Presup for the Kiddos w/ Eli Ayala & Joel Settecase

Teaching Apologetics to Kids Begins with the Home

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today upon popular request, we're going to be talking about apologetics and kids. All right, now myself and my guest included have engaged in debates with atheists and all sorts of unbelievers.

And so we've heard all the questions and the objections and we've tried our best to formulate sophisticated responses and things like that. We're both within the context of teaching and explaining and things like that.

And sometimes it can look as though it comes very easily. And in many regards it does, in some regards it doesn't. But today when I was, I don't know what I was doing, I was doing something around the house and my son who's four, I was kind of caught up in the business of what I was doing.

My son asks me, dad, who made God? That happened to me. It's not just what people's of the generic, like when an apologist is trying to talk about the importance of having an answer. He literally asked me that question and all of a sudden everything went silent and I looked into the sky and I said, it begins.

And so, yes, you are going to, if you're in apologetics, you're sharing your faith and you're trying to equip yourself to do it in a way that is skillful, biblical and just tactful, there's gonna come a time where you're going to have to give these responses to your children.

And let me tell you, as I said, I've engaged in debate. I'm a teacher. I've taught apologetics to middle school, high school students, college age students, adults. The hardest thing to do is to explain biblical truths to a four-year-old, okay?

My son's like, yeah, well, Jesus is God and Jesus is everywhere. He does, but sometimes he's not because sometimes he has a body. And so God died on the cross. He listed a whole bunch of heresies, but you can't call him heresy, he's just poor.

So how do you explain the hypostatic union to a four-year-old? How do you explain the doctrine of the Trinity and issues of perichoresis and the inner penetration of the persons of the Trinitarian essence?

How do you explain that to a little kid? And better yet, how do you explain the fundamental foundations of the Christian world and life view to a four-year-old? This is very, very difficult for me because I tend to be an analytical thinker and I tend to try my best to be very precise in what I say and I make qualifications here and qualifications there.

It's difficult. And so I have a guest that I'm going to be having on today, Joel Setecase, who is over there at the Think Institute. He kind of does what I do, he conducts interviews and talks about apologetics and theology and things like that.

And I'm gonna have him on to help me help you teach apologetics to your kids in general and how to apply presuppositional apologetic methodology to your kids. Not apply it in the sense like you're doing it on them, but how do you teach them presuppositional principles?

If many of you guys who are aware of a lot of the apologetic literature out there, you'll be aware of that. Within the classical schools of apologetics, there's a lot of material out there to teach children.

I was just speaking with my last guest, my last guest, Seth Bloomsburg in my last episode. And I was talking about the series of books that Dr. William Lane Craig has put out. And it's a children's series where you have these, mother, I think it's Papa Bear and Mother Gooser.

I don't remember the characters, but in the format of a children's book, he's teaching children the cosmological argument, contingency arguments, moral arguments, even throws a little bit of Molinism in there, okay?

So all that to say, it is not impossible to take a lot of these complicated apologetic ideas and teach them to children. And indeed, 1 Peter 3, verse 15 tells us that we are all to set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts and always being ready, always being ready.

That means whether you're old, whether you're younger, we need to be equipping ourselves and our family to be ready to give a reason for the hope that's in them. So I'm really excited about this specific topic.

And I'm really excited about my guest, Joel Sedeckis. So let me just give a kind of an in-depth, in-depth, well, yeah, somewhat of an in-depth introduction to who Joel is, if you don't know who he is.

And then when I invite him on the screen with me here, he can give a little bit of his own background, maybe add some information that I'm going to miss. I'm sure he is a very deep man and there's lots of information that will not be captured by this introduction.

But Joel Sedeckis is a man whose life has been transformed by the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the founder of the Think Institute, a teaching ministry that equips believers to explain, share, and defend the Christian message.

