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Episode 22: SUMMER SCHOOL: Can We Trust What the Bible Says? with Dr. Sean McDowell
81 Plays3 years ago
Dr. Sean McDowell is a gifted communicator with a passion for equipping the church, and in particular young people, to make the case for the Christian faith. He connects with audiences in a tangible way through humor and stories while imparting hard evidence and logical support for viewing all areas of life through a Biblical worldview.
Mentioned in this episode:
Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell
77 FAQs About God and the Bible by Josh and Sean McDowell
Chasing Love by Sean McDowell
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This podcast is produced and edited by Angie Elkins Media, Inc.
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Transcript
Introduction of Podcast and Guest
00:00:02
Speaker
Hi, I'm Ruth Schwank and I'm so thrilled you're listening in with us at Root Like Faith. It is our deepest desire to encourage and equip men and women to be rooted in God's word, transformed by the love of Jesus and moved by his mission in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more important. Well, we are continuing our summer school mini-series today and I think you're going to love our guest. He is fabulous.
00:00:28
Speaker
Honey, tell our listeners what you guys are talking about and who our guest is. First of all, our guest is Dr. Sean McDowell. It was just a real privilege to be able to have him on Root Like Faith. I remember being in high school and reading his dad's books, so many of our listeners will be familiar.
00:00:46
Speaker
with Sean and they'll be familiar with his dad, Josh McDowell. And so I remember being in high school and just being so influenced by in particular evidence that demands a verdict. I remember being a youth pastor, taking groups and listening to Josh McDowell as a guest speaker.
00:01:01
Speaker
And now Sean has followed in his dad's footsteps and is just as an incredible mind and just such a great posture when it comes to defending the faith.
Sean McDowell's Approach and Credentials
00:01:13
Speaker
And there's just so few people like him that have a sharp mind, but also a soft heart. And I think he just does an incredible job of articulating the faith, but doing it in a very gentle, loving way.
00:01:25
Speaker
And so I'm just super honored to have him on today to have had the opportunity to talk with him. And we're talking about the Bible and can it be trusted? Yeah. Let me, let me share a little bit about Sean with our listeners. So Dr. Sean McDowell is a gifted communicator with a passion for equipping the church and in particular young people to make the case for the Christian faith. He connects with audiences in a tangible way through humor and stories while imparting hard evidence and logical support for viewing all areas of life.
00:01:53
Speaker
through a biblical worldview. Sean is an associate professor in the Christian Apologetics Program at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. Sean is the author, co-author, or editor of over 20 books. His most recent book is entitled, Chasing Love, Sex, Love, and Relationships in a Confused Culture.
Is the Bible Trustworthy?
00:02:14
Speaker
So today, Pat and Sean, like Pat said, they're gonna be talking about the Bible and whether we can trust the Bible. Is it even true? Like, how do we know it's true? How does God speak through the Bible? Anything else, honey, that you're gonna be talking about? I think just talking about faith in general and just Sean's gonna be sharing his story and just kind of how he came to faith and what it was like to grow up with a dad who was living and working in the world of apologetics and just his own faith story.
Encouragement for Listeners' Faith Journey
00:02:44
Speaker
And so it's just a really, really good conversation as we continue on in this summer school mini series. I just know that this is going to be a great encouragement and it's just going to continue to, I think, to build and encourage faith in our listeners. That's awesome. And you can follow Sean on Instagram at Sean McDowell. S E A N McDowell. M C D O W E L L. So let's get this started. This is going to be really good.
00:03:14
Speaker
Well, Sean, welcome to Root Like Faith. Oh, thanks for having me on. I'm honored. Well, Sean, as you know, as we were talking before recording this, we're in the middle of this podcast series where we're just talking about the basics of Christian belief.
