Raising Wise Kids in a Sexually Broken World with Lori Krieg | Parenting, Porn, Gender & Discipleship

00:00:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I am joined today by Lori Krieg, who is the co author of a book with Matt Kreek, her husband, Raising Wise Kids in a Sexually Broken World. It's published by IVP and she is also the director of parent Programs and Discipleship at the Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender. And So today we're going to be discussing the book How to Raise Kids. It's going to be a very child centered and parent centered discussion. But welcome Laurie to the program.

00:01:03
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

00:01:06
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:01:07
Speaker 1: So, I mean I think just you know, as a first question, you know, just kind of dive into this what prompted your interest in this book. Obviously you work in this field as well, but what are you seeing in the culture, What are you seeing in the church that you feel like really gave you a passion to write this book.

00:01:29
Speaker 2: So I've been in this field professionally ministerially for the last eleven years. Will be twelve in February, and our oldest daughter is eleven years old. So as long as I've been out teaching and equipping at the intersection of faith and sexuality, I've been filtering it through my mom brain and asking myself specifically, do we have to do it the same way that we've always done this? And the way that I was seeing is we're we've been very reactionary when it comes to engaging conversations around face, sexuality and gender. So ten twelve years ago, when I was starting out, it was pastors being like, oh my gosh, there's same sex marriage past twenty fifteen, how do we do addresses theologically? Our hair is on fire?

00:02:24
Speaker 1: What do we do?

00:02:25
Speaker 2: Or it's parents, Oh my gosh, my kids just came out, or oh my word, my kid is addicted to porn, or all my word, my kid wants a transition, And so I just was asking, like, does it have to be so care on fire whether our kids, you know, experience same sex attractions or wrestle with their gender, wrestle with pornography, Like can we lay anything foundationally ages zero to twelve or is it all have to like come at them as soon as they're thirteen? And what I'm finding is there's a lot we can do before.

00:02:58
Speaker 3: It's interesting.

00:02:59
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm mentioned to you before we started recording that I have a twenty year old and then to sixteen year olds. We had twins. I will say their experience with dating is very different than mine was when I was a kid. I don't know whether you had that same experience, but I mean I had a girlfriend or a date, right, I'm using air quotes for the benefit of the audio only audience from you fifth grade all the way through high school. I'm married my high school sweetheart, and so when I watch my kids deal with dating and relationships, it's extremely different than it used to be.

00:03:38
Speaker 3: How does that factor into some of this?

00:03:43
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you can't understate, like the effect, you can't overstate the effect of technology on kids relationships period. So whereas before you know you've had you when you're growing up, Like in order to date who would be your wife, you had to ask her out, you had to have conversations, you had to be embodied in order to establish relationships and move it forward. And now we've totally separated so much of life from the relationship and the embodied experience. It has a fragmenting effect on our minds, on our bodies, on our ability to communicate, and that is it's leaving an internal void inside of us. And then we just start trying to chase connection, but it's like we're chasing more fragments to feel that connection. So I think it absolutely plays into these conversations because we're just fragmented people trying to find pieces of relationships outside of the embodied experience, and that's not how we were created.

00:04:56
Speaker 1: I know, not all of this relates to your book, but outside it sort of pro around the edges a little bit. So I've heard a lot about the effects of pornography, particularly Internet pornography, on you know, social relationships of the next generation, because pornography is so available, and I would say even more than pornography, like things like scantily clad folks on Instagram or what have you right, you're able to interact in these technological ways. How is that skewing the sexuality in the next generation? How do you think about that when you're raising a kid? I mean, I mentioned you I have a four year old, and so she's a little girl, four year old, where we have sort of plans to deal with her social media usage the same way we deal with our sixteen year old girls, which is, you know, not for a very long time, right, Like, just stay off it for a really long time. But is there more that we need to think about, more than we need to worry about with that? I mean it's difficult, you know, you say, it's hard to underestimate the sociological sort of effects of this.

00:06:09
Speaker 3: So how should we be thinking about it? As Christians?

00:06:14
Speaker 2: We need to think about how we're thinking about people like you just said pornography. Yeah, but in our book, you know, my husband Matt has this system. He talks about mindsets. He's like, it's not just about Okay, I consume porn, don't consume porn, it's why do you approach humans as a consumer?

00:06:39
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:06:39
Speaker 2: How can we teach and equip our kids' minds to view humans the way God views humans, which is through flourishing, through giving, through self giving and love. So sure, there's scantily clad things online or garbage everywhere, and it's extra pervasive online, but how can we actually shape our kids' minds and hearts so that when they are online, because facts are there, gonna be like unless I don't know how to avoid it. How can we teach them to not be consumers of humans, but to view them as image bearers of a beloved God to whom we can give. That starts out when they're thirteen, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen and you give them Instagram, it's zero to infinity. Is how can we view beloved image bearers the way God views us and how he calls us to do each other?

