Transcript: 13 Lies that Make us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed (with Alisa Childers)

Something else is going to come and take its place.

And so very often what you see, and I use some test cases in the book, is that people are really leading you to follow the voice inside your heart. So I might put it like this. I think all of us realize that some of our desires are in conflict with what we’ve been told or what we might believe about what we should or shouldn’t do morally, right? Sometimes our desires are in conflict with those things.

So Christianity is going to tell us, hey, we are born with a sinful nature. This is something that needs to be redeemed. This needs to be saved and reconciled to God. We need to be renewed in our minds. We need to be transformed more and more into the image of Christ every single day. And so in that sense, Christianity teaches that there are things we actually have to repent for. We have to change about ourselves. There are things that are fallen and broken and sinful.

Whereas the world would say, hey, when your desires are in conflict with what you’ve been told or shoulds or shouldn’ts, really what you should do is bring what you believe is right and wrong under the submission of your own moral intuition and your deepest desires. Because the world kind of teaches that humans are inherently good. You don’t have this sinful nature. So really you need to listen to your heart. You need to follow your feelings, those deepest desires that you find inside of yourself. These are what represents your truth, your reality. So you need to follow those things and maybe take a second look at what you’ve been told is right and wrong. Maybe that is fluid. Maybe that’s not something that anybody can say is objectively true or false.

And so really you have these two completely divergent worldviews that are going to lead you. But as we know, everybody worships something, right? And so if you don’t bring your thoughts and feelings under the subjection of the Bible and what God has revealed about Himself, then ultimately you’re going to be left with your own sort of feelings and opinions and your deepest desires to follow.

SEAN MCDOWELL: You and I know that there’s nothing really new under the sun, that in many ways these lies you’re talking about are not new, although they’re emphasized more today and maybe we’re tempted to believe them for cultural reasons.

But I’ve always wondered, going back to the garden, why did God give the command not to eat fruit? Because fruit was designed to be eaten, puts it in the middle of the garden. Why didn’t He say, Adam, one commandment, don’t kill Eve? Well, that would be easy, right? The commandment for the Creator to be in a relationship with the created has to be counterintuitive, where we say, that doesn’t make sense to me. Rather than going with my feelings and instincts, I’m going to go with what God says, even if I don’t understand it.

So in many ways, this gospel of self is nothing new. It’s just being pushed and preached to us more today as a virtue in the way it has been in the past. So I appreciate, as a philosopher and apologist, I’m always asking, what are the underlying theological and cultural issues at play here? And I think you’re right to say it’s really the gospel itself is at stake, who we’re going to trust as authoritative.

MORAL RELATIVISM

Now you call your book, the title is Live Your Truth. I actually got an early copy here, I was pretty pumped. It came in the mail yesterday. I have the PDF, great, catchy, just it looks sharp. It’s a great title. And the title, of course, is Live Your Truth, which we hear people saying all the time, live your truth. So clearly you’re concerned about people confusing truth. At its core, what do you think is the confusion about truth today, and how should we think about truth differently?

ALISA CHILDERS: Well, the new Barna stats that were done in conjunction with Impact360 showed that the dominant worldview of Gen Z is moral relativism, basically thinking that what we believe about the shoulds and the shouldn’ts of life, this is kind of relative to each person, and that’s not really grounded in any kind of objective reality.

And so I think if we look at how our culture approaches the question of truth, not many people live as relativists in all areas, right? Most people go to the bank, they expect money to be there, they’ll appeal to the law if the law is broken. I mean, they expect there to be categories of objective truth when it comes to math or science or things like that.

But I think, and Nancy Pearcey was who really pointed this out with her upper and lower story thing, but really what our culture has done is taken the categories of religion and morality and moved those from the math and science objective category and moved those into more of the personal preference and opinion category, kind of like whatever you would say is the best flavor of ice cream might be what you think is the best flavor of ice cream and I might pick something different, but ultimately there’s no objective standard to determine what is the actual best flavor of ice cream, which means it’s just an opinion, it’s not actually an objective truth.

And so I think that is one of the biggest lies our culture has bought into, is that things like religion and morality are more in that ice cream category, where you can just kind of pick what works for you and live that way, and you live your truth and I’ll live my truth and we’re not going to tell each other we’re wrong. And that makes sense on a certain level, I get it. I get why people might think, you know, I don’t want to come against what somebody else might want to believe about right and wrong or religion or that sort of thing. But the problem is that that’s just not how truth works.

So every religion, although there might be some things they have in common, almost every religion and philosophy has some sense in which humans should be good to each other, and however that’s worded or fleshed out might be different, but that core is kind of similar. But really at their foundational essentials, every religion contradicts each other. And ultimately, if Christianity is true, which makes very exclusive claims about how to know God, how to be reconciled to God, how to get to God, if Christianity is true, it actually rules out all the others.

And so I think that’s how we need to be thinking about this is that when it comes to religion, that’s not in the ice cream category because of the very exclusive claims Christianity makes. Now, if Christianity is not true, then it could be that you could just live your truth and I’ll live my truth. But if it is true, it makes these kinds of claims about itself.

And then, of course, if Christianity is true, if God exists, if He has revealed Himself, then we can at least know certain things about what’s right and wrong, and certainly the most fundamental things about what is objectively right or wrong. And those things can’t just be a matter of opinion because if you and I have a different opinion of what’s right or wrong, well, who decides between us? Well, we could keep going up the chain, and ultimately if you do that and you don’t have a place where the buck essentially stops, then it’s really just who’s the biggest and strongest and has the most power or influence that gets to decide what’s morally right or wrong.

And all of us have seen throughout world history where the biggest and strongest and most powerful people were morally depraved and brought a lot of injustice and devastation into their societies. So these things really matter on a fundamental level, especially in the realms of religion and morality.