Sean McDowell's Faith Journey
00:03:29
Speaker
And so I'm just really excited to have you on and to kind of have this conversation talking about the reliability of the Bible. Can the Bible be trusted? And so before we get to that question, we're going to talk more about that here in a few minutes. But I'd love for you to share just a bit of your own
00:03:44
Speaker
story, and particularly, you know, your your faith journey. And so if you just kind of speak to that, you know, I grew up as a pastor's kid. And so I've shared a bit of my story, you know, on the podcast in the past, and I think most of our listeners are going to be familiar with who you are, if they're in my general, I'm in my mid 40s, they're going to know your dad. And so just kind of love to hear your faith journey. And if there were unique sort of challenges or questions you have wrestled with along the way,
00:04:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's a wonderful question to start with. Obviously with a father like I have, Josh McGow, who's written so many books, just a world influential leader, speaker, debater, there's no way that wouldn't radically influence and shape my own journey. And I grew up thinking that Christianity, it just, it made sense, never really questioned it. I saw my parents live out their faith. They're certainly human, but they lived it out with a consistency and kind of a dynamism and
00:04:42
Speaker
in an attractive way. My dad always just raised me to think and rest with ideas and talk things through. And I think if someone had asked me before college why I thought someone was not a Christian, I wouldn't have said these words, but it would have been in the back of my mind. I would have thought, you know what, they just haven't read evidence that demands verdict or more than carpenter. It's really that simple. And then of course, I'm in college in the mid-90s, you and I are about the same age.
00:05:09
Speaker
And that's when we didn't have Google yet, but you could first search the internet. And I don't even remember how it happened, but I came across this atheist secular web that largely began, as far as I understand, responding to my dad's book chapter by chapter with doctors, historians, lawyers. And I'm looking at this going, wow, I have never seen such smart people push back on what I thought was obviously true.
00:05:37
Speaker
And you couple that with just kind of being in college trying to figure out, OK, who am I? I'm away from home. Just all that life stage challenges. And, you know, I don't want to overdramatize it, but I think it just kind of, you know, flip the apple cart over for me a little bit and had a conversation with my dad not knowing how he was going to respond. And we're in Breckenridge, Colorado. And I think it was somewhere between kind of my freshman, maybe sophomore year. And basically said, Dad, I want to know the truth, but I'm not sure that I think Christianity is
00:06:07
Speaker
Fully true. My dad didn't freak out. He essentially encouraged me to seek after truth. He told me that he and my mom would love me no matter what, and to only give up what I had been taught if I was convinced it was false. Don't rebel and reject things for any other reason, which a lot of people do. And that was great advice. I don't think I ever stopped believing, but I think that was kind of a moment for me that was like, okay, why do I believe this? Am I riding on my parents' coat's tail? I got to figure out.
00:06:36
Speaker
what I think is true. And also, I think God was also really just breaking me in many ways at the same time of a lot of my pride in terms of I didn't do the big sins growing up. So I probably wouldn't have put it in these words, but had a lot of self-righteousness that because I didn't drink and smoke and chew and hang with girls that do to borrow a very outdated phrase, I was much more like the older son than the younger son. So it was kind of a coupling of
00:07:05
Speaker
having my own experience of need for grace and answering some of my own questions about the Bible, the stuff we're going to talk about today and Christianity that really kind of formulated my own faith journey. Yeah, that's so good. You know, we have, we just wrapped up a, a series here on, on root, like faith, uh, talking about faith in the family. And so we covered, it was from mother's day to father's day. And we covered a lot of different topics and how, as a parent,
00:07:31
Speaker
you pass on faith. And so I think what you just shared within your own family, within your own home and your own faith journey is going to really speak to a lot of our listeners who have young kids or kids that are, you know, teenagers, high schoolers. And so that's so, so good. Let me ask you just sort of one follow up from that before we move on, you know, outside of your, your parents, um, like who would you say, like for me, I, I had a track coach.
00:07:56
Speaker
in junior high and then had a youth pastor that were so influential as I look back, God used those two men in just profound ways. But outside of your home, outside of your family, who would you say was most influential in shaping you spiritually and even intellectually? I'd have to point to a few people. Number one was a few of my basketball coaches at that time. I was playing at Biola University.
