Season: 10 Episode: 150
Listen to episode 146 in Spanish:
Summary:
Whatever is at the center of your life shapes you. The atmosphere of the home helps a child understand what is most important. Where does the family gather to talk and are free to create? Are more words texted on a device than to each other? Shanda talks about the center of the home before technology and why parents are losing ground when it comes to influencing their children to follow God. No family is perfect, and since we’re all humans and descendents of Adam and Eve, every family is disfunctional in some way. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a design for the home that will shape and develope a biblical worldview in your family.
Recommended Resources:
Cross Examined Article: Is Teaching Your Kids About God Child Abuse?
Website: shandafulbright.com
Instagram and Facebook: @shandafulbright
Email: hello@shandafulbright.com
YouTube: Shanda Fulbright
We’re continuing our series on marriage and family this week and today we’re talking about the biggest challenge families face in the 21st century. Last summer, my family and I took a class at church by the name of a book by Andy Crouch wrote called Tech Wise: Every Steps For Putting Technology in it’s place. It wasn’t so much that I learned how damaging technology can be to individuals, consume our time, and shape our worldview. It’s that it presents a different perspective on how the family has changed over the years and how that has lasting and devastating effects itself.
I’ll share more of what I mean as we look as what technology is exactly, because it’s not so much that all technology is bad, and it’s not that technology is isolated to cell phones and computers. It’s how the evolution of technology and our dependence on it as a society and how we’ve allowed it to replace tasks that brought a family together to make our lives easier.
Summer Curriculum
Before we get into it, let me remind you of the curriculum for those of you who are planning your school year next year. We have hard copies of Let’s Get Real: Examining the Evidence for God (student workbooks and teacher guides) for anyone who needs to learn apologetics at the middle school level. We also have Train Your Brain: An Introduction to Logic (student workbooks and teacher guides). This is for anyone who has not learned basic logic. Go to impactapologetics.com to get the workbooks.
If you need to know basic apologetics concepts about why absolute truth exists and why there are absolute moral truths, Baseline Apologetics is written for those around high school (9th grade) and up. Go to shandafulbright.com/shop to get a hard copy of the student workbook.
The Purpose of This Episode
Alright, the entire point of this episode is to help us understand how technology and the convenience of it has changed the way families operate over the years. Some of it is for the better and much of it for the worse. The purpose of this episode is so that you, the parent and adults running the home, can understand that what is at the center of your life forms you. And that is no different for your kids.
In fact, George Barna in his new book Raising Spiritual Champions, said that kids who go to school outside the home spend most of their day in three sections: more time sleeping, then going to school, then consuming media. By the time your kids are teenagers, they swap out the time consuming media with the amount of time they’re in school. So what role does family play in developing a biblical worldview and why does that matter?
Discipleship, or worldview formation, is intentional, immersive, and targeted.
If families are not intentional about the time they spend with their kids forming their worldview and making sure it’s a biblical one, it won’t happen. If your kids are only immersed into secular education and media produced by someone without a biblical worldview (and if they go to a public school that is guaranteed), then you are not making disciples no matter if you never miss a Sunday service or midweek get together. It’s not going to happen. So this episode is to educate parents on the atmosphere you create in your home that nurtures family time and helps you put what matters at the center of your home since whaat is at the center of our lives forms us.
Alright, this is what we’re going to discuss today:
- What is the history of family time in the home over the years?
- What is the atmosphere of your home and why is the parent responsible for creating an environment that puts technology where it belongs?
- What are three practical steps you can implement in your own home right now that nurtures an atmosphere of God first and then family?
The history of family and how technology has changed family time.
Back in the day, there was no central heating and air. The center of the home was we call the living room around the hearth. The hearth was where everyone came to gather by afire and warm themselves. There were no cell phones, and before TV families read books or listened to shows on the radio – because there was only one, not one in each bedroom. This pretty much forced families to be together. They communicated and discussed the events of the day, ate dinner together at the table, and shared entertainment. It was the central focus of the home and the hearth set the atmosphere, both figuratively and literally.
The family came for warmth and fellowship and spent a lot of time together.