SEAN MCDOWELL: One of the points I often make to audiences, and I wish I didn’t get the response that I got. People are like, oh, that’s like deep and helpful, but it’s not. I’ll say you can have your own belief, but you can’t have your own truth. That should be obvious because truth is when your belief matches up with reality, but we just haven’t thought deeply enough about this.

I also ask audiences, I’ll say just think about how many decisions you’re making moment by moment on what you think is true. So even for this interview, it’s like what day do I have this conversation with Alisa? What time is the conversation? Do I have the exact right URL to connect? There’s so many things moment by moment. If that’s true in the small things, part of what you’re saying, how much more true is that in spiritual things and moral things when eternity is at stake? I think that’s great the way you phrase it.

‘YOU ARE ENOUGH’

Let’s jump to another one you have that I thought was interesting. You take issue with this phrase, ‘you are enough’. How is that typically taken and why do you take issue with it?

ALISA CHILDERS: When I give the talk that I talked about at the women’s conferences, I always start with a disclaimer. If you have ‘I am enough’ stitched on a pillow in your house or you’ve got a tattoo of ‘I am enough’, look, I get it. Because part of the reason these slogans are so slippery is they can really be filtered through different worldviews and make sense in different worldviews depending on what people mean when they use them.

So certainly if you tell someone you’re enough in a certain context, it might work. But what I’m trying to do with the slogans in the book is look at how culture is talking about these things and what culture means by those phrases. So think about even as a parent or just if you have a friend who comes to you and they’re really down on themselves and you’re looking at your friend who’s this beautiful person and you can see all of these unique talents and abilities and this beauty about your friend.

And they think they’re ugly and they don’t have any talent and they’re never going to amount to anything. I can totally understand why the thing you want to say to them is, hey, you are enough. You’re enough. And I get it. I get why that is so appealing because that’s kind of the thing you want to say to somebody who’s struggling with their self-esteem or whatever it might be.

But just thinking a little more deeply about it, essentially what we’re doing when we tell somebody ‘you are enough’ is we’re basically saying you have everything you need to solve all your problems already inside of yourself. So you have to fix all the problems that you have all by yourself. And that’s really a message of bondage because as Christians we know we’re not enough. I tell a story in the book in that chapter where when I first became a mom for the first time and I had my first baby, I gained all this weight. I was miserably uncomfortable physically. My daughter had a birth trauma when she was born. So I think that just made her very discontent most of the time. And I’ve talked with her about this.

I mean if she was conscious, she was crying. And I could not figure out how to make her happy and how to make her be content. And I just had this moment of breakdown at the mall where I thought maybe she’d like to go in the stroller and walk around the mall. And, well, she did not enjoy that. And I remember just sitting on this bench with all this extra weight and just the conflict of the baby crying all the time and just going, oh, is my life ever going to feel any better because I knew that I wasn’t enough.

Well, years later, I read an article that said to every exhausted mom out there, ‘you are enough’. And I thought back to that moment. And I thought, you know, if somebody would have said that to me, it might have even made me angry because I so deeply knew, Sean, that I wasn’t enough. I mean my cup was overflowing and I couldn’t catch all the drops. And I needed to know what outside of me can cover this, can help me even when I sin against others. Like I need to know that there’s grace for that, that there’s redemption for that, that there’s a mechanism for repentance and atonement for that. And not just to kind of pat myself on the back and say it’s all good, you’re fine, you’re perfect just as you are, which is kind of, I think, what culture’s meaning when they say that message.

And so essentially I think it puts a burden on people that, you know, of course we don’t mean to put that burden on when we say that. We mean well, of course. But ultimately I think the good news is that you’re actually not enough. You’re never going to be enough. There’s no parent out there that’s ever going to be a good enough parent to be the perfect parent their child needs. But the good news is that there is someone who is enough, and that’s Jesus. And then the Bible talks about when we’re in Christ, His righteousness gets imputed onto us. It covers us like a garment.

And so what I like to tell people is like you’re not enough, but Jesus is enough, and He’s better than you’ll ever be. And when you’re in Him, then His enoughness gets put on you so that when God looks at you, He doesn’t see all of your failings and all of your sin anymore. But He sees the enoughness of Christ, and that’s really good news. But it’s sort of built on this idea that you have to recognize that you’re a sinner. If you think you can do it all yourself and you’ve got it all inside you, then that’s not going to sound like good news.

But I think that’s sort of the two things we talked about, relativism and then this idea that humans are inherently good. I think all of these lives are sort of built on how you answer those two questions.

SEAN MCDOWELL: You know, it’s interesting. Somebody asked me on social media recently, if you’re never going to be good enough, how can you ever rest and feel good about yourself? And I said it’s actually very freeing to realize I can’t be good enough because that’s what draws me to the grace of God. And that’s far more satisfying than any human effort could ever give.

So the more we push that, the more we’re entering this false gospel and exhausting ourselves like a hamster on a wheel. It’s actually doing a 180 and realizing I can’t be enough. I’m not. But when I reorient, do I see myself in what God says about me, it changes things. One of my favorite books is by a Catholic writer named Henri Nouwen, and he said: ‘We define ourselves by what others say about us, by what we do and by what we have.’ As long as we follow that matrix, it’s just going to be depression and exhaustion until we rethink and realize we’ll never have enough. We’ll never do enough. Can’t control what people think about me. But it’s what God says that is most true. So I love that you unpack that.

‘LOVE YOURSELF’

Let’s jump to another one. And by the way, this chapter is one I slowed down the most at and was like, ooh, I might be hitting a point where I see things different than Alisa, which would be interesting. But I think we’re on the same page when we’re done. It’s the question of putting ourselves first, what it means to love others. And you talk about how Jesus says love others as you love yourself. And then you started by saying we’re not supposed to love ourselves. That gave me pause. And then as I read, I’m like, ah, now I see where she’s going. So unpack your thoughts on that one.

ALISA CHILDERS: Yeah, well, I have to look at the quote that you were just talking about because I didn’t remember actually phrasing it exactly that way because I don’t know if I would say – and if I did, I need to go back and read my own book.

