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Giving Your Kids An Identity In Christ, Not Gender with Jonathan Holmes · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Parents want to form children into their image, not into the image of God. And so that's sometimes the big twist. I think that parents have to just reckon with their own hearts first of what do we want from our kids versus who is the Lord and what does he want for our kids?
• 0:17
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:35
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. I'm excited today to be joined by Jonathan Holmes. Jonathan, thanks for jumping on here today. Well, thanks for having me, Jeremy. I appreciate it. Yeah, so Jonathan is the founder and executive director of the Fieldstone Counseling, and he's been on pastoral staff on some churches, as well as written a number of great books. He really helps...
• 1:00
  churches in particular, kind of navigate some of the especially most challenging kind of areas of identity and a lot of things that are happening, I think, in the whole counseling world. And so I'm really excited to dive into some of those topics. Jonathan just wrote a book, a fantastic book called Grounded in Grace, Helping Kids Build Their Identity in Christ. And I'm very...
• 1:26
  Very interested in this topic of identity. And man, this is such a hot topic that we need to understand at a much deeper level. So I just wanted to jump right in, Jonathan, to that conversation. Why do you think identity is, like, how do you define it? And then why do you think it's becoming such an important topic today?
• 1:45
  Yeah, it's a great question. I agree with you. I think it is one of the hottest topics today, but maybe not in the reason why a lot of parents and Christians might think of it. And here's how I'll come at it. You know, you hear a lot today about mental health.
• 2:01
  in children and teens, how depression, suicide, anxiety rates are higher than ever. And I know in the counseling room, that is one of the foremost things that we see. And I think a lot of parents are kind of treating the tip of the iceberg, but underneath, I think those struggles with anxiety, depression, social media technology, I think are really questions of identity. Who am I? Why am I here? And what am I supposed to do with my life?
• 2:27
  And I think that a lot of our kids and teens today have looked to their friends, to culture, to media, to find a sense of identity. Our culture has said, hey, dig deep into your feelings and find it on your own. And it hasn't worked. I think that a lot of kids and teens have tried that, are coming up short and are really anxious, really depressed about their future, which is why I advocate in the book really coming back to scripture to find out who God is and what he says about us and what he designed us for.
• 2:57
  Yes. So who am I? Why am I here? These questions are becoming extremely confusing to people in a way that has not been historically the case. So what do you think, what is happening culturally to make this such a difficult thing to ground our identity in something? Right.
• 3:17
  I think in our postmodern, post-Christian environment, we have definitely moved the authority of identity to the individual. We've said, hey, the individual gets to decide who they are, what gender they are, what they want to identify as. And the way that you find that out is you dig deep into your feelings. You figure out what it is that you feel you are. And then you go out into the world and you demand acceptance for that identity.
• 3:41
  And that's been, that's a significant shift for how identity was formed for the greater part of human history, which was more of a traditional identity information process, which was your identity was already preset based off of where you were born, what family you were born into, what gendered body you were born into. A lot of those identity making characteristics were already preset. And I think in our post-Christian culture, we've kind of thrown all that out the window
• 4:08
  and said, hey, it's totally up to you under the guise of freedom. But it's actually really not freedom. It actually, I think, becomes quite enslaving because your feelings constantly change, and you end up becoming enslaved to whatever it is that you feel. Some days that's good, but a lot of days that's not so good. And I think that that's caused a lot of inner turmoil and a lot of external angst for kids and teens today.
• 4:30
  Yeah. So help me understand how the gospel, the scriptures ground our identity differently. So one of the elements that I'm really trying to understand about this is, like you said, traditional cultures...
• 4:45
  they were more collectivist. So you were told who you were, what you felt at some given day or as an individual was not necessarily a place from which you would ground your identity. But there is something about the gospel itself that does...
• 5:04
  cause us to be a little bit more individualistically referenced than I think a lot of traditional cultures. And so, and so there's sort of like a spectrum here, or I don't know how you would describe it, but you have the traditional culture, like, does the gospel suggest a more collectivist, traditionalist way of viewing this? Or is there, does it actually push us into a more individualistic frame and then give us a different way of grounding our identity than the culture does? How do we, there's sort of like, like...
• 5:32
  Three things going on there, right? There's a traditional culture, there's individualism, and there's the gospel. And I'm trying to understand, yeah, how do you see that interacting? It's a great question, Jeremy. I think the gospel actually blends the best of both of, I would say, a traditional and a modern identity formation process in the sense of it begins and ends with God. So God is the one who says, listen, this is who you are. This is why I've made you.
• 5:56
  And now there's a great freedom within that framework, I think, for human beings to live and to flourish and to fulfill that purpose. So the constraints of traditional identity, which was, hey, based off of where you were born, what socioeconomic demographic you were born into, the parents that you were given, it was much more rigid, a lot less freedom of expression.
• 6:17
  On the other side of that, though, modern identity promises everything is about your feelings and self-expression, but there's no point of stability. There's no external voice of authority that says, no, this is who you are on good days, bad days, and hard days. And a gospel identity, which is what I advocate for in the book, is an identity that is received and not achieved. It's an identity that we receive from God revealed in Scripture.