00:07:42
Speaker 3: Do you see?

00:07:43
Speaker 1: And I don't want to go too deep into the technological sort of spiral here, but one of the things when AI started coming out, one of the things I sort of sat down and did was I'm like, I'm going to commit to a few things with artificial intelligence. One is, you know, don't use AI generated images. I'll be honest, it's getting harder and harder not to bend on that one. AI generated images, even on things like adobe stock are becoming far more prevalent. It's hard to find images that are human created. And so that one I've I've found myself sort of saying like, do I need to rethink that one? But the second one was never write anything that you're going to send to another human that you intend for human consumption with AI, right, whether it's an email, a text, an article, an essay, anything like that, Like, don't ever do that if you're going to be interacting with humans, even through you know, printed materials, actually be yourself, like, don't have that mediating effect. And then I think the third was just you know, recognize that AI is only going to be good for certain things and that it can really get in the way of our human to human relationships even when they're technologically mediated. So as sort of a guideline, you sit back and say, Okay, even if I could use this to communicate, even if I could use this to sort of be more efficient in the way that I develop relationships, I shouldn't do that. Relationships should be a little bit more arduous and difficult and hard. So we're having this conversation on riverside, right, it's obviously a technological platform we're interacting in real time. We're going to have sort of awkward moments throughout the podcast. We're going to have good moments, you know, like that's a human interaction even though it's technologically mediated.

00:09:34
Speaker 3: But AI tends to sort of blunt those as supposed to sharpen them. Does any of that resonate?

00:09:41
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know when I think about my little kids I've just started. First of all, AI freaks me the heck out. I mean, you watch ten Instagram reels and you're like, Okay, my kids are never going to use tech because it's all garbage, Like truly, you know, I'm seeing this stuff from like legit sources. How AI is like blackmailing executives when it hears it's going to get a reboot. You hear about like if you read the transcript between AI and people who it has basically encouraged it to end their lives, You're like, so this is Satan's voice, huh, Like this is how Satan talks. Is like coaxed them into this stupor and they end up ending they're taking their own lives. So it freaks me out. So as a mom as you're saying these things and like the boundaries that you're having. My kids are at these ages at eleven, nine and six, they're they're not using AI. But I'm thinking, Laurie, what are the parameters you're gonna put around your kids? And I think, what you know, I need to do more research. I think we need more studies, just similar to like Johnathan Height's work and all of it, where we're like, yeah, let's not copy paste that. Let's not go put iPhones in the hands of ten year olds, right, let's not. Let's wait a minute, we need to pause. We need to do some research. But I do know I want to use AI for information, not relationships. That to me, the number one use is therapy therapy, and I have people now reaching out to me through my contact form. People are reaching out to my husband through his therapy world, and they're like, I can't stop talking to AI. I know it's wrong, I just keep going. It's my only friend. So that is one thing that I'm like, there is a very addictive and I feel like sinister nature to it. Now, don't put me on the records for that. I'm not going down on the books like it's all evil. But I think for us to view it at all, and to teach our kids to see it at all as a relational means is dangerous, But to see it as informational at this point, I'm like, I can see it as helpful there when it doesn't get it wrong, which it.

00:11:58
Speaker 3: Does, which it does.

00:12:01
Speaker 1: But I know, I know your your book isn't you know, raising white skids in a technologically broken world? So we should probably get around to sexually broken and I think, you know, internet pornography.

00:12:12
Speaker 3: Is a portion of that.

00:12:14
Speaker 1: I had some folks on who do some amazing ministry in the pornography space and really think it through very well. But I'm wondering, when you think about sexual brokenness, what are you really talking about? Give people a handle that they can understand, you know. Is this just about transgender? Is it just about you know? What is it that we're talking about here? In a sexually broken world?

00:12:38
Speaker 2: So God's vision for sexuality, for us to steward our sexuality. The place where sex is supposed to happen is in a covenant between two sexually different people, and sex says to the other person, just as Jesus covenanted to be one with me, he says, take communion to remember that covenant. My giving to you in this sexual union is me redeclaring. My covenant to you is me saying I am faithful to you. In all these other areas of life, I recovenant to you. That is sexual If you want to use the word purity, that is where God wants sex to happen. For our single friends, you're giving that up for the sake of the gospel. When you feel that sexual desire, if God has called you to singleness, you're giving that up for Jesus. You're saying, Jesus, you are worthy. And the only marriage that I am called to that I everyone will be eventually in is this covenant. Is this union with you in eternity. So, married people, that's where sex happens. This is covenant, renewals, ceremony, that's where sex happens. Single people, you're giving it up for the sake of gospel. You're displaying the eternal marriage, the value, the priceless value of knowing Jesus Christ, our Lord, so and anything outside of that is sexual brokenness. Yeah, women, straight married women are the hardest women for me to convince are sexually broken. When you see marriage, we see sex as a transaction, I'll give my husband sex so that he does more housework. I saw one study that said eighty four percent of married women do that. That's sexual brokenness. So anything outside of God's beautiful covenant marriage or celibate covenant singleness to Jesus is sexual brokenness. However, in the book for this sake of clarity, where we are talking about God's beauty and then how we can teach our kids to live in a broken world, where we engage these areas marriage and singleness, and we talk about how to talk about sex, like I just talked about it gender, What is God's vision for gender because in our sex bodies there is a God's vision there. And we talk about porn prevention, so pornography is so prevalent when we talk about sexual abuse prevention. So those are the five areas that we really try and help parents and caregivers the next generation to understand what's a beauty and how can we equip our kids to live in a world where it's full of distortions.

