Season: 10 Episode: 150
Listen to episode 146 in Spanish:
Summary:
Why are teens identifying as emo wearing their mental diagnosis on their sleeves … literally? There is a movement taking over young kids who glorify the victim mentality. Here’s what you need to know about it. We also talk about how to navigate therapy as a Christian when some of the practices are strange. Finally, Shanda responds to a progressive Christians defense of abortions using the Bible as her evidence. These are your questions answered!
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
Hey guys! We’re starting out Q and A and let me tell ya, I have some doozies. When I polled my audience to see what questions they may have, I thought I’d get some typical doctrinal questions about calvinism or water baptism. I don’t know. You never know what you’re going to get, right. But you guys didn’t disappoint. So let’s get to it.
Question One
There are a group of youth (even in the church and church related activities) that are glorifying depression. They wear “sad is rad” bracelets and talk about how “emo” they are. How their parents don’t understand them and that no one probably does. It’s almost a competition of who can be more emo.
The mom’s do not recognize this as a problem. These kids are freely exposed to all sources of social media and freely watch things like anime and horror movies.
So what’s going on and how do we minister to these kids? What do you have to say, Shanda?
I’m familiar with emo. I have teenage boys and they know what emo is. But for those of you who don’t emo is, according to Dictionary.com, “a fan of emo, especially a person who is overly sensitive, emotional, and full of angst, or who adopts a certain style characterized by dyed black hair, tight t-shirts and skinny jeans, etc. a person who is overly sensitive or emotional.”
What I notice right away here is identity.
Emo is a certain look, a certain attitude, a style that attaches this person to an identity. Now remember, one of the worldview questions that all worldviews have to answer and try to answer is the question of identity: who am I? A Muslim will answer that question differently than a Christian. An atheist will answer it differently than a Hindu. That’s just how worldview works. But understand that identity is fundamental to our beliefs and our beliefs are what make up our worldview.
Now, the sad is rad thing is a whole other movement, as they say. Let me share with you the website sadbutradstore.com so you can see their letter to their comrades in hope.
They identify themselves by their diagnosis.
Again, identity. And one thing I noticed repeated is the phrase, “We have value as human beings even when we’re depressed, anxious, manic,” etc.
Abigail Shrirer addresses an issue in her latest book called Bad Therapy, which I recommend you read, and to my knowledge she is not a Christian. She also wrote Irreversible Damage about the transgender craze effecting girls. But she researches, interviews, and investigates the therapy craze in our current culture and she addresses this issue. What I noticed from her research is the glorification of the victim mentality. It’s the constant need to stay in a state of victimhood by talking about your woes, the people in your life who don’t understand or who are the problem, and the goal is not to move into a state of healing.
According to Shrirer, therapists like these kinds of patients.
It’s easier to “treat” a patient who wants to come lay on your couch every week and rehash the problems, but the patients who actually have personality disorders, and schizophrenia are much harder to treat because those are complicated cases.
And because our culture doesn’t actually treat mental health and get to the root cause, we aren’t making anyone better. The next best thing is to make it part of your identity because if it’s who you are, then no one can devalue you.
But here’s the thing, a Biblical perspective answers the question of identity this way: You are created in the image of God. For that reason, you have value no matter what. You can be an inmate in prison and that does not take away your value. You can be a student with special needs who has a learning disability, that doesn’t devalue you. Because every human being is an image bearer, he or she has inherit value where nothing and no one can change that.
The core problem with the sad is rad movement is that they will never move beyond being a victim to being a victor. Are there people who struggle with anxiety? Of course. But does that define them? No, it doesn’t. So what do you do to move past being a victim to being a victor? I think the next question will help us.
Question Two
Can you chat about navigating therapy as a Christian? Between popular practices like EMDR and brainspotting, it can be hard to know what christians should look for or avoid when it comes to modalities therapists use. Some of these practices claim to be rooted in scientific truth but seem very odd. Thanks!
I agree that some practices are odd. I’m an educator and the thing about education is it’s always changing and school districts and school admin tell us we’re trying something new. As an educator, there might be different teaching practices, but the way people learn doesn’t change. We’re either visual, auditory, or hands on learners. The fact is you have to learn letter sounds before you can read. That is never going to change.
So why continually change the method?