• 6:41
  That's true on your best days and it's true on your worst days. And I think that for me, at least as I'm talking to parents in the counseling rooms, that really is the benefit of grounding our identity in Christ and in scripture. Okay. So walk me through how that actually works in the context of childhood. So I'm imagining somebody is growing up and they are wrestling like everyone does with, okay, like,
• 7:06
  Why am I here? Who am I? They may go to a, they may spend a lot of time in sort of peer oriented school settings. And they're trying, we're trying to help them as parents ground their identity in the gospel. Are there some things that you would say, look.
• 7:23
  there are sort of transmission tools that are dangerous or like, like there's, there's a lot of debate obviously now around peer oriented sort of childhood versus a more family oriented at certain ages. And so, so yeah, walk me through how this identity is formed. And then it does seem like family, peers, media, all are playing a role as well.
• 7:50
  In the midst of all of this. So yeah, like, and this is getting complex. So I just want to understand how, yeah. How do we pull this apart? I'm trying to, how do you see this? Yeah. And it's a question I think a lot of parents are asking. I would say put simply in the ideal scenario, families are going to be, I think the best vehicles in context for godly identity information, mainly because nobody's going to be around your kid more so than the parent, hopefully in an ideal setting.
• 8:16
  I know a lot of times that's not always the case, but in an ideal setting, it's going to be parents who step up to the plate, who are teaching and talking to their kids about who the Lord is and what he has called them to. You really are the most influential person in your child's life, really at those youngest ages and hopefully moving on forward. Maybe that influence gets wielded in different ways, but hopefully that influence remains as they get prepared to leave the home and go out onto their own.
• 8:44
  Now, the downside of that, Jeremy, is I'm sure you know, and as your listeners know, is that a lot of parents have stepped back. They've abdicated that. They've kind of stuck back from that parental role. And I tell people this all the time. If you don't want to disciple and train up your kids, somebody will be more than happy to do it for you.
• 9:00
  And culture has, I would say, in so many ways filled that gap, whether it's YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, teachers, education, etc. Again, not all bad, but everybody would love to disciple your child. And they're not going to be discipling your child, I think, in the way that scripture calls us to. And so parents, I would say, I just plead with them, you do play such an important role.
• 9:21
  And I would say one of the biggest, you know, one of the biggest downsides, though, of where parents can go off is that I oftentimes find that parents want to form children into their image, not into the image of God. And so that's sometimes the big twist. I think that parents have to just reckon with their own hearts first of what do we want from our kids?
• 9:41
  versus who is the Lord and what does he want for our kids. Maybe you want your kid to go to an Ivy League college. Maybe you want your kid to be the starting five on their high school basketball team. And maybe you want your kid to be the most popular, whatever it might be. Sometimes we struggle with putting our own agenda for our children ahead of what God has called us to in their lives. Yeah, man.
• 10:03
  That is a collision. So talk to me a little bit about what's a realistic understanding of how much peers versus family play in the identity formation process. So I know that one of the things that there's a book, I don't know if you've read it called Hold On to Your Kids. There's two secular psychologists who were making the case that we have made the decision
• 10:27
  to hand over our children into a peer-oriented environment in which just for the sake of survival, because of just the sheer number of hours they're spending, picturing like a middle school girl, for example, in order for her to realistically fit in with seven, eight hours a day immersed in a peer-oriented environment, she's going to need to react to the way that
• 10:54
  her identity is being formed by those peers or what they're saying about her, what kind of subgroupings they're placing her in. And that when that identity collides with the family identity that's giving to her at church or through her family in the faith,
• 11:09
  Basically, their case is the peers are going to win because of the survival instinct of the child. Basically, they're saying because they're forced into this environment, this peer-oriented environment, they have to make some calculations. And all of a sudden, when these two identities collide, they're going to...
• 11:28
  And this is kind of their thesis for how adolescence has become so reactionary against parents, why there's such a rift between parents and children. Because when a child realizes that their parents are trying to put on them an identity that's different than the one that actually is going to cause them to succeed at school or in a peer-oriented fashion,
• 11:46
  They push hard against that and they reject it. So what do you see, especially in middle school years? I'm thinking, like I said, that middle school girl, like, do we have to be more realistic about the impact that peer orientation or social media or some of these other things are having on our kids?
• 12:03
  Yeah. I mean, I'm not super familiar with that study, but everything that you're saying completely tracks. I know that from an early childhood development stage of life, kids that have siblings, we know that siblings tend to be the earliest socializers of the sibling. I mean, if you grew up in a family and you have siblings, those are some of your earliest social experiences.
• 12:24
  connections and memories and influences. And so we realize even at an early age of the people around us heavily influence us. So, yeah, you're moving through elementary, you're getting to middle school. I would not want to be a middle school boy right now. I have four daughters, two of whom are in middle school. It is rough out there. You're right. It is.
• 12:41
  It's a difficult season. And it reminds me of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, where bad company corrupts good morals. So we know the influence of friends is key. I think one of the things I would encourage parents to counterbalance that if you can't completely eliminate it is how do you positively eliminate?
