Why Are My Kids Going Woke and What Can I Do?

Why Some Children Adopt Woke Identity

Morning everyone for those who are watching. I wanted to give you a little taste of what I've been doing over the past two weeks Before I get into the topic today for the podcast. So this is the house that I own in upstate New York and got it five years ago and now I haven't lived in it for four years so there's a lot of repairs and restoration things that need to be done so in addition to to all the other stuff the Documentary filmmaking and the podcast.

This is what I've been working on. This is a second full-time job. So I feel like I've two and a half full-time jobs, but here's here's the floor, right? So we put in a new subfloor we leveled it as much as we could and that's leveling compound you see there and Today I get to put on some vinyl finally.

It took about a week just to rip out all the various sub floors and floors that have been laid down since. This was built or at least the addition was put on I think it was built in 1920 I'm not sure when the addition came on here.

Here's the pile of debris from. Much of that some of it's already been hauled away. So anyway, that's that's what I've been working on. During the day and then sometimes in the morning or at night. I try to do the podcast stuff and Hopefully we'll be able to move in and at the end of the month with everything that needs to be done.

That is essential having been done and then and then that's when actually the book comes out. I don't have a release date yet. But I was told that it should be pretty soon like within the next month so Whenever I have that I'll get that to you and I know by October the middle of October I need to have some print copies myself.

So Christianity and social justice religions in conflict is coming out. I'm excited about it I think it's gonna help you a lot and At least understand what we're going through and that's the point of this video by the way is to help understand.

But then also hopefully to provide some just practical Advice and and if anything, it's food for thought for for those who are interested in the topic so the topic is why have my Sons daughters nephews nieces grandchildren.

Why have they gone awoke? Why are they social justice activists when they weren't before, you know, you look back to the elementary school years the high school years. They weren't woke and then all of a sudden they go to college and they come back after two semesters and the place they came from and their family and their country, you know, it's all bad and Everything needs to change.

So why is that and what can be done about it? That's a question a lot of parents have they have older children and younger children, how can we avoid what essentially happened with the older children.

Identity, Family, and Religious Formation

So I want to say before I get into this and and number two things one is I I don't I can't give you like a full Account for all of this or advice that's gonna basically apply to every situation I can just tell you the trends that I see and some of the things that seem to Have prevented it in my own life and in the lives of others and and I I definitely do see a difference between the people who?

Who I know who kind of went woke and the people who didn't and I've been watching this for years and and There's there's a progression. That's very concerning. I mean it especially for like people from good conservative Christian households.

They tend to Adopt what they think is a more authentic version of Christianity unlike their parents version, right? That's you know, their parents and their grandparents and their great-grandparents.

They were all involved in a horrible colonialist or Racist or whatever version oppressive version of Christianity and they're gonna be different and some of them stay there for a little while. But often that's just an off-ramp and I've seen this over and over it's an off-ramp for just rejecting Christianity or Pretty soon.

They have a version of Christianity that doesn't resemble anything Orthodox that actually happens pretty quick usually. So so this is concerning from a theological perspective. It's also concerning just from a relational perspective we have co-workers and classmates and friends and Family members and people we care about and now we're kind of divided from them.

And I think some of this is inevitable in some ways. You're you know, the best thing you can do probably in that situation if you have very deeply Different differing opinions on something is to affirm the relationship if you want to keep it as much as you possibly can while disagreeing so I So parents feel like they've lost their kid to a cult sometimes and understandably so that's why I make the case in social Christianity and social justice religions and conflict.

I make the case that social justice is a religion and I have a chapter on that and then I have a chapter on epistemology metaphysics ethics all of that showing that social justice is a completely foreign religion and.

And that's part of the reason I make that point is just to show that you're not dealing with strictly a political movement you're not dealing with something that's just in the The vein of what a hobby would be or some kind of an interest that's secondary.

This is a very primary identity forming thing and And that's why it It roots itself so deeply so I'm gonna I'm gonna give you just a brief overview of One of the main things maybe I'll get into two of them.

But one of the main things that I think contributes to this and. And this is an exhaustive so just know that there's exceptions to this and I want parents to know as well as the other thing I want to say that I Don't want you to take an unnecessary burden of guilt from this video.

I want to provide practical help, but I don't want people to think that I'm Saying that their kid is exactly what I'm about to describe. It may be it may be that your kid is like this and it may be as a result of maybe there was some bad Parenting.

I don't know but it doesn't mean it's all bad parenting. And so I just want everyone to know that up front. But there are some things I think parents can do. To try to prevent this and I think to do a good job in preventing it.

How Narrative and Social Justice Shape Identity

So I'm gonna read for you a post I posted this today, and then maybe I'll expand on it. Maybe as I go. And this is on all my social media accounts, but I realize not everyone reads that so I said this I frequently asked question is how did my son or daughter go woke?

