Preparing Teens for Life in a Secular World

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Michael Kruger
My name is Michael Krueger, and I’m just thrilled about this session as the first session. We still have a few people coming in and making their way to their seats, but I hope you’re in the right place. I trust you are. The title of our talk here is out of the nest, a conversation for parents and teens about parenting for life in a secular world. I can’t imagine a topic more relevant for not only our current age, but even for this conference. And I trust for you, as you’ve made your way in here, this is something on your mind, but it’s been on my mind for a long time. It’s on my mind, really, for a couple reasons. One reason the subject’s been on my mind is because some of you may know, sort of on the academic side of what I do, I’ve devoted my whole academic career to helping people believe the Bible, believe Christianity is the word of God, and to make that sort of foundational for their life. And so in one sense, what we’ll be talking about today is helping reassure our teens that the Bible is true and that Christianity is true. And so certainly I resonate with this topic for that reason, because this is what I’ve written and spoken about for years. But actually there’s another reason that this topic is so near and dear to my heart, and probably the same reason it is for you and that I am a parent. I’m a dad. I have three kids, one out of college, one in college, one about to start college, and the one about to start college is actually here with me today, my daughter right here on the first row. So you can behold a teenager in their natural habitat, right here with me today. So she says, Dad, am I just here as like a prop for your talk or what exactly is going on here? But she’s here. I’m excited that I know you have teenagers no doubt in your life that are going to be near and dear to your heart as you think about this topic. In fact, as I prepared this message, I had a little bit of a flashback. It wasn’t but about five years ago that I found myself standing on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill looking at my oldest daughter as I sent her off to college, our first one out of the house, and I gave her that hug that every dad gives their daughter, knowing that okay, I’ve had you for 18 years of my life, 18 years of your life, and now it’s time to say goodbye. And I could remember thinking, have I? Have I done enough? Have I? Have I been enough of a father for her? Have I prepared her for the onslaught the tsunami that awaits her in these college years and beyond? So we said a tearful goodbye, and I got in the car and was driving away from the college campus, and my wife leaned over to me and she said, Okay, you know, right that now it’s time to write that book. And I was like, Yeah, I know, and I’ve been putting it off for years. Some of you may know now that book is out called Surviving religion. 101, how to help, basically, young people keep the faith in college. But I hadn’t written the book yet when I sent my daughter off to college and so on that ride home, I thought to myself, Okay, I need to write the book that’s going to help her prepare for what it’s like to be a college student in our secular age. Here’s what I didn’t expect, though, after I wrote that book, certainly I got notes from college students who were blessed by it, but I realized the people who wanted to talk to me most weren’t the college students. The people who wanted to talk to you most were the parents of the college students, parents like probably many of you in this room, parents with teenagers, parents with babies, parents with children everywhere in between. And they basically came up to me and said, Hey, thanks for writing the book for when my kid gets to college. But what do I do before they leave the house? What do I do to prepare them for that next stage of life? Well, that is exactly why we’re in this room today, because I want to begin helping you think through that next stage of things in your life. Now, when I wrote that book, Surviving religion, 101101, it wasn’t just about my daughter Emma. It’s actually about my own story. If you’ve read the book, or know some of my background. You know that when I was a college student more than 30 years ago, and almost dropped my daughter off the exact same day, 30 years before that, I started college at UNC, and when I started there, I had a crisis of faith. I had grown up at a Christian home, had a good youth group, had parents that loved Jesus, been taught the gospel from a young age, and I headed off to a big secular university, absolutely convinced that I was ready, and it turned out that I was not. Now I was ready in some ways. Certainly, I was ready on one sense that I’ve been trained, like most people in youth groups, to not go join the party scene. Okay? I’ve been trained how to sort of avoid certain vices and patterns and behaviors, and that thing has its place, but what I was not trained for was how to deal with the intellectual challenges I was going to face. In fact, I was nowhere near ready for that, so I found myself in a religion class as the professor attacked the New Testament and made all. Kinds of critiques about how it contradicted itself and it wasn’t believable, and it had been forged by people pretending to people who they weren’t, and it hadn’t been copied reliably by scribes and on on it when there I was 18 years old in a college classroom thinking, Why did no one ever tell me this? Why did my pastor ever talk about this? Why did I never hear this before? That’s exactly why I wrote the book and exactly