• 12:59
  early on set in the groundwork for gospel identity. How do you teach, talk, train and disciple your kids into an identity that is rooted and based in scripture and that points to Christ? Namely, your friends are ultimately going to say fundamentally two different things. You are what you do and you are what you feel.
• 13:19
  You are your report card. You are your performance on the athletic field. You are whatever you want to be sexually or gender wise or romantically. And pushing back against that as early as possible and as often as possible to help kids say, you are not primarily what you do and you are not primarily what you feel. You are who the Lord says you are. And scripture says you were made in the image of God. You're fearfully and wonderfully made and you belong to him. And because you belong to him.
• 13:48
  Here's how you should live. And I think a lot of times parents get a late start in that game. Honestly, they do cede a lot of that territory to peer oriented influences to teachers to easy to other influencers. And I think parents have to reclaim that in many ways.
• 14:06
  Yeah, man. Yeah. It's, it's a tough job. It is. It's like, it's getting harder. It is. It really is. Yeah. Well, John, any tools for grounding? And then I'd love to hear any, like, are there practical things that you've seen parents do that have really made a big difference in that area? Yeah.
• 14:25
  You know, one of the things I would say is I think a lot of parents need to really get to know their children. One of the things we advocate for in the book is becoming becoming an expert on your child. I think a lot of parents don't practice curiosity. They don't really seek understanding of their child.
• 14:44
  Sometimes they can just deal with the 10% of the iceberg and the other 90% that's below the water. We can kind of just leave that underwater. We don't really pursue it. So encouraging parents to ask really good questions, to know their child's temperament.
• 14:59
  their strengths, their weaknesses, their temptations, their distractions, their desires, their dreams, to find out, listen, where is my child most prone to put his identity in or to place her identity in? Is it in their actions?
• 15:15
  Is it in how other people think about them? Is it in their popularity? Is it even in how maybe I view them or see them? So I think a lot of times parents don't really operate on a deep knowledge of their children. So then what happens then is their interventions or their discipline or their discipleship is not in keeping with who their child is. And so that's really the whole movement of Proverbs 22 where the author says, train up a child in the way that he should go.
• 15:41
  It's the sense of training up a child in the sense of knowing who they are, knowing their character, their personality and their disposition. And I think that's an area where I think a lot of parents can grow in their understanding and in their practice. Yeah.
• 15:57
  One of the things you said in that was sometimes there's also a danger in them thinking they are who I as a parent am trying to make them into. Or that's a very difficult line to figure out. So how much, where is that line? Like, how would you describe, because I mean, part of the...
• 16:17
  the reality of, I think, ancient cultures is that they had these rites of passage where they would confer identity from the community or from the family very directly onto the sons or daughters. And we don't really do that culturally anymore. I remember the first time I went to a bar mitzvah, I went to a worship service. I was at a synagogue, and it was like three hours long.
• 16:45
  Just focusing on this one boy, it was like 200 people in the congregation. All of the male relatives had flown in for this. And I went from that experience, like seeing, and it was amazing. They had done, I mean, he had spent a whole year with the rabbi, you know. I mean, it was like the amount of identity that 13-year-old boy, and I know this was just one event of many that were going on around his bar mitzvah, but it was just so intense.
• 17:09
  And then I went not too long after that to a worship service where they were baptizing like 50 people. And because there was a megachurch, it was just like, it was like, it was like factory style. And I was just like so struck by the difference. So, yeah, I'm curious where that line is. How much can we impart identity to our children? Is there going too far?
• 17:34
  Yeah, no, I think that's such a salient observation. One of the things I talk about in the book is, well, I referenced Paul Tripp. He talks about ambassador parenting versus ownership parenting. And ownership parenting is where, hey, we think we own our kid. We're supposed to make them into our image, our identity, our agenda. And Tripp, I think rightly counters and says, no, we really are ambassadors for Christ. We're about his agenda and his priorities. You're the mouthpiece for that. You're the physical embodiment
• 18:03
  of God's agenda for your child, but you're not trying to make them into your image. And I think that as parents, we do have to keep that in mind. Are we acting like an owner or are we acting like an ambassador? And so when we're talking about identity, are we making sure to nuance, caveat, add disclaimers into our conversation that make clear identity?
• 18:25
  hey, here's an expectation or desire that we have for you. But the foundation out of which that activity comes from or that desired behavior comes from is your identity of who you are in Christ. So, yeah, we don't want you to hit your brother. We don't want you to steal, et cetera, et cetera. But that's coming out of an identity that is at the foundation.
• 18:46
  And I think a lot of times we can focus on the activity and the behavior. We can ignore the heart, the identity of the child. And that's a conversational piece, I think, that can get added in again early and often as possible. And, you know, we don't always, I know I for sure don't do it perfectly the majority of the time. So we need God's help in so many of those conversations. Yeah.
• 19:09
  Are you following us on Facebook and Instagram yet? Look up at Family Teams to get even more free content and never miss out on event announcements. What's interesting too is in that framework between being an ambassador parent and an owner parent, seems like part of what that sort of assumes, and I think this is the common reality,
• 19:39
  the individual identity of the child and then the individual identity of the adult. And so, um, what I hear, especially the examples you were giving for an ownership parent is somebody who is, you know, maybe a little bit on the narcissistic side as a parent that they want to, they want to like live vicariously through their child. And so there's a, there's a desire to imprint them, um,
• 19:59
  Not out of real knowledge of the individual child, but really out of selfishness that the parent has. There's a third category, and this is when we talk about a lot of family teams that is almost entirely missing culturally today. But I see it so strong biblically.