SEAN MCDOWELL: I might have butchered it if I misread it.

ALISA CHILDERS: No, no, that’s okay.

SEAN MCDOWELL: Probably on me.

ALISA CHILDERS: I think the point I was trying to make is that a lot of times – and I engage with this a lot in the movement of progressive Christianity. Very often what progressives will do is take that story of Jesus saying love the Lord your God and the two commandments, the most important commandments, and they take that as a command to love yourself. And so the point in the book that I’m trying to make is that the Bible actually never commands us to love ourselves. That’s not what that is actually about.

The Bible actually assumes that we’re going to love ourselves. We all love ourselves. I mean, just look at the narcissism in our culture and how social media even exacerbates that type of thing. And so the point I was trying to make is that the verse kind of assumes that you already know how to love yourself. And so what Jesus is even saying with the golden rule and as all these things come together is that we are actually supposed to love others as we already know how to love ourselves.

And so there is a sense in which – and I think I said this on a podcast the other day – where I can say, Sean, that I love myself because I love what God has created. And so I look at all the people that God has ever created who were made in the image and likeness of God, and I see that inherent dignity and value and worth in them. And so I can say I love people, and in a sense I love myself because God created me in His image.

But I think where our culture, and maybe even in some of the more progressive types of expressions of Christianity, where they miss is that there’s a big but there. And the but we read about in Genesis 3, and that’s, as you mentioned, the deception in the Garden of Eden when Eve took the fruit and gave some to Adam. And that ushered in sin and death into the world, and that spread to all men as we know from Romans.

And so there’s a but there. We were made in the image and likeness of God, and so there’s going to be a sense in which we love ourselves, we love each other, we know how to do that. But there’s a but there where all that gets kind of distorted and broken. And so the image of God is not lost. It doesn’t go away. But in a way it becomes distorted by sin. So once we’re in Christ and we begin that lifelong journey of sanctification, becoming more and more like Christ every single day, that distortion might clear up. But it won’t be fully clear until we’re face-to-face in heaven with the Lord.

And so I think that with putting yourself — putting others first, the message that’s in so many of these sort of self-help books that these slogans are all coming from, they’ll tell you that you actually can’t love other people until you love yourself. And I just don’t think that’s true. I think that we only know what love is because God loved us. He says we love Him because He loved us first. So we get our definition of love from God. We know what love is from God.

And so if we focus on ourselves first, it’s going to give us a self, like a focal point that comes from and out of ourselves, where that focus point should be coming out, you know, through and out of the Lord and out of God. And so I think that when we get those things mixed up, then we end up loving other people in a very kind of selfish way.

And so I love there’s a proverb I quote in the book where it says in the Bible that he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. So you kind of get this when you do put others first, when you seek the benefit of others before your own needs. Then what you end up doing is you yourself become refreshed.

So I think in the book I say it’s not so much like a car running out of gas because we don’t want to exhaust ourselves and not take care of ourselves. I wrote about that a bit in the authenticity chapter. But it’s more like a house with solar panels. You know, you absorb the energy from the sunlight and that gets converted into electricity. But it’s not like this thing where just when you run out of gas and you crash, you’re constantly being refreshed.

And so the point of loving others and putting others first is that when we do that, when we put others first, we also get the benefit of living that way. But when we put ourselves first, then our lives become very self-focused, which ends up, you know, in many ways can end up hurting other people.

SEAN MCDOWELL: I thought it was really helpful when you quoted Ephesians chapter 5 where Paul says: ‘Husbands, love your wives as you love yourselves.’ The assumption is, and it says as you nurture and cherish, that we naturally do this or at least know how. We don’t always do it, but we don’t naturally extend it to others in the same way we do to ourselves. That point I think is really interesting that you brought out.

Hey, let’s jump to a question and then keep going. Here’s a really helpful one from Andrew. And Andrew Green says, how did Alisa decide on writing about these 13 lies? I’m sure she had a longer list of lies. How did she get down to these ones? Now, I realize there’s 13 chapters, I think, so it might not exactly be 13 lies. So the bottom line is, how did you land on these? What was that process like? Why not others?

ALISA CHILDERS: Well, Andrew, you are right. I did have a longer list. And as I wrote the book, a couple of them were like, actually, I think that would have to be a whole book to even address. Like I was going to do one on the word justice and kind of how culture defines justice and how God defines justice. And I just thought that is a beast that I’m not going to be able to tackle in one chapter. So I just left that one out and figured I’ll deal with that another time. There’s lots of great people. Sean, you’re one of them in that discussion talking about those things. And so I just thought, man, I can’t put that in one chapter. That’s just too much. It’s too big.

So how did I get it down to these ones? You know, I’d love to say that I had some super organized approach to it, but I am a flaky artist. And so I kind of just started writing what I wanted to write. And then when the book filled up, I was like, I think we’re good. I think that’s good. So, yeah, I don’t want to say it was completely random because, of course, there was intention behind it. What I think I realized, I originally had the book in like three different sections, like lies about self, lies about the world, and lies about God.

And so as I was writing the book, it was like the lies about self section just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the lies about God and the world, this was getting smaller. I thought, you know, maybe I just need to focus on the ones that are in this category for this book to keep it succinct. And so that’s why so many of these lies are really kind of around that whole gospel of self and the lies that are surrounding how we see ourselves.

SEAN MCDOWELL: That’s awesome. That makes sense. And I would emphasize, you are doing podcasts. You’re reading books. You’re having conversations with people. So you have your finger on the pulse of culture. So seeing these lies is not something just like randomly somebody who’s not spending their time thinking about these things. So that probably plays a piece of it as well.