Nancy Pearcey talked about the history of fathers taking their children to work with them decades ago and the fathers would teach the children how to take care of the family farm or learn the family business. This was also during the time where mothers didn’t work outside the home as much, so she set the tone of the home, taking care of the needs of the family and providing for their care. It automatically set the tone that the family was first and with that, more families easily passed on their values and beliefs to their kids they were intentional about their time and conversations. Their kids were immersed into a worldview of their parents through conversations, books, and working alongside them. The instruction was targeted because it was the central target of the day.
But then technology became more and more advanced. When we think of technology, we often think of our cell phones, tablets, and computers. We don’t often think of our dishwashers, heating and air conditioning, or smart cars.
But those are all part of the advances of technology.
I love my dishwashers and I’m thankful that I can more quickly clean my kitchen because of it. But along with technological advancement came an ease of life that gave us shortcuts to things that once brought us together. Instead of chopping wood with dad for a fire, or helping mom kneed the dough, we just set the dial on the thermostat and I’m warm.
There’s no gathering around a hearth anymore to warm myself by the fire or with the comfort of my family’s fellowship. We can all take our microwaved dinners to our bedrooms and watch any show we want because there’s a TV in every room. In other words, for as great as technology is, it has also been detrimental to the family because we have allowed it to take over and become the center of our homes – and for that it’s become the thing that forms us and our kids.
What does this mean for us as Christian families?
Think of it this way: your home is ground zero. That means it’s the starting point for your kids. What you say, how you live, the rules you put in place, and the way you live as a Christian here is what sets the pace for everything else in the lives of your family members. If discipleship is intentional, immersive, and not neutral (targeted instruction), then that means you must consider the atmosphere of your home and how you are discipling your kids and how technology impacts discipleship. If you allow phones at the dinner table, then you are having dinner with your kids’ friends and social media influencers. And, if you allow phones while everyone is together during a boardgames or movie night, then you are allowing friends and social media influencers – complete strangers – into your home environment.
What’s at the center of your life forms you.
It shapes you. It impacts your worldview.
Andy Crouch, author of The Tech Wise Family said this, “If our families are to be all that they are meant to be – schools of wisdom and courage – they will have to become more like the church, households where we are actively formed into something more than our culture would ask us to be.” And I would add, “More than our culture is capable of helping us become.” There is no way you or your child will develop a biblical worldview if your days are filled with sleeping, immersion into a secular environment, be it school or work, and media consumption.
So am I saying we should all sit around the hearth and throw out the AC and heater so your family will be stronger and spend more time together? Your girl ain’t crazy. But we must be intentional, immersive, and not neutral when it comes to what we allow in our homes, and what we allow to happen under our own roof.
Family is about the forming of persons – who God has made us, yes.
Your children are created in the image of God.
Their identify begins there and it is also attached to who their parents are and their family heritage. But it’s also about what they become. Family shapes us, regardless of the final outcome. Family is what makes you who you are. That can be a good thing or not. It all depends on what’s at the center of our homes.
Andy Crouch also says this:
Family forms us into persons of wisdom and courage. Wisdom is understanding and walking in it. But when you’re with your family, you realize how foolish you can be. We misunderstand each other and we see the consequences of those misunderstandings. Living in a family with other foolish people helps you see how foolish you are.
But the wonderful thing about it is, our foolishness is seen and forgiven by those in our family because we are loved. There is nothing better than being known for who you are – your mess-ups and imperfections – and still be loved. That’s why those who know the me in real life – the one that trips over things and doesn’t get the joke – and they still love me, mean a lot to me.
Our kids should be able to land softly at home.
They should be encouraged to be courageous and take the leap. Go for the big thing. Take the risk. And if you strike out, who cares. You tried and we still love. But not trying isn’t an option.
What I tell my kids is this: how you treat your brothers matters. You can be the kindest kid outside these walls, but you can’t love your brothers and be patient with them, nothing outside these walls matter. If you can’t do it here, it’s meaningless out there.
And this is what families do – they help us develop wisdom. They help us work out the foolishness as we patiently correct each other, forgive each other, and learn from each other.
You’re responsible for how your family works. What can you do about technology?