• 20:17
  Which was that there used to be a family identity, right? There was a sense of who we are as a family. And so as a parent, I'm not, I don't own you, but it's not my individual identity versus your individual identity. It's the fact that you come from somewhere.
• 20:33
  Our family didn't just erupt, you know, out of nothing. Like, um, we, uh, there's been a lot that has been, that will be poured into you and a lot that, that, you know, uh, through God's grace, we would love to see you, you continue to carry on.
• 20:48
  Now that most people don't have that at all. Like they don't hand that to their children. They've lost any contact with their root structure. And I can't help but wonder if the identity crisis that we are experiencing across the entire culture, not just in the Christian world, is maybe mostly rooted in a lack of family identity. I'm curious what your thoughts are about that.
• 21:09
  Jeremy, I think that you really are onto something there. One of the things we talk about with the problems in modern identity is just, it's like American individualism on steroids. Because what we do is we tell every kid, you are unique. You are special. Dig deep into your feelings. Go out into the world and demand acceptance and affirmation. Every single person is individually on this voyage of self-discovery and self-realization. And what it ends up creating is...
• 21:36
  I think a lot of self-involved, self-focused, self-referential individuals, because we're all on this quest towards, you know, being the best we that we can be to the detriment of, like you said, any sense of collective family identity or a collective family structure that we belong to, that my actions impact somebody else.
• 21:56
  I don't really care if my actions impact somebody else in today's culture. And I do think that ironically, that is not unifying us. It's actually dividing us more than ever. We've told everybody, go be whatever you can be. And we have thought that the product would be everybody would be happy in living their authentic selves. But we've actually seen the exact opposite. And so I think you're absolutely right. If we can emphasize that collective family identity,
• 22:22
  a couple of degrees more, I think that would have a significant impact. And again, that's where I think the local church in the metaphor of a family of God becomes such a rich metaphor for us to utilize in our own parenting and in the identity formation process for children.
• 22:38
  Yeah. And this is part of what I'm trying to understand. And one of the things I really appreciate, I was listening to some videos, Jonathan, of you walking churches through so much of the issues regarding gender confusion that are erupting. And I know you have thought deeply about this and have counseled, you know, personally, lots of.
• 22:59
  people who are struggling with gender dysphoria, families that are walking through that challenge. And so I think I'm trying to, there's sort of two layers to the conversation I really want to have with you about this. One is,
• 23:12
  I think there's our kind of collective Christian approach to the problem of identity and then how it's now become this open door for the enemy to really cause so many people to think the gospel is bad news. The idea that the gospel is saying overt things about things like gender, saying that men are men or women are women.
• 23:39
  Um, you know, I was, I was watching a street preacher not too long ago, you know, trying to witness to, and, and the guy just kind of walked by him, just started screaming at him like your God hates, hates gays, you know, whatever. So, um, this is the defeater. I think this is the, the core obstacle that this generation is going to have with receiving the gospel. And, and I, and I think that.
• 24:01
  There's been like multiple ways that I think I've seen different, um, different thought leaders tried to approach this challenge. So there's the, there's the, um, I would say the more evangelistic way of approaching it. Obviously there's sort of like the, a liberal way of approaching where we start affirming and agreeing with the culture.
• 24:21
  I know neither of us think that's the right move, but in terms of those of us who really want to stay grounded in Scripture, there is a desire to be careful to, okay, we need to be more thoughtful about our language. One of the things you said in a video that I was listening to is when you're in a church setting—
• 24:42
  The emphasis on family and constantly lifting that up as the norm, this is not a direct quote, but I wanted to interact with you about this. This could potentially be outputting to the large number of single people that are in the church and obviously people that are on whatever spectrum they're struggling with. So there's a desire to be more winsome.
• 25:07
  And then there's, I think, this counter move. And I think it's theologically grounded, and this is what I'm really wrestling with. And I know it got a lot of airtime with Rod Dreher's Benedict option, which is, guys, we need to retreat more from this, and we need to kind of create more of an insular culture. Peter Thiel, he's a famous investor. He's not an evangelical Christian, but he's a believer. Yeah.
• 25:32
  He was making the case on a podcast I listened to recently that, you know, you have ultra-Orthodox Jews with about a 90% rate, and Orthodox Jews, of retention of their children. Amish communities we were talking about when we got on here, you look close to Amish country, they're about a 90% rate of retention. Evangelicals are, I've heard statistics as low as 20%.
• 25:54
  Um, so there's, we, the crisis is so immense and, and somebody was asking Peter Till this question and he, he said, well, the reason why evangelicals lose their kids is because of evangelism. And I was like, whoa, like, and he said, yeah, because the way that you think about your faith and you, you train your children to be empathetic to these, um, different ideas. And it's not surprising that in those very vulnerable seasons of their life, um,
• 26:21
  That kids that are more open, they're going to begin to doubt their faith when they meet a friend who's transgender or who is struggling with same-sex attraction. Anyway, so there's these two spectrums, and I want you to help me think through, like, why shouldn't we go towards something that's a little bit more...