ALISA CHILDERS: Yeah. And I think all the books that I was reading, too, like the more progressive kind of books, the influencers, where all of these messages, it’s really the kind of the gospel. And I’m certainly not saying all progressive Christians, but swinging out to the more kind of self-help category of maybe Christians who started out as bloggers in the Christian sphere and kind of wandered out of that and are now kind of, you know, they’re on Oprah and they’re more in the secular realm. Promoting some of these lies where it’s like they took the Christian gospel and replaced it with this gospel of self. And that really comes out in so many of the books that I was reading. So that’s probably another reason I wanted to focus on those.

TAKING CARE OF OURSELVES

SEAN MCDOWELL: Fair enough. Hey, let me ask you one more question about the one before about loving yourself. And then we’ll jump to the next one. So the Bible says love others as you love yourself. The assumption is we intuitively know how to do this. But the reality is we don’t actually do it. Right. When we look at how many people addicted to alcohol don’t eat well, we don’t actually take care of ourselves. We know how to do it. We act in our self-interest.

But I would argue we probably don’t love ourselves in the way Paul says in Ephesians chapter five, nurture and cherishing. I’m not sure we actually do that. So if we’re not doing that, if you agree that, wouldn’t that prohibit our ability to love others? I can think about myself. If I just don’t eat and sleep, I’m cranky and I cannot love my family and others as well as I should. So is there a sense where we should actually love ourselves to be in a better position to love others?

ALISA CHILDERS: No, that’s a really good point, Sean. I think that even some of those innate things are distorted also by the fall. So, yeah, you do see people trying to kind of fill the void with things like alcohol or entertainment, whatever it might be. And that’s, as you rightly point out, not going to nurture ourselves very well. And that’s why in the authenticity chapter, in fact, I would love to flesh that out more. I think that’s a really good observation.

Because in the authenticity chapter, that was actually the hardest chapter for me to write because that’s where I talk about taking care of ourselves. And, in fact, I just did a podcast on how to take care of ourselves without falling into the trap of self-care. Because what the world means by self-care is a little bit different than what would be biblical for Christians. Because one thing you do see, and I acknowledge this, is you do see some messaging from some churches telling people to just almost wring yourself out for others, to where you’re so spent and you’re so exhausted that you’re not taking care of yourself.

And so in the authenticity chapter, I tried to sort of bring a balanced perspective to that. And even talking about, you know, I kind of talked in my weight journey of gaining all this weight in pregnancy, then losing a bunch of weight. And I got too skinny and I wasn’t healthy. And then I decided, okay, I’m not going to live like that anymore. And so I just kind of let myself balance out a little bit. But then that almost on the other end of the spectrum turned into me sort of putting myself first.

I was putting myself first when I was trying to be too skinny and I wasn’t healthy. But then I was also ended up, you know, not – I ended up sort of in this bad cycle when I was just, excuse me, lazy and overeating and not moving. And in both situations, I wasn’t able to really be a great mom to my kids because I just – I wasn’t in a balanced thing with that. So I think that was kind of the hardest thing to write about to try to find the balance in.

THE HARDEST LIE TO OVERCOME

SEAN MCDOWELL: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Well, I was going to keep going with my questions, but we’ve got some awesome ones coming through here. And, oh, shoot, so many – here it is. Here’s one from Monica. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one, Alisa. Monica Navarro says, which lie has been personally difficult for you to overcome, if any?

ALISA CHILDERS: What a good question. The hardest one for me to overcome – well, possibly, just – and this would have been in the past, but the one – I think it’s chapter – maybe it’s chapter 11 or 12, but it’s the one that’s – the lie is girl power is real power. And when I was younger, I write about this in the book that for some reason, I’m not even really sure why, I developed a real chip on my shoulder about men. I developed feelings of competition with men. I would even read the Bible through the lens of wanting to see men put in their place and see a powerful woman put a man in his place or something like that. And that was a real struggle for me when I was younger.

And then when I was about 20 or 21, I remember being at a – with some fellow Christians and just asking someone to pray for me and saying, I want to confess. I think the Holy Spirit was convicting me of that. And I said, I just want to confess this, and I want to pray that this will just not be a part of my life. I don’t want to feel this way about men. And my friend prayed for me, and it was just one of those sweet things that the Lord did for me that certainly He doesn’t always do when we ask Him for those kind of things. But it was like it just got yanked out by the root.

And so that was probably the most stark one where I was really, really believing this lie that anything a man could do, I could do and probably do better. And girls should be doing things better than guys and just this competition. And then just kind of receiving that real healing moment from the Lord was very sweet. And then just coming back around to this time in my life today where I can honestly say I love men. I love what men are. I love what God has created men to be. I love what God has created women to be. And I think that that’s something that our culture is very confused about, and really there’s a lot of distortions on that.

So I’m thankful to the Lord for that journey and Him walking me through that healing and just giving me all these years to be thinking about that and just be interacting with it in this very culture right now.

SEAN MCDOWELL: Thanks for sharing so honestly about that. There’s a few times where I think you’re really just vulnerable and open. If you’re going to talk about a book on lies, we’re all tempted to believe. It could be tempting to talk about everybody else, but you enter into some personal stories. And that one makes sense. Really appreciate you sharing. Great question, Monica. That was awesome.

YOLO – (YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE)

Well, you talk about one of the most well-known or commonly used hashtags, YOLO. This is a popular hashtag. Obviously, you only live once. And there’s something just appealing about this, right? Christian or non-Christian. Kind of the world of existentialism that make a difference, stand up, go for it. There’s something just emotionally powerful in that. But you take issue with it and actually say it’s selfish and in contradiction with the gospel. Tell us why.

ALISA CHILDERS: Right. So where this really was sparked for me is I don’t remember what I was watching, but this commercial came on, and it was like this real somber scene at a funeral. And then all of a sudden, this guy leaves the funeral, and he goes to this party, and he’s looking at his watch at the funeral. Like, I can’t wait to get out of here and just go party. And then he goes, and I think it was a whiskey commercial. And I just thought, my goodness, is that really what we’re talking? And then it had the hashtag YOLO.