why I’m excited to talk to you today, because I want to help us as parents and teens. Some are here think through what these next steps are. I think if you’re here, you probably have a little bit of that parental angst that we all have. That parental angst is basically, is my child going to come home in 12 months with an entirely different world view than when they left, and I’ve spent 18 years with them, and I have one college experience where someone spends 18 months with them, and now everything I’ve done has been undone. If you feel that you’re not alone. The recent Barna studies statistically have supported that danger, and it’s a real one, that lots of people, if they ever lose their faith, they’re going to lose their faith when they leave the nest and head off into college for the first time dealing with those challenges ahead of them. So what are we going to do to prepare for this? Here’s the way I want to break down our session today. I have one short moment with you, not nearly enough to do all that I wish we could talk about and discuss. But basically, I want to do this in two parts. I want to first say some things to the parents, which I know mostly this room is filled with and I want to say things to the teens. Now I’m aware that probably most of the room is filled with parents and not with teens, but in the second half of the talk, when I say things to teens, I’m really saying things to you, right? Because I’m saying things to you to say to the teens. And so some teenagers are here, fair enough. But even if this is just all parents, there will be three principles I want to give you as parents, and four principles I want to lay out for teens for a total of seven things, which I figure is that’s a good biblical number. So can’t go wrong there. Now, I know you’re thinking seven points. How long are we going to be here? I’m going to going to move quickly. Okay, through these seven points. So don’t panic, but three for the parents, four for the teens, and then I think, as you’ll see, they very much cross pollinate each other, because truthfully, you can’t understand what your teen is going through without listening to that half, and the teen can’t really understand what the parents are going through without listening to their half. Okay, with that in mind, I’m going to say a quick word of prayer. Of prayer for us, and then we’re going to dive in to these seven things. Let’s pray together.

Michael Kruger
Lord, as we pause, we know that as parents, you’ve tasked us with certain things to be as faithful as we can be with our kids, and we want to do that. But Lord, we also recognize that the heart of our child is not in our hands, but in yours, you’re the one who steers the hearts of kings, of princes, of all people. So Lord we really pray, yes, make us faithful parents. Yes. Lord we pray our teens would, would keep walking faithfully. But Lord we pray most of all that you would sovereignly care for them, protect them, and be their God. We pray all this in Christ’s name. Amen. Okay, let’s dive into three principles for parents, starting off now, as I lay out these three principles, let me begin by just simply saying that these aren’t the only three things you do as a parent, right? I mean, a lot of the things I’m talking about here presume certain things are already in place. I’m presuming that you already go to a good church. I presume you already have some sort of family devotions, I presume, to some extent, you yourself are following Christ. So there’s certain built in assumptions going on. As I mentioned, these three principles for parents. But here’s the danger. One of the things I’ve seen over the years, and I’ve seen this in my life too, is lots of Christian families think that, well, if I just go to church every week, and my kids involved in a good youth group, and maybe they’re involved in some sort of parachurch ministry and they seem to have Christian friends, then they’re going to be fine. And I really don’t need to do anything else intentionally prepare them beyond just that. And so parents go a little bit on autopilot mode. I figured if I just do those basics, all things will fall in place. Can tell you this, that may have been true in years gone by, I don’t think it’s true anymore. It wasn’t even true in my own day, I had all those things. I had a Christian home, I had a good youth group, I had a faithful church. I was taught the gospel, but I wasn’t ready. So what do you do beyond those things to get your child ready for the next stage of life? Okay, three things. Here’s the first, first principle, wise exposure instead of just isolation. Wise exposure instead of just isolation. I came across a remarkable book a few years ago by a microbiologist by the name of Jack Gilbert. It’s a 2017 book, and here was the catchy title of doctor Gilbert’s book. The title was called Dirt is good. Subtitle the advantage of germs for your child’s developing immune system. Now you’re I know you’re sitting here thinking, wow, I thought we were talking about religion. Why are we talking suddenly about germs and immune systems? But hear me out. No doubt in this book he was targeting. Seen a parental trend that’s out there, and that parental trend is no doubt something you yourself have experienced or may maybe even pursue. It’s the idea that our job as parents number one is to take every step humanly possible to protect our child from every germ on the planet. And so we take every step. Our kids can never use enough hand sanitizer. They can never take enough baths. They can never have enough Clorox wipes and their school backpacks. And parents spend their whole life making sure little