your books, and so we're excited to talk to you about some of the topics that are in there. We're just taking the seat of student and want to learn right along with our community at Risen Motherhood. We're going to dive in here with some tough questions, but we know for you guys that you are well-versed in these topics.
The first question that we have is: what is "apologetics?" Can you please explain that? We know some of our listeners may have heard that term just tossed around, but it's sometimes hard to know what that means. Why do apologetics matter to a Christian mom, especially one who is just trying to survive through work and through motherhood and through the work of the home and all those things? What does apologetics have to do with the regular, everyday life of a mom?
Hillary: Apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which means "to give a ready defense." The early lawyers were actually called apologists because they were making a case for why they believe their case was true. A lot of people like to think, "Oh, it's defending the faith." Well, it can be defending the faith, but I think, more than that, it's making a case for why it's true.
This is incredibly important for motherhood and for parenthood in general because we have all these things that are our basic mom tasks. They have to be well fed, they have to be well rested, they have to have clothes and your basic needs. I would say the spiritual need is: they need to be discipled and they need to be discipled into knowing not just what they believe, but why, because we no longer have a culture that's just like, "Oh yes, we reinforce that. There's enough of us here to where we all generally agree." There is not enough of us anymore to where we all generally agree.
I think it was Barna who just did in the most recent 2022 or 2021—I can't remember which study it was—but it was 1% of people who had a biblical worldview. We're talking about people who believe that Jesus was the Son of God, that he's the only way, and that reading your Bible is important and prayer is important. It's not just tenets, but also the things that come along with believing what's true.
Our kids will only be as able to stand up to the—we'll say the hostility. I don't think we're at the point where we're really getting full-on persecution yet. I would like to still leave that for the third-world countries that are experiencing actual persecution, but we need to be preparing them for the hostility. Their ability to stand firm in the faith will only go so far as their belief that it's true—not their belief that "This is what I was raised in," not their belief of "This is our family's tradition," but no—"This is objectively true."
We have an embarrassment of riches, as one of the apologists likes to say, of evidence for the Christian faith, and so that right there would be spiritually our number one thing as moms. That's why I think apologetics is so important. Some people make apologetics as if it's mainly for the person who's an atheist—your atheist neighbor. No. The number one reason for apologetics is convincing the Christian that what they believe is actually true and not just a belief or blind leap of faith.
Emily: That's so helpful. I love that you mentioned the word "worldview" in there because that's something that we talked a lot about in the little years and the very first foundational blocks that we're giving our children in terms of "How do you think about your life and who you are and who God made you to be?" and what we believe. I think it would be helpful if you could define "worldview" for us. What is a worldview? How are they formed? Then how can we ensure that we're giving our children a Christian worldview or a biblical worldview?
Amy: A biblical worldview, or a worldview in general, is how we see the world and answer the core questions of existence. Does truth exist? Morality? What is a human being? Does God exist? What happens to us after we die? Every single worldview out there has to answer these questions. Within Christianity, it's important for us to answer these questions as well but also show how they correspond to reality. That's how we get the validity of a worldview. Just like with truth in general, it has to correspond to reality.
What we find is, when we look at all the evidence for Christianity and the faith, we find that Christianity stands head and shoulders above all other worldview faiths. That's why it's so important for our kiddos that, as parents, we not only teach them, "Okay, here's the fundamentals of theology and this is why mom and dad believe this to be true and give them evidence," but we're also practically engaging other worldviews to say, "Okay, this is what your friend who maybe is raised in the Islamic faith believes," or "This is what your atheist friend or your nihilist friend is believing. Here's probably why they believe it, why it may look attractive to them, but here also is why it doesn't actually give them what they're seeking and why only Christianity does." It's very practical for parents because we're able to engage in all of these different worldviews within the safety of the home. Your kiddos become critical thinkers, which is what we need in society.
In fact, that's probably the best way to have your kiddos really stand firm against the secular tide—to make them good thinkers because then, when they're outside of your home, when they're talking to their friends, when something comes up on their friend's phones and you are not there, they're going to be like, "Wait a second. What are the truth claims being made? What is the good? What is the bad?" We do this within the ROAR method within Mama Bear. What are they seeking? What are the pitfalls of this belief? How is it not true? How does it not correspond with reality? Then how does Christianity come in and show, "No, this is the way?"