• 26:41
  um, like we're going to create a little bit more of a closed culture, um, because we live in this negative world where, um, we've already essentially lost the cultural battle. And if we continue to send our kids, um, at the same rate into the culture at vulnerable ages, the inevitable result is going to be, we're going to have this horrendous, um,
• 27:02
  a fall off rate that we are experiencing as evangelicals. Right. Well, I mean, again, not not super familiar with some of those statistics, but they're obviously alarming, but they track and they make sense with, you know, I think what you were sharing.
• 27:18
  You know, I think one of the appeals of, you know, something like Rod's book, you know, the Benedict Option of, you know, let's, you know, I'll move on to the same cul-de-sac and, you know, kind of form up what we huddle here is that it is responding to, I think, this cultural problem that we're having in our current culture where...
• 27:34
  The way that children and teens come into an understanding of what is right and wrong looks completely different than it did for our generation and generations before us. And I try to help parents understand that of the way that you train and teach your children looks very different, right? You're going to be going to scripture, trying to help them understand their faith.
• 27:55
  But they're going to schools and talking to friends who think that the Bible is, you know, false, that it's not really an accurate recounting of reality. So the battle that you're up against, I think, in my mind really is, is God true? And is he revealing himself in scripture as he said he is? And if that's not the fundamental starting point for you and for your kids, and if that's not portrayed in a positive way, then I do think that you're up against a little bit of a losing battle.
• 28:25
  Satan and culture are going to be more than happy to step in and say, did God really say, did God really mean that when he said this than this? So let's take gender, right? The way that we talk about gender historically, culture would say it's restrictive, it's repressive, it's oppressive. These two binaries, you've got to release yourself from that old antiquated way and get on the right side of history.
• 28:50
  And I think the church has to own some of that because I don't think the church has done a good enough job of positively portraying gender as a gift of God's gift. And so that's where, you know, in talking about the role of parents, the family, and the church in the official formation of children and identity—
• 29:10
  I feel like we have a long ways to go, Jeremy, in terms of helping children see gender is not random. It's not a social construct. It's not whatever you want it to be. It is God's good gift to you to live out your image bearing capacity as a human being.
• 29:29
  I just, I know for me, I never heard that growing up in church and I didn't hear about it a lot. It was, if anything, it was more of an incidental footnote as we're talking about Adam and Eve, but the goodness being made male and female biologically wasn't really talked about. And I think we have a generation now who, because we haven't talked about, somebody else is willing to talk about and say, yeah, it's all up for grabs and it can be whatever you want it to be.
• 29:54
  But that type of authority, no child really has the capacity and really shouldn't have the capacity to wield on their own. Yeah. Yeah. So if I think it's really important to try to understand what, yeah, what, where does gender come from?
• 30:09
  And, um, so there's, there's like two battles. There's two, two hypotheses that seem to be playing out in the secular world. There's a, it's a social construct, uh, which has really been, um, the academy, especially the humanities, the, you know, psychology, sociology, they've really, um, lifted this up. Then there's, it's a biological concept, you know, um, construct it's, it's in, it's innate, you know, you can look at people's DNA, their gonads, you know, there's, you
• 30:37
  It's clear that there's a binary gender within biology. And so these two are fighting. And I, you know, those of us who believe in scripture, one of the things I guess I keep wondering and the implications of this or what I really wanna help you, like help you help me understand. Like, so if the scriptures are saying that God himself creates gender in Genesis one, it's a biblical God designed concept. It seems to me like it really exists
• 31:06
  for the sake of the family, right? Like that's the reason. So it's really a family construct that's designed by God. That means, and this is what I want to get your feedback on. It seems to me that the way then you would define masculinity and femininity is that you would think about masculinity primarily from the perspective of a man is really, and this is all the way down to like you're trying to teach a five-year-old about what it means to be a man, you know, someday, or what it means for him to be male.
• 31:35
  It means preparing to be a future father or like a female. It's what you need to be aiming yourself at from a gender perspective is motherhood. Now, that is so radioactive to suggest to individual children.
• 31:52
  who have their entire lives ahead of them and who knows what career path they're going to pick or if maybe they're called a singleness. There's such huge pushback for actually framing gender in a family way. And I've heard almost no one, even in the Christian world, be willing to do this. And it seems like if we don't do this, and then part of it is, well, what are you saying to women who are infertile? What are you saying to, again, it's just like all the exceptions come to the surface.
• 32:20
  And the exceptions cause people out of empathy for those who might choose different paths or out of a desire to respect people's individuality, we enter in the same level of confusion as the culture about what gender is. Like, how do we how do we how do you think through this?