Johnny or little Susie or whatever, never catch a cold, never get sick, never get COVID at all. And then some parents argues the book, find themselves with a child that went most of their young life never sick in any meaningful way, maybe even in the teens, 16, 1718, with no real illness. And parents pat themselves on the back and say, Well, that looks like I’ve done my job. I’ve protected and kept my child safe. But the book argues, as you can guess from the title, that’s not at all what’s happened. Yes, your child hasn’t been sick for the last 15 so years in any meaningful way. But what’s also true is the lack of exposure to germs never allowed their immune system to get kick started. Their immune system has lied dormant. Never had to do any battle, never had to do anything, never really developed. And often, those same children you thought you were protecting them getting very, very, very sick later, because they never actually got a little sick earlier. In fact, he argues in the book that most of the trends that we have here in terms of allergies and all kinds of other ailments may be due to the fact that kids no longer ever get exposed to any dirt, any germs on their young life. Now you can see where I’m going with this, because this is exactly true. Spiritually. There are parents who think the number one job is to make sure that their child never hears a wrong thought in the world, that they never hear an argument against Christianity, they never hear something that’s not true. And so parents labor their whole life to put their child in a theological sanitary bubble, where never do they hear anything that could contradict their faith. We put them in the right places, have the right friends, have the right circumstances, thinking that we’re accomplishing the ultimate end, which is good. Now don’t misunderstand many of those things we do we ought to do. There’s nothing wrong with being careful with your children. There’s nothing wrong with putting them in good schools, even Christian schools. But there’s a lesson to learn here spiritually. If your child graduates at 18 and has never, really, ever heard a substantive argument against Christianity, have you really protected them? Are they really ready? You ever wonder why it is that it’s after 18 that most kids end up leaving the faith? Maybe because they never actually got the answers at home. Maybe you ever, never even heard the questions at home, and then they get out in the real world, they hear the questions for the first time that they never heard before, and then the only person around to give them the answer is the people at their secular university. One of my goals in writing the book I mentioned a moment ago is to make sure that when any child leaves the home, they can never say the phrase, my parents never told me that. My pastor never mentioned that. I’ve never heard that before. What I’d love to have happen more is for parents to have children exposed at age appropriate levels to certain levels of non belief theological germs, if you will to kick start their theological immune systems so that when they go off to college they can say, Yes, I’ve heard that. No, that’s not new. Yes, my pastor talked about that. Yes, my parent and I went over that. Now some of you may think, Well, I don’t have to worry about any of that, because my child is going to go to a Christian college. Oh, boy. If that were only true. First of all, we know that doesn’t work. Even if they’re solid Christian colleges, they’re still going to come across non Christian thought. We also know that all, not all, colleges that say they’re Christian really are Christian. In fact, sometimes children are told they’re at a Christian college, they let their guard down, and they hear arguments that are no different they would hear at a major university, but yet their guard is not up to protect themselves against it. So here’s some practical thoughts, terms of wise exposure. Find age appropriate ways to talk to your kids about non Christian thought. Have they ever read a book written by a non Christian? Have they ever read a book written by a non Christian arguing against Christianity? Have they ever watched or heard even a single substantive argument against Christianity that you can show them in the home, and then you can be there to answer the argument. So step one, wise exposure, instead of just isolation. Here’s the second principle for parents, purposeful dialog, instead of just instruction, purposeful dialog, instead of just instruction. Now I’ll tell you this in the seminary world, which is, of course, the world that I’m in most of the time, we think a lot about how to teach people things. We think a lot about how people learn things. And we spend a lot of time in a seminary doing one directional and. Instruction, where we tell the students what they need to know, and the students learn the thing we told them they need to know. And it goes mostly in one direction, mainly because of the practical limitations of how much time we have. And I know that parents do the same thing, particularly when your kids are young. You just simply want to give them facts and data and information, and so you teach and teach and teach, and it’s one directional, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s perfectly fine, particularly when they’re really, really young. But as they age, you have to understand learning doesn’t work that way at every stage. There has to be a time when it shifts. In the seminary space, I tell people, there’s really three levels of understanding something. One is just learning the facts. Okay, fine. You learn something. Step two is the ability