00:08:21
Speaker
in particular, Coach Meesig and Coach Holmquist, who is still there, just had a huge influence on my life in different ways. Uh, thinkers, people like William Lane Craig and JP Moreland, uh, said a lot of the same things that my dad had said growing up, but sometimes you need to hear it from somebody else in a different way. So intellectually they shaped me. And then my resident director's name is Rob Lone.
00:08:46
Speaker
And he was one of the people, I was an RA in a dorm, he was an RD and he just invited me into a conversation. We were reading Henry Nowan, reflecting on the spiritual life, talking about doubt, like just this whole side of like what it means to be a Christian and grow amidst uncertainty. He just gave me space to wrestle with those, which the older I get, I realized was such a gift. Yeah, that's, that's amazing.
00:09:12
Speaker
It's funny, I know Rob. Rob came out and spoke. One of the residencies that I was there doing my doctoral studies at Biola and have kept in touch with him a bit through his ministry. And yeah, he's a phenomenal guy. I know he had co-written a deep mentoring, I believe is the title of that book. And yeah, no Rob. And so that's interesting to hear you share about his influence. So yeah, I appreciate that. That's really good.
00:09:41
Speaker
You want to ask you sort of moving on.
Crisis of Faith in Culture
00:09:43
Speaker
I mean, your life and ministry dedicated it to really helping people understand the Christian faith and so much of your writing and speaking is in the area of apologetics. I mean, just giving a defense of the faith, much like your dad did. I can still remember, by the way.
00:09:57
Speaker
exactly where I was at in a stadium. I was a youth pastor with a group of kids. I think it was Acquire the Fire as a youth conference and your dad was speaking there and just being blown away. And so just to see you continuing on, that must be such an honor for he and your mom, but to know that you are continuing on in that legacy, that ministry. But it seems over the last couple of years, I mean, we're just hearing more and more stories just even recently.
00:10:28
Speaker
of prominent Christian leaders who are walking away from their faith. I mean, in your opinion, is there a crisis of faith in our culture today? And if so, what do you think is contributing to that? I do think there's a crisis of faith. And I think some of the famous people we've seen, like I've had conversations with John Steingard, who used to be the lead singer of Hawk Nelson. I've had him on my channel, a pastor.
00:10:54
Speaker
uh, who's kind of deconstructed to more of a progressive Christian kind of view. We've had that conversation. I've had a conversation with people like Bart Campolo, who now would describe himself as an atheist. It feels like every couple weeks, you know, Joshua Harris, we're hearing about these stories. And in some ways, a couple of things are going on. Number one is whenever someone deconstructs their faith and they've had a platform, there's a million people who are going to step in.
00:11:21
Speaker
and push their story because it promotes a narrative that they want heard. So I've never had the secular press in any way come to me and go, your dad was an apologist and you are too? Tell me about that. I want to do a story. I'm being facetious, but that doesn't happen. It's never happened.
00:11:43
Speaker
I'm always asked myself how much of this is a phenomena of the media. And also everybody today, it's like you have to express yourself and to be authentic, tell your story and come out of the closet. That's a piece of it too. So I just asked myself how much of it is that versus an increase in people really deconstructing and losing their faith. And I do think what I said, there's some truth in that, but there is enough data.
00:12:12
Speaker
to show that there's a ton of people disengaging the church, not all their faith, and a not insignificant number of people disengaging their faith as well. I wrote a book called So the Next Generation Will Know, and my co-author is a detective.
00:12:28
Speaker
And he tracked down every single study we could find over the past 10 or 12 years of kids disengaged in the church and why. And one conclusion we say is that the phenomena is real. There's enough data to see a large number of young people disengaged in the church. Now only God knows if they ever really were believers, but it's enough data to give us pause. Why? I think there's two big things at the heart of it. Number one,
00:12:56
Speaker
is there's so often a relational brokenness in almost every deconstruction story I hear. And I don't want to say always, there's so often brokenness with a pastor, with parents relationally. I mean, one of the largest studies shows that the top reason faith is transmitted is a quote, warm relationship with the father. So when divorce happens and there's hypocrisy and broken relationships,
00:13:23
Speaker
that contributes significantly to people disengaging. Second is I think the significant number of people leaving the church in some ways has just revealed how shallow many of our teaching and living and preaching is within the church. That we're not living this radical life that Jesus has called us to. We're not teaching apologetics and worldview and theology with some depth.