That's what we want our kiddos to do. We want to raise competent, critical thinkers because that's how, when other lies start creeping in and culture comes roaring through your door, through your tv, through the radio, your kiddos are going to hear that and they're not just going to absorb it. Instead, they're going to engage it and say, "Wait a second, that isn't true."
For parents out there, I know sometimes within Christianity we think, "Oh my gosh, if my baby doesn't have water wings in the baptismal, I've failed as a parent." No, no, no. Even if your kiddo has left your home and does not have an active relationship with Christ, if we have trained them to recognize truth, they're going to run into Christ every single time. That's our goal as parents: to raise competent kids.
Laura: I love that. Emily and I have just been talking a lot lately about how the world of motherhood has really changed, especially as we've gotten into middle years where, like you're saying, it goes from "How are we sustaining them? How are we taking care of them?" to "How are we really training their minds?" That shift happens slowly, where one day you wake up and you realize, "Oh, I have to teach them how to think." I'm not doing all the thinking for them, which is what we're doing for our youngest of children.
I love what you're talking about, of teaching them to be good thinkers—of teaching them to be critical thinkers. Can you walk us through some practical applications, even giving us an anecdote of what that might look like for a mom because this feels like a big and overwhelming topic? Can you talk us through a little bit of what that might look like tangibly?
Amy: There's a great book called Greg Koukl's Tactics—so the title of the book is just Tactics. What this book does is it provides a really accessible way to engage in other worldviews, other belief systems, and other truth claims. Perhaps the easiest question is: "What did they mean by that?" That's one of the first ones he asked: "Wait a second, what are they actually saying?"
That helps kiddos to start thinking, "Okay, maybe something that they said is attractive. It's appealing. Oh man, it stirs up all the feels because our culture is big into inspiring emotional reactions. It's okay; let's slow down for a minute." We register the feelings, but what is it that they're actually saying? Then you start working through those worldview questions. Okay. "What is the implication for me as a person? What are they saying about truth? What are they saying about what is good? Is that actually good? Is that actually true?" Then it's just slowly working through those questions.
Some of the easiest ways to do that—that I encourage parents to do—is, honestly, watch cartoons with your kids. Seriously. You won't have to watch very many to start recognizing these worldview claims that are coming right through their television, and then what you do is you pause, and you say, "Okay what's happening right now? Why is the character making this decision? What are they hoping to achieve? What happens if it fails? What is actually the result of this decision?"
It's awesome because it's critical thinking in this practice session, to where they get to interact with somebody. Basically, it's almost like when you play dolls or trains with your kiddos. They get to play out these scenarios without having the repercussions fall upon themselves, which is fantastic because it trains them to think well.
Then when they're outside and maybe another situation very similar to what they've engaged with happens—"Oh, wait a second, I've been here before." They'll start to think critically. Now, this isn't foolproof. This doesn't mean that if you train your kiddos this way, they're never going to make a mistake ever again. I wish I could tell you that.
Laura: Because #boys. [Laughter]
Emily: We're still looking for that foolproof answer.
Amy: Oh my gosh. I know. I've got three boys at home, and very often, I'm just like, "Oh, okay, really?" This is what—you ask them, "Why'd you do that?" They're like, "I don't know." You're like, "Oh."
It's the amygdala firing off. It's just, "Oh, this looks awesome. Let's do it." That's just kids, right? It gives them that practical training. One encouragement is—they did a study on Christian parenting. And so they had what I'll call the bubble parents, to where—these are the parents that—they've got their kids in homeschool co-op, Christian private school, Christian cheer team. Basically, any activity—if it's got a Jesus stamp, their kids are involved. They never let any cartoons or shows come in that don't have the biblical worldview affirmed. They are the bubble parents. Then you have the other Christian parents.