He's a former pastor. Joel has been working in Christian ministry and education since 2009. And he earned his BA in history from Grove City College and his master's in philosophy of religion from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Joel is a speaker, preacher, and public theologian, the host of the Think Institute podcast, the lead teacher of the Think Institute and the lead writer for the Think Update, a worldview evangelism and apologetics publication of the Think Institute.

Joel is also the author of Catechids, the New Covenant Catechism for Little Ones, as well as a number of courses and curricula. And he runs the Christian Culture Builders social media groups on Facebook and MeWe and the Hammer and Anvil Society, the semi-secretive applied theology wing of the Think Institute.

Joel is married to Eliza, I think I got that right. And they live in the Tri-Cities area of Illinois with their four children. He also enjoys pina coladas and long walks on the beach. That's a lot of information there, but hopefully you get a glimpse into the man.

Okay, and without further ado, we will invite the man to share the screen and we'll begin this very, very interesting, fun, and yet very important topic, priests up the kiddos.

Joel Settecase’s Background and Family Life

How's it going, Joel? Hey, man, I'm doing much better for hearing that introduction. Most of which was actually true, most of which.

Most of them, okay. So there's some false information here, okay. Well, the pina coladas thing.

I'm more of a daiquiri man myself. All right, fair enough. But if you hand me a pina colada, I won't turn it down. And you know what, long walks on the beach, that's, now we're talking.

Now we're talking about a good thing. Okay, very good, very good. So we kind of gave kind of a formal introduction, but who are you, Joel? Who is the man, right? If you can give kind of an informal introduction of who you are, how you became a Christian, how'd you get into apologetics?

I know folks enjoy that sort of information. Why don't you share that with us?

Sure, I was raised in a Christian home, and which was a major, major blessing. Both my parents loved the Lord, still love the Lord to this day. And I asked Jesus into my heart, if you're listening via the podcast, you can't see I'm making air quotes right now.

Because you probably recognize some of the errant theology and that idea of asking Jesus into your heart. But as a five-year-old, that's what I knew, and that's what I did. I would say the earlier years of my life were really characterized by the word hidden.

I was the first born in my family and wanted to make a good impression. I wanted people to approve of me. And as I grew, my capacity for sinning grew, but unfortunately, my capacity for resisting sin and fighting sin and putting it to death did not grow.

And so a lot of my life was characterized by the word hidden. I was hiding, to a certain degree, who I was and what I was doing behind the scenes. Although I was a Christian, I felt guilty about my sin.

I didn't have the victory over sin that God would give me later in life. And then when I was in my early 20s, I had a fresh encounter, you might say, with the Lord that I'll spare you some of the details, but I had just gone through a breakup with my girlfriend I'd been with for a year.

And there was this mentor that was working at the place where I was working, and he really reminded me about the unconditional love of God. And this was in the context of talking about my breakup. And we talked about the unconditional love of God, and it was like the Lord just, through this brother's counseling, really helped me see that God's love for me was unconditional, based on Christ, not based on myself.

So although I had been keeping parts of my life hidden, God wanted me to be fully open with him and to accept his free grace openly and fully. And so over that next year, I was really mentored in a lot of ways by another brother who was working at that same place.

And I would say my life since that time, Eli, has really been characterized by the word open. I can really be open about who I am now, open about my relationship with Christ. Will I sometimes be called a hypocrite?

Absolutely, of course, yes, because I don't live up to God's perfect standard. We all fall short in many ways, and I'm the chief example of that. But I've experienced God's grace and his mercy and the rejuvenation of the Holy Spirit in my way, in my life, in a way that I can really only attribute to God.

I know him, I know Jesus, I love him, he loves me. And the cool thing is, after I had that encounter with the Lord Jesus, he gave me another desire of my heart, and I ended up getting back together with my girlfriend and ended up marrying her.

And so that's my wife, Elisa, and together we have four kids. Elisa, not Eliza. That's right, yep, that's right.

