March 4, 2021 Show with A. M. Brewster on “Cancel Culture & Your Kids”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday. On this fourth day of March 2021, and I'm so thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest.

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His name is A .M. Brewster, a .k .a. Aaron Brewster, and you've probably been hearing the ads that Aaron has been running on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio every day.

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He, for over ten years, has served God and His people in various capacities, including husband, father, homeschooling parent, preacher, biblical counselor, president of a non -profit that serves

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Christian families, a conference speaker, a camp director, Christian school administrator, director of a boarding home for at -risk teens, podcaster, author, and host of Truth, Love, Parent, will address cancel culture and your kids.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, A .M. Brewster. I was really looking forward to getting back on this show with you.

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I'm super excited. Thanks for the invitation. And let me give our email address right away to our listeners in the event that they have a question on cancel culture.

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My email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. So before we continue with the main theme at hand, cancel culture and your kids, tell us about Truth, Love, Parent.

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I'd love to. So Truth, Love, Parent started in 2016 as a podcast.

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I was working at a boys' home, Victory Academy for Boys in northern Wisconsin, and I was creating a parent program for the parents whose boys were in the home with me.

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And I realized very quickly that the information we were putting together from the Bible for those parents had value for more than just those parents.

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Long story short, I thought, hey, I've never even listened to a podcast before. How about I make one?

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And I did just that. I started putting the information out there in podcast form, and the

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Lord blessed its spread. People responded to it. And now, you know, almost five years later now, we are working on getting our 501c3 status and being a full non -profit ministry where we are doing three things primarily.

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Number one, we're creating free parenting resources. And then number two, one of those resources is the podcast,

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Truth, Love, Parent, with A .M. Brewster. But we also started a second podcast called

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The Celebration of God, which Celebration of God is a discipleship experience that is designed specifically for parents and their children, but it goes far beyond just parenting.

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It's discipleship for all of God's people, and so the Celebration of God podcast was started. And then the third thing that we do is, in addition to speaking and so on and so forth, we also counsel.

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We're biblical counselors, and so we meet with pastors, and we meet with parents, and we meet with anyone who works with children and help to equip them to do that better and to help people with their family struggles.

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And if anybody wants more information about Truth, Love, Parent, go to TruthLoveParent .com.

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TruthLoveParent .com. Well, this is something, this theme that we are addressing today is something that has been coming up a lot lately, every day in the media, and that is something known as cancel culture.

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If you could please, for those of our listeners who may be living in a cave somewhere, and they only listen to Iron Trump and Zion Radio, let them know about exactly what cancel culture is.

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I'd love to. Not because I think cancel culture is an amazing thing, but because it's very important that we have a unified definition, and that definition to be

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God's definition. Man, cancel culture, the phrase itself is a new thing, but of course, people have been doing it ever since Adam blamed

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Eve, and also God, way back in Genesis, for his sin. Cain, we could say, canceled

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Abel by murdering him. So canceling has been going on, this idea of canceling has been going on for quite some time.

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And also, it's important to acknowledge that cancel culture has participants on both sides of the issue, and there are various practices included in the process.

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However, there does seem to be some agreement on the root purpose of cancel culture. And if I could sum it up this way,

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I'd say that cancel culture is the act of punishing people for their beliefs. Punishing people for their beliefs.

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Now, that's a general definition, and I think some people might be like, well, I don't know.

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They might have some questions, and admittedly, I'm about to cite Wikipedia.

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I know it's not a scholarly source, but I've looked up lots of definitions for cancel culture, and I really liked theirs.

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Theirs was fantastic. Quote, a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of the social or professional circles.

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This can be online, on social media, in the real world, or both. Unquote. That was such Wikipedia's definition for the cancel culture, and it involves this idea of ostracism.

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And yeah, it may involve simply shaming an individual in person or online. It may involve this group ostracism idea.

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There are a growing number of people losing their jobs over this as a result of cancel culture, and sometimes we're even seeing that violence is involved.

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Now, some people listening may say, well, no one's actually being canceled for their beliefs,

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Aaron. They're being canceled for their words and their actions, what they've done, not really what they believe. And in those situations,

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I would just point out to someone who's thinking that, that the premise really is very faulty with their understanding of beliefs, because what we do and what we say and what we feel and what we think are all consequences of our beliefs.

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So yes, to cancel someone for their behavior, to cancel them for what they said, is in fact to punish them for their beliefs.

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Other people may not like this particular definition I've given because of the word punishment that I used, okay?

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Somebody punishing somebody else for their beliefs, but Merriam -Webster defines punishment as suffering, pain, or loss that serves as retribution.

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So retribution is exactly what cancel culture want. They want to hurt you or hurt someone else for what you have done.

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And then I think the last, one of the last objections a person may have to my basic definition I've given is that, you know, everyone, every authority figure on the planet is involved in cancel culture if that's what cancel culture is.

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This would include police officers giving a ticket to a speeder, a parent grounding a disobedient child, and it could even be said that punishing people for their beliefs is true of God.

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Now, I would completely agree with that observation based off of the definition that I've given, but I want to make my definition a little bit more specific, okay?

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The real problem with cancel culture is not the act of ostracizing or condemning or firing someone because of what they said or did.

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This can be in real life or online, it doesn't matter. That's not the real problem. Cancel culture best refers to people, whether those people are in a position of authority or not, whose punishment does not fit the crime or who is punishing a behavior that they have no right to punish, okay?

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So I would say that a really good way to sum up this definition of cancel culture would be to say that it involves illegitimate authority, unrighteous punishment, or both.

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And where we would distinguish liberalism from leftism would very much involve this subject today, wouldn't it?

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A historic liberal, the liberals that have existed for centuries, and always in some way or another at odds with those who identify ourselves as conservatives, although liberals have always been at odds with us, there are some things that we have always shared in common and freedom of speech is one of them and other things, but a true liberal would be very upset and should be, those that are liberals today that are true liberals, they should be just as if not more upset as the conservatives are against this leftist totalitarian tactic known as cancel culture, should they not?

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I would agree completely with that. I have many friends who are on both sides of the political spectrum, both conservative and liberal, and I'm finding that the ones who would not consider themselves to be leftist do have a problem.

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For example, this whole cancelling of Dr. Seuss, you know, I saw it on Mulberry Street, you know, they refer to that in that particular book, they make a statement about a man of Asian descent, and it seems cliche to these people, and so okay, we have to get rid of the books.

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We're not burning them necessarily, but we're not selling them anymore either, we're discontinuing them, and I've had some liberal friends who are just astonished that we're going so far as to say you can't read the

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Mulberry Street from Dr. Seuss anymore. Yeah, and Dr.