Let me start by asking you this question: are you running your family or is your family running you? I would often ask my husband this question about his business when he went through seasons of being so busy that he couldn’t do anything outside of work. This question puts things back into perspective. And he’ll flip it on me during a busy writing season – is your ministry running your or are you running your ministry?
It just means – are you in control or not?
Are you setting the pace and atmosphere for your family or are the kids telling you when and if they want to have family time, bible studies, dinner at the table? I’m going to do an episode on discipline soon, but I am a firm believer that in my house it’s my rules.
And again, we’ll get to this soon too with older kids, but I don’t care how much money you pay for rent, you live at home. You follow the rules of the house. My boys know this and they don’t balk at it because they know what the other choice is – you can get your own home and make your own rules. But I started the whole respect thing with my boys when they were very, very young.
They are not allowed to talk back, raise their voice, argue with me. And that doesn’t mean they haven’t tried, but when they do, I nip it quick. I don’t transfer discipline to my husband if the issue is between me and one of my sons. I handle it because I’m mom and if I expect them to respect their wives one day and the other women in their lives, it’s starts with me.
Parents, that’s the whole point.
Your family is your responsibility and God will ask you to give an account.
You’ve heard this passage of Scripture a lot but we’re going to read it today and then break it down and look at what I think many people overlook when they dive into this passage. It’s in Deuteronomy 6:4-9.
It says:
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[a] 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Whenever people talk about families and how to teach kids, they mention this passage. But what I want to remind you of first, whether you have kids at home or not – this isn’t only for parents of young kids. It starts with you.
You can only impress onto your children what is important and of value to you.
If loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind isn’t your aim, don’t expect to influence your kids to do it. You can forget the success of verse 7-9 of this verse because 7-9 can only happen if you love God with all you have first. But no doubt, you are responsible for this because it is a command – we see that in verse 1.
How you run your family is all about the environment you create. It will always start with you. I always tell parents that God has called us to be diligent to teach our kids, no matter what the culture looks like. But parenting for our parents looked different than the way we have to parent. My parents limited screen time in regard to TV. We have to limit screen time in regard to smart phones. When I taught 5th grade, I couldn’t believe that my students had a cell phone. Why? They can’t drive.
What do they need a cell phone for at 10?
The research on the cell phone usage and how it’s detrimental to a child’s development and dangerous in what it exposes them to at such a young age is vast. Your home environment has to include cell phone rules. What age is appropriate for a child to have a phone? If your child needs a phone, I suggest they get a flip phone for communication purposes only. My boys can’t watch YouTube in their rooms alone. Brody, my youngest who is 14, cannot have social media of any kind and we no longer have free games because they are known to slip something in that children should not see.
So if we are going to get any games, which I think he has one or two sports ones, then we pay for them because if not, we are going to pay one way or the other and I don’t want it to be with his innocence.
In Andy Crouch’s Tech Wise book, he suggests technology breaks.
I believe it’s one hour out of the week. One day out of the month. And one week out of the year. We do this on vacation. Also, we have no phones at the dinner table so we have uninterrupted family time. And sometime that means I have to take my smart watch off because I will want to check my messages I get a notification so to avoid temptation, I ditch it.
We also don’t have cable TV. We always plan a movie to watch as a family. To be honest, I don’t watch a lot of TV because I read a lot and my boys have taken on that habit, thankfully.
So TV watching is very strategic.
My youngest does like to watch Dude Perfect and baseball plays from YouTube but the noise from the TV gets super annoying because it’s not on a lot.
That kind of accidentally happened, if I’m being honest, because my husband and I created an environment in our home where we sit around and talk a lot and debate certain topics since we’re into apologetics. We’ve also invited people to come debate topics with us like Calvanism and we order pizza and it gets heated sometimes. We’re learning how to debate without so much emotion, but everyone wants to talk.
My point is this – you are the one who sets the temperature in your home.Your kids are going to fall in line with the rhythms of the home. If you let things go and everyone disperses to their own side of the room, then that’s what you’ll get – distance in communication and fellowship. But that also means if your kids are spending more time with outside influences (and by this, I mean their phones) they are getting their worldview formation by what is at the center of their lives and if it’s not you, then it will be something else.