Just basically the message was forget about all this eternal perspective stuff, and you’re going to die one day, so live it up, right? And then I searched the YOLO hashtag throughout Instagram and Twitter and a couple other places just to kind of see what people were saying. And so how culture is defining you only live once or that YOLO hashtag is really to bring to yourself a very temporary solution, like whatever kind of makes you happy in the moment. So don’t save your money, just blow it on the big vacation. And not saying that it’s wrong to take a vacation, but just don’t think about the consequences of anything. If you’re unhappy, get drunk. If you’re not satisfied in your marriage, just get a divorce. Get out and live your truth, live your life, because you only live once. One day you’re going to die, and then you don’t want to die with all these regrets of things that you didn’t do.

And I was just thinking about how that just stands in stark contrast to the Christian worldview, where in the Bible we have this eternal perspective. The Bible talks about our lives being like a vapor. It starts and ends so quickly. And we are to have, as Christians, an eternal perspective. This life is very short. This is when we share the gospel, when we bring other people as best we can into the kingdom and make disciples. But ultimately, the main event, it’s like our friend Clay Jones says, heaven is the main event, right? Our eternity with God, where there will be no more tears or crying or pain. This is what our eyes should be on.

And what that does for us when we have that eternal perspective, rather than the YOLO perspective, is that no matter what happens in this life, if we get a bum deal or we have maybe not the happiest marriage in the world, or we’ve gone through circumstances that have caused us pain, we know that all things will be made right. We have redemption. We have this eternity to look forward to with the Lord.

And so I think that the YOLO hashtag in a way, it sort of removes that. It removes our ability to live our lives with not so much a here and now perspective, but more of an eternal perspective, which is what we’re supposed to have as Christians.

SEAN MCDOWELL: You know, I think of YOLO, the first word is you only live once. That tells us something about the focus. It is about the self. And of course, it’s true. We only live one life. But Jesus never says live it up. He says, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and then all these things shall be added unto you. Our culture flips this. Seek yourself first, your meaning, feeling good, your success. The gospel is the exact opposite. It’s not about you. It’s not about me. But ironically, when we die to ourselves, then we actually experience the most contentment. So in many ways, when we search for happiness, we’re not going to find it. The paradox is that it’s not about you living a certain way. It’s about following God and His plan, and then all things are added unto us.

HAPPINESS

Now, that actually brings us to the next question. I want to hear you unpack this one about happiness. And it’s really interesting, Alisa. You know I’ve worked at a Christian school 10 years full-time in Southern Orange County. And since I’ve been at Biola the past 10 years, I’ve stayed teaching one class, wonderful Christian school, high school students only. And I’ll ask my students a lot, more than anything else, what do your parents want for you? And you can guess what the top answer is. My parents want me to be happy, and they want me to be successful.

Now, I’ve often said, I want my kids to be happy and successful. But I’d rather have them be miserable failures in the eyes of the world and following the Lord than happy and successful and not. Now, those are not in contradiction. But we just assume God wants us to be happy. So what’s your take? Does God want us to be happy? What do you think Scripture says about this? What’s the lie at the heart of this that we often hear in our culture?

ALISA CHILDERS: Yeah, this is something I think that my parents did a really good job of instilling in me and my sisters is I never grew up feeling like the point of life was being hugely successful in music or in a job or something like that. I knew deep down that what my parents wanted for me was for me to know the Lord, to walk with God, and to grow in my relationship with Him. That was always very clear. In fact, there would have been certain types of successes that I know would have probably grieved them. Had I gone into some sort of maybe a music career that didn’t honor the Lord, and even if that was successful, I knew that they would much rather me just walk humbly with the Lord than have all of that. So I’m really thankful to my parents for that.

But ultimately, the chapter that interacts with the lie, God just wants you to be happy, is really a chapter on suffering. I really go into a little bit of just the depth of meaning that we can mine from times of suffering. This is kind of the paradox of Christianity, is that if you look at other religions or philosophical systems, the answer to the suffering question sometimes will be to detach yourself from it or overcome it or something like this.

But with Christianity, you have this thing of going through it, and then God working all of that for your good, which doesn’t really make a lot of sense to our logical, analytical minds. But I start with this story of my friend Maydeen, who’s the wife of Bible scholar Craig Keener, Maydeen Keener, who’s from Congo. And she spent 18 months, and it’s just a harrowing experience that she had as a refugee in Congo, and just having to depend on God for literally everything, her next cup of water, surviving the night, her child almost dying of malaria. And just watching the depth — and then knowing her and being in her presence and seeing the depth of joy that she has, the peace that she has in her life, the compassion she has for other people when they’re going through difficult times. There’s just a depth there that we don’t have when we aren’t sort of engaging in trials and times of suffering.

I mean, I think on a common sense level, we all kind of know this. If you know a person who really just hasn’t been through a lot of difficult times in their life, there’s a lot they don’t understand about the world. There’s potentially a lack of compassion in certain areas because they haven’t experienced that. And so I think that I kind of hearkened back to the research that was done in 2005, where we got the term moralistic therapeutic deism, or is it therapeutic moralistic deism? I was getting…

SEAN MCDOWELL: You got it, right?

ALISA CHILDERS: Yeah, where essentially they told the average American teenager, and the average American teenager basically thought that God just wants them to be happy and kind of good with each other. He’s not going to tell you what to do when it comes to your sex life or anything like that. But if you need something, he’ll kind of help you out and answer your prayers. But otherwise, he’s just going to kind of stay out of your business.

And this was kind of the dominant way that the average American teenager felt about God. And I think that that has continued to grow. And now those teenagers are adults. And I think that’s kind of the general view. And it can be a pitfall for Christians, for us to even say as parents, of course, you want your kid to be successful. You want them to have a good job. But I think sometimes we need to kind of recalibrate that with what Scripture has to teach us.