• 32:37
  No, I think you're onto something there with the exceptions. Sometimes we load up the exceptions at the front end, and we leave the general teaching and principle way, way, way in the background. And so all we hear are all the exceptions. But yeah, the capacity to be a father and the capacity to be a mother, to have children and to father children,
• 32:58
  that doesn't get talked about a lot. I think you're right. I think that that's probably seen as quite reductive and old-fashioned and wrong side of history and bigoted, et cetera. Another way that I try to approach it with the goodness of male and femaleness is that it follows the creational order in Genesis 1 of God is creating everything in a binary. He's creating light and
• 33:28
  So if you're a first century reader and you're listening to the creation account, the rhythm of creation is all building up to God creating male and female. So that rhythm of God creating two binary genders would not have been a surprise. It would have been expected that that's the pinnacle of creation.
• 33:47
  of creation, there's something about two binaries, two opposites, when they come together, are able to fully reflect the image of God. That's the whole point of Adam. Adam cannot be an image bearer of God on his own. God says, it's not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.
• 34:06
  And again, I don't think that we accurately communicate that to our children, that the goodness of the male-female binary is the ability to fully image a God who exists and has lived in a triune community for all of eternity. And I think when you put it...
• 34:24
  In that frame of reference, I think it adds a whole layer of transcendence in beauty to gender that we just oftentimes don't get in today's culture. So you're saying it's beautiful because it creates community? Yeah.
• 34:36
  It creates community. I think it gives us a holistic picture of who the Lord is. It gives us a holistic picture of this is who the Lord is, and this is how he operates in this world. He has designed and created us in his image. And as you were saying, that image bearing capacity for Adam and Eve, the very first words that they have from the Lord is, be fruitful and multiply.
• 35:00
  I tell people this all the time. It's an invitation, not a prohibition. The first words of God to human beings are not, hey, don't do all of these things. It's, no, go do these things. Be fruitful and fill the earth. Multiply and fill the earth. And when you're talking about that capacity then for fatherhood and motherhood, I think in so many ways, that's what's being directly referenced there.
• 35:27
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• 35:47
  Yeah, I agree. And I think, I think that's the, that's a very tricky place for, like you said, our culture to, to think about because I, you know, in a, in a clinical sense, when you're talking to, let's say an eighth grade girl. Who's really struggling with gender identity. And she's in the midst of this social contagion where she sees people identify as queer and identify, you know.
• 36:10
  females who are identifying as male, it seems like if in the light of that, and even in the conversations around transition, one of the very odd things that seems to just not be talked about hardly at all is when you go on these sex change hormones or you're even...
• 36:32
  you're even really working through this ideology. The primary thing that's being under assault, we think about that girl as an individual and what she's struggling with as an individual. But what's about to happen if she makes a decision or if we hand minors the decision to transition is that her ability to become a mother will oftentimes be over, right? Yes. And so...
• 36:59
  If you it does make sense in some at some level that if you basically put boys and girls into essentially a an environment in which gender is really neutralized. And this is what we've been desperately trying to do this in our schools and our entertainment. Like we're trying to like just level every distinction.
• 37:20
  And then of course, if the girl in most like eighth grade girls aren't necessarily thinking about motherhood, like that's, that's way down the road. Um, and you know, they've, they're now experiencing, you know, their period. They're like, why would I want to be a female? What are the advantages if there's not a culture that's constantly lifting up the beauty of motherhood and that you're, you're going to someday really want this like over 90% of women, you know, by the time they're in their thirties want to be mothers, but not necessarily
• 37:50
  But this is when they're making that decision. And we're also not, we're not fraying that decision with family. There's not an understanding or an appreciation for the family implications. And it's like, I just don't see the church...
• 38:06
  Bringing that topic into this conversation, it seems like we're still framing this as an individual problem, and then we'll talk about it in very high theological language, but it seems like it's rooted in a theology of family that seems to be either missing or very weak.
• 38:25
  How do you see this in a clinical context when boys and girls are at that stage struggling? This family theology, is it central to the discussion or does it always seem to devolve into an individual discussion? Yeah.
• 38:41
  Well, I'll come at it from this way and I think hopefully answer your question. I do think that there is a significant struggle with family authority and authority in general in terms of how families live it out. And here's what I mean is in placing all of the authority with the individual, which is what modern culture wants to do.
• 39:01
  Whenever parents then try to exert their authority, that's seen as a negative because your authority, parentally, is impinging on my personal freedom and authority. And I've been told and been led to believe that I'm in charge of my life. I am sovereign. I can do whatever it is that I want to with my body and my life, my body, my choice. That gets trumpeted pretty much all across.
• 39:23
  And I think what has happened is that parents have not accurately talked about authority, and they have let culture shape the entire conversation around authority. So authority is almost always seen as a negative. It's seen as keeping you from what you want rather than saying, no, God's design is actually that we all are people under authority. We live in his world under his rule.
• 39:45
  And he has delegated that authority and that power to parents to exercise within the context of the home. So the goodness of authority is that when you live under your parents' authority and live under your parents' guidance, that's not a negative. That's a positive. So the goodness of me submitting to that is a positive, not a negative. And I think that that's something that we have...
• 40:07
  that we have lost and that we have not been able to reclaim probably as a church. If for whatever reason, we're not talking about it in a positive way, there's definitely abuses of it as well. And we've seen that. And so culturally, we kind of want to throw the whole baby out with the bathwater too. But I think if parents were to reclaim...