to articulate it. By the way, there’s a lot of things I bet you know and believe that you couldn’t do very well articulating right. We all have that right like I believe that. But if I had to say it, if I had to express it, if I had to put it in my own words, that might be kind of hard to do. So there’s the learning of it, there’s the articulating of it. Ah, but there’s a third thing when it comes to really grasping something that is defending it, defending it against those who disagree with you. So three steps, learning something, articulating something, defending something. Here’s the thing about the way most families work, and this is true, and nothing wrong with this. We usually get to step one and stop. We just simply taught our kids the Catechism. We taught our kids the Bible, we taught our kids these things, and that’s all good, but there’s never any dialog. There’s never any back and forth. There’s never any sense in which we ask them to express it yourself, to say it in your own words, to speak it back. Nor do they ever have a chance to defend it against someone who’s sort of persistently eager to break it down. I can tell you something you think you know something, when you may realize you really don’t know it until you have to defend it. In fact, it’s the first time, usually, when people have to defend something, they begin to realize, Wow, maybe I don’t really know what I thought I knew, or maybe I don’t even really believe what I thought. I believe that took that person 30 seconds to tear apart my world view, and I didn’t have any answers. So one

Michael Kruger
of the things to think about as a parent is, how can you create more both ways, dialogs? Now my kids were growing up, we did a couple practical things in my home. We had sort of these things I would call sort of atheist dinners. Atheist dinners are where dad pretended to be an atheist at the dinner table. And Cape remembers this and and she was pretty young during a lot of these days. I’m like, Okay, I’m an atheist. I’m going to give you arguments. I want to see if you can respond to them, and then I want you to give me arguments for why God exists, and I’m going to respond to your arguments. And so here they were trying the dialog with me, and I was giving them arguments they hadn’t heard, and they hadn’t heard, and they were giving me their arguments for why God existed. I was like, that doesn’t work for these four reasons. And they’re like, Wait, Dad, what do you really believe? Again, you know, they’re not sure whether I was, you know, a Christian or an atheist. Another example of this two way street was in my children’s youth group. They invited me to come in and do something I think was rather creative. I had one hour with the youth group, and I spent my first half hour pretending to be a non Christian professor, and then the second half hour, I pretended to be a Christian Professor refuting what the first professor had said during the first half and so I went into this youth group with about 15 to 18 year olds, and I for the first 30 minutes, laid out all the arguments a non Christian professor would lay. Professor would lay out against the Bible and against Christianity. I got to say, when the first half was over, they were looking pretty nervous, wide eyed, and then I gave them the other half at the end, hopefully undoing the damage that I had done, in principle. But when it was over, one of the students came up to me and say, Man, you make a really good non Christian. And I’m like, I don’t know what I should think about that. Here’s the point, find ways to dialog with your child and put them in places where they do more than simply learn things, express things, and defend things. Here’s a third thing for parents, the third principle for you, allowing doubts instead of just giving answers. Allowing Dallas instead of just giving answers. One of the things you’ve already learned as a parent, even if your kids are young, kids love to ask questions. This is one of the delightful things about having kids. And when they’re young, they ask the craziest questions, and some of them are so fun you got to write them down or catch them on video lots of times, because they don’t even realize what they’re asking. And that’s why kids are so fun to be around. They ask questions and ask questions, but they also ask questions about Christianity. They’ll ask questions about religious matters. And when they’re young and they’re nine or 10, you will get a question, and then you’ll give an answer. But as your child gets older, they’re going to ask harder questions, and they’re going to start doubting what they believe. And here’s where you have to make sure your response is appropriate. As a parent, it’s so easy to see that twinge of doubt in your child, and think My number one job as a parent is to snuff that out as quickly as I can, and by snuffing it out, usually the tactic. Is to do what I call sort of doubt shaming. Doubt shaming is like, Oh, you have a question about how Christianity isn’t true. Well, you shouldn’t feel that way. You shouldn’t have that question. You’re probably not a good Christian. Now, we wouldn’t say it in those words, but the posture and attitude we have when people bring their doubts to us makes all the difference. I’m absolutely convinced that one of the reasons that you have this crisis of faith with kids when they get to college is because this is the first place they’ve been able to express their doubts and not feel shame for them. In fact, maybe they grew up in a home where most of the time when they expressed doubts and never really got a hearing, they never really were allowed to ask the hard