And I think about Paul when he said, you know, this light and momentary affliction. And, I mean, light and momentary affliction coming from somebody who was whipped and beaten and stoned and left for dead and shipwrecked and starved and having these to face the elements. And, I mean, if there was anybody who knew suffering, it was Paul. And he calls them light and momentary afflictions are not worthy to be compared to the eternal weight of glory.

And there’s a Catholic philosopher, Peter Kreeft, who talks about earth being the womb of heaven. And it’s sort of like we experience all this suffering and all these trials. And when we get to be in heaven for eternity with God, it’s like the comparison. I can’t even fathom it when I really think about it. And it’s like it’s hard to imagine having the knowledge of certain types of suffering and pain and trial and then getting to appreciate even more the beauty of not having those things. Right.

And so what we see when we have a good theology of suffering is that God uses those things in our lives. If we’re surrendered to Him, if we’re willing to walk through it. And I highlight stories of people like Corrie Ten Boom and Elisabeth Elliot and even some of the people that Rod Dreher interviewed in his book, Live Not by Lies, of Christians who survived the regimes in the Eastern Bloc. And he noted that, the deep abiding joy that they have. And that’s really a paradox.

It’s a beautiful promise we have as Christians that no matter what life gives us and whether we feel ultimately fulfilled in every area of our life or not, God will still use all of that for His glory and for our good. And that’s an amazing promise for Christians to hold on to.

SEAN MCDOWELL: Amen to that. I’m going to jump to an excellent question here from Kaylee. But I’m not an expert on this, so I spent some time reading books on happiness and thinking about it. And Dennis Prager has a book he wrote a few years ago, Jewish talk show host, and it’s called Happiness is a Serious Problem. And he says you can define how our culture approaches happiness through the formula H equals NF. H equals happiness, N equals the number, and F is the number of fun experiences that you have. So the more fun experiences you have, our culture says the happier you are.

But when you go back to the ancient Greeks, they had this idea of eudaimonia, that happiness is not an internal subjective state. It’s the kind of life that you live of virtue committed to something bigger than yourself. That brings a kind of contentment and meaning that is very different than a subjective state about the number of fun experiences we have. So many in our generation reads Scripture through that faulty lens of what happiness even is and distorts everything.

So I just have to emphasize you bringing out these lies again, just kind of eating away at the core and the foundation of this faulty secular worldview so many of us have is really, really helpful in so many ways.

Here’s a question from Kaylee. It says, any insight as to why self-help culture seems to target or impact women more often than men? So I guess two questions. Do you think it tends to target and impact women more than men? If so, any insight as you think why that might be the case?

‘THE GOOD PLACE’

ALISA CHILDERS: Okay, yeah, I want to address that question, but if I could just say one more thing about just because you really fired me with a couple of things you just said. And I wish that I would have seen this show before I wrote the book, but I hadn’t. But I don’t know if anybody watching or maybe you, Sean, have watched the show The Good Place. It’s essentially just a little sitcom about heaven and hell and the good place is actually the bad place. But ultimately at the end, and this is going to be a spoiler, so if you don’t want to know how it ends, everybody plug your ears.

But ultimately they define heaven as this place where basically all of your pleasures, all of the things you’ve ever wanted, kind of that subjective sense is fulfilled. Well, what ends up happening is after so many years of these people just getting everything they’ve ever wanted in life, they get bored. And then as the show comes to a close, they basically end up making the decision to cease to exist. And so the show ends with everybody kind of walking into this light as this cosmic suicide.

And I was – Sean, it was so disturbing to me. I couldn’t even finish – I couldn’t finish it. I didn’t even finish watching because I could not watch them do that because it was so sad to me to see the world’s version of heaven is really just getting all the hedonistic pleasures we’ve ever wanted. And then that just gets super boring after a while. And so really thinking about as Christians knowing that God is eternally novel. There’s never going to be a moment of boredom, and we’re never going to exhaust the beauty of heaven.

Anyway, I just wanted to make a little point about that because that really is – it points out – it really was an illustration just in pop culture that showed me the depressing end of just kind of trying to follow your happiness or what subjectively might make you happy in a moment. So anyway, with that said, I’ll go on to the question from our guest here.

So I do get asked this a lot if I think that these lies affect women more than men, and to be honest with you, I don’t know. I’m not sure. So as a woman – of course, I’m going to have the perspective of a woman to see how these affect women probably more than men. But I also know of several families where these lies have brought great devastation through the man who might have bought into some of these lies.

So I don’t know that they affect women more than men. I think some might be more crafted toward women than men. I think the whole hustle culture, that might be something that might appeal more to men than to women, whereas a different lie might appeal to women. So I’m not sure. I’m not sure I answered that question. I think it would be interesting to see if there were some sociological data done on that to find out which of these kind of slogans are more attractive to men or to women. But I think the gospel itself, just as a broader thing, is something that impacts men and women equally.

SEAN MCDOWELL: That’s really well stated. I was wondering where you were going to go with this because I’m not certain myself. If I had to answer, I would say I think some of the lies as a whole are more likely to affect men than women, and these lies probably affect us in a different way. So some of the lies about identity on social media in particular, we do see girls struggling more with loneliness and depression and comparing themselves with others. So that might be the kind of lie that affects women more so, but this larger self-help expresses itself in different ways. The anti-gospel I think cuts across gender and affects all of us unmistakably.

‘JUDGE NOT, LEST YOU BE JUDGED’

All right, here’s one for you. I’m curious your take on this. You said earlier, and you have a chapter on kind of ‘judge not lest you be judged’ and that we shouldn’t be judgmental. It seems to me that when I was growing up in the 90s, there was this live and let live, you be you kind of culture.

On the flip side, today it almost feels like we have a hyperjudgmental culture that if you don’t get in line with exactly what we think you should believe, we’re going to judge you quickly and dismiss you, and everyone’s going to pile on and shame you. So do you think the strain of not judging is stronger or do we live in this moment where there’s just both intersecting and we’re trying to figure out how to live? So what is the lie about judgmentalism you want people to take away?