Hillary: And then they give them a smartphone and wonder why none of it works. [Laughter]
Amy: Then you've got the other parents who come in, and they are the Christian parents, but they say, "Okay, maybe we're going to watch a TV show where the characters don't make very Christlike decisions, but we're going to pause, and we're going to engage it and we're going to discuss it." What they found—shocker—is that the bubble kids went off to college and lost their minds because they had no idea. They got this taste of what they thought was freedom without realizing that, "No, what the world advertises as freedom is really slavery."
The Christian kids who were able to engage in age-appropriate ways with the secular worldview and secular thinking and actions—what they found is: they had less risky decision-making behavior. Whew, that is so awesome for us parents because it means we don't have to work so hard to shelter our kiddos. In fact, actually we're hurting them if we do that. We want our kids to be tactically proficient on the battlefield because from a very young age—from the age of Bubble Guppies and Sesame Street—they're on the battlefield. Just watch any cartoon in the month of June.
Emily: Oh, I love that idea. You guys do such a great job of this in your books, on your podcast. We just want to encourage moms—if you're getting the taste of this and you're like, "Wow, I want to really dig into more of where this comes from," to check out more of their resources. We wanted to give you guys a chance here on the show to help a mom take something in our culture, like moral relativism—which is one of the worldviews you give in your book—and help us know how we would spot that. How would we train our kids to spot it, and how would we fight against that as we disciple our kids? We're trying to take it down from this macro level. It's like, "Show us how this works with something like moral relativism."
Hillary: Yes, I would say for moral relativism—number one, the chapters in the book are ordered in a very specific way. It's taking you through "You have to have believed this in order to believe this next thing. Once you believe that, then this next thing is the next thing you're going to believe." Moral relativism is really predicated on the idea of postmodernism. For those who aren't all into the reading—
Laura: I feel like we got a lot of moms that are like, "I need another cup of coffee right now."
Amy: Right. Fourteen-dollar words.
Emily: It's good. It's good.
Laura: These are some big ones.
Hillary: Everyone's like, "I'm smart. Postmodernism. Yes."
Laura: Yes. Just drop it in a convo, and you’ll sound brilliant.
Hillary: Yes. Drop it in a conversation. Let's take it down to the bare brass tacks. What that is is—postmodernism is the belief that even if there is absolute truth out there, it's unknowable. Now, practically, what they will say—something like, "There is no truth. Everybody has their own truth." Once you have this belief that there is no truth or if there is a truth, we can't access it, the next logical thing is "Well, then I guess we're going to all have to do what our own truths are."
Let's just think of what we have heard over and over. Shout your truth. Speak your truth. He's telling his truth. Of course, nobody cares what his truth is. It's always her truth that matters the most. His truth is probably lying and covering up power. I'm saying that facetiously, of course. This idea that we can have multiple truths. I remember even back in high school that the small group leader—she was saying, "Everybody's entitled to their own opinion. They're not entitled to their own truth."
The same thing. Everybody's entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. So like facts and truth—it's like they either correspond to reality or they don't. Again, if we've gotten rid of that, now we have this concept of something that's maybe true for me and not true for someone else. I want to say one of the confusing things that people have done about this. I've heard 1,001 apologists speak on the difference between what's called "objective truth" and "subjective truth."
"Objective truth" means it's based on an object outside of ourselves that everybody has access to. We can all look at the shirt that I'm wearing, and, even if we have different color names for red, this is giving off just one wavelength of light. However you perceive it, it's still that one wavelength of light. There is only one color—that this is a red shirt. That's an objective truth statement. Everybody has access to it, unless they're blind or whatever.
"Subjective" means that the truth is based on the subject—the person. This is one of the things that drives me nuts—when I hear apologists give talks on this, what they always use is, "Well, I could say chocolate's the best flavor of ice cream," and they use that as their example of subjective truth. I just want to say, "Please, let's stop using that example." The example that I think would be a lot more helpful is for someone to say, "It's really hot in here."
My husband and I both have our own truths in the sense of—we were doing one of those games once where it's like, "What do couples normally fight about?" John and I are like, "Temperature, of course." Most were like "Sex, finances, kids." John and I are temperature. To tell someone, "No, you're not hot." "No, I am hot. It is true that I am very, very hot right now." That's not something anyone else has access to.