questions. And if you’re not allowed to ask the hard questions, what are you going to eventually do after a while, you’re going to after a while, you’re going to stop asking. I’m convinced a lot of teenagers to stop asking, because they know that deep down it’s not right to ask. You should just believe so they stop asking. And you know, when they start asking again is when they get out of the house and get to college. What does that mean? That means you want to create an environment for them in the home that is inviting of tough questions, defensiveness, shaming of doubt. You’re not allowed to ask tough questions. You want to flip that around and say, yes, please make let this be a place where you can bring me any question you have about the faith. If you’re wondering about something, bring it to me. Let’s discuss it. Let’s have let’s have that conversation. One things I’ve learned over the years with my kids is then they’ve got some Zinger theological questions. I thought in a seminary context, I’ve heard it all. My son in particular, be like, and my daughter Kate would be like, Hey, Dad, what about X, Y and Z? And there’s times I’m like, you know, I don’t know. And they’re regularly disappointed with me. I got to tell you that they’re like, you’re supposed to be this professor, you know? And I’m like, Yeah, but just because I’m a professor doesn’t mean I have an answer every question. Sometimes we don’t know. Sometimes it’s okay to say you don’t know. You know, what can really help your teen out is to recognize that mom and dad don’t think all things are just snap the fingers easy, that believing is just nothing to see here, just easy peasy, no problems, no sometimes believing is hard, and they need to hear that the Bible is filled with people who doubt it. The Bible is filled with people who struggled. If you don’t know the history of the church, some of your greatest heroes in the church, doubt it. In my book, I mentioned ch Spurgeon and Martin Luther as two examples of some of the great theological heroes we cherish, they had tremendous periods of doubt, tremendous periods of despair, tremendous periods of wondering whether any of this was true. And you expect that a 17 year old is never going to have that. Of course, they are give them space to let it breathe and rather to do that in the home than later when they’re out. Okay, those are the three principles for parents. Let me transition now to the second half, where I’m going to lay out four quick principles for teens. Now, as I do the four principles for teens, remember this is also for the parents, because, first of all, they apply to you too, but also hopefully you can pass them along to your teens as you go. And these are four of many things that I bring up in times a past to when I talk to teenagers about life in college or life about to go to college. But here’s four of the ones I think are absolutely essential to get, and you’re going to make sure you understand them and pass them along. Here’s the first thing for teens headed off to college, you won’t have all the answers you won’t or to put it a more blunt way, you’re going to be asked questions that you cannot answer if they’ve been trained in a home that makes it seem like faith is always pie in the sky. Simple, easy peasy, no problems here, then they’re going to get floored when they get to college, because when they get to college, they’re going to realize there’s hard questions, hard questions. There’s not always easy answers to you know what’s going to happen? They’re going to get into debate in their dorm, a debate in the classroom, debate with the professor or a fellow student, and they’re going to get asked a question about Christianity that they cannot answer. They might even be intellectually embarrassed. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with people who are thinking of leaving the faith, and the reason they’re thinking about abandoning Christianity is because they were asked a question they couldn’t answer. What I want to do is preempt that and help you, as parents, preempt that by just simply saying, of course, you’re going to get asked questions you can’t answer. You should expect that. That’s not a crisis of faith. That should be par for the course. You’re only 18 years old. How would you expect to have all the answers to all the questions? Moreover, you also to remind your team this important principle, just simply, because you cannot answer a question that may not mean what you believe is wrong, you could not have an answer, and that may not at all affect the truth of what you believe. You could believe something and have no ability at all to defend it and still be right. I don’t know if you’ve ever met one of those Moon Landing deniers out there in the world. Ever come across one of them? These are the people that think that we didn’t really land on the moon tonight for this. 69 was all in a studio and so forth. They have a set of beliefs. We didn’t land on the moon. You have a set of beliefs. I hope that we did in 1969 if you ever cross the path of a moon landing denier, maybe on an airplane or something, I guarantee you they will bring up questions you cannot answer. They’re very sophisticated. They’re very, very sort of thoughtful in the way they make their arguments. They have their own types of evidence. And if you left saying, Well, I guess if I can’t answer this person, maybe we didn’t land on the moon in 1969 No, you cannot have any answers and still be right. Here’s the other thing, though, about not having the answers, just because you don’t have the answer doesn’t mean there’s not an answer, and that’s the most important