It's understandable to ask this because much like a religious conversion. Someone who's contracted the disease is generally impervious to rational discussion. They become obsessed with exterminating social ills to the point it becomes part of their identity.

Anyone who challenged their chosen identity is then questioning their reason for existence in their own minds. This is why I wrote a chapter on the social justice religion in my forthcoming book Christianity and social justice religions and conflict.

Of course, all people are different, but there is a general pattern among those from otherwise conservative households who go woke. Usually they weren't entirely grounded in an identity of their own whether it be familial regional or religious.

What generally happens is they learn about something they previously did not consider such as the horrible stories of Deprivation and mistreatment during slavery or something similar. Sometimes the stories are true, but usually they're embellished and necessary and Necessary interpretive material is purposely left out or distorted.

Richard Delgado talks about the centrality and importance of narrative for critical race theory and this is why. The emotionally charged stories invoke anger towards certain social classes i .e white people arouse suspicions of being deceived for having not heard them before and Propel the hearer toward activism against people today who they believe are somehow connected to these sins of the past usually in their own Family.

First the stories become a kind of sacred literature that can never be questioned contextualized or minimized. Interestingly the progressive era was filled with stories of deprivation incurred by primarily white people.

Stories such as the true accounts of what took place during Sherman's March or the authorities. Committed against atrocities I should say committed against white settlers on the frontier. Clothed certain classes in the garments of martyrdom and made them the objects of pity.

This did not spark an ideological desire to rip down present systems such as as much. But it did help inspire a kind of romantic zeal and pride in one's white race and against others. Activists of that time literally called for social justice through things like eugenics in Germany of course with media and government help something much more aggressive and similar to today's social justice activism emerged.

Germans were to awaken to the privilege of Jews who bore the brunt of many social ills from the degradation of the family through pornography industry to the national embarrassment of World War one by helping Germany lose by supposedly dodging military service to allegedly rigging the stock market.

Etc. Germans became the grand victims and Jews the grand villains in this narrative. And it all took and all took were some emotional stories repeated over and over. Those not properly grouted in their local communities.

Religion and families bought the ideological nationalism. It became an all-encompassing identity that substituted for these other natural identities by hijacking them or making them obsolete. Of course.

It did not help that the dead churches in Germany primarily went Along with this just as the dead churches of the United States are going along with today's social justice movement. All this is to say that properly grounding your child on Who they are and where they're from is essential in keeping them from going in the same direction.

Prepare them for stories. They may hear whether true or not with a good anthropology. Teach them that it's man's heart that's evil and not the hearts of certain classes over others. Let them know the stories they are to pass down to their children and cherish.

Those will become a guide to them because once they undergo a woke religious conversion is very difficult to make them stop. Step outside of the cult they've joined to consider things from a more objective perspective.

So that's what I wrote on social media and I want to go into a little more detail on some of this. For my own self and I'm speaking for myself and my family and I think many I know one of the reasons we didn't go that way is because I think We were very grounded in a family identity and that's something that you can confer to your children.

I think even if They are not Christians and no child is born a Christian, but even if they're not that. This is something that you can teach them that our house obeys The laws of Jesus. We love Jesus in this house and we try to honor him with what we do and That reflects itself and are the rules of our family.

Our family also has a history. We want you to hear the stories from your grandparents and your aunts and your uncles and Your great-grandparents if they're still alive. We want you to know about the people that even preceded them my family.

Especially the Harris side had a lot of genealogical research. I think that helped. I went to a lot of family reunions. I was very grounded. I think in who I was as a Harris and I think that really really helped in some ways.

I think in addition to that I obviously did become a Christian and I did adopt at a young age the doctrines of Christianity. I knew that it was man's heart. That was evil. I knew that man needed salvation.

I knew it wasn't particular to one class or social location or you know, there were certain advantages and disadvantages and whether evil or good because of someone's Race or ethnicity. I knew that the problem was with man himself.

And so I think that also Helped a great deal and obviously I found a source of identity in Christianity itself a primary source of identity. And in being in Christ and so true conversion obviously has a great effect.

But then in addition to all that I also and and this I think somewhat Can is connected with family identity, but I certainly had my own regional identities I say identities because I was born in California raised in upstate New York had a lot of family in Mississippi.

So, you know I had I felt like I had a home in three different places at the very least. And and to some a lesser extent in some ways I only went to a family reunion there once but I definitely had on my mom's side Ohio I had a lot of family from there.

So I really felt like I loved this country. I Studied history. I loved history. I loved especially military services as you know, a lot of young boys do and I I think I liked to see the differences in regions in in the country that I lived in but I also liked the country and I just developed a love when we would go on vacations.