• 40:27
  a godly and beautiful and holistic picture of authority, I also think that could positively influence the conversation. Because to that eighth grade girl that you were referencing earlier, yeah, is that eighth grade girl, you know, concerned about being a mother? Maybe not then, but like you said, when she's 30, she might be. And it's that type of parental insight that can be offered from a mother to a daughter
• 40:48
  It says, hey, I know that this might be what you feel right now, but trust me, honey, I don't think that this is the wisest, most godly, best decision for you. And I'm not going to allow you to do this. I'm not going to allow you to take that hormone or that puberty blocker. And if she has grown up in a place where godly authority is exerted and lived out, the chances for her to submit to that are going to be far greater if she sees it as a good thing. If she doesn't see it as a good thing, she's going to want to rebel against it and claim her own authority.
• 41:16
  Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I do think it's important. We do need to know. We're talking about minors. And there's a great confusion about, and our culture does say, yeah, you should be able to define who you are when you're 12 and make permanent decisions for your life. And that authority has been delegated to those parents, and there's a jurisdiction there that needs to be respected. And obviously, they have the wisdom and the perspective to be able to do this as opposed to...
• 41:45
  part of what I also want to like really understand is, is there something beautiful or good about the way that God designed this? And the kind of last topic I wanted to kind of explore with you with regards to this is trying to understand. So the Bible has, has an incredibly narrow sexual ethic. I mean, it's like, it's like one man, one woman after you make the covenant of marriage, you know, for life. And so we're defending this, this, this exceptionally narrow sexual ethic.
• 42:15
  And I think that there is a, the culture itself is super confused. And I think that the church, we've had a really hard time articulating why is the sexual ethics so narrow? And I've struggled with this a lot, trying to figure out how would I...
• 42:31
  how would I articulate this to somebody who doesn't necessarily have faith in scripture? Why this, why this is a good thing, right? Because part of what obviously it's, you can see it in scripture and, but it's part of the thing. Our job is to give an answer for the reason why we believe these things.
• 42:50
  And so as I've thought about, like, what was God attempting to do by creating and insisting on such an incredibly specific narrow sexual ethic where you have one man, one woman, you read through like Leviticus 18, you see all the prohibitions. And when you look at that, to me, it does seem like the purpose of this narrow sexual ethic is.
• 43:14
  was to create a culture of thriving multi-generational families. So many of the, um, of the specific, even the specific prohibitions about certain family members, I mean, it gets really crazy if people haven't read Leviticus, you can see what it's trying to do. It's assuming you've got a village, right? And you've got a multi-generational family in that village that's raising children, and incredibly close proximity with, with, with a large extended family member and members and all their community.
• 43:40
  And the Bible's insisting on this very specific, very narrow sexual ethic in order to, I think, preserve and cause that to flourish. So in the same way that—and this is an argument I hear rarely made—one of the real tragedies in a culture like that of same-sex attraction is that it potentially ends the family line. Like, the ability for that—if you create a culture that celebrates—
• 44:05
  basically alternative lifestyles of any kind. And I would say that, you know, then you have this, and we have, of course, now famously this plummeting birth rate. There's a sterilization that's happening in society. And the last thing I want to ask you about this is with regards to like the queer identity, which I'm trying to understand. What's really interesting.
• 44:27
  It seems like this, this Q, this has been, this is, this is a, has been a growing, um, um, like category for people, um, and for especially kids. And it's, it's interesting, like when you, when you're growing up and you're trying to.
• 44:45
  Uh, you're thinking about your future and if, if somebody identity, there was a, I would say that when I was, um, when I was growing up, there was a, a real effort on behalf of the culture to, to really sort of, um, emphasize the maleness of that I was experiencing. And I would say the same thing was true about, about females. It was like, there was a, there was an understanding that again, we're trying to create a culture of flourishing future families, future fathers, future mothers. Yeah.
• 45:12
  that can bond with each other, pair bond, male and female, for the rest of their lives and stay totally committed to one another for life. But today, if you start to find an element of your identity that doesn't comport with your gender,
• 45:30
  there's an actual cultural movement to say, identify with that. That's the most important part about you. And if you go into that and you identify deeply with that one element of your personality, then, and you just accentuate that and make that the basis of your, you know, your style and, you know,
• 45:45
  then you're going to immediately be enfolded into a community of people who, it's just like, it's so shocking how quickly this is turned. And so, yeah, it does seem to me like the Bible is trying to enforce a very traditional kind of structure.
• 46:02
  where, hey, we're trying to make a world for flourishing for these multigenerational families. And all of these different elements, the celebration of all the LGBTQ+, it seems like it's directly challenging that. But we're not talking about it from the perspective of, again, like there's a normative sort of family trajectory or design behind what the Bible is actually trying to advocate for.
• 46:32
  Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the irony on that is I do think you're right. The Bible presents a narrow sexual ethic. One man, one woman covenanted together in marriage for the purpose of portraying the gospel. Ironically, though, it's the most narrow sexual ethic, but I think it's actually the ethic that allows for the greatest freedom and pleasure and satisfaction. Yeah.
