TLP 477: Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side | Natasha Crain Interview

Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth Love Parent podcast where we train dads and moms to give God the preeminence.

In their parenting.

I'm your host, A .M. Brewster, and welcome to our 22nd season. This season, we're going to revisit some of our favorite interviews, and today's special guest is special in so many ways. She's not only a four-time author and important female apologist, she's also the first special speaker to appear on the Truth Love Parent podcast five times.

And this interview is the second time she met with us, and the topic was her first book, Keeping Your Kids on God's Side. It is such a fantastic book. I highly recommend you read it because it deals with a desperately important topic from an extremely practical and accessible way.

I won't say any more about it now. You'll hear me gush about the book a bunch later, but I still stand by my claim that this can be a very instrumental book in any parent's arsenal. And speaking of important books, I hope you take the time to check out truthloveparent .com.

Not only do we have a ton of amazing book suggestions, we also have game suggestions, parenting resources, counseling tools, apparel, TLP meetups, and so much more that can equip you to better worship God in your parenting.

I hope you'll check it out and take full advantage of everything you find there, including becoming part of the TLP family. It's free to sign up, and you'll get access to unique parenting resources just for you.

Keeping Your Kids on God's Side and Why Apologetics Matters for Parents

And now let's talk with Natasha Crane about how to keep your kids on God's side. There's no knowledge in all the universe more important than the knowledge of God, and this is why Natasha wrote her first book, Keeping Your Kids on God's Side.

And today, that resource is the topic of our conversation. Welcome back, Natasha. How are you doing today?

Great, how are you doing?

I am doing pretty well. I'm thankful to the Lord that we get a chance to do this. I think so many people don't have the opportunity to share their faith. I think so often they're so used to feeding on God's word that they don't take the time to really share it with other people.

And I wanna encourage everyone to do that, because anytime I have the opportunity to talk with somebody else, or just record one of these podcasts, or deal with the boys in my home, or my own kids, I mean, how much better could you day get when you're doing that type of stuff?

Absolutely.

Now, I know we broached this topic last time, but I think most people imagine that a mom who writes books on apologetics probably graduated from a seminary with her doctorate in Christianese, but that's not you at all.

How did you start writing apologetics for parents?

Well, yes, I definitely don't have my doctorate in Christianese, but I think that's a good thing, hopefully. For those who didn't hear last time, just really briefly, I had started a blog a few years back, and I just wanted to write a general Christian parenting blog.

But over time, as people started coming to my website, I was getting attacked on the truth claims of Christianity, and so it sent me into an intense reading journey where I wanted to learn everything I could about apologetics.

How do we make a case for and defend truth in Christian faith? And then I used that opportunity, once I started understanding some of these things, to then turn around and write about them on my blog so that I could share about these challenges with other Christian parents, and help equip parents with the kinds of things that I was learning about.

So that was kind of how I ventured about apologetics for parents. And then over time, as my readership grew even further when I was writing about these subjects, a publisher reached out to me and said, hey, would you like to talk about writing books for parents that equips them in these same ways?

And the thing is, you're seeing a lot of people would assume that I have a doctorate or a master's degree in these things, and the thing is, there are tons of awesome, amazing apologetics books out there that are written by scholars.

You do have those degrees. But I think that where I see my little place in this world is to show other Christian parents that all of us, every single one of us as a Christian, is called to be able to give good reasons for why we believe what we believe.

First Peter 315, always be prepared. And it doesn't say, if you have the time and the interest and the money to go get an advanced degree in these things, then you should always be prepared. No, it does not say that.

It says that every single one of us as Christians should be. And as parents, we have even more incentive and motivation to live up to that calling, as if the Bible telling us isn't enough. And so I really want to be that person who can reach out to other parents and say, hey, all of us are able to do this.

And when people do ask me, so are you gonna get a master's degree in apologetics, or are you going to school? Well, no, I think that would be wonderful, and I love learning, so I'd actually love but I actually want people to know that this is not required.