00:13:54
Speaker
with an urgency to reach the culture that we're in. And so kids get challenged on these apologetic issues, they get challenged on these moral issues, and it rocks their faith because they've been told to be a Christian is just to have certain emotions and have an experience. And I'm not downplaying experience and emotion, but if it's not rooted in truth and you get challenged in your beliefs, you're gonna chuck it.
00:14:19
Speaker
That is so good. It's so true. Gosh, we could spend the whole episode talking about what you just said there in terms of what's being taught and how it's being taught and some of the consequences we're seeing today because of the lack of that. That is so good. I appreciate that.
00:14:37
Speaker
I want to move on because I know we want to get to this topic of the Bible. And again, we're in the summer school series talking about different doctrines, the Trinity, the gifts of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. We're talking about the reliability of the Bible today. And so you work with a lot of students. You work with a lot of college students. You, of course, work with adults.
00:15:00
Speaker
But I mean, what are you seeing as it relates to the Bible? What particular attitudes are you noticing or beliefs that you're noticing most often today? Well, I would say a couple things. I'd say, number one, some of the big intellectual challenges, some of the big challenges used to be primarily intellectual. So if you talk to my dad who's spoken on 1200 universities going back to like the 60s,
00:15:27
Speaker
He tells a story about how the kinds of questions have shifted over the decades. In other words, it used to be, give me some evidence, proves that that's true. That's false. There was an assumption that there was such a thing as truth that it mattered. And we could debate to discover what it is as a whole. That started to shift in the 90s and 2000s, too. That's intolerant to say that you have the truth. You're bigoted to say that you have the truth.
00:15:54
Speaker
That's not inclusive to say that your worldview is right. So there's been an epistemological shift. Now, you know, the word about five years ago in culture was post truth. Now we hear, well, truth is oppressive. That's just your truth, not my truth. So the way people even approach these questions has shifted. I also think it shifted from the primary objection is that Christianity being false to that Christianity is bad.
00:16:23
Speaker
that God is not good as understood in the scriptures. So it shifted to moral questions, whether it's a problem of evil, whether it's hell and a lot of case ethical issues that Christians hold or allegedly hold tied to political positions, tied to the LGBTQ conversation, tied to immigration, tied to Trumpism. I mean, all these things get mixed in together
00:16:50
Speaker
And we're now seeing that some of the biggest objections are moral as opposed to just being intellectual. So that's a pretty radical shift we have to keep in mind. Now, does that make the intellectual questions less important? No. We have to approach them and frame them very differently than we did in the past. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that. I mean, real quickly, I remember as a kid, and I've shared this on the podcast before, but I remember as a kid just by God's grace, having a love for the Bible.
00:17:19
Speaker
And I mean, I can remember being like, I don't know whether I was nine, 10 years old. And I just, I was interested in spiritual things and I would go upstairs and I had, I had this, you know, this red, uh, illustrated picture Bible that I just loved to read. And I just, from, so from an early age, like I just loved the Bible and I was very interested in spiritual things. And as I got older, I just remember, you know, nobody told me, Hey, you should be reading your Bible on your own. Um, I just, I just wanted to.
00:17:49
Speaker
And that was a work of God's Spirit in my life, and I'm grateful for the grace that God has given me there. And there were times as I got into my later years in high school, and I did my undergrad at Moody that I was wrestling with maybe some of those intellectual challenges and wanting some evidence. And you're right, how people are approaching that question today is very different. And so that was kind of my story. I know that's not normal probably for everybody.