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Seuss was actually a liberal, and he was a champion for racial equality, not the equity that we are hearing about today, but the equality of all humans regardless of their ethnicity, their nationality, the color of their skin, and he actually had at least one of his books specifically on that whole topic, one of his children's books,

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The Sneetches. I'm not sure if that was the title of the book, but the

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Sneetches were the main characters in the book. Yeah, exactly. That book basically said it didn't matter if you had a star on your belly or not, we are all

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Sneetches, and we're all in this together, and obviously it doesn't have

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Bible verses in it, but by God's common grace, it is filled with Biblical truth, and we don't treat a person a certain way simply because of the way that they look.

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And that was, I mean, even Yertle the Turtle, oftentimes people will say was an attack against totalitarian governments and people like Hitler who would treat people in terrible ways based off of their ethnicity.

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So yeah, Dr. Seuss was this fantastic guy who wrote fantastic children's literature, and I mean, forget children's literature,

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I think I still have one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish memorized, and yet because he wrote a line in a book about an

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Asian man with chopsticks, all of a sudden we're deciding that we must stop.

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Universal Studios has a whole, my family and I, we love going to Universal Studios Park in Orlando, Florida, and they have a whole section dedicated to Dr.

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Seuss, and one of the sections is if I ran a zoo, and it's a bunch of stuff that kids can play on in that section.

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Universal Studios is discussing whether or not they need to tear down that section, because if I ran the zoo, it was one of the books that has recently been canceled, and so you have these whole organizations, these multi -million dollar organizations submitting to this idea of cancel culture because a group of individuals have said this is bad, we must punish it, and everyone else is running to be in line to give part of the whipping.

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Yeah, and one of the classic Dr. Seuss books that has even been used by the pro -life movement is

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Wharton Hears a Who, and a person's a person's no matter how small, and you very small persons will not have to die if you make yourself heard, so come on now, try.

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This has just reached a level of insanity, because you have this elite, this group of people who are declaring that they are creating the dictionary, or the encyclopedia, and we must all follow the definitions that they subscribe to certain things.

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They are the ones who are the arbiters and determiners of what is racism, what is bigotry, what is hate, what is right, and what is wrong.

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This is, it's mind -boggling how insane a lot of this is.

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This is just, and I'm sure there are a lot more historically liberal people out there that are just terrified or paranoid to open their mouths about this, because they recognize that their favorite political party is pushing this nonsense, and many of their

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Hollywood elite celebrity heroes are pushing this, and their folks in the music world are their idols, so they keep their mouths shut and they don't let their voices heard that they know that this is insanity.

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This has really become something that you wouldn't even thought would be realistic maybe three, four, or five years ago.

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I'm not sure I would have thought it would have been realistic two years ago. Yeah, you're right. Honestly. I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous, and the word's not strong enough, but I love the word that God uses in Proverbs 12 .1.

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He says, whoever loves discipline loves knowledge. They like to learn, they like to grow, but of course, as you said, and truthfully apparent, we've been focusing on this now for a couple seasons, the importance of the fact that God's word has to be the foundation for our family vocabularies.

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We have to define terms the way God does, right? But then the second part of this verse says, but he who hates reproof, right, reproof is basically being told that you're wrong, and of course, you know, we need to tell people that they're wrong based off of what

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God says is wrong and what God says is right, but basically here it says that he who hates to be told by God what is right and wrong, this is the

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Bible's word, is stupid. And that's not pejorative, that's not me sitting back here, you know, passing judgment on a group of people.

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God himself is saying that when we hate to bow to the Lord's definition of what is right and what is wrong, we are literally being stupid.

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And the Hebrew word being translated here has the idea of being brutish, of being senseless, and that's exactly what we're seeing in the world today, and you're right, people are afraid.

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Even people who completely disagree with it, because they're seeing that cancel culture is going out for blood, and if you disagree with cancel culture, you can guarantee that you're going to be the next one on the list to be canceled, and who knows, you might lose your job, you might get kicked out of your social circles, you may have your house set on fire, who knows?

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Well, obviously Christian parents, and leaders in the church, need to help prepare children, even small ones, because they are indeed targets of the left, with cancel culture and everything else that they want to push.

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We need to make sure that our children are aware of what's being said out there, so that they have an answer for it, so that they don't become sponges and just immediately soak up everything they're hearing as truth, and I think one of the beauties of classical

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Christian education, I don't know how familiar you are with classical

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Christian education or how much you are involved in supporting it, but one of the things

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I love about it is that they don't keep children isolated from everything that has been said and taught and written about and promoted in secular society, just because they're a

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Christian school, they want the children being educated to hear first, if possible, from Christians what the enemies of Christ and his word are saying, so that they can have a biblical and an intelligent response to that.

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Am I making sense here? Definitely. In fact, I just referenced that same concept,

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I'm in the middle of a series right now called The Biggest Parenting Challenges You Will Ever Face.

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In fact, this series was actually inspired by our last interview that we had talking about parenting challenges, modern parenting challenges, and one of the observations that I made was the fact that some people, in an attempt to guard their children's definition of morality, they will try to keep them separated from every definition of morality that is not their own.

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So, you know, we don't want our kids interacting with any books or movies or music or people who disagree with our morality, lest our kids come to believe that our definition of morality isn't the right one.

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And I pointed out in that particular episode that that, A, is not very smart, and I also pointed out that it doesn't work very well,

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I mean, consider North Korea, they as a country are trying to do that, like, we can keep our people ignorant of Western thoughts, they'll hopefully buy into our concept of morality, but it's not working.

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It's never worked to just try to isolate everyone from reality. In fact, we're told in Proverbs 18 that a person who isolates himself is doing so for the wrong reasons.

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And so, you're right, exposing our children to what's going on, having these conversations so they understand why people are doing what they're doing on both sides, and then helping them see how

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God would have them navigate these issues is the way that biblical Christian parents need to approach it.

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And one of the ways that this whole cancel culture is a manifestation of totalitarian leftism and not liberalism is because eventually you're going to have the tiny handful of an elite group, elite in their own minds of course, who even exist after everything else is smoldering in the ashes, because it's a very cannibalistic concept.

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You more and more hear about even those that were considered a part of the left, we could even consider

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Dr. Seuss being a part of that, who have been attempted, there have been attempts to annihilate them from public view, public hearing, and this just keeps progressing.

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There is a hunger, isn't there? There is a hunger on the part of these proud and arrogant and self -righteous elitists to continue to hunt down and dig up things that they can attempt to remove from society that they don't believe fits their world view, am

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I right? Yeah, that's exactly what totalitarianism has to do. They have to totally 100 % be in control and it has to be the smallest group of people possible, that's what despotism is all about.

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And of course, I have to clarify one statement you made, yes, generally speaking that it's true that they have to stamp out everyone and they have to knock everyone down when they do things that they don't like, but the problem is that that's not always the case.

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A perfect example is Judge Kavanaugh, because of something that he supposedly did at a party when in college, the whole

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Me Too movement pretty much grew out of that. People were looking to cancel him everywhere, they had all these hearings, right?