An objective statement along the lines would be saying, "It is too hot in this room." In which case, you're saying it for everybody—all people, all times, all places. This is too hot. That's an objective truth. Just saying, "I feel too hot right now"—that's a subjective truth, and you can't convince someone out of that subjective truth.
Now what we've done is: we've taken these subjective truths and we've placed them onto objective things. For example, what your gender is. This idea that we just assign gender and that, no, this subjective quality can determine what our gender is instead of it being an objectively verifiable thing when you're born—that people are not assigning gender. They're recognizing gender in terms of what your body looks like. Basically, that gender is stamped into every single cell.
I would just say that this concept of following your truth—any time there's a possessive pronoun, got to go to your seventh-grade language rules: a possessive pronoun. His, hers, theirs, mine, all that. A possessive pronoun in front of truth— you're dealing with moral relativism. It's the ones that are saying, "We can't judge anybody for any of the decisions that they make because maybe that's how their culture is."
Okay. This culture thinks that you should help your neighbor. That culture thinks they should eat their neighbor. You do you, boo. That would be the concept of moral relativism—that there is nothing that's true for all people at all times in all places. Of course, the easy thing with this is—to say there is no truth—everybody can have their own truth. Like, "Was that an objectively true statement?" It's self-refuting. Some people just think you're playing word games at that point, and you're not. You're like, "No, we're playing logic games, and it's not a game. The world depends on it."
Emily: That's really helpful. Even as you're talking about making sure we are telling our kids that God does have things that are true for all people for all of time spelled out in his Word. One of the other episodes that we've done in this series is talking a little bit about personal conscience and how we're trying to help our kids see there's house rules or family-specific rules, and then there's God's rules and God's commands.
We can be sure that if God has a command or a rule for us to follow, that is going to apply to all people for all of time. Whether or not we wear shoes in the house—well, that's going to vary from family to family, and that's okay. I think those can be hard things for us as adults to sift through and then trying to help our kids sift through this on some really big issues like sexuality—like you're saying, that falls under the category of "There is God's truth for all people for all of time." But whether or not the room is too hot—well, you can think it's too hot, and that's probably okay. That's really good.
I think one of the things we liked at the end of your book on sexuality—you sum it up in this list of seventeen things. Is that right? Seventeen things. Can you guys just share? If people want to read the list, they can go read it, but just a couple of things that stand out to you from that list and just give us an example of how we would disciple our children with those.
Hillary: I'd say that I think it's the first two of them that are the most obvious in terms of—that’s going to undercut everything that's going on in the sexual agenda right now. That's "what you do with your body matters" because what kids are being taught is that what they do with their body doesn't matter. It's like—whatever is going on in their mind, their body now has to be subject to that.
This can go anywhere from the people—I say the people out there. Kind of the people like me that don't place as high of a priority on exercising. I really need to do it better, but what you do with your body matters or what you eat or how you dress— all these things. Whether or not your kid asks you—you say, "Go brush your teeth." They're like, "Why? Why do I have to brush my teeth?" You say, "Because what you do with your body matters."
Well, why does it matter? This brings us to the second one because God gave us our bodies to take care of it. Again, you don't say, "Your body is a gift from God," because kids have seen us re-gift gifts or just throw away a gift once it wasn't useful anymore, but a stewardship is something that goes throughout all of Scripture. Saying, "God gave you your body to take care of it. Our job is to take care of the body." These are both things that are going to undercut everything within the sexual revolution.
There was one that I wrote about—I can't remember who originally said it. "You can't keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from making a nest in your hair." It's this idea of "What do we choose to dwell on?" Because what we choose to dwell on is going to be the thing that just keeps riling us up more and more and more.
I posted a tweet the other day, and I have some guy giving me random pushback. I said, basically, "We need to cultivate a heart of gratitude in preparation for suffering because suffering is coming. If we have not cultivated a heart of gratitude beforehand, basically, we're not going to have a chance during suffering." That would be the kind of thing that, when you are suffering, you're going to have these thoughts of "Woe is me," or "This is so hard," or "Nobody else has to go through it."