It looks like Was that one of the false, that was one of the false things you said. That's right, and you know you made up the pina coladas thing yourself, but I did, that was, I added there.

But Elisa and I now have four kids, so I'm a proud father of four. And throughout the years, God's brought me out of the business world, where I was a financial advisor, and brought me to the realm of Christian education.

I'm a former youth pastor, former associate pastor, but I've got a background in education, background in children's ministry. That was my first ministry gig. So I've spoken, by God's grace, I've spoken at numerous kids' ministries and retreats and events and overnights and all kinds of stuff like that.

And as the father of four kids, and with my experience in ministry, the development of young minds in the biblical worldview and the ability to defend and articulate the biblical worldview and really believe it and to really know God is very, very deep, deeply ingrained in my heart.

It's something that's very personal to me, very important to me. So when you suggested this topic, it really, I was very grateful for that. I love the opportunity to talk about this stuff. It gets me up in the morning, literally, because sometimes my kids do get me up in the morning.

And it keeps me up at night as my wife and I are talking about how to disciple our kids. So it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart and a deep part of who I am.

Why Presuppositional Apologetics Matters for Children

That's awesome. So we were going to talk about, Joel suggested that we talk about something to the effect of something about the transcendental argument and why does the transcendental argument demonstrate the triune God, which is a big question.

We have addressed it on the show in the past. And I was like, well, why don't we do something about teaching presuppositional apologetics to children? He was like, ooh, okay, that's really good. So I could tell right off the bat, this was something that he was passionate about, and I'm glad that he's on here to talk about it.

So four kids, huh?

How old are they? Well, our oldest is nine and then it goes nine, seven, six.

He's not reading the lottery numbers, guys. That's right.

Well, I have, so our first three are, the three of them are exactly all one year, four months and 11 days apart. So the first two are one, are 16 months, 11 days apart. And then the second and third are 16 months and 11 days apart.

So right now, nine, seven, six, and then three. Our baby is three. That's right, she just had a birthday recently.

Well, how on earth? I mean, it looks like you have a bunch of books in the background there, and you can see there are some books in my background here. I would imagine you've read a little bit of a lot of them.

And this is a question I always, I have this kind of private conversation with a bunch of people. I just recently had a conversation with Braxton Hunter of Trinity Radio, who's in the chat now. And I always ask people who do what I do and have kids, and I ask them, well, how do you do it?

How do you find the time? And I've gotten some encouraging answers and some disheartening answers. Some good one guy was just like, listen, you just got to ride the wave, man. There's nothing you could do.

Because it can be challenging. How do you find the time to keep yourself sharp and in the know with respect to theological topics, apologetic topics, while having four, I mean, I have three kids. You have one more than I.

I mean, that's, four kids is a lot. That's a lot of kids, bro.

How do you do it? You know, I've got an amazing wife. I mean, I really have to give credit to Elisa. Elisa homeschools our kids. This is our first full school year homeschooling. And she started doing that before the pandemic, actually about a month before all the lockdowns happened.

Our kids were going to a private Christian school before that. But she is just absolutely incredible. She and I together are missionaries with, well, the Think Institute is the organization that we started, but we started it under the umbrella of crew church movements.

So we're both crew missionaries. And so we really partnered together in this. She handles a lot of the really vital administrative work. And then when she's doing that, I'll take the kids or else my mom, you know, the kid's grandma will take the kids, which we're blessed to live close to her.

But Elisa is just unbelievable. She's just my right arm, man. She really is. And then, you know, I gotta say too, God has just been incredibly gracious. We started the Think Institute about three weeks before my son started, our third born, Lucas went into heart failure in 2019.

And that's a long story. There's a lot that happened before that. And a lot that's happened since, but we were starting this ministry in the context of going back and forth from the hospital, extended stays in the hospital, just a lot of craziness.

And, you know, in times like that, God's grace is just abundant. And he provides through his people. He provides through just strength and perseverance through the Holy Spirit. And so we were really started in the crucible.