It is not necessary for us to be witnesses for our faith, for us to be able to raise our kids with a strong faith. And so as I write today, I write simply as a parent to other parents in that kind of friendly, easy to understand, hopefully voice that tells people, when someone says this, here's what they're saying, and here's how we should respond.

And here is the evidence when people say, why Christianity? So my hope is that it's not about how many letters are behind the name, but it's because the Bible calls us to do it. And I want to be an example, hopefully, to other parents that they can do this.

Even when we're overwhelmed and we're going crazy with the kids and all these things, we can absolutely do it.

So you're just a mom, which, but you're not just a mom, you're a child. Yeah, well, you're a child of the King, but the fact of the matter is, I think so many of us allow the fact that I'm just a dad or I'm just a mom to keep us from believing that we can do exactly what it is you're talking about.

We feel like we have to leave this type of stuff up to the quote unquote professionals, when the reality is, like you said, God's called us to be ready to give an answer. So awesome, awesome. And I hope that's an encouragement to all the other just parents out there.

You don't have to be, you don't have to have your doctorate in parenting to make this important. And when it comes to your children and apologetics, and apologetics, again, is your child's ability to systematically argue in defense of biblical doctrines.

You could have written on an encyclopedia full of topics, and I think lots of people have, but you pursued these 40 questions. And you know what, I'm kind of sorry, I forgot to mention the title of your book, Keeping Your Kids on God's Side.

And what's the subtitle to that again?

40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith.

Yes, 40 Conversations. So what made you pursue this concept of these 40 conversations?

Well, it's kind of interesting how that happened because originally when the publisher reached out, I wanted to do a book and highlight 10 and really go into depth on those. But as we started talking more about what would be most helpful to parents sort of as a first book in this area, we looked back to this blog post, actually,.

That I had written.

It was 65 Apologetics Questions Every Christian Parent Should Be Able to Answer.

You're not an overachiever at all.

But that post, it was so interesting to me because when I sat down to write it, I wasn't really thinking too much about this being a highly needed blog post per se. I just thought one day, you know what, I wanna, after everything that I've been challenged by and all the questions I've gotten from people and all the stuff I've learned about, I wanna put in one place what those questions are for the most important ones.

You know, there are lots of other kinds of conversations that people have around faith and Christianity that get really into the weeds. But what are the ones, if I had to summarize them, that parents most need to be able to talk about with their kids, the biggies?

And there were 65 biggies that I came up with. And so I put these into a post. And I was shocked because that post went viral and was shared thousands and thousands of times. And it really opened my eyes to the fact that, you know, it's not just that parents need answers today, they need to know the questions.

Most people don't even know the questions that are being asked because a lot like me, they probably grew up in a Christian home and they went to church their whole life and they love Jesus and they're Christians, but they haven't been really challenged.

And so they might not be aware of what the questions are. And so that kind of, that opened our eyes. And when I was talking with the publisher about, you know, the direction of where the book should go, we were talking about that fact, you know, that maybe it's not so much, you know, here are 10 things to go really deep into, and maybe it's, hey, let's first help parents see what are the big questions today?

Oh, that in and of itself is part of the value. And then beyond that, okay, now let's begin, introductory level answers, let's begin to guide them in how to think about these kinds of questions. So it's not, you know, it's not your in-depth scholarly look at 40 questions, that would be thousands of pages long, right?

But it is a collection of here are the 40 things that are most important today that you should be able to talk to your kids about, and here are about five pages each on the responses. Here's some introductory level answers to get you thinking about them.

Yeah, and I will definitely say what she said, it's, you think, well, 40 things and all this, it could be super in-depth, it is so accessible, it's fantastic, and I really, I pray that all of our audience members today will really follow the links.

I put all the links into the description where you can look at the book and purchase a copy of it. Listen, I don't care if it's digital or it's print, this resource is so helpful. I have completely enjoyed reading the book, and I've already actually been using it with my kids.