00:15:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let me kind of probe in a few different places for that, because I think it's really interesting the way you all address marriage and signalness I very much are.

00:15:27
Speaker 3: I appreciated the whole book, but those chapters.

00:15:30
Speaker 1: I just had a conversation with a gentleman who works with primarily a homosexual community and was advocating for singleness within the homosexual community, and part of his argument was that, you know, the theology of marriage and the theology of singleness really do need to go together. There needs to be some sort of a fit there. To understand almost the way you articulated it, that you're either married to another person and this is a covenant relationship that now you're faithful to, or your covenant relationship is primarily with Christ and now you're giving up something the physical act of sex, in order to serve Christ more fully. And I'm not exactly sure those are the words I should be using, but I do think that there is something around marriage and singleness that we struggle with because, as parents model to their kids what this covenant is to look like, it's difficult to get behind that covenant, that covenant relationship, no matter how much how well you model it to the choice that you made prior to entering.

00:16:39
Speaker 3: Into that covenant relationship. Does that make sense?

00:16:42
Speaker 1: It's like, how did I choose to become married versus choosing to remain single. What was my thought process? And for me personally, I would sit back and say, I'm not sure. I gave it a ton of thought. Right, it was almost the right. It's the default setting. It's like, I'm gonna get married. Now happy I'm married, I'm happy, I have kids. I'm like not regretting that decision at all. But at the same time, I don't recall going through a real strong discernment process before entering into that relationship.

00:17:15
Speaker 3: It was the default setting. So how do you help kids sort of adjust that default setting?

00:17:23
Speaker 2: So I mentioned five areas that we talk about in the book 'age singing a sex, gender or in French body safety. The first section we talk about is the Gospel. And I don't just talk about that to be like, hey, guys, I just said, like the cheat code. So trust me and buy this book because I said gospel, verily, Verily, I say, unto the we don't know what we're doing on this earth as Christians. When I go and speak places, this is a question I ask everyone. I say, what's the purpose of your life? And the room is either crickets or or someone quotes to me the shorter Westminster Cabchism. Sure, what's the chief and of man? To glorify God and enjoy him forever? And like great love it we say that the purpose of our life is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. But we actually live and what we preach to our kids and what is preached to us is that the purpose of your life is to get married, make Christian babies, tithe and die. Yeah, Like truly that's the goal? Like why was it the default setting for you? I'm guessing and growing up in your home, it was a lot of when you get married, it's you go to college, you get a job, you get married, you have kids. It's like all the levels up. That's how you level up. But that is not the Bible, that's not the gospel a purpose of our life. So yes, the purpose is a glorify God and enjoy him forever. But we also have a mission, and our mission is not to get married. Our mission comes from Genesis one twenty eight, that's emphasizing Matthew twenty eight, and it is to be fruitful, supply faility, or to subdue rule. What does that mean? We're supposed to be vice regions. We're supposed to be kings, queen's priests. We're supposed to live as God lives and not just reflect his image and just like sit and be shiny, happy people. We're supposed to be advancing his rule and reign. We're supposed to transform this beautiful garden into the city of God. That's the Telos of the Bible, that is His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. So we do that as married or single people. Those are both equally valuable ways we live out the mission to how I say it to my kids, what their mission is. Your mission is to push back the darkness and usher in the light. So, guys, you get to do this as the married or single people. When my kids don't want to go to school, when they don't want to do their homework, when they don't want to do anything, Hey, guys, you know what's so cool? I want to say. I want to say that moment, you need to get married so you can get a good job. And you know you need to go to school so you can get married and get a good job and get out. That's not the mission of God. I say, you know why you need to go to school? Why, Mom, Because God has an incredible job for you. Do you remember what our mission is? Yes, Mom, to push back the darkness and usher in the light. And God has made you to be a little light warrior. And when you go to school, you actually get to figure out how God has made you. He's given you specific gifts, specific ways to push back that darkness. When you go to school, you're getting trained for how the beautiful calling God has on your life. I said nothing about marriage, I said, I said everything about the Kingdom of God. Why don't I say anything about marriage? Because why, I don't know what God has for my kids. I actually don't just give it lip service. I actually truly believe that marriage and singleness are equally valuable. What if God has called my kids singleness and I've been preaching when you get married and that's the only way to live in the Kingdom of God, I'm just going against God's will for them because singleness or what if one of my kids experience the same sex attractions? Yeah, and their entire life. I've been saying, when you get married. So when they're eighteen, nineteen twenty or thirteen, Mom, I'm actually attracted to the same sex you've been saying, when you get married, my whole life. So here's my same sex spouse. I'm either going to be like, oh my word, my life is over. Their life is over. Or I could say, you know what, honey, some people experience attractions for the same sex. God is his vision for marriage is this between sexually different people. So it seems like perhaps God is calling you to surrender those to Jesus and get back on mission. Yeah, your life is not over if you experience the same sex attraction. Your life is not over. If God has called you to marriage, your life is still on mission to advance the Kingdom of God. So how do we not have our kids see marriage as the default? Is we actually got to believe it first. Yeah, we actually have to believe that the Kingdom of God is our primary concern and we have to see that as number one. And then we'll start preaching it in simple, age appropriate language.