If those are the things that you choose to dwell on, your suffering's just going to get worse and worse and worse. If you say, "Swat those birds away; you are not going to make a nest in my hair. I'm going to choose to focus on what I'm thankful for." Which brings us to another. You do have some choice over what you think about and how you feel. It's like—you don't have all the control in the world, but you have some control. What control you have, you need to use it. I can't remember exactly how I phrased that. A lot of these are just really basic things that I think we have forgotten.
Laura: I know just with phrases and things, I use a lot of short kitschy phrases with my kids too. A lot of the Risen Motherhood listeners will know many of the ones that I share like "See needs and meet them" and "speak life." These phrases—what's so great about them is that you can unpack them over the course of many, many years while they're under your roof because sometimes these phrases can be unhelpful. We want to see needs and meet them, but we also have needs that we can allow others to help us.
My kids, as I train them in these things—you can unpack them over the course of eighteen years or so and help them to see what they really mean at its heart and where they're tied biblically into Scripture. I know my mom used a ton of them with me growing up as well. I am now thirty-six years old, and I still hear the phrases in my head, and they come in these—they're like hymns or Scripture. [Laughter]
Hillary: Then they start coming out of your mouth and you're like, "Good gravy, I sound like my mother."
Laura: Just like my mother. [Laughter]
Emily: I guess, just as we close today, we would love for you guys—either one of you or both of you—to give our listeners just some hope and some truth in the midst of a world and a culture that rejects God.
Amy: I think what's important is recognizing the roots of fear and anxiety that often creep up. Typically, it's rooted in, one, a lack of knowledge and possibly a lack of perspective on our role as parents. We are not called to be the Holy Spirit. We're not. It's not a role we can fill. We're not omniscient. It's not one of the spiritual gifts. I wish it was because I've got teenagers, but it's not. That's why I'm friends with their moms. [Laughter]
Hillary: They think you're omniscient because—all the moms talk together, and they're like, "I do know."
Amy: I know. We know our own kids. It's awesome. Like seriously—best pro tip. As your kids become teens, be friends with their friends' parents because that's how you find out all the dumb stuff they're doing when they're outside your house. [Laughter]
Yes, recognizing that it's often rooted in a lack of knowledge, lack of words, and also a misunderstanding of our role as parents. Again, our role is not to convert our children. It's to make competent children. The Holy Spirit's role is the conversion. Two, rooted in a lack of fear. It can often feel overwhelming when we have this first survey of how vast the battlefield is and how our children are on it right next to us because we like to think, "Oh no, it's just we adults that are on the battlefield."
Uh-uh. Moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas—it's your kiddos too, and they were given spiritual armor for a reason, and we need to be cultivating the proficient wielding of that armor because if you've ever had a kid given a BB gun or a whittling knife, you don't just say, "Hey buddy, go at it. Have fun." No, you're right there saying, "Okay, wait, nope, don't stab that. He's not going to like it if you shoot him with that." We are often more careful about teaching our kids how to wield their nerf guns than we are wielding the armor of God, and that's where we need to shift and change.
Hillary: Preach. That's a quotable quote right there. [Laughter]
Amy: What we need to do—and what I encourage parents to do whenever we talk about this—is to just have one conversation. Look at where your child is at right now. A public school kid is going to be at a different place than perhaps a homeschool kid. Look at where they're at right now. Look at their friend group. Take a look at the music on their phones that they're listening to. See what themes are coming up and have one conversation about that theme.
Read up on it, read a blog, read a chapter—just do one thing. Have one conversation, and then once that conversation's over, just do one more. It's so attainable because so often we as parents, we think, "Oh my gosh, I needed to know all the things four years ago, and I haven't been evangelizing my baby since I was watching them on the monitor at the doctor's office." No, no, no, it's okay. If they're still breathing and you're still breathing, the Holy Spirit's still working, so start talking. Just have one conversation. Mamas, if you feel like you aren't doing enough—no, no, no, you are. You can do this. Just one thing.
Laura: You guys, thank you so much for this encouragement—the exhortations. This is just really, really helpful for us as moms, and I know it will be for our listeners as well. We really appreciate you guys taking time out to join us today.
Hillary: Absolutely.
Amy: Thank you so much for having us.