ALISA CHILDERS: Yeah, that’s an interesting point because it’s almost like our culture says you should never judge, but it’s literally like the most judgmental culture ever with cancel culture and everything. It’s a bit hypocritical. It’s kind of like the intolerance of tolerance. So with this lie in particular, my hope is that Christians will literally just step out of the worldview of culture and just step into the worldview of the Bible, because how we’re even going to define the words like Judgment and these things, we need to define these things biblically.

And so, of course, the Bible verse everybody will bring up if a Christian has an opinion on maybe a moral stance or something like that. Many of us have received the response, hey, judge not lest you be judged. And of course, they’re quoting Jesus. And so what we have to do is really look at what Jesus was talking about there. So, of course, this is when Jesus is talking about take the log out of your own eye so that you will be able to see clearly to help your brother take the speck out of his eye. And the point of the verse is not that we should never make judgments about people.

The point of the verse is that when we do make judgments about people, we should not make those judgments hypocritically. We need to take a hard look in the mirror and make sure that if we’re going to confront somebody in their sin that we’re not guilty of the same sin or a bigger sin. We need to take a hard look at ourselves first. So I think what Jesus is saying there is don’t judge hypocritically. Even backing up from there, what do we mean when we say judge?

So I think that there’s a sense in which we are not supposed to judge other people when it comes to their salvation. Like I don’t have the power, the right, or anything to determine whether or not someone’s going to heaven or hell. That’s between them and their judge. That’s between them and Jesus, right?

Now, the Bible does invite us to look at the fruit to make a guess sometimes as far as who we’re going to call brother or sister. So certainly that’s in play. But when the Bible talks about us judging each other, Paul talked about, he said it’s not those outside the church we are to judge, but it’s those inside the church. And the context Paul’s talking about is confronting each other in our sin. It’s important that as Christians we live in community with one another where we have an open door to say to someone, hey, let’s talk about this because I see this. And maybe confessing our sin to each other and walking through and leading each other to repentance.

And biblically speaking, that exists to protect the church but also to restore the sinner back to the church. And so there’s this kind of beautiful full circle thing of why we do that. But I think that verse where Jesus talks about not judging hypocritically is so important because I’m sure we’ve all got somebody in our church that’s like the finger-waving sin police. And they’re just looking for what everybody else is doing wrong. So we need to be so gracious with each other and charitable with each other.

But that’s where I think Christians just need to step out of that cultural worldview and step into the worldview of the Bible because so much of this is countercultural. But if we just kind of give ourselves permission to do that and just say, what is the Bible really talking about when we’re talking about judging? We know that it’s not saying we shouldn’t make judgments about each other. In fact, Jesus said, judge with right judgment. So we’re actually supposed to judge rightly.

So I think there’s – I wish I would have had more space to flesh that out more than just a chapter. But ultimately, it’s not true that we’re not supposed to ever judge. But we’re supposed to do so graciously, humbly, non-hypocritically, and with the intention of restoring the sinner back to the church and also protecting the church from sin – so many sins that can be so contagious in a group. Like take gossip, for example. Gossip is so contagious. And so it’s important that we do make judgments saying, hey, that’s not good fruit, and we’ve got to talk about that.

SEAN MCDOWELL: I’ve never had somebody who agrees with me on a moral position say, Sean, you’re so judgmental. But as kind as I try to be with people, I’ve had many people tell me I shouldn’t be so judgmental. When I differ with them, which makes me think when we say don’t be judgmental, we’re not saying people shouldn’t make moral judgments because even saying you shouldn’t be judgmental is a moral judgment. It means you shouldn’t differ with me, and you should hold my moral view. Then I won’t condemn you as being judgmental. That’s what I think lurks behind this.

So it makes me ask, what is my attitude towards others? How am I making moral judgments? Like you said, the Scripture says to do this. John 7:24: make a righteous judgment. But I’ve had a lot of friends who are not believers point out to me some of the hypocrisy in the church, that we’re willing to call out certain sins and not others. Well, shame on us if we do that. Shame on us. We ought to be consistent with what Scripture says.

One last one here for you. I found this really interesting. Actually, two more. I got one for you, and then we’ll take one that popped in from the questions, and then we’ll wrap up.

‘LOVE HAS NOT BUTs’

When I talk about love in our culture, I try to point out some ways that our culture gets love right. Like at the end of Endgame, you point out a lot of movies, sacrificing one’s life, we know intuitively that’s an act of love. Like at the end of Endgame, we see Tony Stark doing that. Our culture gets that right because it’s written in our hearts. But then I like to point out that sometimes our culture gets love wrong. Where do you think our culture goes wrong on its understanding of love?

ALISA CHILDERS: Yeah, that’s a great example of Tony Stark in Endgame because you’re right. Our hearts resonate with that because deep down everybody knows that sacrificing yourself for others or laying down your life for other people is virtuous, that that’s what love does, right? To me, our culture has a split personality because although we pay millions of dollars to go watch that in movie theaters, so many of the books that we’re reading, even books that are marketed to Christians, are telling us that really what love means is that you accept everything I say, believe, and do, and even celebrate that.

And one of the books that I kind of interact with in Live Your Truth and Other Lies is a book that was extremely popular a few years ago where love is really defined as having no buts. So if you’re going to love somebody, there can be no buts. I love you, buts. So basically you have to agree with this person’s – this is what was brought up in the book, political views. You have to vote a certain way to show love. You have to agree with that person. You have to actually, according to this book, and I write about it in here, you have to leave any religious belief that would tell you that that person might be going to hell if they’re not subscribing to the gospel or something like that. And to me, that’s so hypocritical because essentially what that definition does is demand that love has buts, right?

You as a Christian have to leave your beliefs or you have to leave what the Bible might say about something in order to love somebody else. And it’s like demanding that you subscribe to their political beliefs, but yet their whole definition of love is that love has no buts. So I see kind of this hamster wheel I think is a good term that you used earlier that it puts you on, and ultimately it doesn’t make space for the Christian. And it really does.