thing to remember. I talk to 1819 year olds a lot, and I’m like, Oh, so you’re going to give up the faith because you didn’t have an answer yourself. But that presumes that no one has the answer. Just because you don’t have the answer doesn’t mean that no one has the answer. One things I was so thankful I did when I had that religion class at UNC all those years ago is that I went looking for answers. I heard a lot from my professor, and I thought to myself, That’s what he says. But how do I know that’s true? I’m going to go do the homework and find out if there’s validity to that. And so I went out to see if there were answers. Turned out there were answers. Turns out there were there were really good answers, even though I’d never heard them before. And it turned out the church had been answering that question for generations. And what you realize is, just because you don’t have an answer, just because your teen doesn’t have an answer, doesn’t mean there’s not an answer. Go do the work to find it. Now what’s going to happen, too, is your teen is going to come home from college and bring the questions to you,

Michael Kruger
and it’s okay for you to say you don’t have the answer either, but that doesn’t mean what you believe is untrue. You can just go work to find it and walk alongside your team to find the answer to those questions. That is a really key principle of all intellectual inquiry. Just because you don’t have the answer doesn’t mean there’s not one very smart people have looked at these things before. One thing is, I tell my seminar students all the time is that, do you really think you’re going to you’re going to go to college, or that someone’s going to go to college? And hear a question that’s that’s entirely original. No one’s ever thought of this before. No one has ever made this objection before. This is a brand new objection that no one’s ever come up with now, the chances of that are really, really slim. Almost every argument your teen will hear has been leveled against Christianity for 1000s of years, and Christianity is still here. Here’s a second principle of our four with teens. First one there was, of course, you won’t have an answer. Second principle for the teen, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And no, I’m not quoting Kelly Clarkson. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger was originally said by Frederick Nietzsche, although I don’t think Kelly Clarkson knew that when she wrote the song. Nonetheless, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is a very important principle for what happens when a teen goes off to college, they’re going to be very uncomfortable. They’re going to be very frustrated. At some point, they may feel very attacked. Those are the times where you suffer persecution and ridicule and mocking, where you think about giving up. I want to suggest to you that the image you want to give our teenagers. This is precisely the chance for you to grow in your faith like never before. What you think about it for a moment in your own life, ever, ever met a Christian you really admired that was very either theologically knowledgeable, biblically aware, or just had a character and a depth to them that just really made you want to emulate them in your life. If you’ve ever met a Christian like that, I promise you, they did not become that way through ease and comfort. They came that way through suffering, persecution, hard work, and maybe I can even use the word pain. Going through tough University experiences, yes, can be a danger, but they can also produce some of the most mature, wise, intelligent and articulate Christians, who can then use that experience to go and share the gospel faithfully with so many others. One of the things that’s interesting about studying the early church, which I do a good bit of, is we see examples of this in church history all the time. The second century of the early Christian faith was the first time the church ever sort of got outside the apostolic womb, so to speak, and was trying to stand on its own feet. And I can tell you that the church in the second century was looking pretty wobbly. It looked like the sort of newborn sort of animal on the Serengeti plains. You’re just waiting for some cheetah or lion to come and just take it away. You’re wondering, How in the world is this little church going to make it? And then. In the middle of the second century, all the philosophers, all the great thinkers, all the intellectual giants of the second century world just unloaded on this early Christian faith. Every argument, every attack, from Celsus, who was one of the most ardent critics, all the way up to the Emperor, would level all these attacks on the faith. What did this little baby Christian church? Do? They learn to stand they learn to give an answer. They learn to articulate their faith. Do you realize some of our greatest theological creeds, like the Nicene Creed, that eventually was written in the fourth century, comes out of generations of Christians trying to figure out how to speak their faith clearly and articulate it simply to a world that was skeptical. Did you know that the greatest Christian apologist we’ve ever had came out of the second century of suffering persecution and difficulty? Don’t think for a moment that when your child goes off to college and they struggle in their faith, that it’s all bad. We don’t want them to lose their faith. Don’t misunderstand. That’s all why we’re in this room. But struggling, fighting, dealing, pushing through, can create in your child, maybe one of the strongest Christians, that can then go and help other people down the