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But a sitting governor in New York who has sexual misconduct accusations coming against him and people of the leftist establishment are sitting back going, yeah, but a lot of those things he said, he wasn't on the job when he said them.

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Well, hold on, he was a sitting governor, whether he was on the clock or not, that's completely different than a guy being held responsible for something that he supposedly did when he was in college.

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And so they're not even consistent with the behaviors that they want to cancel, it really is about canceling people, and that's why they're so inconsistent in how they apply the cancellation, because they will latch on to anything that they can latch on to to say,

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I don't like you and so I'm going to use all of these reasons to cancel you, but when they find out that those exact same reasons apply to people in their camp, they go, oh, that's okay, because this person is a leftist, or this person agrees with our ideology.

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The feminists have been doing this for decades. But just as with Governor Cuomo, there are more and more exceptions on the left coming out of the woodwork who are trying to be consistent.

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Because not long ago, a leftist like Governor Cuomo would hear absolutely no opposition from the left.

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Now you are at least hearing some. And amazingly, many in the left finally acquiesced and came to admit that Margaret Sanger, for instance, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was indeed a racist.

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She was indeed a champion of eugenics who desired to wipe out all the non -white races, originally through sterilization and then later through abortion.

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But even though what you're saying, I believe, is absolutely correct, and it's infuriating and inconsistent, you are starting to hear more and more opposition from the left, from people who are guilty of the things that go against the ideology of the woke movement.

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But in certain circumstances, though, however, obviously, even you and I as conservative

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Christians, we are opposed to women, or anyone else for that matter, being sexually abused, sexually harassed, and on and on we go.

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So it's one of those odd things. Even throughout the history of feminism, there's always been some unlikely unions between leftist feminists or liberal feminists and conservative evangelical

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Christians on things like pornography and so on. And that might not be so much of an issue today, but the feminists used to typically be guaranteed to be opposed to pornography.

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So not everything's monolithic. That's very true.

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Sometimes praise God, logic wins out. That's right. We have to go to our first break right now.

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And as I said before, if anybody wants to join us with a question of your own for AM Brewster on cancel culture and our children, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

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If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous. If your question, if your question is personal and private, we'll be right back with AM Brewster right after these messages.

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So don't go away getting a driver's license, running a cash register, flipping burgers, passing sixth grade.

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Do you know what they all have in common? They all require training assessments and certifications. But do you know what requires no training at all?

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Becoming a parent. My name is AM Brewster. I'm the president of truth, love parents and host of its award winning podcast.

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We are now back with A. M. Brewster, a biblical counselor, and he is also the founder of Truth Love Parent.

37:00

We are discussing cancel culture and your kids. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

37:07

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you are sending in a question or comment.

37:14

We have a comment from Tom in West Islip, Long Island, New York.

37:21

And Tom says, a young man in Geneseo, New York, going to college there, has been suspended from his education program for putting on Instagram that he believed there was only two genders.

37:36

Outside of the fact that I find that to be a violation of his First Amendment rights, I am fearful, even voicing my opinion, that what they are doing is wrong given the ramifications that might occur on my job and also to my daughter who attends the same college.

37:56

We really are in a bad position right now. Not sure how this is going to end, but it really doesn't look like it will be peaceful.

38:04

And any comments, Aaron? Definitely, I do have a comment for that. That was

38:10

Joe, correct? No, that was Tom in West Islip, New York. Sorry, Tom. So, yeah, that's something

38:17

I've read about. That's something that's definitely happened. And you're right, it does go against our First Amendment rights and whatnot.

38:23

But really, the thing I want to focus in on, Tom, you said, that I think is one of the key things that we need to be watching out for in our kids, in ourselves as well, is this idea of fear.

38:34

Okay? We are afraid of what is going to happen to us if this cancel culture were to turn on us.

38:43

When I look at our children, I see that there are two potential groups of temptations.

38:50

Some kids are going to be tempted to be the cancelers, and we can definitely talk about those children, but I think that the bigger group are the ones who are going to be afraid of being canceled, or who are going to be the canceled one.

39:06

And what's interesting is that they are tempted, this group, the second group, is tempted in all the same ways that the first group is tempted, but they have additional temptations on top of them, the biggest of which is this temptation to fear, of being completely just paralyzed by the idea of, what will

39:27

I do? One of the things I think was interesting is that this past election, we saw early on in the coverage, people were talking about how all the exit polls were just so completely skewed and so completely wrong.

39:39

And I happened to be watching the coverage on Daily Wire, and one of the things that they talked about was how that you have these closet

39:46

Trump voters who, when approached by a pollster outside of a polling facility saying, you know, who did you vote for, they were afraid of telling this pollster that they had voted for Trump.

39:59

And that's one of the reasons they believe that the polling data was so skewed, especially there early on, you know,

40:05

Biden didn't have the last side and so on and so forth. Now, we won't get into the whole discussion about who won the election or anything like that, but I definitely want to focus in on this idea of us being afraid.

40:15

That is definitely something that we're going to have to talk with our kids about how to approach that fear, how to grapple with that fear from a biblical perspective.

40:26

Thank you so much, Tom. Keep listening to Iron Trip and Zion Radio and to keep spreading the word about the program in West Islip, Long Island and beyond.

40:35

Okay, so parents are sitting down with their kids. How young do we start the conversation on cancel culture with them?

40:47

And what would be the most delicate version that we start off with very young kids?

40:55

And how do we progress as they get older in our defining it and warning about it?

41:03

Fantastic question. And I think the best way to approach our children on any topic is to approach them where they are.

41:09

That means that we have to keep an understanding of what they know, the words that they're familiar with, their own personal experiences, because the reality is that a child who has the ability to communicate is a child who likely has already canceled somebody.

41:24

I want to go back real quick before we get into this answer and just remind ourselves what I'm talking about when I say cancel culture, okay?

41:32

I said that it involves illegitimate authority, unrighteous punishment, or both, and a good way of summing this up is that cancel culture involves unrighteous people punishing people in unrighteous ways.

41:43

So let's apply that to a three -year -old who's playing with a toy, who has that toy taken from them by a sibling or a child in the nursery, who then retaliates.

41:54

That child is taking it upon themselves to punish the other child for this thing that they did, but the child, the punisher, is not doing it in any more, you know, not glorifying

42:04

God the way they did it either. So children understand these concepts. They don't have to be taught how to stand.

42:09

They do, however, have to be taught how to respond to that. So one of the things that I think is really important to start with is that children are all attempted to believe that they can define right and wrong outside of God's Word.

42:23

They can be the sole source of what it means to be right or wrong. I didn't like that you did that, therefore you are wrong.

42:29

This is why children will throw temper tantrums when they're in a store and they ask if they can have a toy and a parent says no. The child has decided that you are wrong.