And so now, now that that season of life, again, by God's grace is passed, is over to a large extent, he's gotten a heart transplant. I feel like I'm riding on easy street, man. You know, it's just, it's a lot easier right now.

But that doesn't mean it's easy, you know, with a capital E. I look at other guys whose kids are older. You know, there are some men that I really look up to. Their kids are older, they're out of the house, you know, their grandparents.

And the amount of energy they have and the content they're churning out is like, man, it's hard for me not to be envious and covetous of that, you know, I have to repent. Because, oh, what would I do with all that time?

But, you know, that's, I guess that's how it is.

Apologetics Definitions and a Child’s Version

Who's your favorite Christian YouTuber to watch. Who's putting out some good content? You don't have to say this one. But if you have a favorite one.

No, don't worry, I wasn't going to, but no, for those who don't know, Eli has been on my Sons of Thunder show and then with my brother Parker, which was, right? Or did you come? Yeah, you came out with it too.

Yeah, it was both of you guys, yeah. Yeah, and Eli has really helped me out in my own apologetics work and preparation. But I mean, for me, I mean, James White, I love watching The Dividing Line. I know you've had him on your show as well.

I haven't had him on yet, but he just liked one of my posts on Gab. So I feel like I'm one step closer.

To getting Dr. White on the show. James White likes one of your posts, he puts on his sunglasses, that's right. Bucket list, that's right, very good.

So, yeah, I like James White. I listen to, I like Doug Wilson's stuff. The disclaimer with any Christian thinker who's got a big name, you always have to say this, I don't agree with everything that they say.

Yes. Well, it's true, I mean, you know. But I should go without saying, like obviously they're not Jesus, okay? I would hope that anybody who likes my stuff would not feel the need to give that disclaimer, but just so that I don't get too much flack, I don't agree with everything they say, but they do put out a lot of very good content.

So Doug Wilson, James White, there are many others. But yeah.

All right, very good. Well, that's good. I love the kind of that introductory sort of stuff and to see a little bit of the background, what you're listening to. And I'm always looking for new, I mean, I do listen to The Dividing Line, but every now and then someone suggests something new and interesting, and I'm always into jumping into something useful, especially.

You know what? Yeah. Let me give you a recommendation.

Sure. Two actually. So my brother Parker has a show, Parker's Pensies. He mispronounces it intentionally. Okay. Yeah. And that is a very, very intellectually stimulating show. Okay. And then my buddy and co-laborer Rafe Chenery has something called The Christian Optimist.

It's just a podcast now, but he's gonna be transitioning to video soon. And he is, his stuff is very, very good. It's usually a monologue rather than an interview. And it's really at the pastoral level, but The Christian Optimist, I think, he's one of my favorite guys to listen to.

Yeah. Very good.

Well, thank you for that. Well, let's jump right into our topic. So presub for the kiddos. Let's define again, if there are people who are listening for the first time and are interested in just the thumbnail, which suggested apologetics for kids, and maybe you don't know what presuppositional apologetics is, why don't you define for us what presuppositional apologetics is?

And then let's dive into how one might teach this to children, to our kids. So what are some practical examples that we can teach our children to think presuppositionally? So why don't you define the methodology and perhaps we could jump into some application.

Okay.

The Meaning of Apologetics and the Goal of Christian Defense

Yeah, sounds good. So presuppositional apologetics. Well, first of all, apologetics, that word comes from 1 Peter 3 .15. The word is apologia, which refers to a vindication or a reasoned defense that one might give in court.

And the term apologetics has to do with the discipline of vindicating biblical truth or Christian truth claims over against unbiblical thoughts or unbiblical messages. All right, I'm gonna stop you right there.

Go ahead. So a Christian apologetics is the vindication of the Christian perspective, right? So I'm a five-year-old. Daddy, what's apologetics?