3 Practical steps to nurture a godly environment.
Ok, so some of you might be wondering where you begin with this. I did mention a few things we do in our home and the first one I’m going to do is ask you a question: what is at the center of your home? You can answer this question by thinking about where your family spends the most time when they walk into your home. Is it in the kitchen together? Is it in the living room watching TV? How about in their rooms? Where do you spend the most time and what are you doing there?
If it’s not in a place where you come together and carry on conversations about what took place that day, what they’re looking forward to, and the pressing issues, then you need to reclaim that space. So for that, I would say get to the dinner table. My parents ate dinner with us at the table every night and I loved it. It was my favorite part of the day because we got to talk to each other and I got to tell my parents what was going on in my life.
Your kids will love this.
And if you have a hard time spurring on conversations, get the conversation cards that ask questions and go around the table and have everyone answer. We’ve had several of these packs and my boys get them out and we don’t even ask. They love it.
Second, set tech rules. Remember, what is at the center of our lives form us. If your kids day is split into three sections of where they spend the most time: sleep, school, and media consumption, they are being discipled by someone other than you. Read Tech Wise by Andy Crouch and look at the 10 steps for how to keep technology in it’s proper place.
He’s not saying technology is bad.
He’s saying it has a place and it’s place isn’t at the center of your child’s life.
And that brings to the third thing you can do immediately to cultivate and environment for discipleship and growth in your family.
Make your kids think and create. Things in our homes have made life easy everywhere. Certain things do not encourage critical thinking and creativity. Andy Crouch uses the example that instead of learning to play the guitar and make music, we push play on a device. Instead of playing boardgames and sitting outside, we play video games and put headphones on and talk to people outside of our homes. Nurturing an environment where kids learn how to think through hard things, have hard conversations, and learn to create with their own hands and mind is an environment that helps them grow and be who God created them to be.
Can you still use technology to do this?
Sure, but put it where it belongs. My older two boys and I share an Audible account and we all buy books that we share and then talk about them. My middle son always asks me what book he should read next and we discuss what he wants to learn and go from there. We throw a question out to our boys in the living room and a lively debate starts. And some people ask, “How did you get there? How did you get to the point where they want to read and debate instead of watch TV?” I started when they were babies.
And in all honesty, I did it because I’m a teacher. I graduated with my BA as a big pregnant twenty-something year old and I got my teaching credential when my oldest was one year old. I wanted my kids to love to learn so I bought all of the books and had hundreds of kids books of all stages and reading levels in my home on the books shelf. We read one book every night and I read the Bible to them every night. Every night. It was a long bedtime routine. And when they were in middle school, I started to give them some of that responsibility and I told them how to read their Bibles and it wasn’t always perfect.
We live in a world post Garden of Eden
I told the ladies at a conference last weekend that we live in a world post garden of Eden. We have to understand that things are not going to be perfect. But I wanted my boys to know that their relationship with God was their own.
I still check in on them today and ask them what book of the Bible they’re reading or what I can pray for them about. I encourage them to learn and be able to articulate a reason for why they believe what they do. But it was important to me and my husband to do that.
Close:
I don’t have a huge following on social media but I do get plenty of comments of people telling what they think or pushing back on some of my podcasts. One of the things Christians will say is, “Well what do you expect this culture to look like? God only has a remnant.” As if that’s a pass for them not to disciple others or to be passive about making God known.
But just because narrow is the gate and there will always be a remnant does not mean that God does not expect us to take up the Great Commission and go and make disciples of all nations. But no matter what the “go” part looks like for anyone of us, everyone of us is responsible for our own families. At the very least, you should be diligent in your own home to create an environment that gives the best to your family and once they leave the house, at least you’ll know you gave it your all and you gave your best to your kids.
Your family is your most important investment and your home is the most sacred space you have to do that. I hope that encouraged you and gave your some ideas for how to create an environment that nurtures the Biblical formation of your family. If you have any questions for me, email me at hello@shandafulbright.com and I’ll catch you on the next one.
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