Because there is a fallacy in logic, yet we all believe it, called the fallacy because of age, and some fall for, “If it’s new, it’s true.” If it’s a new mode or method, everyone jumps on the other fallacy called the bandwagon, because it sounds good and if everyone is doing it it must be good. But that’s not always true. I feel it’s the same with the medical field. But my assistant, Ashleigh, is more experienced in this area and I am going to put up what she said so that you guys can get this information from someone well versed on this topic.
I think the main point to remember is that Christianity doesn’t glorify being a victim but being victorious through Christ and His death on the cross. If you are going through anxiety, depression, and other trials, don’t settle for that to be the rest of your life. There is deliverance in Christ. And I’ll put Ashleigh’s YT channel link in the show notes.
Question Three
Heaven a place or rather a state of being?
First, let’s define our terms. “State of being” means the quality of your present experience. So that begs the question: if Christ promised us an eternity with Him in heaven, and heaven isn’t a literal place, then what are we looking forward to? The Christian life is a life of taking up your cross daily and following Christ. To take up your cross means you deny yourself. I don’t know that that would be heavenly. To deny myself of all of my desires, that of course would make me happy in the moment, would be ideal. Yet the Bible does not tell us to do that. It tells us to follow Christ. Why? Because our natural desires our sinful and will lead us away from God.
In Rev, we get a picture of what Heaven will look like and it says there will be a new heaven and a new earth where the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven. Revelation gives descriptions and dimensions of the city. That cannot be a state of being. So the final answer is that heaven is a real place. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, as Paul says, so that means we are going somewhere beyond this physical body when we die.
Ok, so let’s end this q and a with a reaction video.
Genesis 2:8 is not the correct verse. It’s Gen 2:7, but there are some pro-choice advocates who use this to say life begins at the first breath. First, this woman calls herself a pastor and a Christian. I have no issues with saying she is neither. Now, before anyone tells me not to judge, she has a TikTok account where she calls herself a progressive and advocates for many things that contradict the Bible. She is most likely a progressive Christian because they deny all the core doctrines of Christianity, which means they are not Christians.
Gen 2:7 (NIV) says, “7 Then the Lord God formed a man[a] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
ESV, “7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
The Bible goes on to say God put that man into the garden of Eden. Genesis 1 gives us an overview of creation. Gen 2 zooms in on it. This is specifically speaking of when God created Adam and later, Eve.
The Bible does say that all living things have the breath of life in them, and the breath is the breath we get from God. But to say that an unborn baby is not living until it takes its first breath is illogical and unscientific. Only living things can grow. That means it is a living being. So this argument is stupid. Also, we see where the Bible acknowledges the unborn in places like Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Psalm 139: You knit me together in my mothers’ womb.” And Luke, “when Elizabeth’s unborn baby, John the Baptist, recognized the voice of Mary and leapt in her womb.” She, as a so called pastor, has to deny all of those verses to widdle her way down to this conclusion.
Second, she says, ‘This is what I believe and you can believe in something else.”
This is the postmodern worldview played out right down to relativism – denying objective truth and letting people live their truth. Again, it’s in direct conflict with the Bible. Jesus makes absolute statements like, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father but by me.” That’s not relativism.
Her argument is that Jesus wants you to live an abundant life and that includes killing your unborn child. Is that what Jesu meant when He said, “I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly?” She’s quoting a verse from John 10, but skipped all of the verses before it where Jesus talks about false teachers, referring to them as thieves and robbers. He was specifically talking about the Pharisees, teachers of the law, who cared nothing about the sheep. Instead, Jesus said all who know His voice will not listen to a false teacher. The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Jesus has come so that they will have life. Isn’t that odd? That the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy and she is talking about killing the unborn to have an abundant life? The irony. She’s a false teacher. All of PC is false. Stay away from it.
Pro-life means protecting the life of the unborn.
Of course we care about the mother. Of course we care about helping. Christians and pro-life clinics in the US are the most supportive of mothers who find themselves in crisis pregnancy situations. Check out the stats. The pro-life argument is simple: It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Abortion is the intuitional killing of an innocent human being. Therefore, abortion is wrong.
I hope you enjoyed this Q and A. If you want to learn more about worldview and receive my monthly newsletter Worldview in 3 Minutes, go to shandafulbright.com. Check out Ashleigh’s YT channel and email me at hello@shandafulbright.com to send in your questions.
e next one!
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