42:37

You are not allowed to tell me no and I am now going to punish you for doing so. So regardless of the age of the child,

42:43

I think that definitely the first place we want to start is to deal with the temptation that they have day in and day out, moment by moment, to define right and wrong by their own standards.

42:54

Secondly to that, those same children are going to be tempted to believe that they have the right to punish people who do and say things that they don't like.

43:03

That's always how it's going to be. If I'm God, if I get to define morality, if I get to define what's right and wrong, then

43:08

I get to throw lightning bolts at people who are wrong, which is why all those ancient false gods were depicted that way, because mankind was just saying, well, if I were

43:16

God, this is how I would respond, and that's exactly how human beings respond. So children are constantly tempted to believe that they have the right to get vengeance or to punish people.

43:27

And so we need to help our children with that as well. We need to sit down. We need to have very real conversations with them in the moment when they have retaliated against a sibling or they have thrown a temper tantrum with mom and dad.

43:37

One of the things that we need to discuss is the fact that they don't get to be the boss. They don't get to mete out punishment.

43:46

By the way, just as a side note on this particular topic, parents, I would strongly encourage you to stop using the word punishment to describe what you do to your kids.

43:56

And I'll tell you why. Punishment is the process of an acting harm on an offender for no other reason than they deserve the harm because of what they did, okay?

44:07

Yes, it's sometimes true that the experience of being punished may teach the offender a lesson, quote -unquote, but the action itself is simply designed to penalize the offender.

44:17

Often, the punisher doesn't care if the lesson is learned or not. So, for example, a speeder, you pay a hefty fine.

44:24

The example that we used earlier of Cain punishing Abel by murdering him, but we also have to understand that punishment is also oftentimes a righteous thing.

44:32

God has often punished sinners, and the lake of fire is going to be the ultimate and final act of punishment for all unbelievers.

44:38

God's punishment is righteous and appropriate, even though it often does not allow for any lesson to be learned, okay?

44:45

So, that's the punishment side, and I hope that we as parents, when we give consequences to our kids, it's not simply a punitive act.

44:52

If it's simply punitive, I, the parent, want you to hurt because you did this thing. That's a wicked way to approach this, and definitely sending the wrong message to our children about how this works.

45:02

I would encourage us to start using words and ideas like consequences. That's, on one extreme, a good word to use.

45:08

However, I don't think it's the best. Consequences are just simply the natural result of any and all actions. So, a speeder losing control of his vehicle, slamming into another car, that's a consequence, all right?

45:19

Consequences are neither righteous nor unrighteous. It just so happens that God created the world to work so that, for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

45:26

I really think the best word we need to start using with our kids is not talking about punishing them, but really talking about disciplining them, because disciplining is a beautiful hybrid of punishment and consequences.

45:38

Discipline is designed to teach the offender an important lesson about the consequences. Sometimes it involves pointing out the consequences that are already apparent.

45:45

Sometimes it involves giving secondary consequences to help the individual see and understand the primary consequences of their actions.

45:53

So, obviously, there's, you know, just like with punishment, there are righteous versions and there are unrighteous versions, but that's the thing that I want to encourage all the parents listening out there right now.

46:04

When we talk about this idea of punishing people, it's simply, I want you to hurt because of what you did to me, and that's pretty much never appropriate unless you are the government who's been given the right by God to give righteous, punitive judgment, or you're

46:21

God himself. We really need to swing more to the other side of giving consequences and giving discipline. Yeah, even in reference to God and his own children,

46:30

I'm not speaking about the reprobate who will be in hell, but his own children are not punished by him, they're chastised by him.

46:39

Correct, yes, exactly. So, this is a, I just wanted to say that because it is definitely important for us to consider, but back to the question at hand, what are some lessons that, you know, that we need to be teaching, conversations we need to be having with our kids?

46:52

Definitely that they don't get to define right and wrong, they don't have the right to punish anybody. However, there, and this one starts to be a little bit more subjective, depending on the child and what's going on, because there are many different sins inherent in the individual who is engaging in sinful cancellation.

47:09

So, pride, vengeance, sinful anger, wicked communication, slander, malice, the list just goes on and on, and if there are any specific questions that come from people about those specific things and how to talk with a child about that,

47:22

I would love to have that conversation. However, I think, though, we also need to talk about, like I said earlier, the kids who are really the ones who might be canceled, or the ones who are being canceled, because in addition to the lessons we just talked about, we also, again, need to talk to our kids about what fear is, why the

47:42

Bible has fear not in it so many times, what the opposite of fear is, and how we should respond when scary people are doing scary things in our lives.

47:53

And all of these conversations have age -appropriate versions to them. There's also a big thing that starts to happen, and again, this is something we can teach all children, that starts to happen in the cancel culture, and that is that these oversteers of cancel culture, they're bearing down on us, they're putting huge pressure on us, and oftentimes we're tempted to believe that they might be right.

48:19

You know, we're sitting there and we're starting to look that we're just being ganged up on from every side.

48:26

So a child is at school, and all these kids are making fun of them for being a

48:31

Christian, or going to church, or the way they dress, or whatever else, and eventually this child may start to believe that this cancel culture is right, and they've been wrong all along.

48:40

And so talking with our children about what that looks like, how the only way that we can ever guarantee that we are right is when we agree with God and His Word.

48:52

And then also, you know, children are tempted to bitterness and resentment when they are in a position where they're being canceled, where somebody is unrighteously punishing them for something right or wrong.

49:05

That's definitely something that needs to be addressed, helping the child to realize what the root of bitterness is, and the effect it has on their lives, and how to cut that root out of their lives.

49:15

And I guess, you know, one of the last things I would say is that oftentimes the person being canceled is often tempted to retaliate.

49:25

They just choose to fight cancellation with cancellation. And so, you know, we have to help our kids understand, when you are wrongfully treated, when people abuse you and they say wicked things about you, in Matthew chapter 5, this is how

49:37

Jesus says we need to respond. So yes, there are many different lessons that we can pull right from the

49:44

Scriptures, and we can sit down, have these conversations with our kids before, during, and after, and God forbid they be canceled, that will help point them to the truth of God's Word and help them to find hope for how to navigate the situation.

49:59

And I'll just say, going back to what Tom said, all of that is appropriate for us adults, too.

50:05

We have to recognize that Daniel, in the book of Daniel, was being canceled.

50:12

He was praying to God, and these governmental authorities went to the king and said, you know, this man's doing this.

50:18

And not only did Daniel continue praying to God, but he continued doing it the way he had always done it.

50:25

He opened up his window, he sat there in his window, and he prayed to God. He was unabashed. He was not fearful of what was going to happen to him, not because the guys didn't try really hard to scare him.