We were stopping at now I don't know if I would recommend this as much today, but a lot of historical Sites at the time they weren't woke and so this you know, I I heard a lot of narratives about the people who inhabited the place I live and.

And so I was very proud in a good kind of way to be an American and not just an American. But I liked there were the region that my grandfather came from. I liked the region that I grew up in. I like the region I came from so.

Anyway, those three things a tie to the land the people and then a tie to my family and then a tie to. And this is the most important one because if you don't have the other two this one's sufficient in my opinion.

But a a firm identity in In Jesus Christ, I think that's that those are the things that honestly kept me. From going in that direction. And the reason I say kept me is because that's what's fashionable.

There there are a lot of people probably more than we realize who are not woke out of conviction but just because it's the fashionable thing and they want to be liked and if it was popular to run around with white hoods and You know be part of the Klan or something.

They'd probably do that too as as bad as that is to say. But they're they're opportunists and they you know, they're not doing it for reasons of conviction. They're doing it for You know fashionable reasons and to be liked and not to stand out and that kind of thing.

So we all have that tug in our hearts at least to not want to stand out to be to conform to. We we all want to be liked by people, right? So so there's that but then I think when people go truly woke I mean the ones that are actually this is part of their identity.

It's convictional for them. They they may have some of that and that may have even been the thing that kind of jump-started it. But they've adopted it at a deeper level. They've swallowed the pill it's gone down all the way and for them they've rejected a lot of these natural identities that I just talked about and Substituted for them an artificial identity.

They don't feel like they can love their own people or culture without or that I should say they can't love another people or another culture without denigrating their own and I think it's just the opposite.

It's actually in loving the things that are familiar to me that I I've gained an appreciation and a love for the things that aren't as familiar. It starts at home love starts at home and love starts in the household of faith.

That's the one another's man. It's it's the other believers. It starts with loving your neighbor. People that you you know in your daily life the things that are familiar to you before you extend it out so that that's what I think I and I go over this in the book, but I think a lot of social justice activists.

They heard these stories. They they thought man. I haven't heard about that. Or you know, this is just shocking how horrible the story is about a race riot of the past or something why haven't I heard about it and they start to be suspicious of their family of their teachers of everything the world they live in it creates this this this this suspicion and then a resentment sets in and Then they they ditch those identities and a lot of the time it's people who are already struggling with identity to begin with.

They don't know where they fit in. I've seen this often with fundamentalist Christians, by the way they the most aggressive social justice activists come from very strict fundamentalist homes in my From what I've seen and I think the reason for that in my first book social justice goes to church.

I actually explained this I think it's because All they had to do was swap out some rules if you had a legalistic version of Christianity and not saying all fundamentalists or especially theological fundamentalists have that but there there is.

There's an undercurrent of that for sure and many places that would consider themselves fundamentalist. When it's wrong to go to the theater to drink or to play cards or you know. You fill in the blank with whatever rule that's not quite biblical.

But it's you know, it's it's a cultural thing that was formed later on to you know, all of that I think All they do is they swap out those rules. So instead of theater drinking cards it's equity inclusion diversity and that becomes the new law and they are just as hard on themselves and hard on others and judgmental and content condemning and All of that they never lose that.

But they just switch out the law that they're following and in so doing that. They what they're doing is they're rejecting the way that they were brought up. Sometimes I think they feel like Their their parents or their family was so different and they're they're tired of standing out.

I think sometimes like I said, they feel like they've been lied to they've you know, why haven't I known about the deprivations of minorities of the past or or they just accept the narratives they learn at school about how evil their parents are for voting for Trump or something like that but there there's a sense in which they They have to Ditch the identities that they were raised with or the identities their parents have and they have to somehow go out on their own.

And form their own from scratch. That's a lot of stress. It's a lot of angst with that a lot of insecurity with that and you find security by being in a big group you find security by saying oh look at all these other people who they're just like me and It's sad because most of the people that I know who would go down this path.

They're not well, they're very insecure. They'll find identity in You know their career or their their friend group or more likely their their their activism. Which is usually related to those other two things and that becomes who they are.

I'm you know, I'm a superhero I'm a social justice warrior. I'm gonna tell the truth I'm gonna, you know rip this down and put this up and I'm gonna be a revolutionary. So that's becomes their substitute for their friend group becomes a substitute for their family.

Their activist friend group and then their Their career becomes, you know much more to them their religion. Is it's almost like in fact, I remember one one girl. I know it came from a very strict Fundamentalist background.

This is years ago. She posted online. I think this is even before George Floyd if I'm not mistaken that She said that Going to this activist thing. I think it was a me too thing. Was that was her church and she still I think I don't know if she still claims to be a Christian.

But at the time she's like she was claiming to be a Christian, but no churches were good enough. She couldn't go to any church. They're all bad. But her church was going to this activist rally. So, you know, what is that?