00:22:16
Speaker 1: It's been a really interesting I would say, it's been an interesting journey for me to sort of come to this.

00:22:22
Speaker 2: Right.

00:22:22
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I'm an Old Testament geek, but I you know, I do work in both Testaments. I'm my backgrounds in theology and so I've studied those passages where Paul talks about singleness and pretty extensively, and you sort of sit back and you're like, this is a real viable option even today, despite the cultural scripts that we tend to.

00:22:46
Speaker 3: Accept.

00:22:47
Speaker 1: And so, but I will also say that there's a there's a motivating factor for me. You know, when I talk to my kids and we I'm a very sarcastic human being, and so when I talk to my kids, they know I'm a very sarcastic human being. But you know, you know, telling my daughters they shouldn't day till after college, those kind of things. I know they know I'm joking, but there's an element of me that is also very serious with them when I talk to them about they don't need to get married. Yeah, Like there's an aspect of it that you just sit back and it was like, this is what was right for Mom and I. This is the decision we made. This was a good decision for us. But at the end of the day, the Great Commission, unlike and I would say sort of unlike the Old Testament, I tend to view it as a matter of emphasis. And I'll see if you agree with this Old Testament. There is an emphasis on biological reproduction because there is a largely a covenant with a nation that needs to biologically reproduce and then and then make disciples, is the way I would phrase it. You need to biologically reproduce and then make disciples. When you get to the New Testament, the emphasis is on, no, just make disciples, and when you biologically reproduce, or if you biologically reduced, also make disciples.

00:24:09
Speaker 2: It's good.

00:24:09
Speaker 3: It's a shift in emphasis.

00:24:11
Speaker 1: It's not a drastic wrenching like, hey, you had to have kids over here and you don't have to have them over here.

00:24:17
Speaker 3: That's not the point. And so it's not that sort of.

00:24:20
Speaker 1: You know, ninety degree sharp turn. It's a shift in emphasis. And so what I'm trying to say is, no, you you always make disciples. No matter what you do, You're always making disciples. The question is whether those disciples are your own kids or whether they're.

00:24:36
Speaker 3: Just somebody else.

00:24:38
Speaker 2: Yes?

00:24:39
Speaker 3: Is that a yeah? Am I kind of scratching where you know? Am I hitting on the right note here?

00:24:47
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think I love it, And I you know, I'll bring this up when we go and speak and do conferences and stuff on parenting as I was like parents, like I feel with you. You have this natural instinct inside of you that's that wants to wear the sweatshirt that says, if I had known having grand babies was this good, I would have had them first, right, Like, we have this, we want to see our kids have kids. Yeah, but we're not looking deep enough or big enough. Is God doesn't just want image bearers on the earth, which he does. He wants more of his image. He wants little Christs on the earth. So that's either through your body and making them into conforming them into the image of Christ by the power of the spirit God willing. That's a discipleship process, or that's through disciple babies. So if God's called you to singleness, You're gonna make little disciple babies. You got babies from your body who become disciples. You're gonna have disciple babies who That's a language in the New Testament is parenting language. Paul, You see that, John, is that there's this real relationship between parenting and discipleship. I think is very interesting.

00:26:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, Paul, despite being single, has many sons and daughters, many sort of frames it like that. So yeah, fantastic. Let me switch gears a little bit to gender. So gender is interesting. You talked about our sext bodies, and I've done a little thinking about this. I became uncomfortable with the conversations around Christian masculinity at some point in the past. It just felt like it was more machismo than actually manhood. And so to me, it's like, if we're going to have these sex bodies male and female, what it means to be a Christian male has to emerge from discipleship. And this gives you a certain or Christian female obviously, but it gives you a uniqueness that is, it's uniquely you. You are not only male, but you're a whole host of other things. You're not only female, but you're a whole host of other things, and those things are shaped and formed through the discipleship process such that you become a Christian male or a you know, a male disciple or a female disciple through this process of recognizing the authority of Christ. Gender has always felt to me like that sort of when we say masculinity and femininity, these are almost stereotypical notions that compete with discipleship in some degree, and so I'm kind of interested in your take on some of that, like how do you think about gender as opposed to sex, and how do you think about gender from a biblical perspective.