50:37

I mean, the threat of being thrown into a lion's den is a scary thing. But Daniel didn't fear repercussions of being canceled, specifically because he knew

50:46

God. And that, I would say, has to be the starting place for all of us. If our children do not know who

50:53

God is, what He's capable of, His amazing love, His sovereignty, His power, then yeah, we have lots of reasons to be afraid.

51:01

But when we understand who He is, when we see His power historically in the scriptures and in our own lives, it actually becomes more and more difficult to be afraid of these puny humans running around threatening us.

51:15

Because like Jesus said, we should not fear man. The worst thing he can do is kill the body. We need to give

51:21

God the fear that He deserves. Amen. We have to go to our midway break right now, and please be patient with us because it's the longer than normal break in the show.

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Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because they are required by the

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01:10:36

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01:10:42

Before we return to A .M. Brewster, who is our guest today, discussing cancel culture and your kids, we just have a couple of quick announcements.

01:10:51

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01:10:57

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01:11:05

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01:11:19

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01:13:51

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01:14:05

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01:14:11

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01:14:23

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01:14:38

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01:14:53

Send me that email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to AM Brewster.

01:15:02

On our subject today, cancel culture and your kids, that's chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:15:08

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We have

01:15:14

Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania who has a question and he says,

01:15:21

Hello Mr. Brewster, I hope that I'm not steering too far off the subject today that involves children, but I was wondering if you would agree with me that many conservatives were wrong when they were pushing for the intrusion on personal things into the lives of private citizens in order to protect not only conservative views of morality and social activity, but also when things occurred like 9 -11 and I believe

01:15:57

Homeland Security went too far in its intrusion upon a person's rights to privacy.

01:16:06

Could it be that conservatives unknowingly and unconsciously helped create the atmosphere of cancel culture that we are experiencing today?

01:16:17

That is a significant question to ask and I'm glad that you asked it. Some of the question

01:16:23

I think was posed in a little bit of a vague way, like your specific answer there at the end, and one thing that I would say is that there are proponents, again as I said earlier, of cancel culture on both sides, okay?

01:16:37

And here ends up being one of the biggest issues, okay? Everyone is going to refer to canceling that they don't like as cancel culture and canceling that they do like as righteous and appropriate, okay?

01:16:50

But we don't get to be the ones, like I said earlier, to determine which cancellation is appropriate. As Christians we have to rely on God's definition of righteousness and though it's true the

01:17:00

Bible gives us absolutely everything that we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Jesus Christ and his word, at the same time there are some things to which

01:17:09

I don't know that I feel comfortable speaking. For example, you know, from a governmental standpoint saying whether or not we should or should not investigate supposed terrorists and so on and so forth in certain ways, but I definitely understand exactly what it is you're saying.

01:17:22

And this is where we end up coming into trouble. This is where the world really doesn't care about what

01:17:28

God says, so everyone who believes that they have the right to enact a vengeance or does so because they don't believe

01:17:35

God's going to do it. So they either make themselves the authority or they grant themselves the right to punish the person who said the thing that they didn't like or did the thing they didn't like, or the individual, maybe in the course of the government, actually has a position of legitimate authority and they decide to punish the person who said the thing that they didn't like.

01:17:54

And the difficulty in the situation that there's no way to convince anyone to stop canceling because no one can agree on an authority to whom we all need to submit.

01:18:03

But we as Christians should all agree on that authority to whom we need to submit. And the other struggle

01:18:10

I have with your question is the fact that I used to be an associate administrator of a very large

01:18:16

Christian school in the Chicagoland area. And I was the dean of students, specifically, that was my title.

01:18:23

And one of the things that I had to do was I had to give consequences and discipline when people decided to break the rules in the school.

01:18:33

And whether they were elementary schoolers or high schoolers, I found myself having to expel children because of what they did and what they believed about life and the actions and words they spoke based off of those beliefs.

01:18:48

And somebody might argue and say that I was, you know, Christians. Christians have been canceling people for centuries.

01:18:57

But I want to go back to my definition. And here's the point I think where we need to land, okay? When it comes to cancel culture, it involves unrighteous people punishing people in unrighteous ways.

01:19:10

Or to make it broader to your question, we could talk about unrighteous people doing things that they should not be doing in order to stick their noses where it doesn't belong.

01:19:21

But as I said, it's a very big topic, and I think that we all have been involved in it.

01:19:26

The issue is that it's not cancel culture when God's Word makes it clear. And it starts to be more and more cancel culture, and we are the ones setting the rules.

01:19:35

So we want to make certain that we are basing our rules off of God's Word. However, Chris, on a side note, before we continue,

01:19:42

I wanted to say this on our last interview so long ago, and I wrote it down to say it this time.

01:19:47

Here we go. You ready? Yes, I am. All right, well,

01:20:00

I'm going to have to ask you to record an official ad to add to the rotation of other ads.

01:20:07

There we go. I'll be happy to do that. I'd love to do that. Also, for your listeners, True Thought Parent, like I said, has been around since 2016, and we have over 400 podcast episodes that involve interviews, and we have so many resources specifically for biblical parenting.

01:20:24

We try to have it all organized well, so people can go in there and find our podcast episodes by series, and by topic, and by guest, and so on and so forth.

01:20:32

But what I've done, what we've done, is we've created a special page specifically for your audience.

01:20:38

It's truthloveparent .com forward slash iron. And if someone types that in, truthloveparent .com

01:20:45

forward slash iron, they'll be taken to a special page specifically for your audience, where they can get a couple things.

01:20:51

First of all, they can learn more about the ministry. All of that information will be right there on that one page. But secondly, they can get direct links to different content that we've created that is specific to our conversation today.

01:21:05

Also, direct links to the content that was specific to yours in my last conversation together.

01:21:11

All of that is right there, and I want to invite all of your listeners to head over there to be able to get some more specific content that would speak directly to the topics today.

01:21:22

Great, that is terrific. And just to repeat that addition to the website, it's truthloveparent .com

01:21:34

forward slash iron, right? That's correct. Truthloveparent .com forward slash iron.

01:21:46

Now, one of the things that we all, well, I guess we all deal with it from one level to another, even as Christians, even those that have the

01:21:56

Holy Spirit indwelling us. We are convicted of sin when we transgress

01:22:07

God's law. We are growing in our sanctification. But even,

01:22:13

I think, the best of us on different levels have the problem of sinful, what's the word

01:22:26

I'm looking for? Sinful anger. Sinful anger and a desire for retribution and a hateful response, perhaps, to those that are imposing this cancel culture, woke movement, social justice warrior agenda on us.

01:22:45

And what counsel do you have to prevent us from basically attacking sin with sin, attacking hate speech with hate speech, and on and on we could go, attacking bigotry with bigotry?

01:23:01

In fact, that is exactly what I believe the woke movement is doing. They're attacking bigotry with bigotry, and they're even attacking fictitious or invented bigotry with genuine bigotry.