What do you call that? Well, it's it's a religion and it's a more than that. It's a new identity she's formed in her in herself and. And and I hate to see the place some of these people go out of just compassion.

I I would try to Steer them away from that and say don't go down this road. Don't go down the road of hating everything that's familiar to you instead embrace those things. Form try to form those natural identities as much as you possibly can and for Christians.

This isn't shouldn't be the hardest thing in the world. We have we have a book we have. We have Jesus Christ. We we already have an identity in him and. No matter what kinds of bad store, you know things stories you hear narratives you hear.

You know that your theology is gonna overcome all those things to get you to think about okay I can't vilify one region or one social location or one people group. I know that problem is in the heart of man and.

And you're gonna you're gonna understand it does not that there's not bad people who exist out there. There are bad groups of people who do bad things. But the deeper question and this is where social justice activists get it wrong.

Is that original sin is not more or less depending on social location and. Someone doesn't have more access to truth because they're from a certain solo social location experience doesn't necessarily mean in living in a certain region that you know, they they're just.

They they're the only ones allowed to talk about the stories of that region or that area or that situation. So, you know, there's kind of Within the narratives that people hear these really sacred writings these narratives that you're not allowed to question that are the Gateways to people becoming woke in my experience.

There's there's kind of implied behind that is this idea that experience is what determines truth? And so there's sort of a postmodern undercurrent to this whole thing. So to wrap it all up because I'm rambling at this point I think this is what parents can do to help their kids.

Practical Ways to Root Children Before College

This is this is Everything that I want to say in one kernel. Teach them who they are by way of being part of a family teach them the unique things about the family teach them about Christianity not just as something that's external to the family but something that the family itself lives by the rules that Jesus laid down the.

That Jesus laid down right not that, you know. Make it clear to them when you when you're adding extra family rules. The this is you know, explain to them the reasons these aren't Jesus's rules necessarily, but we we do this because A B or C.

We do this because we want to honor the Lord and In our in our family, we we don't jump around the house, you know starts young really we eat our broccoli and we don't jump around. Because we care about people and we don't want to disturb them.

I mean, it's one of the things I remember from my early childhood I remember ripping leaves off a tree and my dad being like, well, you know really scaring me a little why would you do that? I'm like, well, I don't know, you know people are precious.

We in that we in the Harris family believe people are precious. So you don't we don't do those things and that whole idea of we we the collective we don't do that in our family I think. Was really helpful.

So that's what I'm trying to get at is the unique things about your family. From Moral, you know direction all the way to the kinds of foods you like or the kinds of hobbies you do, you know. Make sure there's there's a good family identity there.

And it does take time. It does take some sacrifice. Sometimes it takes some money, but Those are important things. It's not just about pursuing individual pleasure, right? It's about having experiences that you can all talk about later in life and things that bind you together.

Okay, so so that's one thing the second thing is Obviously evangelize your children teach them about the Lord teach them about Christian theology start young. Don't shirk that family devotions are important.

I think along this line and then the third thing is civic obligation go to Local memorial services. I remember as a kid Memorial Day we went to a park down the street and sometimes my dad would even give the invocation and there was a war memorial and Lots of people would come out.

I remember even mothers whose sons died in World War two. I mean, that's how long they lived and this is in the 90s. But you know hundreds of people would be out and that the that crowd shrunk every single year now I don't know what it is.

I guess I'll find out next year, but The last time I went Which was probably five or six years ago, it was barely anyone and Something's happening. I don't know what it is. But I think I have an idea.

But I think it's still important take your kids out to to those kinds of things. Give them a sense of place and that gives them a sense of purpose when they have a sense of place of rootedness of Responsibility for their fellow man their neighbor their community when they understand Christian theology.

When they understand What evil is they're not going to be shocked when they hear those stories that are meant to pull their heartstrings and to get them to? Adopt in a narrative that's the jump that made they make from the from the horrible story to here's the narrative That we must use to fix it.

They're not going to go for it. They already know before they get to college. What what the problem the problems with the world what they're caused by and what the solutions are and they're not going to sacrifice their their families their regions their religion to Somehow fight the what's being called social justice, so That's just hopefully some helpful advice.

There's probably a lot more that could be said but I didn't want to go too long and it's already been a little over 25 Minutes and I got to go lay down a floor. So any questions that you have put them in the comment section and maybe I'll try to do some episodes and follow up and And we'll talk more about it, but the other thing I can say is also When it comes out in a few weeks Christianity and social justice religions in conflict you're gonna want to get it because I go into a lot more detail about some of the things that I just talked about and Things that might be confusing now, I think I hope I did a good job explaining them.

So God bless again Hope that was helpful. Bye now.