Talking to Children About Big Questions Like Evil, Suffering, and the Canaanites

Now, again, some parents, as you're perusing the book, deciding whether or not you wanna use this with your family, you may look at the table of contents, and you might think these concepts are a little too advanced for your little ones.

For example, here are just five of the conversations that, Natasha, you suggest that we should be having with our kids. You say that, you know, we should ask the question, how could a good God allow evil and suffering?

Why would God command the genocide of the Canaanites? I mean, wow, that's a big one. What's the difference between objective and subjective truth? What are the historical facts of the resurrection that nearly every scholar agrees on?

And does the Bible support rape? Now, you make it clear in the book that most of the 40 topics should be discussed with our kids while they're in elementary school. So can you talk a little bit about how and when to start teaching our kids to answer these questions and then give some direction to the parents who might look at the table of contents and go, whoa, that's heavy.

Right, well, you know, in the operative word there, you said most of the 40 topics should be discussed. So I don't want anyone listening to this day, you know, thinking, oh my gosh, she thinks we should be talking to our elementary kids about rape.

Most of the conversations, I think with the exception of that one and maybe a couple more are absolutely appropriate for younger kids. This is a book that is intended to equip parents directly who can then tailor the conversations to their kid's level of understanding.

So whether you have teenagers or you have elementary age kids, it's to the parent to gain the understanding that then you can have in a developmentally appropriate way with your kids. So there are a couple of conversations that I would say, yeah, you know, you're not gonna be talking to your elementary kids about rape.

Outside of that, however, I think so many parents shy away from these big topics because they don't necessarily feel equipped to have those conversations themselves. And so it seems like it would be really overwhelming to suddenly bust out with your first grader, you know, talking about how, why did God command the genocide of the Canaanites?

But that's actually the purpose of my book is that it breaks down these big questions into number one, why does it matter? Why is this such an important thing? So I use a lot of examples and quotes from skeptics and things like that so you can understand that.

But then number two,.

How do we break down the key points of that conversation? So when you really get into it, I think that you see that a lot of these are absolutely appropriate for kids. So take some of the examples that you give, you know, how could a good God allow evil and suffering?

Well, we shouldn't think that that's a big adult conversation. Every small child has noticed that bad things happen. I remember when my daughter was four years old and she, one time at bedtime, I mean, we weren't even talking about anything related to this, but she had just been thinking about it.

And she said, mommy, why doesn't God stop bad people before they do bad things? You know, this isn't a big topic that only adults think about. The smallest kids can see that, okay, God is love, but there are a lot of bad things in the world.

And unfortunately, some kids experience those bad things firsthand.

And that happened recently in our household. My son, we had these baby chicks and a couple of them have died. And this was, this hit him hard. He's not only an old soul, but he is super sensitive and they died and he was in tears.

And he asked the question, why does God allow this to happen? He was struggling with this loss. And the best thing that I could do was just take him back to what we knew was true about God. So yeah, you're 100 right.

We look at some of these topics and we think, oh, this might be too big for our kids, but it's not. You know, there is no children's version of the Bible. You know, all of the truth there is for them as well.

No, that's exactly right. And I think on the, you know, the question of evil and suffering, that's one that gets to the heart of what, you know, so many of us have questions about. This is not, you know, a simple thing, but to give you an example of how you can take a big concept like that and even talk to your kids about it, the book that I, in the book, the answer that I give, it's kind of the traditional answer if you studied apologetics, is that God created humans with free will.

Because if he wanted to have a true relationship with us, he, and he did not give us free will to choose to love or choose good versus choose bad, then he would have created robots and robots are not capable of a true love.

So this is something that with my, you know, I think they were five when we started maybe having this conversation. I remember we had sat down for our Bible time that night and I still remember, cause I felt kind of silly doing it, but I'll just tell you about it.

But you know, I walked around the room and I pretended I was a robot and I kind of made these like stiff arm motions and I pretended like I was saying, you know, I love you guys, I love you guys, you know, and I was pretending to be this robot who had been programmed to love them.