00:27:48
Speaker 2: I know, this gets real hairy, and you'll notice I didn't really get into it in our book, so I was a little bit intentional. I was like, if you want to write the next biblical manhood and womanhood book, go to town. It's very hard to find anything in the Bible about biblical masculinity and femininity that is outside of marriage roles and church roles.

00:28:16
Speaker 3: I agree, like, yeah, you can't find it, and.

00:28:21
Speaker 2: You know through the spirit is not gendered. I I don't know how deeply I can get into this without getting like in trouble, but I think it is interesting. Gosh, let's start this conversation with that sentence. I appreciated the only works that I've appreciated on this conversation on the subject as far as gender and sex. So sex and gender I think should be together. We are to what it means to be a man is it has to do with your biological sex. How do you feel inside of your biology, biological body, inside of your body as male or as female? Some people don't feel like they belong inside their body. That's why we use that word gender sometimes, like your gender and your sex, don't Matt, Should they be separate? No, that is not intended design. However, some people are like, well, I actually in my male body, I don't feel like a man. But then as you start asking questions like what does it mean to be a man? It starts getting real squishy.

00:29:23
Speaker 3: Right, It's like what do you mean right?

00:29:28
Speaker 2: Or what's it mean to be a female? Like I'll ask at these conferences we do, I'm like, raise your hand if you're the ideal specimen of female. Zero women feel like the ideal woman, zero men feel like the ideal man. We all have some operation. But there are friends for whom they have gender dysphoria, or that dissonance between their insides and their outsides is extreme and that is not a sin. That's the effects of sin on them. I would say, is that that's living in a broken world, and it is extreme, and I have grief and pain for them. It's not dissimilar to how I feel as someone who's experienced sexual trauma. When I get triggered. My body might be in a safe place, but inside. I don't feel safe.

00:30:09
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:30:10
Speaker 2: Am I not safe? No? Should it be that way? No? Is that the me sinning? No, that's the effects of sin on me. There's this dissonance. So we need tough compassion and care and love and tenderness. But about gender, does it mean to be a political man or woman? Oh my gosh, I hate it. But the only book that I have kind of relatively thought this is interesting is actually Larry Krabb's book Fully Alive. Have you ever heard of this? Yeah?

00:30:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, Fully Alive?

00:30:37
Speaker 2: Did you read it? I did?

00:30:38
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:30:40
Speaker 2: So scholarship isn't great, but I think it'd be from what my like pres and sprangle. He's like, I don't love it, but I do think it'd be interesting to say, Okay, if there is anything to biblical manhood or womanhood, is there anything to our biology that speaks to what it means to be a man? Is there anything to our biology about speaks to be a woman. It's interesting at least the start of a conversation.

00:31:02
Speaker 3: Agreed.

00:31:03
Speaker 1: I think that's sort of And I will say I appreciate it from that perspective, I think where I look at it and I say, you know so much of this stuff exists on a spectrum, right, So you can talk about on average, men are more aggressive than women. Let's say, yeah, but you can't say that every man. Then if a man is not aggressive, he's not masculine. And that's where all this sort of stuff starts to break down. And so it's it's a very difficult thing, I think for us to conceive of this idea that there's a predominant male or predominant female set of characteristics and then say that Christian men and women should conform to those, and I would just not like the way I've tried. The question that I got stuck on was is Jesus is David? Is Isaiah? Is Jeremiah is Joseph? Are these biblical characters ideal men in the sext perspective? Or are they ideals of the faith? When I read Hebrews eleven, should I skip over Rahab as a man? Or should I be learning from her example? And those are the parts where I'm kind of sitting there, like, I think we've just had this sort of masculinity femininity conversation in a way wrong.

00:32:27
Speaker 3: Note.

00:32:29
Speaker 1: I think there needs to be some sort of resetting of it, and we need to just sort of look back and go, Look, I like what you're saying. If discipleship is at the root of all this stuff, why is it that we're adopting these misconceptions about what a man is. Is if because I bench more than someone else, I'm more masculine, or if I like camping, you know, I'm more macho.

00:32:54
Speaker 2: Point to the verse that says that, right.

00:32:56
Speaker 1: These things just don't work, and so it's a really interesting and difficult I think sort of point. But I love that your your comment about, look, your gender and your sex should match. Yeah, and I think maybe and see if you agree with this, would the next logical question be, then what is your gender?