road. If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger as a way of articulating that that a university experience in the crucible can hone one’s intellect and hone one’s character. Another way to say it is, is that I don’t see Christians being produced that way. If they’re living in isolation, they’re living in that theological bubble we talked about earlier, thinking that any little germ that gets in here is going to destroy me. No working through the germs, so to speak, is going to create that immune system that’s super strong. Okay, here’s the third principle for teens, and this one’s enormous, not just for teens, but actually for each and every one of us. Third principle is this, people don’t believe things simply because of the facts. People don’t believe things simply because of the facts, and I have facts in quotes there in my mind. People ask me all the time, what’s the most common question you get from students that go off to college and struggle in their faith? By the way, I have heard it all, all the questions, from the very technical historical questions around manuscripts and textual criticism, to the big philosophical questions like the problem of evil, those are all big issues. I tackle those in my book, by the way, in different places. But there’s one that stands out above all of them, in terms of what people ask me. The most common question they ask me, most common question they ask is, if Christianity is true, why don’t more people believe it? If Christianity is true, why don’t more people believe it? And probably even more to the point, if Christianity is true, why does it seem like the smartest people are precisely the ones who don’t believe it? Why is it? I look at the Faculty of my university, and I look at the intellectual elites in America, and I look at all my fellow students who are very smart at my university, and basically I am completely in the minority. I am maybe 5% of the population. Every one of those people with all the letters after name, all of them think I’m wrong, and I have to believe, as a Christian, that all of them are wrong, and I’m the one that’s right. What’s the chances of that being true? By the way, it’s not your team that’s asking that question. You and I are asking that question, right? If Christianity is true, then why don’t more people believe it, and why do the smartest people reject it? And is it really intelligible to say, well, I know 95% of the people think Christianity is crazy. Christianity is crazy, but I guess 95% of the people are just wrong in the world, and only 5% are right. Now, when I say it that way, maybe even you were wondering, right? Maybe you’re thinking, Yeah, that sounds nuts. Do we believe that really? Ah, but notice the premise that was slipped into the argument, the idea of why don’t more people believe this presumes something that that’s not made plain. It presumes a simple truth that it’s simply not true. And that truth that slipped into the argument is that if something is true, most people believe it. But that’s not the way people form their beliefs. We operate that way, but we shouldn’t operate that way. People don’t just form their beliefs based on quote facts they believe. They form their beliefs based on experience. They form their beliefs based on world views. They form their beliefs on assumptions. They form their beliefs on biases. They form their beliefs are all kinds of ways. A real simple way to say this is that no one is neutral when they make decisions about what they believe, the only way you’re going to make right decisions about what’s true is if you have the right world view to interpret the facts through the very thing most university professors and truthfully, most university students obviously don’t have. So people don’t form worldviews simply based on, quote. Facts. They base their decisions about what they believe on world views or paradigms.

Michael Kruger
Now, this was made very famous by a book written by a non Christian. Actually, you may have heard of the book by Thomas Kuhn, MIT professor, actually, back in the 60s, wrote a very famous book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and in a very different way, he made the same point. He said, You know, you think science works because people just follow the facts. That’s not how science works. Argues Kuhn, he’s not even a Christian. He’s a philosopher. He goes, don’t think that science works by someone putting on their white lab coat, and they get out a bunch of data, and they collect all the data and they reach the conclusions. It’s an all mathematical he’s like, no, no, that’s not how science works. Science is not some linear fact gathering enterprise. Instead, Kuhn argues that science works off what he calls paradigms, systems of thought, a grid that you stick the evidence inside of. And if you have a powerful enough grid, it can just reinterpret all the evidence to preserve the grid, and the only time the grid changes is if the evidence becomes so overwhelming that you have a complete flip of a new grid, what he calls a scientific revolution. Think Copernicus, the Copernican revolution, right? A heliocentric universe, or, sorry, a geocentric University, a heliocentric universe. Well, that’s the way truth really works. But what if someone looked at the world through a non Christian lens, and God really made it what if someone looked at the facts of the world, which are God’s facts, God’s facts, and try to interpret them on non Christian assumptions? Well, they’re going to get things wrong. So why do so many people not believe? Because so many people don’t look at the world through the lens that God has put in front