As you articulated when it comes to judgment, it’s like you have to get on board with a certain cultural ideology or else you’re not loving. And so I think if we look at the Bible, the way the Bible talks about love, of course God is love. It’s one of His attributes. So we’re going to know what love is based on who God is. But Paul fleshes this out for us in 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient. Love is kind. Such a wonderful passage. But also in there it says love cannot rejoice at wrongdoing, and love rejoices in the truth. And so as Christians we just don’t have the option to celebrate something that is sinful or something that’s going to harm somebody else according to what the Bible says. And so it’s sort of like culture wants to have it both ways, but it just doesn’t work.

SEAN MCDOWELL: One of the things a lot of students will say is if you love somebody, is there ever a time you resist what they’re doing? And everyone’s going to recognize that. And I say, okay, so love means resisting. Now what objective standard do we have for determining what standard is right and what standard is wrong? But in previous generations you didn’t have to establish that. We knew that’s what love did. Now it looks like we’ve got to take it a step even deeper.

Last question for you, and this is a tough one. I’ve got to tell you, Alisa, one of the great things of interviewing other people is I’m like, I don’t know how I would answer that, but I get to ask my guest. You’ll do great. It’s not that tricky. Don’t worry.

But this is a common kind of question I get all the time, more of a personal one that says, how can we navigate a conversation addressing sin in someone’s life with compassion and love and truth? What does it look like to navigate that, presumably in relationship with somebody who’s in sin?

ALISA CHILDERS: Yeah, well, I think that the first comment I would make about that is, how can I do this in compassion? Make sure that your compassion is real. I would say that a lot of Christians might try to approach, how can I drum up some compassion? Maybe that’s not a conversation you need to have unless that compassion is very genuine and very real. So maybe starting there.

But I can give you an example that I write about in the book of someone in my life who did that in a very beautiful way, and it was one of my bandmates in Joey Girl. So when Joey Girl was probably at our height of popularity, I had at this point developed an eating disorder that was kind of spinning out of control. And I was really trying to hide it, and one of my bandmates, she knew what was up and confronted me about it. And what made that so precious to me is that she’s probably the nicest person you’ve ever met, probably the person that would be the last person you’d ever meet that would ever want to have any kind of conflict with anyone, anywhere, at any time, a total peacemaker by nature.

But she loved me so much that she just couldn’t let it go unchecked, and so she confronted me about what was going on. And it didn’t go well. Sean, I did not react well. I basically invited her to buzz off, and I didn’t want to hear. I denied it. I acted like she was crazy. I did all the things people do when they lash out.

Well, she could have given up. She could have just said, well, that didn’t go well. But she persisted. She came back again and then brought in my other bandmates. And it was after two or three times that I finally surrendered and acknowledged that this was going on. I confessed it to my husband. I got counseling, began years of counseling with that that was so helpful, but also allowing the Lord to shine His light in my heart and show me sinful things in my own heart that were contributing to the whole thing, and then beginning that repentance and getting counseling to heal wounds from the past and all sorts of different things that were converging there.

But all of that happened because she genuinely did have compassion for me. She genuinely did love me enough to confront me. And even though, and maybe this will encourage you, even though I didn’t react well the first couple of times, I knew she loved me, and I knew that that’s why she was doing it, and it was so convicting to me, which is why I think I reacted that way. So I tell that story in the book because, and I say there, I say she judged me because she loved me, and it might have saved my life.

And I’ve told her this, and I’m very thankful to her for that. So I think when we kind of put it into that perspective, and if that is your vision of the thing where you just love this person so much that you have to bring this up, the Holy Spirit will help you. The Holy Spirit will work on them. And whether it goes well or it doesn’t, you’re responsible for you. You’re responsible to do things biblically on your end. And no matter how it turns out, just keeping your conscience clean before the Lord and knowing, like, I know my motives for this, and I’m going to do my best. And whether I get it perfect or not, I’m going to ask the Lord to help me.

And I think that’s really what it’s all about is that your heart wants to be compassionate. You want to come in love and in truth, and I think the Holy Spirit will help you.

SEAN MCDOWELL: Boy, that’s a great answer. I got goosebumps when you said it literally could have saved your life. It could be somebody’s spiritual life. It could be their physical life. It could be a relationship. So, beautiful response. Genuine compassion, persistence, and the courage done in love is honoring to that person. And in your case, had beautiful results.

I love in your book that when you’re asked questions, you respond with stories. Jesus did that. I tried to do that. It’s an interesting, fascinating read. We’ve been talking with Alisa Childers and her new book, Live Your Truth — and then don’t miss it — and Other Lives. It comes out within a couple weeks, so you can pre-order it now. Number one in Christian apologetics. There’s a lot of good apologetics books out there, so to be number one early on is just fantastic. You’re doing a great job, Alisa.

And for the rest of you, don’t forget to hit subscribe. We’ve got some conversations coming up. For example, I have two of the most outspoken Christians, one Catholic, one Protestant, talking about Christian nationalism. What is it? Is it a big concern? How should Christians think about it? I have a Catholic and a Protestant coming in to talk about theology of the body and things like birth control, some of these topics we often don’t discuss, and a ton of other topics. Make sure you hit subscribe, and if you thought about studying apologetics, we would love to have you at Biola. We have a top-rated distance program, and we walk through a lot of the lies that Alisa has been talking about today. We want to equip you to be an apologist today, so check that out below.

Again, Alisa, really appreciate you coming on. Keep the great work, and we’ll do it again soon.

ALISA CHILDERS: Awesome. Thanks.

For Further Reading:

Economic Storms are Gathering: Peter Schiff (Transcript)

The Essence of Terrible Parenting: Stephanie Davies-Arai (Transcript)

Morality, The Lord of the Rings, and Awkward Jokes: Dr Peter Kreeft (Transcript)

How to Win the Culture War: Dr. Peter Kreeft (Transcript)

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