00:18:17
Speaker
And so it is so fascinating to hear how you're describing, you know, the ways that people are approaching, you know, non-Christians are approaching the Bible and their attitude towards it, and therefore how we sort of enter into those conversations. So that's a great segue into just kind of talking now about the reliability of the Bible. I mean, let's talk about what are some of those evidences for the reliability of the Bible, and then based on what you just said, what are some ways that
00:18:44
Speaker
that we can begin having those kinds of conversations from that perspective because of the cultural shift you described. Yeah, so if I may, let me give kind of a precursor to this because I think sometimes if we just launch into evidences, we miss some of the heart cry of this generation as important as evidence is.
Foundational Goodness of God
00:19:04
Speaker
And you know, I've updated the book with my dad, evidence that demands a verdict. So I think it's as important now as ever. But here's one question I'll ask with students.
00:19:14
Speaker
I'll say, let's go back to the garden. Of all the commandments God could give, why does God give the commandment not to eat fruit to Adam and Eve? Why that commandment? Why doesn't God say, Adam don't kill Eve? Like that would be intuitive and obvious and easy. Why does he give a counterintuitive claim?
00:19:39
Speaker
because fruit is meant to be eaten, puts it in the center of the garden, it almost feels like he's setting him up for failure. I think the answer is, if the finite is going to be in relationship with the infinite, the created with the creator, we're going to have to trust God even when things don't make sense, even when we don't get it and we don't see it. So God wants to be in relationship with Adam and Eve. He has to set up a commandment
00:20:10
Speaker
that enables them to say, you know what, this doesn't make sense to me, but I'm gonna trust God because God is good and worthy of trust. So students today, we need to start with that God is good and his commandments are an expression of his goodness. I think when young people understand here's who Jesus is, here's his heart for us, then there's more of an openness to jump into some of those evidences
00:20:37
Speaker
because they understand it on a heart level. So that's one way I've really been careful to try to shift as I talk about evidences as I can. Yeah, that's really good. I mean, I think just from that starting point, I think from there, if you have a friend who is wrestling with
00:20:59
Speaker
Christianity and they're wrestling with the truthfulness of the Bible. And I think what you have just described that is such an important starting point and such a different starting point than maybe how we tend to engage in those conversations. But when somebody said, you know, maybe I'll say it this way, years ago when we started the church that I'm now the campus pastor of, we partnered with another church in town,
00:21:24
Speaker
But one of the things we did is we went over to the University of Michigan. Our church is not far from there. It's not far from Eastern Michigan University as well. But we went over and we began, I gave our core team three or four questions to go ask students. And we walked around campus and just engaged in some great conversations. And oftentimes, the Bible came up and it was not only just a reliability question, but for some students, it was a relevance issue.
00:21:53
Speaker
And it wasn't that they were opposed to the reliability of the Bible. They just saw the Bible as completely outdated and irrelevant to their life today. I think that's so right on. And that is my experience too, both from data and experience that the Bible is a nice book, but it doesn't really relate to my dating life and my work schedule and my identity in politics today. It's a nice ancient book, but totally irrelevant. So in some minds,
00:22:23
Speaker
there used to be a cultural sense that, you know, the probably previous generation still felt like that to a degree. You know, it's an ancient book and I don't really know how to read it anyways, but there still was a sense that the Bible's good and you should follow what the Bible teaches. Now you add that irrelevance that you're talking about and there's still a sense that like, wait a minute, if the Bible defines marriage this way or ever supported slavery,
00:22:51
Speaker
I think the Bible is immoral and bad. There's that layer that I think is even increasingly recent in the minds of many young people today. Yeah, that's good. I think what you're saying is it is so important, depending on the age of the person, that is so important, such a different starting point.
00:23:15
Speaker
for somebody and helping them, like you said, see the goodness in God's command, see the wisdom there. We've talked before in the podcast that the Bible always presents two ways to live. There's obedience and disobedience and to walk in God's wisdom. There's fruit, there's a blessing there and to disobey God, there's a curse there and God wants life for us. And it's in many ways what you're describing there, helping people see the wisdom of what God's word says.
00:23:44
Speaker
as it relates to different issues. And the brokenness that happens when we go against that, whether that's issues of sexuality or marriage, some of those that you described. But for the person that needs evidence, because there are plenty of people out there that still need the evidence.