01:23:18

So, I mean, we could go on and on and on with that whole concept. But what's your counsel about that?

01:23:25

That's such a necessary question because it is the natural temptation for all people. It was Cain's issue.

01:23:31

He didn't like what Abel was doing, and so he did something even worse to Abel. And Abel hadn't done anything wrong, but he reacted in sin.

01:23:38

And so that temptation to react in sin to any sin done against us is huge. It's very easy for me, being a very passionate person that I am, to see the injustices of this cancel culture and just for my blood to boil.

01:23:50

I think what we have to remember is that the anger of man does not accomplish

01:23:56

God's purposes, but anger in and of itself is not inherently a sin.

01:24:02

Now, this starts to get difficult, difficult for all of us, because one of the things that we have to recognize about anything that we say and do is it's not just about doing the right thing in the right way.

01:24:13

It's about doing it for the right reason. And we can do the right thing in the right way for the wrong reasons, and therefore end up sinning against God.

01:24:19

And that ends up being the real issue with our angry responses. If I am truly angry, if I'm angry in a biblically right way for biblical reasons, then

01:24:30

God is glorified by that, and that actually would be a correct response to what we're seeing in the world today.

01:24:35

However, it won't result in sinful actions like bigotry and prejudice and cancellation and so on and so forth.

01:24:42

So how do we determine whether or not our anger, our response to this situation is actually

01:24:50

Christ -honoring? How do we guard our hearts in that instance? And I would say that a passage that's very familiar to all of us would be

01:24:58

Ephesians 4, 31 to 32. But on a casual reading, it seems like two lists.

01:25:05

A list of things we shouldn't do and a list of things we should do, and it's just a bunch of words that we all agree with. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

01:25:15

Be kind to one another, tender -hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you. But I think that if we take the time to really open our

01:25:24

Bibles, and not just to read, but to study, to study for the purpose of understanding, so that we can live in that understanding wisely in this world, we would see that these verses are filled with amazing truths for all of us.

01:25:37

And I really just want to focus in on two words in answer to your question, Chris. The very first word in the list of bad things is bitterness, and the very first word in the list of the good things is kind.

01:25:49

And one of our problems with coming to the Scriptures, like we've already been talking about, is our propensity to define terms in our own, with our own understanding.

01:25:58

And when we see the word bitterness, oftentimes we as Americans or English speakers, we are thinking to ourselves, resentment.

01:26:06

That's pretty much what bitterness means for us. However, that is not actually the word here in the

01:26:13

Greek, okay? This is talking about, like, just for sake of illustration, I don't like coffee. I know

01:26:19

I've just lost all of your audience. Are you nuts? Chris will never have me on the show again.

01:26:26

But I think that coffee is very bitter. You would be ashamed of me if you saw my thermos right now.

01:26:32

It's the size of a nuclear, it's the size of a nuclear warhead. But anyway. I'm not going to cancel you because of your coffee habit.

01:26:40

You're actually right. You're just like my friend James White. He doesn't drink coffee ever. Yeah, you're good for James.

01:26:47

But you know, to me, that coffee is bitter. It has nothing to do with resentment. It just tastes bitter.

01:26:53

And that's the word that's actually being used here. Something that is gross in our mouth.

01:26:59

And the important thing to understand about this is that this particular word, if you look it up in the

01:27:04

Greek, and I'm not claiming to be a Greek scholar, okay, but the study that I've done, we look it up in the Greek, it basically refers to something that is just bad.

01:27:13

Something is bad. It's a very general word, actually. Not, resentment is too specific.

01:27:19

This is something that's just bad. So if my thinking is wrong, if I'm not defining my life the way

01:27:26

God defines it, if I'm not looking at my life and myself and the events in my life through God's eyes, then

01:27:31

I am thinking bitterly. I am, I have bitterness in me because my thoughts are not true.

01:27:39

They're not, they're not righteous, okay? And when that happens, when I allow that bitter thinking to, to be how

01:27:48

I look at a situation, how if I'm being canceled, I'm looking at what's going on in the world today, and I'm looking at it the wrong way, then

01:27:55

I'm going to be tempted to wrath and anger and clamor and slander and malice. However, verse 32 says, be kind.

01:28:04

And what's interesting is that that's another word that, man oh man, this gets a lot of people into trouble because we like to define it however we want.

01:28:10

If I, if I said to a million different people, go say something kind to that person over there, they would all say different things using different vocabulary and different tones of voices and different body language, and they define all those things in different, as being kind.

01:28:26

And especially when I'm doing marriage counseling, it's so amazing. The husband is saying the wife is not being kind.

01:28:31

The wife is saying that the husband is not being kind, and I ask them, what do you exactly mean by kind? And they can't define that term with any biblical sense.

01:28:41

They just basically said, well, it feels unkind. Or, you know, their tone of voice was unkind, and I'm like, okay, so what kind of tone of voice is kind?

01:28:49

And there's just no agreement on that. And here's the problem, because that Greek word, again, is dealing with something.

01:28:57

In fact, twice in the New American Standard, twice that word is actually translated good, simply as something that is good.

01:29:05

So the word kind in verse 32 is the the polar opposite of the word bitterness in verse 31.

01:29:12

Instead of thinking in a bitter way, instead of focusing on what is not true, instead of believing a lie and being deceived by our hearts about the situation that we're experiencing, we need to have good thoughts, righteous thoughts, truthful thoughts.

01:29:28

That leads us to being tender -hearted. That leads us to forgiving.

01:29:33

That leads us to what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, which I alluded to earlier. When people are being persecuted for righteousness' sakes,

01:29:42

I recognize that I am blessed. That when people insult me, and persecute me, and falsely say all kinds of evil against me because of my love for God, I can rejoice and be glad, for my reward in heaven is great.

01:29:58

And that's the key thing, that whether it's us or our kids, the cure for this, our fear and cancel culture, starts first with a knowledge of what is true.

01:30:13

Now, no more bitter thinking. Instead, kind, right, good thinking. When that leads us to, you know,

01:30:20

I mentioned earlier, Matthew 10, 24, actually specifically verse 28, do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

01:30:32

So here Jesus says, don't fear these people, but instead fear God. And then in verse 29, he says, are not two sparrows sold for a cent?

01:30:41

And he goes on with that. And then he says, verse 31, so do not fear, you are more valuable than sparrows.

01:30:49

And so, how does Jesus say, what is, Jesus is at counsel for us when we're facing fear.

01:30:56

He says, don't fear. And how can I tell you not to be afraid? Because I'm telling you what is true about the

01:31:03

Father. You need to accept it, you need to believe it. If we believe that we are blessed when we are persecuted, if we believe that God is in control of us, if we believe, as James chapter 1 tells us, that all of these difficulties, these temptations, and these trials are being designed to produce steadfastness in us that will help mature us into the image of Christ, if we believe,

01:31:23

Romans 8, 28, that God's working these situations out for good so that we can become more like Christ, then we're not going to have that fear, and our anger will be righteous anger, will respond righteously versus that anger of man that seeks vengeance and seeks retaliation and retribution because I've been hurt.