And I said, so do you guys feel loved? Like if I was like a robot and I was telling you that, do you think that that robot really loved you? And they said, no, of course not. Well, then we talked about the fact that, well, God wanted a real relationship with us and so he had to create people to be able to choose that so that it would be a true love, a genuine love, a real love.

And so through that conversation, we talked about the fact that that's called free will. I like to give kids the real word for things and I think that they're absolutely capable of learning these things.

And I said, this is called free will. And the kids have absolutely, you know, since then, like, it's funny cause they'll say things like sometimes like, you know, well, Nate used his free will poorly.

You know, I thought he'd say funny things like that, but you know, they can get these concepts. You know, just to give you another example, cause this is something I'm really passionate about is getting parents to just understand that these aren't huge concepts only appropriate for older teens.

This is something we can be talking about, you know, from the earliest times that we're talking about Christianity with our kids. You said, why would God command the genocide of the Canaanites? Well, you may or may not, as a listener, be aware that this is one of the biggest challenges against the Bible.

That skeptics say that there is no such thing as a loving God who would have said, hey, Israelites, you guys need to be in here and you need to wipe out all the Canaanites. And they say, you know, that's just, somebody the other day said, you know, that's just like Hitler going in and trying to exterminate a people.

So I remember when I was a kid and I talk about this in the book also, we used to, you know, Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. Did you guys sing that? You know, it's Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho, and we all came tumbling down, right?

And all the kids get excited and we all fall to the ground with my favorite songs. But, you know, if you look at that through the eyes of how non-believers see it, that's really kind of disturbing scene, right?

It's like we're celebrating and laughing about what was the first of many battles where a very wicked people, they were gonna be wiped out. And, you know, why? Why would God have commanded that? And so I don't like to take light of those things.

And so, you know, I've talked to my kids about that and I've pressed them and said, okay, so let's talk about Jericho. You guys were learning about Jericho at church. And of course, if you're learning about Jericho in Sunday school, it means that you're gonna march seven times around something and, you know, build some horns or something like that.

But you usually aren't getting into, okay, where are we in the timeline of biblical history here? You know, we're going into the promised land, but this is gonna be a big battle. Why would God command them to go and kill these people?

That's a big question, but let's talk about it frankly. Let's talk about what happened here and talk about how wicked the Bible says they were and how they were doing these child sacrifices. And this is absolutely something that you can talk about with kids.

And, you know, objective and subjective truth, you mentioned that question. I actually just went and read to you. My kids go to a private Christian school. And so I was able to go and share a kid's apologetics book with them where we talked about objective and subjective truth.

And afterwards, I just gave them little quizzes and I said, okay, you know, what about my favorite color is blue because blue is the best? Is that an objective or subjective truth? And so we kind of went back and forth.

Excuse me, green is the best?

Actually, it's red, but I was just giving blue as an example.

No, it's still green.

We, so we can, you know,.

There's no question that these different challenges, these questions, they can be applied to kids and they should be applied to kids. It's just that as parents, we have to be equipped first to be able to have those conversations.

And then we can start to see the necessity of having them everywhere.

Helping Uninterested Kids Engage with Truth

Yeah, no, and that's true. And as I think back to that conversation I had with my son about the chicks, it was really an amazing conversation. He participated in it. He understood, like you're saying, you know, your kids are, you know, interacting with you, but not every kid is like that.

Recently, we did a series called the four children and we studied the different responses that people have to truth. You know, there's the thorny and there's the rocky hearted children who oftentimes do respond well to certain biblical truths, but not all of them.

And then you have the hardhearted kid who isn't interested in anything spiritual. So what if the kids simply aren't interested in talking about these deeper truths? What do parents do?

That's a really good question. That's something that I get asked a lot, actually, when I speak at churches or conferences, a lot of parents say, my child's just not interested. And I think this is something that I really enjoy answering because I have a background in marketing and my professional background before I started doing this writing and speaking is in marketing.