• 46:57
  The world has promised you don't need any sexual ethics. There's only actually one ethic that you need sexually in our culture today, and it's consent. That's the only thing you need to have for sex. You just need to have two people giving their consent. And you know what's happening? Birth rates are plummeting. Teen sex rates are plummeting. Teen abstinence rates are rising. Nobody really wants to have sex anymore because I think what they've realized is...
• 47:20
  is sex, according to culture's way of doing things, gender, according to the world's way of doing things, does not lead to freedom and happiness. You've been lied to. Sex cannot be whatever you want with whomever you want, however you identify, and it actually leads to a flourishing, meaningful relationship.
• 47:39
  And there's numerous books and evidence that backs that up, that women feel taken advantage of in sex. Women feel exploited in sex. You see birth rates plummeting, all of the things that you just mentioned. The people that are happiest in their life, with their sex life, with their marriage life, are people that are following Christ's ethic as it relates to sex, being covenanted to one another in a marital union. So I would say apologetically...
• 48:06
  you're looking at sexual ethics, I think you have to poke away at some of those cultural fallacies of saying, listen, culture has promised everybody, be who you want to be, have sex with whoever you want to be, and you'll be the happiest person alive. But what we are seeing today is we are seeing sexual assault, sexual harassment rates at abnormal levels. We're seeing depression, suicide, and anxiety rates at highest levels that we've ever seen. Nobody's happy.
• 48:33
  Nobody is peaceful. Nobody is experiencing the life that they want to. And I think we have to ask ourselves a question of why. Why is that the case? When we've told everybody, be whoever you want to be and live an authentic, happy life, it doesn't actually seem like anybody's actually realizing that in their life.
• 48:49
  And if somebody said, okay, that sounds as though you could use that argument for same-sex marriage, like just being very narrow about one man and one man or one woman and one woman. So how would we take that to the next level and say, why does the narrow sexual ethic exclude same-sex unions?
• 49:06
  Because going back to our comment about gender, because what we see in the early pages of Genesis 1 and 2 is that God's design is one biologically gendered male and one biologically gendered female. We're not looking for two Adams and we're not looking for two Eves. There is something about difference brought together in oneness that portrays the beauty of who the Lord is in the beauty of the gospel.
• 49:30
  It is not portrayed in that way with one man in one man or one woman in one woman. And I have I have scoured scripture. I've read the arguments. I think you have to completely reinterpret the biblical record to arrive at a place where you affirm same sex relationships and same sex unions. Um.
• 49:52
  I just, I don't see it in the picture. I don't think that it's possible. Okay. Yeah, totally agree. And then talk to me a little bit about these. What do you think is happening with this, the multiplicity, the Q, the plus, the non-binary, that what's going on there? Yeah, I'll tell you what it is. Number one,
• 50:10
  It is, it's the atomization of identity of, like you said, this sense of family identity, collective identity, that's got thrown away. You have to be the most unique you possible, right? Jeremy's got to stand out. You need to have this bone unique identity and go out. And so, yeah, the proliferation of identities, you can't keep up with it. Every time I teach material on this, I have to update my footnotes, update articles, because there's a new identity. Back in the day.
• 50:38
  there was maybe four. People talked about LGBT. Queer was more of a pejorative term that was used derogatorily. The idea of gender binary, gender nonconforming, gender role nonconforming, gender creative, gender expanded. I mean, there are literally hundreds of identities that you
• 51:00
  I think it honestly shows the absurdity of sin. There's a simplicity of the gospel that says biological male, biological female. And culturally, in an effort to be whatever it is, the proliferation of all of those letters in that acronym, I think just shows the absurdity of people.
• 51:20
  looking for meaning in this world when that meaning can only be found in Christ. And that's Matthew 10, 39. Jesus says, if you find your life, if you seek your life, you'll ultimately lose it. The key is you have to lose your life to find it. And we've told a whole generation, hey, go find your life. Go carve out your unique identity. And they are as lost as ever. And the message of the gospel is, no, lose yourself. Self-denial is self-discovery. And it's self-denial in service to Jesus Christ.
• 51:50
  That's so good. That's the only direct teaching of Christ that's in all four Gospels. Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it. Anyone who loses his life or finds his life, that's a great context for that.
• 52:02
  Well, this is really helpful, Jonathan. I would love for you to share how people can hear more. And we got Grounded in Grace, Jonathan's new book. But where can people find you online or what we're... Yeah, we encourage people to pick up a copy of the book. If you found our conversation helpful or interesting, you can get on Amazon.
• 52:21
  Grounded in Grace, Helping Kids Build Their Identity in Christ. The counseling practice that I work at serves families. It serves children, adolescents, individuals, fieldstonecounseling.org. We do in-person and remote counseling in all 50 states, 26 different countries. If you're looking for solid biblical Christian counseling, our team of 48 counselors would love to serve you and your family.
• 52:44
  Awesome. Fieldstone. That's great. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Jonathan, for taking the time. And thank you. I just want to say thank you for waiting in. I know this is like, this is the most difficult. There's probably lots of topics that are a little less radioactive, but man, we need so much more of this. So thank you for waiting in, really thinking deeply about scripture, how it's interacting with this part of culture. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you, Jeremy, for having me. I appreciate it.
• 53:11
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.