01:31:45

Excellent, excellent. We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who asks, do you think that an excellent example of cancel culture from the

01:31:59

Bible would be the Judaizers? That's an interesting question. Yeah, it is.

01:32:05

It was really good. I mean, Paul interacted with the Judaizers, and specifically, you know, we have his writing where he was interacting with various churches who were either giving in to that type of thinking, or they were being persecuted by the

01:32:18

Judaizers. I definitely think that's a good way of doing it, and what's interesting is, you know, the

01:32:24

Judaizers had, can I say it this way, from a human perspective, they kind of seemed to have a good point.

01:32:33

Like, they were trying to make, the Pharisees were trying to make a good point, too, and they weren't Judaizers, but they were trying to make a good point, too.

01:32:39

What happens, though, is when we try to take man's logic and apply it to a situation outside of God's truth, we're always going to apply it the wrong way, but they kind of were coming at it from a decent point.

01:32:49

You know, the whole Old Testament was written, this is what, this is how you need to live your life, right?

01:32:54

So therefore, you know, enter in the New Testament, enter into the

01:33:00

New Covenant, then obviously we need to continue with all that stuff from before.

01:33:05

You've got to continue in the circumcision, you've got to continue in all this stuff, because it was good then, it's good now. And there definitely was a negative influence, as well as retaliation.

01:33:15

In fact, we're told that when Paul confronted Peter, one of the things that Peter had done is he had stopped hanging out with the

01:33:23

Gentiles who had come to Christ. He wasn't associating with any more, we could use the word, he was ostracizing them, because they were not holding to these

01:33:35

Jewish customs and Jewish laws, and Paul got up and said, no, that's wrong. And he confronted Peter in front of everybody to say that is completely inappropriate.

01:33:43

So yeah, I think that's a fantastic observation, that that would probably, you know, be a biblical example of sinful cancel culture.

01:33:53

Thank you, Susan Margaret, keep spreading the word about Iron Trip and Zion Radio in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania and beyond.

01:34:00

Well, I want to make sure that you provide for our listeners today, because we don't want to run out of time before you have most of what you want etched in their hearts and minds.

01:34:14

Make sure that you have some, I'm going to make sure that you have some uninterrupted time right now to really focus on things parents should know and even teachers in Christian schools should know about cancel culture and our kids and their approach to that dilemma.

01:34:36

Well, thank you for that, I really appreciate it. It is a big dilemma because of many of the things that we've discussed so far, it's so emotion -charged, it's so subjective, it's so vile on many accounts that we just have this visceral reaction to it.

01:34:54

If you're working with children, one of our natural responses is to want to protect the kids from these things.

01:35:02

And parents, I know my wife and I have spoken, and we were facing some temptation to fear ourselves because we are concerned about how this world is going to treat our children.

01:35:16

And so, you know, we're being tempted to not put them in a certain situations where they're going to have to explain why they are or are not doing certain things.

01:35:25

And so, yeah, it's a big topic that affects, it's really become such a huge deal, it's affecting every area of our lives.

01:35:33

We're wondering that, you know, if you're eating at a restaurant, you know, I'm not chewing food right now, should

01:35:38

I have this mask on? If I don't have this mask on, am I going to get kicked out of this place? Are people going to take a picture of me with their cell phone and, you know, here

01:35:47

I am having a stern conversation with my child in the aisle of Walmart, someone can take a picture of me or video of me and post it and, you know, and say who knows what, you know, am

01:35:57

I going to have my children taken away from me because, you know, my thoughts about pro or anti -vaccination or, you know, or whatever, you know, all of these different thoughts are being literally daily shoved into our faces because it's happening all of the time.

01:36:13

Kids are being kicked out of school, they're getting consequences left, right, and center because of sometimes very legitimate, very appropriate stances on something that was mentioned earlier in the show about this young man who said there are only two genders, only two sexes.

01:36:30

He made a scientific, biblical observation and he was being persecuted for it. So that, we have to go to it recognizing, understanding ourselves and our own temptations to this, but then our response to it needs to be not to shelter our children.

01:36:45

Obviously, we're not going to throw them into a position where they are going to have to, you know, face the mob on their own, but we don't want to shelter our children.

01:36:54

We want to teach them what's going on, as we mentioned earlier, but we also want to prepare them to respond in a

01:37:00

Christ -honoring way. I have conversations with my children all of the time. I'll just throw it out there right now.

01:37:06

I'll elicit maybe a little bit of a pushback myself. We are not masked people, all right?

01:37:13

Not only do we have medical reasons in our family for not wearing them, but I just personally have some very strong issues with that, okay?

01:37:22

So I have to have conversations with my children, especially my son, who medically should not be wearing a mask, about exactly what he may experience as he goes out there in the world.

01:37:33

In fact, I just want to interrupt that I am going to a doctor tomorrow, a new doctor,

01:37:39

Dr. Joel Yeager, who's actually been a guest in this program, and he does not believe any of the mask rhetoric.

01:37:47

Nobody on his staff wears masks and the patients are not required to wear masks either, and I'm just so thrilled about that.

01:37:54

So I'm sorry to interrupt you there. What do you think the commute would be from North Carolina to there? If you would accept a new patient.

01:38:04

Might be worth it. But I have to have these conversations with my son.

01:38:09

I have to explain, okay, this is what people might do. This is why they might do it. Can you see their position?

01:38:17

And we talk about that, and he says, yeah, actually, I mean, from their perspective, it makes sense. It's wrong, but it makes sense.

01:38:23

And then we talk about why we do what we do and how we do it, and in a way that hopefully is going to glorify

01:38:28

God. I think there are regular conversations we have to have. We're not hiding our children from cancel culture, but we're preparing them to meet it.

01:38:37

God never called us to protect our kids. He called us to prepare our kids to glorify Him in this world.

01:38:44

And so that's a, I would say that would definitely be one of the biggest things that we need to do. And as we ground our children in who

01:38:53

God is, and that's the other side of this, we don't want to just focus on the negative, okay? Cancel culture, this is how we respond, this is what people might do, because that just produces more fear.

01:39:01

Now I'm scaring my son, because now his mind is filled with nothing more than what might happen to him when he goes walking around.

01:39:09

What I need to do is I need to fill his mind with the beauty and the awesomeness and the majesty and the sovereignty of God.

01:39:16

I need to help him understand that the steadfast of mind, God will keep in perfect peace.