00:33:19
Speaker 3: Sort of how are we understanding that.

00:33:23
Speaker 2: It should be your biological sex should be your gender, those should be aligned.

00:33:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:33:30
Speaker 2: Do people struggle with that? Yes? Is it on a spectrum? Yeah, But it's like who's who's writing the extremes. It's like culture is saying what it means to be a man and a woman. So it's I will say, when I walk with my friends who wrestle with their gender, they're grateful for the more like, Okay, I'm supposed to look like Jesus and I'm just gonna love my version of female. Yeah, even though if I'm a born biological female. If I'm thinking. You know, my friend Kat who wrestles with her gender, she's a biological female, and she that was actually very helpful for her was to think and actually reading Fully Alive was kind of helpful for her to be like, maybe there is something to my biology that makes me female. This open to receive and to nourish, as he says. But she was like, is there a way I can just love and embrace my version of female as God has made me? So I'm not trying to reject it. I'm not trying to say I'm male, But can I just live into this is me? My gender is I don't know. It's like when you start staring at it too long, it gets so you just your eyes go get crossed. It's like, Okay, accept my body. I don't always feel like the ideal woman or even like a woman, But God, I am choosing to accept this tension. Yeah, and honor you in this tension. And isn't the Christian life basically yeah, free, free, new heavens, new Earth. Like God, I'm choosing to glorify you in this already. Not yet, I'm choosing to glorify you in the midst of whatever He has allowed us to suffer with.

00:35:19
Speaker 1: It's really interesting, you say, I mean, when I look at the New Testament and I see the master slave dynamics that are pointed there, and I know slavery isn't exactly the same as what we're used to in America and all that kind of good stuff. But there's no point in history that being a bond servant was actually the ideal position. But what is Paul talking about when he deals with these things. He's saying, right, just own it. You can minister, you can have a ministry. You can glorify God in this moment. You don't have to get out of this situation in order to glorify God in order to be faithful. And you can live as a bond servant and be faithful to Christ both at the same time, and you can do that in unique ways. It seems like there's a lesson there for us when we're struggling with something like gender, When we sit back and say, yeah, there's this real deep tension.

00:36:07
Speaker 3: Maybe it's not way. We're not in the ideal situation.

00:36:09
Speaker 1: Probably none of us are no, But at the same time, there's that extra focus and it just feels like there's you know, the way you describe marriage I think is so beautiful. It just feels like the way we could talk about gender is very similar. Even if you're experiencing that tension between sex and gender, there's a disconnect. It's like, well, you don't have to change that in order to glorify God.

00:36:34
Speaker 2: Yes, And even in living in that tension, Like I'm just telling you my friends who wrestle in this space, I'm just so in awe of their faithful Yeah, suffering and glorifying God and joy and it's not all just like everything's terrible, Like I like, aren't you blessed when you watch someone who's suffering? Well, yeah, it's just taps the spirit and I says, looking for Jesus. It's such a beautiful christ like reflection to say this is not ideal got them to glorify and honor you in the midst of it. Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

00:37:14
Speaker 1: Well, let's dive into that sort of third leg at this point, the spiritual abuse aspect or the sexual abuse aspect.

00:37:21
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, not sexual abuse.

00:37:22
Speaker 1: The sexual abuse aspect talk a little bit about that, because I think this is a really crucial aspect, not only from the perspective of kids you might get sexually abused, but also of how sexual abuse is sort of becoming more rampant in our culture.

00:37:38
Speaker 2: I know it's too florable. So at least one out of four of our daughters will experience childhood sexual abuse before the eighteen and at least one out of ten I've read like one out of five boys we'll experience it. And you know, it's something no one wants to talk about or think about. But I am again after writing this book and doing all the study and gender and I know everyone's like, ah, my word, LGBTQ stuff. We're all freaking out. I walked away from writing this book and doing all the research the most concerned about pornography and specifically how much it is growing younger and it's leading to the abuse of children. And this is only increased since COVID, and it's only increasing now with AI and live streamed abuse that's happening in third world countries. It's deplorable. It feels almost inevitable, like our kids are going to get hurt. But I don't declare that over anyone, But it feels like it's just rampant.

00:38:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it is. Statistically it is, right, how do you?

00:38:57
Speaker 1: I mean, there's the inevitable question of how do you deal with someone who's been sexually abused? And I think even more, maybe more crucial, is how do we proactively address this as parents such that we can help our kids avoid both. Maybe being sexually abused isn't avoidable, right, maybe we can help them avoid sexually abusing others. Yeah, yeah, I think pornography is a form of sexual abuse that we don't often recognize as such.

00:39:29
Speaker 3: And so how do we think this through with our kids?