Ah, okay. Apologetics is showing why God is true and everyone who says he's not is wrong. Okay, there you go. Thank you, dad.

I'm gonna go back to bed now. All right, yeah, get back to bed. What are you doing? So good. So when I ask you to define certain terms, I want you to give me the official definition and then the kiddo's definition.

Okay, yeah, that'll be fun. We'll see how I do on that. Yeah, because again, this is a very important aspect of communication is we need to learn how to contextualize all of this sort of stuff. So go ahead, I apologize for interrupting.

You can continue with your official apologetics definition and then we'll jump into the application.

So apologetics is the discipline of vindicating Christian truth claims over against doubt, unbelief, unbiblical thought and messaging. And the goal or the content being defended according to 1 Peter 3 .15 is we are defending our hope, the hope that's within us.

And what the Bible teaches in Colossians 1 .27 is that our hope is Christ in us. It says, it refers to it as Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, Jesus Christ is not maybe Lord, not probably Lord. Jesus Christ is definitely Lord.

Jesus is God. Jesus is King. So when we are doing apologetics, when we are vindicating Christian truth or showing that God is true and everyone who says he's not is wrong, what we're doing is explaining and proving, if you will, why God and his word are absolutely true.

So we don't wanna deal with probabilities. We don't wanna deal with just sort of vague claims that could apply to many different religions or systems other than biblical Christianity that God actually teaches in the Bible.

We wanna deal with what God says in the Bible and why it is absolutely, positively, completely, certainly true. And so how do we do that? Well, presuppositional apologetics as opposed to other forms of apologetics has a particular approach.

And I'll just sort of cut right to the method and you can feel free to stop me and ask for more detail. I know that you've dealt with this many, many times in your show, pretty much every episode. But what we do is we want to compare worldviews.

We want to, there's a two-step or a three-step process where what we do is we assume, we take on the unbiblical worldview, the non-Christian worldview for the sake of argument. And we examine it internally.

I like to describe this as a home inspector going down into the basement of the home and looking around at the foundation and revealing that there's no foundation there. There's nothing holding up the house.

And then the way that that works is we're asking questions to determine what the unbeliever believes, what they actually believe. And then we're showing how their beliefs don't line up with each other, how their presuppositions, their foundational beliefs don't line up with the things that they conclude with their conclusions.

Again, getting back to the house metaphor, there's nothing connecting the roof to the ground. The house is just sort of floating there in midair. And we show them this is a problem. The roof's gonna come crashing down on your head if you try to live in this house.

This is not safe. All right, then what we do is we go into the biblical worldview, biblical Christianity, and we examine it. And we look at the foundation and we see that it's strong. We see that it's solid.

We look at the walls and we say, oh, look at these walls. These walls could hold up anything. Any roof that this house wants to hold up, it can do it. It's certainly strong. And the way we do that is we invite the unbeliever to adopt the biblical worldview, again, for the sake of argument.

And we show them it's internally consistent. There are no contradictions there because if there's a contradiction between two of the beliefs of a system, then the system is necessarily false. Contradiction implies falsehood, implies that it's not true.

So do you want me to explain this for a five-year-old? Well, I mean, okay, so

Or do you not like that definition? No, no, that's fine. And I think there's great value in using examples like the foundations of a house. This is something that Van Til did all the time. As a matter of fact, it was something that annoyed a lot of people in that instead of going into some of the rigorous logical details, he would use very homey analogies.

But that is still very useful to teach children. And so that analogy that you use, I think, is good. If people who are kind of in-depth in this apologetic methodology sort of stuff, you might want the more rigorous, logical layout of the argumentation.

But if you're looking for ways to teach your children, I think using these analogies are very important, especially the kind of example that Van Til used with the little girl sitting on her father's lap to reach up and slap him.

But if someone were to say, because you have maybe an 11-year-old kid, like, well, okay, daddy, well, yeah, I think there are some things that my friends believe that I think are kind of weird. They think, I'm just gonna make this up, that the universe popped into existence out of nothing, or the universe just always existed.

Now, dad, I can show how that kind of doesn't make sense, but how do I demonstrate what we believe is true? How would you explain that? I'm 11 years old. I'm kind of on the, a little bit more of the knowledgeable 11-year-old, so I'm not the 11-year-old who's just kind of like, I don't know what's going on.

It's more of the 11-year-old who's asking deep questions and wondering about these things.

Laying the Biblical Foundation for Apologetics at Home

Well, so first of all, I would wanna give my kid credit, pat on the head, pat on the back, little Hershey's kiss or something, because he's recognizing the differences here. He's identified a clash of worldviews.

He's got his biblical worldview specs on, and he's able to discern the difference between what he believes and what his friend believes. And if I could camp there for a second, I wanna just really reiterate the importance of laying down that foundation of, see, rather than really get into the specific arguments that we prepare our kids with, I really wanna talk about the importance of laying down that foundation.

So let me do that real quick, and then I'll come back around to that argument. Is that fine? Okay, so in terms of if someone were to say, yeah, but I don't wanna, my kids, this is why they have teachers.

Like I put my kids in a Christian school. I bring them to Sunday school. Why do I have to teach my kids how to defend their faith? The rationale for teaching your kids apologetics, teaching them to defend why God is true and everyone who says he's not is wrong, is thoroughly biblical.

God made your kids to serve and glorify him. Psalm 103 talks about all creation, worshiping and glorifying God. Many other verses do as well. We all need to learn to know God so that we can serve him the right way.

This is what David instructs his son Solomon in 1 Chronicles 28 .9. So our kids are created to worship God, but they need to learn to know how to do that. They need to learn to know God. And God has commanded fathers and by extension, mothers and parents, fathers and mothers, to bring up our children in the teaching and admonition of the Lord.

Ephesians 6 .4 talks about that. So what this means is we need to prepare our kids to be disciples. We need to prepare our kids to demolish arguments against Christ as 2 Corinthians 10 .5 talks about.

So the biblical rationale for teaching our kids these things is irrefutable. It's in there. Part of that could absolutely be bringing your kids to Sunday school, sending them to Christian school, et cetera, getting a really good homeschooling curriculum.

I think that's all very good. I think it's all very valuable. The important thing though is that we as parents need to really take ownership. So that's why I say if my kid at 11 years old is recognizing, hey, my neighbor friend or whatever, my classmate is a materialist, not using those words necessarily, but believes the universe popped into existence out of nothing.

Hey, great job, son, great job, daughter. You recognize that's not what the Bible teaches. So my first question then is what do we know? Or what does the Bible say about that? I'm always asking my kids that.

Well, what does the Bible teach? What I'm doing, Eli, is I want to know if I've taught them what the Bible teaches. Am I actually, yeah.

Let me just share something real quick, because that's funny. I have a friend who catechizes his kids as well, and they were watching Moana. And in the opening scene of Moana, it says, it's kind of giving the narrative of like the gods, whatever, that created the islands.

And it said, in the beginning, nature. And he just put the movie on pause, and he's like, all right, kids, what's wrong with this statement? And kind of use that as an example to remind them what they were taught with respect to what happened in the beginning according to the Bible.

So I think that's a really good example. Taking pop culture, movies, cartoons that they're watching, and not being preachy and pausing it every two seconds to get a sermon out of it, but being able to integrate these worldview issues.

I mean, this movie is coming from a specific perspective. We as Christians, we don't believe that. How would we respond to this? What does the Bible say? And always bringing people back to, our kids back to the foundations.

I was thinking of Deuteronomy 11, verses 18 through 20, where it says, fix these words of mine, speaking of God's law in your hearts and minds, tie them as reminders on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

Teach them to your children, speaking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up, write them on the doorpost of your houses and on your gates.