01:39:22

Why? Because the steadfast of mind, he trusts in God. He trusts in the

01:39:28

Lord forever, for in God, the Lord, we have an everlasting rock. I need to teach my son how to rejoice in the

01:39:36

Lord always, and how when he's being tempted to anxiety, he needs to take those things to God in prayer and in supplication with thanksgiving, how he needs to let his gentle spirit be known to all people, even those people who are potentially going to persecute him because of what he believes on a subject.

01:39:53

And I need to teach him that he needs to be thinking about what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, things that are excellent, things that are worthy of praise.

01:40:04

Those are the things he needs to be dwelling on. And then, and only then, can he experience that peace that passes all understanding.

01:40:11

So again, what we see so often, at least in my biblical counseling, I see this so often, is that people are looking for a silver bullet.

01:40:20

They're looking for a verse that speaks specifically to cancel culture, or a verse that speaks specifically to whatever other parenting issue or marriage issue they may be having.

01:40:29

And oftentimes, I have to warn them that I'm going to sound an awful lot like a broken record, because the

01:40:34

Bible says that the first and second greatest commandments are to love God and to love others. If we only dedicated our time to what it truly meant to love

01:40:43

God and understand that and to grow in that, Jesus tells us that everything else, all the other law and the prophets hang on those two commandments.

01:40:52

We will fulfill those. We will glorify God in every other facet of our lives. I believe it was Augustine who said, love

01:40:58

God and do whatever you want. Because if we truly know God, we truly love

01:41:03

God, we understand what it means to love Him, then our lives are going to conform to His will. Whether we're like Joseph being persecuted in Egypt as the only

01:41:12

Hebrew there who believed in Yahweh, who was falsely accused, who was forgotten in jail, treated terribly, he stood firm not simply because of his life experiences.

01:41:27

In fact, his life experiences would have told him that he has a lot of reasons to be afraid. He has a lot of reasons to not speak what he believes to be true.

01:41:36

That's not why he stood firm. He stood firm because he knew God. This is why he could say to the people in the jail,

01:41:45

I can't interpret this dream for you, but God can. He said that to Pharaoh. This is why he said to Potiphar's wife, how can

01:41:51

I sin and commit this great sin against God? This is why when his brothers, after his father died, came to them groveling, please don't kill us, he said

01:42:01

God meant this for good. It wasn't because he had some proverb in his mind about what to do when people hate you.

01:42:10

It's because his mind was consumed with who God is. And that, my friends, right there, is the key.

01:42:16

That is the one thing. If we want to set our children, our students, our disciples, whoever else up for success, it's going to be bathing them in God's Word, helping them to know him, to love him, and to live accordingly.

01:42:31

Amen. We have to go to our final break, so if you have a question, send it in now to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:42:36

We'll be right back with more of A .M. Brewster after these messages from our sponsors. of God through preaching, teaching, and singing, including

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That's truthloveparent .com forward slash iron. And Aaron, if you could give our listeners your final thoughts today.

01:53:48

Well, thank you again for letting me come on the show. I do hope everyone will come check out Truth, Love, Parent and hang out with me on social media.

01:53:56

I'd love to be a blessing. I think our news feeds are so incredibly depressing so often.

01:54:02

I'd love to help redeem your feet if I can. My friends, love God, love the children in your life.

01:54:09

The best way to love the children in your life is to teach them how to love God and to love Him well, to know

01:54:15

His Word, to believe it, and to live it out wisely in their lives. Cancel culture is coming for all of us.

01:54:21

There's absolutely nothing we can do about it. Things are probably going to get worse before they get better. And so how on earth could we not afford to prepare our children to meet it to the honor and glory of God?

01:54:35

Amen. We have Mike in Monroe, New York. I think Mike may be a first -time questioner.

01:54:42

I heard today that Amazon is going to censor what books they will sell. I hear the

01:54:47

Bible is being considered as one item they may no longer sell. I don't know if that's true or not.

01:54:54

Have you heard anything like that, Aaron? I have heard people are conjecturing that that is coming.

01:55:01

I haven't seen any hard evidence that it's actually happening, but to be completely honest, I have no reason to think that it's not, because all of the stuff that they're canceling and all the reasons they're canceling it, the

01:55:13

Bible is filled with it and far more. You know, it's bizarre if that is true.

01:55:20

I was looking for a book and I found it eventually.

01:55:25

It's called Hate. I can't remember the author's name right at this moment, but it was about the founder of the

01:55:33

American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell. And I was shocked to see that Amazon, this is about a year or two ago when

01:55:44

I was doing this Amazon search to purchase this book, which just in case anybody's worrying, it was against George Lincoln Rockwell, not in support of him.

01:55:56

But Amazon was selling a ton of things by George Lincoln Rockwell, books that he wrote himself and books that were pro -Nazi.

01:56:06

So, it's really amazing if they were to eliminate the Bible. It would also be financial suicide for them because Christian books,

01:56:16

I'm sure, sell in the millions of dollars on Amazon.

01:56:21

And that's one of the reasons why tragically many Christian bookstores have gone out of business. So, I still find that somewhat hard to believe that they would go that far with their censorship, but who knows.

01:56:37

People have done things before that have been to their own detriment eventually. So, this could be one of them.

01:56:44

Men are constantly, all throughout history, thinking that they can get rid of Christianity by getting rid of the

01:56:50

Bible. And so, we can't say that they haven't tried over and over again. Yeah, that seems to be actually the opposite trend.

01:56:59

Maybe this trend is going to come to an end, but the trend in the business world has been that when publishers and record producers saw how much money was being made in Christian books and music, these formerly

01:57:15

Christian -owned companies were being purchased by secular companies. So, it's kind of interesting if this were true, there would be a reverse of that trend.

01:57:24

Who knows? Maybe Christian bookstores will come back into business then. Well, I want to make sure again that our listeners have all of the information that they need about you.

01:57:35

Oh, and very quickly, Mike, in Monroe, New York, if you are indeed a first -time lister or questioner, send me a full mailing address so that you can receive a free

01:57:48

New American Standard Bible that will be shipped to you by cvbbs .com. Cvbbs .com,

01:57:54

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Thank you again for the excellent comment.

01:58:00

And truthloveparent .com, and as we said before, if you add forward slash iron, people can find out specifically what you have to offer for our audiences and things that we discuss.

01:58:13

Any other contact information or events that you'll be involved in or anything else you want to announce?

01:58:19

I guess the one thing I'd like to put out there is now that churches are starting to open up again,

01:58:24

I would love to get back into speaking, traveling around. I do conferences specifically on parenting, marriage, family, as well as discipleship and what it truly means to worship

01:58:37

God. And I would love to get in contact with you. You can reach out to ambaruster .com

01:58:43

to find more information and to get in touch with me. That's A as in Aaron, M as in Michael, Brewster, B -R -E -W -S -T -E -R .com.

01:58:53

You can find all the information there. Great. Well, I want to thank you again, Aaron, for being such an excellent guest as I knew you would be.

01:59:01

I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater