Dr. Jeff Myers, president of Summit Ministries, spoke with Jody Hice on Washington Watch on building a biblical worldview in children. He says most people in the U.S. are not familiar with the term “worldview.”
“They don't realize that if you're not operating from a Christian worldview, you are operating from some other worldview that either ignores the existence of God or discounts the existence of God as relevant,” says Myers.
He highlighted Fairfax Country, Virginia, where a school was able to facilitate the abortion of their girl students without parental consent. He explains that the school is operating on the assumption that parents are evil.
“They're operating on the assumption that the parents do not have the best interests of the children in mind, that the children do not belong to the parents. The parents are not stewards of the children. The state is the steward of the children. And therefore, the school can do whatever they want to the kids,” continues Myers.
He emphasizes that, if a child goes to a school that aligns with the parents values, they are still living in a culture that does not.
Three top-of-mind points
There are three things Myers encourages kids to keep in mind:
- Take every thought captive – recognize and discover, beginning with God’s design, the truth that God has given man.
- Don't be taken captive – do not fall for hollow and deceptive philosophies that have taken away most of those who grew up in church away from biblical truth.
- Set the captives free – learn to talk to those that do not have a biblical worldview and help them come to the knowledge of the truth.
“And we talk about the specifics of how to do that, but often it’s just conversation with your kids,” Myers says.
Myers says that the transgender ideology is probably the No. 1 ideology that young adults will face in the coming semester.
“They are going to be told that there is a gender spectrum. On one end is extreme masculinity, and on the other end is extreme femininity. It's either G.I. Joe or Barbie, and since nobody is really either G.I. Joe or Barbie, we're all kind of in the middle. We're all transgender. Maybe you're even born in the wrong body,” Myers expounds.
Because kids will encounter this ideology, Myers mentions his book Raising Gender Confident Kids, co-authored with educational psychologist Dr. Kathy Cook. The purpose of the book is to show parents how to bring up these types of issues to their children in a natural way that can help build a relationship between them along with helping children come to a truthful knowledge about these issues.
Myers expounds on what ‘gender confident’ means.
“For boys, it’s understanding God designed you as a boy. You can be a boy who plays the violin, or you can be a boy who plays football. It doesn't matter, but God made you as a boy, and He wants to grow you into a godly man,” explains Myers. “And for girls, God made them on purpose as a girl. “They could be a helicopter pilot, like my daughter, or they could be dancing. But they have been made in God's image. They are a girl, and God wants them to grow and to be a godly woman.”
Myers said this is knowable because of the very first piece of information given about human beings according to Genesis 1: that God made them in His image and that God made them male and female.
He says there are 6,500 cataloged differences between male and female biology.
The ‘everybody’s messed up’ worldview
Now, Myers says, kids are told in schools that there are 68 different genders instead of two, male and female, and that everybody, to one degree or another, is messed up.
“And if you are messed up, then you're a victim of the culture. And we're going to celebrate you being messed up by rolling a red carpet down the hallway and playing music when you come out as transgender or whatever that happens to be,” Myers states.
This is not a worldview taught in every school, but it’s in a lot. Fifty percent of schools are doing this in the fall, Myers said.
“If you wanted people to believe that there is no God or that God is irrelevant to anything that is important, then you have to somehow tear down all of the categories of meaning that make them think about God. And the most obvious of those is that we're made male or female,” says Myers.
According to Myers, opponents tear down the biblical worldview with a bias toward a false worldview – not with facts or evidence.
He explains how parents teaching their children not to be mean or bullies in schools but to be kind instead has backfired. Now, others with a false worldview and bad motives are weaponizing that mentality.
“I mean, after all, if you can get little kids to look at a boy or girl and say they can't tell a difference, then you can propagandize them to believe anything,” Myers states.
Two mistakes parents make in correcting this issue, Myers says, are dismissing the concern in their child or debating with their child.
Some parents do not think that it is that big of an issue; however, Myers says that young people under 50 are more likely to identify as transgender and that 39% of young people identify as LGBTQ.
For parents that try to debate, Myers warns that their children can go to Google and find “fact” pages on transgenderism that they believe will back up their argument, along with law firms that can legally separate children from their parents for not approving “gender identity” and organizations that can provide “cross-sex hormones” without parental knowledge.
Parents: Watch and engage
He says that the only thing parents can do is watch for changes in their child and begin asking questions.
“If they come home and they're a little bit down, you want to ask them, ‘can you tell me what happened to you today that causes you to see yourself the way you do?’ And when they talk, just start asking, can you tell me more about that? Then, your affirming of the relationship with your child and helping them understand that God made them in His image is what makes the difference,” concludes Myers.