There is this great emphasis in scripture upon drilling these foundational truths into our children, into the fabric of our lives so that we remember them and they become useful when we are in a context that we are required to kind of give an answer, to give a reason for the hope that that's in us.

So those are some kind of simple examples that you've just expressed. And just reminding me, my friend said that he did that with his kids while watching Moana. Just gives me an idea of all the different kinds of examples we can use depending on how old your kid is and what you're doing, so.

Doctrine, Devotion, and Defense in Christian Parenting

Well, 100%, and when I think about teaching my kids to defend the faith, I think about it in three, I try to look at it from three different perspectives. As a good Framian, I wanna be tri-perspectival in how I approach this.

Wait, you're a Framian? I thought you were like Vantillian, bro, we're done. I'm just kidding. And there's people, I know there are the presuppositional purists out there saying, ugh, a Framian. Listen, I love John Frame.

Well, I mean, Vantill's great, he just, he has to be interpreted. You know, he's like the Pope. The Pope might speak ex-cathedra and he's infallible, but you know, you gotta have the magisterium to interpret what he says, and that's Frame.

Frame is our magisteria.

Okay, we'll pray for you after this.

No, in all seriousness, the three perspectives that I look at it from, you've got doctrine, so three Ds, let's keep it simple. I'm a former preacher, okay? My wife would say I'm probably still a preacher around the house, but the first D, doctrine, so that's catechizing.

And I wrote a catechism called Catechids, the New Covenant Catechism for Little Ones. I'm partial to it, I like it. I think it's been helpful for a lot of people, but if you don't like mine, there are other good ones out there.

There's the old school Baptist catechisms. Of course, there's the Westminster Shorter Catechism. There's a ton of good catechisms out there. You could take mine and take the parts you didn't like and develop it into something different, using it as a skeleton.

But there's the doctrine aspect of it. There's the devotion aspect of it. But I wanna teach my kids to actually know Jesus. I was just talking with my brother Parker this afternoon, and he was talking about how he knows Jesus.

Jesus is not a proposition for him. Jesus is a person. How do I know Christianity is true? Well, I know Jesus. I want my kids to have that as well, that personal piety. We talk a lot about, as evangelicals, we talk about a relationship with God.

It's a relationship with Jesus. And sometimes people say it's not a religion. It is a religion, but it is also a relationship. So I want my kids Not either or. That's right, it's a false dichotomy.

So I want my kids to be reading the Bible. We do family worship with our kids every day, at least five or six times a week, by God's grace. And there's Bible reading, there's prayer, there's discussion, we sing a song most days.

I want them to get in those rhythms of regular daily devotion. I want them to know Jesus. I can't force them to know Jesus. Only the Holy Spirit can bring them into that relationship, but I want to provide a context where they can.

And then the third, so you've got doctrine, you've got devotion, and then the third D is defense. Now, this is what we think of, Eli, when we think about apologetics. And oftentimes people might want to jump right to the defense.

I want to teach my kids apologetics. I want to give them arguments. I'm going to get out the little William Lane Craig book with the goat, no, no, what is it? The goose and the bear, and somehow the goose and the bear are married, and they're kids, but the boys turn out to be bears, and the girls stay geese.

It's this weird. There's some worldview issues in there, I don't know. By the way, I own a couple of them, except for the areas where I would disagree with Dr. Craig, they're pretty cool. I think they explain some stuff pretty well.

Okay, good, good, that's good.

I don't want to throw, I just think that that aspect of it is funny. And obviously, I don't share his approach to apologetics. Brilliant, man, all the disclaimers, everything else. But sometimes we want to jump right to the defense, but the defense has to rest on the doctrine and be situated in a context in which there's devotion happening, where I'm not just defending propositions.

I'm not teaching my kids to win an argument, although I think my kids are pretty smart. I think they can win arguments, not against me or Elisa, but against other kids, sure. But I want them to know Jesus.