of them to view it through, namely, his own system. He’s revealed in Scripture that principle is going to revolutionize the way you think. Is going to help your teen realize that just because everyone believes differently than me doesn’t mean I’m wrong. If you don’t ever address that. That’s going to be the sliver in your mind that’s going to continue to haunt you in your particular life, because you always think, how could it possibly be true that they’re all wrong and I’m right? Well, it’s not about you being smart. It’s about seeing things through the right lens the Christian worldview. Okay, here’s the fourth and final principle for kids, teenagers, and truthfully, as I said from the beginning, also applies to parents. When they head off to college, you’ve got to stick together like a band of brothers or a band of sisters. Still remember the first time I saw the movie Saving pride of Ryan. Some of you probably seen that movie, a world war two film starring Tom Hanks and others. They showed it on 24 hours of TV during the celebration of D Day back just a few weeks ago, Saving Private Ryan on all day long 24 hours a day. Still remember seeing that movie in the theater when it came out years ago, because I don’t ever really cry in movies, but I cried in that movie, and I cried in the first five minutes of that movie. You usually wait to the end for such things, right? But I cried in the first five minutes as they stormed the beach of Normandy, and just, you just saw the tragic, tragic deaths of so many American soldiers. How in the world do people do stuff like that? How in the world do people endure that kind of suffering and have that kind of courage? The very end of the film, Matt Damon’s character actually explains it. They’re trying to get Private Ryan to go home so he doesn’t die along with all his brothers, and he won’t leave. Here’s the words in the film said by Matt Damon’s character. He says this, you can tell my mother that when you found me, I was with the only brothers I had left, and there was no way I was deserting them. I think she’d understand that. Now, Private Ryan is not a Christian movie, but that’s a Christian principle. The way you have courage to persevere is when you do it in community and you do it with brothers and sisters together. The way a teen will survive college. The thing, more than anything, that is a determining factor for whether a teen who’s a Christian makes it through college with their faith intact. The number one determining factor is, do they find Christian Fellowship in college? Every other factor compels you could say, well, how many books have they read? How many classes they take? You know, did they did they do this or that? I’m not saying none of those things matter, but the number one thing is that they stick with their brothers and sisters. True for adults as well as teens, you’ve got to stay together in other contexts, I have called this my horror movie advice. You may have heard me say that before. In other contexts, I say people. I say that to people like horror movie advice. What are you talking about? Why I love scary movies probably makes me a bad Christian. Okay, let’s just get that out there. But I love scary movies. But if you ever watch scary movies, you know that the protagonist and. Scary Movie always makes the same mistake. Right? In the movie, they go off alone in the dark, and then you scream at the TV, right? Like, what are you doing? You don’t go off alone in the dark. Everybody gets it in the scary movie when they go off alone in the dark. And you think, why don’t these people get this? Have they never, ever seen a scary movie themselves when they’re in a scary movie? Surely they know you don’t do that. Well, that’s exactly true in the Christian life. If you’re going through doubts, you’re going through struggles, you’re going through college, you survive with the horror movie advice, don’t go off alone in the dark. Stay in the group. Stay in the light. Community makes all the difference. Okay, seven things. Let me run down them again. For parents, wise exposure instead of just isolation, purposeful dialog instead of just instruction. Third, allowing questions instead of just giving answers. And then for teens, which is also for parents, you won’t all you won’t have all the answers. Why do you think you should? Secondly, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Use this as an opportunity to grow. Third, people don’t believe things just because of the facts. They believe things because the worldview they have. And if they have a non Christian worldview, worldview, they’re going to reach non Christian conclusions. And then finally, and perhaps most importantly, is a fitting seventh stick together like a band of brothers or sisters. Well, my college experience was a tough one, but by God’s grace, he got me through it. My daughter Emma, who I wrote the book for. I wrote it for all my kids, but she’s the one I address all my little chapters to. She’s now graduated and getting married, and she made it through. And let me give you some encouragement. God will get your child through it. Be the kind of parent who faithfully prays and instructs their child and leave the rest in God’s sovereign, good and gracious hands. Amen. Let me pray for us, Lord, we’re so thankful for a chance to reflect on these things, I just pray for this room, probably mostly parents, some who want to be parents, maybe some teenagers. Help all of us, Lord, stay in the group. Stay in the light. Pursue you, knowing that whatever we endure makes us stronger for the cause of the gospel. We pray all this in Christ’s name. Amen. Thank you very much.