Manuscript Authority and Archaeological Support
00:24:05
Speaker
And I've heard you talk before about external evidence and internal evidence.
00:24:11
Speaker
very briefly, I mean, what are some of those, I think, key evidences that you would point to to help somebody have a greater, you know, confidence in God's word? I love that you keep bringing it back to the evidence because the recent Gen Z study from Barnas said, I think it was 46 or 47 percent of Gen Zers, those like 10 to 25, are open to evidence for a particular faith.
00:24:37
Speaker
So we need to go that route and it resonates still with a lot of young people. You know, it comes to Bible. There's so many angles we could take. We could talk about manuscript authority. And one of the things that my father and I do in our recent book is we do an exhaustive search on the most early to get the greatest number and get an accurate account of how many manuscripts are out there and also Greek ones.
00:25:06
Speaker
to see how carefully we can reconstruct what was originally written down. Now, this doesn't tell us it's true, but the bottom line is even many classical scholars will agree that the Bible was transmitted with care and accuracy, that we have a high degree of confidence, that we have what was originally written down to a very high percentage.
00:25:31
Speaker
That's agreed on by quite a few people. Now, there's still some challenges that remain about individual passages and individual verses. But as a whole, because of the number of manuscripts, the early manuscripts, the nature of individual manuscripts, we can have more confidence in the New Testament, I would argue, than any other ancient book of antiquity. That's one piece. The second piece is things like archaeology. Now, again, archaeology doesn't prove something's true. It helps corroborate a story
00:26:00
Speaker
that's being told. So I recently had an archeologist named Joel Kramer who lives in Amman, Jordan. And he's been studying archeology for decades. Had him come on my YouTube channel and just talked about some of the recent finds about Sodom and Gomorrah, about the birthplace of Jesus, about the upper room with the disciples, about where Abraham camped and tented. I mean, we went through 10 to 12
00:26:29
Speaker
archaeological discoveries that match up with the biblical record. Now, there's some places we haven't found yet. There's some cases where there is debate about the date and location. But over and over again, he told me and made the case for we have strong archaeological support that corroborates these people, places and events really took place. The other line out of this, of course, is fulfilled prophecy we could talk about.
00:26:58
Speaker
And then there's also some internal cues within the scriptures themselves that help us realize the Bible was not invented, but the writers care about truth. So for example, you have something called the criterion of embarrassment, that when a writer reports material that's embarrassing or disparaging to his or her position, it's unlikely to have been made up. Because when we make up stuff, it's usually to make ourselves look good or get out of trouble.
00:27:28
Speaker
Well, you see these things in the Old Testament like God's chosen people used to be slaves. Isn't that interesting? David, right? King David, who were told the Messiah will come through that lineage. King David was a murderer and an adulterer. You see faults in Moses. You get to the New Testament. Just look at the apostles.
00:27:52
Speaker
You know, Peter denies Jesus three times. Jesus calls him Satan. They argue over Gethsemane. I mean, over and over again, the Bible is a realistic book that describes the faults of its people without reveling in it. But in many ways, what could be argued a very honest fashion and approach? My answer to you is like the 30,000 foot view that raises more questions than it can answer.
00:28:20
Speaker
but it's the kind of approach that I would take to say that the Bible is unique and we have good solid reason to believe that it's really true.
Resources for Deeper Learning
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah. No, it's so good. I, you know, obviously you've written numerous books, um, on the subject and you've got all sorts of videos, you know, in your YouTube channel. Um, and so there, there's so much more, I know you could say, well, we'll link to all of those things for our listeners. They want to dive even deeper, you know, into the subject and other subjects that you cover. We'll link to those in our show notes.
