Help! My Kid is an atheist!!!

In this video, I'm kind of making this because someone asked the question and I think it was a good question. Apparently, someone tagged me on a thread where it was talking about a parent who had a kid who used to believe in God but doesn't believe in God anymore.

And so every time the parent posts something on Facebook or social media, the now atheist son will try and debunk everything that the mom will put on. And so of course, that's very unfortunate. Someone tagged me on this post and asked me what I thought.

Responding to an Unbelieving Family Member

How could we respond to an unsaved family member? How might we do that? And so in this video, I want to share just for a couple minutes my thoughts. I also released a podcast episode on this and I kind of go into a little more detail.

So I'll cover a little bit of what I said there and here, but different format. If you want to listen to it, you can check out the Revealed Apologetics podcast. If you're more visual, then you can watch this video.

So thinking about this, how do we witness to unbelieving family members, whether it's your son, your daughter, or whoever? I think 1 Peter 3, verse 15, is still relevant here, right? Set apart Christ as Lord in your heart, always being ready to give a reason for the hope that's in you, yet doing so with gentleness and respect, okay?

There is a relational aspect to how you might engage this issue, and there's an intellectual aspect in which we would engage this issue, okay? First, let's talk about the relational, okay? I think the advantage of witnessing to family, and there are some disadvantages, so this is not an absolute absolute thing, but I think the advantage is that if this is a kind of a mother-son relationship, hopefully the relationship is such that there is the possibility of kind of engaging in a face-to-face conversation and kind of just sitting down and talking about like what's the person going through, what kind of questions do they have, and kind of deal with it in that kind of personal sphere.

Although I have nothing against debating on social media, I think there's a place for that, okay? I think the best bet for a parent and their son, in this particular context, I think the son's an adult, I don't think the best way to go about that is to engage in debate on the Facebook thread, right?

This is someone you know, so you have kind of a relational connection with the person, so there's kind of an advantage. You're not just talking to a stranger, this is someone you could actually interact with on a more personal and meaningful level, and so I would probably encourage that kind of route, and if the son, who's an atheist, respects the mom, perhaps the mom could ask, hey, when I put something on Facebook, I really don't want to engage in kind of a debate on there.

If you have any questions, why don't we just sit at home and talk about it, or whatever the case may be, talk on the phone or something like that. So I think within that kind of interpersonal relationship, I think that can be a possibility depending on the relationship they have, which again, I don't have the broader context here.

Preparing to Give a Reason for the Hope

So that's kind of the relational aspect. The intellectual aspect, kind of my advice for the mom or a dad that's in this situation, or whoever, the intellectual aspect. 1 Peter 3, verse 15, calls us to always be ready to give a reason, and that requires that we know what the Christian faith is.

We know the content of our faith, and we know why we believe what we believe, and we know why we think that Christianity is true. And so we need to be able to equip ourselves intellectually to be able to give a reason for the hope.

So for the mom, or the dad, or whoever is involved in this situation, really sitting down with their son, or their daughter, or over the phone, or whatever, and really just have a conversation. Hey, what kind of questions do you have?

Write them down, make a list, and be like, hey, these are great points, let me look into these, and then maybe we can continue to talk, right? And so this can be kind of a project that the mom or the dad creates for themselves as they really see the value in being able to answer even their children when there are certain doubts and animosity towards the Christian faith.

So again, we can't just have a kind of a get-out-of-jail-free card experience. Well, what if my son says this, you know, what should I do? Well, whatever you do, it's going to require you to be ready.

You're going to need to study the Word of God, you're going to need to be familiar with what the Word of God teaches, and you're going to have to know the rational foundations for what you believe. And this is especially important if the nature of the objections are intellectual, right?

You have kind of a two-fold kind of issue here. Sometimes people's doubts towards the Christian faith are intellectual, in which requires you to give specific intellectual answers to their objections, and then sometimes the nature of their doubt is emotional.

Sometimes it has nothing to do with intellectual reasons. Maybe there's an emotional issue, the person's going through something that caused them to doubt the Christian faith, and now they're kind of taking a more stronger stance against the Christian perspective.

So you want to feel these things out through meaningful communication, which because they're related, might be a better situation than interacting with each other, you know, online, all right? So again, two things.

There's a relational aspect. Get off Facebook and have the conversation with the person, right? And intellectual, you need to know the content of your faith. You can't defend the faith if you don't know what the faith is.

And so whether you're a parent, whether you're talking to friends, or whatever, as Christians, we need to always be in the Word. We need to always be looking into these things so that we're ready to give a reason for the hope, all right?

The Spiritual Dimension of Doubt and Prayer for Children

Well, that's my advice for this specific situation, and take it for what it's worth. I hope it's helpful, and oh, one more thing. I'm so sorry. There's one more thing. Also, we don't want to forget the spiritual aspect, okay?

We can't forget that as well. As a parent who is engaging with a son or a daughter who they're raising objections to the Christian faith, maybe those objections are very challenging, you have to understand that the nature of conflict between believer and unbeliever is not always intellectual.

It's not merely emotional. There's a very strong spiritual aspect to this, and so I would encourage parents who have unbelieving children, you need to be praying for your children, praying that God uses your words to be effective, to create context in which you can clearly communicate and interact with the person.

And so you don't want to forget that spiritual dimension to this whole thing as well, all right? So I hope this is helpful. Take care, and God bless.