00:39:33
Speaker 2: Yeah? So from a young age, top way to prevent childhood sexual abuse is teach your kid biological body parts. That seems countertwited, like what are you talking about teaching your kids not nicknames for private parts, but the names of them. I don't know if I want to get an e on your podcast, but thank you every body part that you could say, and it doesn't if you don't know how to say it with confidence. Just practice and as you're washing your baby you have a good elbow and knee and good private parts, say it out loud as they're getting older, to not be shamed, to not laugh, to not make fun of them, but to honor them as special. We do not cover up private parts because they're bad. We cover them up because we honor them as special. Because they're the only parts of their body that can produce a mago day life. So we want to honor them. So, oh, that's why we shut the door. So from a very young age, why it is teaching about private parts, anatomical names, biological names for private parts, because teaches your kid that you're not ashamed of them. They don't need to hide them, they can talk about them. These are not things that we're scared of. Also teaches your kids if someone's trying to prey on them, to groom them, to try and hurt them, which the majority of predation happens by someone or kids know, or an acquaintance or someone at church, different daycares, but usually it's a relative or family friend or neighbor. There's a lot of peer on peer abuse as well, and at recess happening right now it's increasing. But your kids no private part names. That's going to signal to a potential groomer, who often use nicknames for private parts. It's going to signal to them that they have parents who are teaching them, they have involved parents. And then also if your kid comes home and they're saying some strange names for their private parts, you're gonna be like, what in the world, why are they saying this? And so it's going to signal to you that maybe something's going on. Also, if God forbid, something happens to our kids, if they have specific names for even different parts of their private parts, that is going to help police, help them to get to say exactly what happened to them without it being like a nickname. So that's the number one way to prevent childo sexual abuse. Also, having family rules to give a list in the book, like start from very young, and I say it with joy, I don't say it with fear. I'm like, all right, we don't ask to see, don't ask to touch, don't show or play with other people's private parts, or show anyone our own. We have family rules. When friends are over, we always keep doors open. I know, isn't moms super annoying. We just always keep doors open because a lot of things happen in play. I don't care if I'm the annoying, mom, I am always going to be saying that with joy inconsistency. We don't ask to see or touch or show our own private parts. We always keep doors open, we shut doors when we go to the bathroom. And this is just because we honor there's a lot of shame talk in the eighties and nineties. That's a shame. It's not shame. This is honoring private parts for the value that they are. So that's a big thing. So teach private parts have family rules. And the third thing is treat the internet like you are dropping your kids off downtown New York City in the middle of the night. Yeah, you would never do that, So our kids they know. I'm like, yeah, you know what, the world is kind of a sketchy place, and there's certain time that we need to be really extra careful. Do you know is a very dangerous place. The internet, And I don't freak them out. We're not doing seventeen paragraphs on that. But in our home the tone is we're sus of the internet. We're not like overjoyed. And so that takes me as a mom to not be addicted to my phone and me loving the internet. So I want my kids when they have more access to tread cautiously as I would want them to tread cautiously in the middle of New York City in the middle of the night. So I'm going to have guardrails, I'm going to have, you know, be able to see what they're doing. But we need to overprotect online and then allow our kids free play where it's safe. But then having those family rules. Teaching anatomical body parts, I mean, cautious online and teaching our kids caution is a good beginning to preventing childhood sexual abuse, would.

00:43:46
Speaker 3: You say too. I mean one of the experiences I've had.

00:43:49
Speaker 1: We live on the Illinois side of Saint Louis, and so when we drive into Saint Louis, we take a road and we and we drive by what's called Strip Strip Club Row all the time. One of the unfortunate parts is one of the clubs is named the same as my daughter, right, so you know, and so it was very noticeable when she was even.

00:44:10
Speaker 3: Young, and it's like, well, what goes on there?

00:44:14
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:44:15
Speaker 3: What I have found to be at least partially helpful is just pointing out how evil these places are.

00:44:23
Speaker 1: One of the digital billboards that they put up on one of these clubs says school.

00:44:29
Speaker 3: Owns got you down.

00:44:31
Speaker 1: We're hiring wow and just having a conversation with my kids about Look, just I want you to think about all the ways that makes that sign makes sense. Yeah, right, These these young girls are in now financial trouble. They're feeling this pressure and this establishment is trying to take advantage of that to get them to take their clothes off in front of men's they can earn money to pay off the school debt.

00:45:03
Speaker 3: That's how it makes sense. It's not a laughable sign.

00:45:06
Speaker 1: It's real, like, that's really happening to real people, and it's despicable. And so we've tried as we you know, it's hard to avoid anymore. Right, it's not just the Internet, it's all this stuff that you drive by, that you see on a daily basis. We've tried to sort of highlight this as Look, there is such a thing as systemic sin. The world is not as it should be. It's broken. Don't participate in the brokenness, right, Redeem the brokenness. Be different than the brokenness. Not about fixing the world, but yeah, push back the darkness. That's similar language. Do you see that as sort of a viable helpful strategy. Just is it more about clear conversation and like openness about what you're seeing as opposed to hiding it away.