00:28:48
Speaker
But that is so good. I want to, you know, I know our time is almost up. And I want to, you've got a new book that just came out not too long ago. I think it was last year, if I remember right. And so it's called Chasing Love. But tell us briefly what the book is about and, you know, where our listeners can buy a copy. Yeah, thanks for asking that question. I basically wrote it for Scotty, Shauna, and Shane, which are my three kids. And I started to notice
00:29:17
Speaker
that there's so many confusions and lies about marriage, sex, and singleness. And although there's a lot of good resources in the church, I didn't find any that I thought really gave a theological, cultural, and worldview kind of backing to this that would help kids not only know what the scripture says, but why it says certain things that it does. So the first third of the book
00:29:43
Speaker
I'm really stripping away faulty ideas that I think a lot of young people today have about the nature of love, about truth, about what it means to be a person who's truly free, about identity. In the middle of the book, I say, okay, here's God's design for sex, marriage, and singleness. And then the last third of the book, I talk about some of the thorny, what you might say just hot cultural issues like sex abuse, pornography,
00:30:12
Speaker
uh, cohabitation, the LGBTQ conversation. And now that we've stripped away cultural ideas, talked about God's design, we can look at each of those issues with, uh, I think biblical understanding, but also graciousness of how to look at these topics in which a lot of people are hurting and approach it in a loving manner. So that's the vision of it. People, I mean, if you just Google it, you can find it anywhere, but I've got links on my website. It's on amazon.com.
00:30:41
Speaker
And you know, it's interesting. One quick thing is I tried to make it as practical for parents to use with their kids as possible. My first book ethics, I was like, Oh, 10 chapters. That makes sense. I was like 26 or 28 and every book has 10 chapters. And then when I wrote this one, like 15 years later, I was like, wait a minute. I have a parent. What if, what if I did shorter chapters, kids would likely read. And I did a 30 and gave parents the one month challenge of reading a three to four
00:31:11
Speaker
page chapter with her kids each night and talked about it. And a ton of parents are doing that with their kids. And it just gives me goosebumps because the whole purpose of the book is not to tell kids exactly how high their shorts or skirts should be, but to frame it typically and say, work this out in relationship and wisdom with adults who've been there. And a ton of people are actually doing it.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I know our listeners are gonna be very interested in that. As you know, we've talked about already, we did the Faith in the Family series and we did an episode on, you know, how do you talk to your kids about cultural issues? And we talked just about several. We talked about, you know, talking to your kids about abortion and talking to your kids about sexuality and just sort of, you know, some of those principles that can guide you
00:32:01
Speaker
and offered some resources. But this is going to be, I know, a resource that our listeners are going to want to pick up. And so we'll link specifically to that book in the show notes as well. And so yeah, that's incredible. Thanks for putting that together, not only for your own family, but for lots of families. That is such a needed resource within the church, within our culture today. So thank you again for being on. Where can folks find you?
00:32:29
Speaker
What are the best places online to go if somebody wants to follow along? You know what, Pat? Probably the best place is my website. It's just seanmcdowell.org, where I have links to a YouTube channel that I'm on and have an upcoming conversation with an atheist, interestingly enough. I'm on Twitter, on Instagram.
00:32:50
Speaker
also on TikTok might surprise you, but I do TikTok to reach a new generation. But SeanMcDowell.org would probably link to most of those different options that may help. Perfect. We'll link to that in the show notes. But Sean, thanks so much for your time and God bless you and your ministry. We're grateful to have you on Root Like Faith today. Thanks, Pat.
00:33:17
Speaker
Well, friend, we are so, so grateful you have joined us. Wasn't that a great conversation with Pat and Sean? I hope you loved it as much as we did. Again, you can follow Sean on Instagram at Sean McDowell and it's spelled S-E-A-N-M-C-D-O-W-E-L-L.
00:33:37
Speaker
Well, if we haven't met you yet, we want to get to know you and we absolutely love when you send us messages. I love hearing from you. So you can follow us on Instagram at Patrick W. Schwank and at Ruth Schwank or on Facebook. Also, don't forget everything we talked about will be at rootlikefaith.com.
00:33:56
Speaker
Again, we welcome you into our family here at Root Like Faith. Would you do us a big favor and leave us a review or rating and share this podcast with your friends. It just takes a second and it's a tremendous help to us as we spread the word about Root Like Faith. We're so grateful for your help in getting the word out. Okay friend, well we will chat soon and we hope you have the best week.