And I think in marketing, we actually have some answers and just in terms of psychology and how you make something relevant to people. And in marketing, if you wanna get someone's attention, if you want to get their interest in something, there are really three different aspects of that that you should be concerned with.

And I think these are really, really relevant when we're talking about getting kids interested in talking about God. The first thing is how a person's feeling at a given time. A lot of times parents wanna just club their kids over the head with something and maybe their kids had a bad day.

Maybe that's not the time. And then they say, well, my kid's not interested or my kid's just in a bad mood. How someone feels at a given time has a lot to do with how receptive they are.

To hearing anything.

It's not just about the Bible, it's about anything. And you can relate to that, right? You know, when we're in a bad mood, we don't care. We're not feeling well. Yes, so that timing is really, really important.

And so it's important, I think, that we set aside time in the week and I'm always talking about that where it's not just, well, let's, we can fit a family Bible time in. It's okay, every, whatever it is, Sunday night at six o 'clock, we're gonna spend this amount of time and people come to expect that.

And I think that that gets away from trying to push something in when kids are feeling overwhelmed or stressed out about homework, whatever it is. So that's the first thing is just making sure that you're finding space, time space in your home when your kids are not bogged down emotionally.

The second thing, and this is really huge, this is kind of the core of it. People aren't interested in something they don't think is relevant to them. And there are two kinds of relevance. One is intrinsic relevance.

And it sounds like you have a son for whom faith is intrinsically relevant and he really wants to learn about it. And I have a daughter like that also. But not every kid finds it all so relevant and so interesting.

The other kind of relevance then that we have to work with is what marketers call situational relevance. So let me give you an example I'm sure you can relate to. When you hear car ads on the radio and you are not in the market for a car, do you listen to those ads?

Do you care?

Not really.

No, no, not at all. Unless you happen to be a big car fan, then the example's a bad one. But for most people, the average person, you just don't pay attention to it. Let me ask you, if you are suddenly in the market for a car, do you hear those car ads more?

Oh, definitely.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now you really are paying attention because the situation has changed and it's now relevant to you. So the reason that I bring this up in this context is that I don't believe there's anyone anywhere for whom the meaning of life is always irrelevant or that it's always uninteresting.

But we need to find where our kids are in terms of that situational relevance. If a child, for example, is going through a hard time because a friend's dad might have died, that creates a very difficult situation.

Well, I can almost guarantee you that in that particular context, your child will be interested in talking about why do people die? Why do bad things happen to good people? And that kind of opens the door to having more of these conversations.

Or maybe you saw something, there are billboards now that atheist organizations put up that say there is no God or stop believing in your imaginary friend. Well, maybe you pass that on the freeway and that's a good situational kind of context to say, hey, what do you think about that sign?

And maybe your child is really interested in that point. So situational relevance is really the key that marketers, as a prime point of psychology, take advantage of all the time. And I don't mean this in a negative sense of taking advantage of, but I mean it as parents.

We talked about in your last episode about being experts on your kids. Well, as a part of being an expert on your kids, you need to understand and be able to identify here's what's going on in their life and here's what would be relevant to them.

So that's creating that situational relevance. And then the last point, so how they're feeling, creating relevance. And the third one is how prominent faith is in your life. And this is something I see with a lot of people.

When they say, well, my kid's not interested really in having any conversations. Well, what are you doing now? I'll ask them. And they say, well, we go to church on Sundays. Well, that's great. We all do need to be going to church, absolutely.

But there's so much more that we should be doing as parents who are called to write these things on our kids' hearts. And so if all that we're doing is one day a week shuttling them to church, not talking about what they're learning, not applying that at home, yeah, they're not gonna be interested in it because they don't think it's that important to you.

And so prominence and how big a part your own faith plays in the home is a really big part of it. And so sometimes it takes you building up that level of prominence in the home before they become interested.