00:45:58
Speaker 2: I am a fan of parents shaping the gospel narrative in their home and then also sins effect on the world through beautiful everyday conversations like that it. You know, there's one study I was reading about how sex talks go the best and even how like parents parent the best in a way that cultivates relationship with their kids and the kids end up like following the rules the best. Now there's authoritarian parenting that's top down, You're gonna do what I say and here's the rules, and up not in a great relationship. Kids might follow the rules in your home, probably not out. Then there's permissive parenting. They have good relationship back and forth, but when parents say the rules, it's like very squishy, we have a hard time like laying it down. Ideal parenting that promotes the best relationship between parents and kids and kids end up following the rules more is authoritative parenting. Those are parents they have an open conversation. They don't just explain the rules, explain the why behind the rules, and kids can talk about it. There's dialogue, and that even if the parent is like, Okay, well, this is still what we're going to do. The fact that there's dialogue actually helps kids to follow the rules for longer. It actually promotes parental conversation and relationship better between parent and kids when they understand the why and there's back and forth, even if the rules are still the rules. So what I hear you modeling, which is just I mean, that's deuteronomy right like in your going let's talk about this, and you go wake up and go to bed. So I love that. It's like you're like, here's the beauty, here's the aberration, and what I would add and what I hear just naturally and what you're saying is a non anxious presentation of the beauty of God's world and the distortions we see around us. Kids have mirrors, so they're gonna pick up. If you're anxious, you're like, oh my gosh, we're going through strip row. I'm having a panic attack, even if you are. But for you to say the beauty, the why, to have these conversations and to be a non anxious presence for your kids, you are modeling in so many ways, like, yeah, I guess what we do live in a broken world, and this is how our family approaches it. We say a strong noe, but here's why, beautiful.

00:48:29
Speaker 3: Well, this is good. We're running close to times. So I want to kind of ask you last question.

00:48:33
Speaker 1: I ask a lot of my guests, and that is just this And I think if you could tailor it to kids, that would be fantastic. But sure, what do you think the church needs to be doing today that it's not doing to really help kids grow into disciples of Jesus Christ.

00:48:49
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, if if one legacy from this work that I'm doing is parents are preaching the true beautiful Gospel purpose of their lives to their kids and their home, and that the purpose is not marriage. A little that's good, and that shows us the picture of eternal marriage. Marriage and single it shows the picture of eternal marriage. Great. Yeah, but if we actually make the first thing, the first thing that are calling our purpose our mission is to advance God's rule and reign until the Kingdom of God is on earth as it is in heaven, to God's glory and our good like works. How many how many LGBTQ people have I talked to that when they discovered their same sex attractions, they thought their life was over because they thought their purpose was to get married and make Christian babies and tithe and die. What if that didn't happen anymore? Yeah, what if when they found it they're like, oh, great, this is my version of sexual brokenness. I can surrender to Jesus. That'd be amazing. Yeah, can begin to move the needle to really remember Jesus was our true purpose. I think, I mean, we did we do some beautiful work to advance God's kingdom and maybe prevent some some people saying goodbye to Jesus when really they didn't need to.

00:50:19
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful answer. I really appreciate that, and really appreciated your book. I thought this was a fantastic book. Again as somebody who's raised kids and sort of had to fumble through for you know, my older kids sixteen year old, but we have a four year old now and that we just adopted, and so these are matters that are actually pretty on my mind.

00:50:45
Speaker 3: You know, how do we do this, how do we do this well?

00:50:48
Speaker 1: And what does this look like in an age that has pretty significant changes and challenges. Right, it's not the same world that my son who's twenty grew up in. Right, it's a very different way world and so very much appreciated this book. I just encourage listeners, if you're interested in all of these topics, pick up Raising Wise Kids in a Sexually Broken World by Laurie and Matt Kreeg. It's fantastic, you'll love it. I'm going to put the link in the show description. IVP gives us twenty percent discount on books if you order it off the IVP website. So and encourage you to go there. And then Laurie, is there other places where they can find your work? More resources for this kind of thing? Do you want to give another website?

00:51:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you go to Center Forfaith dot com, we've got tons of resources, especially if you're a pastor or parent, ministry leader of any kind. We have a lot of free resources there for you, as well as videos, curriculums. It's a ton we're doing there, and I'm always trying to do like ninety seconds. If you only got ninety seconds, just find me on Instagram trying to do little videos to help us with a little bit of time.

00:51:52
Speaker 3: We have very good.

00:51:54
Speaker 1: Well, we'll put that link in the show notes as well. So I just encourage you to take a look at everything that Lori and Matt have available and definitely check out the book. Thanks so much, Laurier for being here. I really appreciate having you on.

00:52:08
Speaker 2: It was a real joy to be with you.

00:52:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, everybody, thanks for sticking with us, and we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian Take Care. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.