So interest is a big topic, but I think that there are a lot of things that people can do. And I really believe there's no kid who's not interested at all in any subject related to faith. Because even if they are saying they don't believe in God and they've gone that far, they're still interested in these conversations.

They'll be interested in telling you why they don't believe. So they're always an entryway. The challenge is finding it.

No, it's so true. And I find that every year that when I get new guys into my home, everyone to one degree or another is interested in spiritual things. It's so true. Now, I personally had the opportunity to study these 40 questions and their answers at various points in my life and parenting and in college and whatnot.

Yet, I just, I really loved being reminded of how important these truths are, not just for a seminary student, but for the little ones as well. And what I really like is your writing style. It's so accessible and yet it's also profound.

I think too often you have the profound people are talking in a way that most people just don't resonate with. But then sometimes the people who are talking in a way that you can resonate with aren't as deep as they should be.

And I love that your style, your voice has both of those in it. But I think the best part is how valuable it is. Natasha, I just wanna say thank you for writing it and thank you for sharing your heart with us today.

This is literally invaluable.

Thank you very much for the kind words. I really appreciate it. And that's kind of my goal. Like I was saying at the beginning, if I can just make it feel more accessible for parents so that they don't have to think that they need some big degree in order to be able to defend their faith and build a case for Christianity, then I have really reached my own goals of what I can do to contribute to God's kingdom.

Upcoming Follow-Up Book on God and Jesus

Now, I heard that you have a new book coming out in October, which by the way, we totally have to sit down and talk about when it comes out. But what can you tell us about that now?

Yeah, so I have a new book that's gonna start a series of books actually. And it's basically the follow-up to Keeping Your Kids on God's Side. So, Keeping Your Kids on God's Side has five different sections in it with eight questions each.

There's a section on God, one on truth and worldviews, one on Jesus, one on the Bible, and one on science. So it's kind of a, if you think of it in terms of a college course, it would be like that 101, Christian Apologetics 101 and the survey course.

So now, a lot of parents asked after reading the first book, they said, okay, so where next? And so I've pointed them to lots of awesome books that are out there and everything, but a lot of people still said, but we like that parent-to-parent style thing and they wanted to read more in that style.

And so that's kind of what was the catalyst for these books. The first one is called Talking With Kids About God, 30 Conversations Every Christian Parent Must Have. And basically, this is the 201 version.

If the first one was the 101, this is the 201. This is going deeper into 30 conversations just about God, specifically on the topic of God. And then in the following year, the next one will be Talking With Your Kids About Jesus.

And that one will go 30 conversations deeper just about Jesus. And those are the two that are already on the books with Publisher. And then if everything goes well, we'll keep going in the series of Talking With Your Kids About, I don't know what the next ones will be, but it could be about the Bible and then Talking With Your Kids About the Church.

They did kind of have that box set that you can have as a parent and say, this is my library of helping me get equipped on these topics. So I'm really excited about it. Every single chapter has a conversation guide.

That's something that a lot of people wanted after I wrote the first book. They wanted specific questions that they could use to start off the conversations. And so every single chapter in this book has a step-by-step conversation guide with parent tips on how to talk about it, which I think people also find very valuable.

And it's also, the chapters are sequenced in a curriculum-oriented way. So they build on each other. And so it could easily be used in a small group setting in private schools and Sunday schools, at home for homeschools, lots of different ways to use it as a curriculum.

So I'm really excited about it.

That is awesome. Thank you so much for joining us again today. Like I said, I thoroughly enjoyed your book and I've already recommended it to a number of friends. I look forward to your new book coming out this fall and then hearing more from you next time when we tackle questions from the audience.

Sounds great. Thanks so much.

I hope this conversation was encouraging for you. And I want you to click the link in the description so that you can be taken to the episode page. There you will find an Amazon link that will allow you to purchase the book.

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The other TLP counselors and I would love to speak God's truth and God's love to help you better worship Him during this trying time. And I hope you'll join us next time as we once again open God's word to discover how to parent our children for life and godliness.

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