Ideas Have Consequences
Everything that we see around us is the product of ideas, of ideologies, of worldviews. That's where everything starts. Worldviews are not all the same, and the differences matter a lot. How do you judge a tree? By its fruits. How do you judge a worldview? By its physical, tangible, observable fruit. The things it produces. Ideas that are noble and true produce beauty, abundance, and human flourishing. Poisonous ideas produce ugliness. They destroy and dehumanize. It really is that simple. Welcome to Ideas Have Consequences, the podcast of Disciple Nations Alliance, where we prepare followers of Christ to better understand the true ideas that lead to human flourishing while fighting against poisonous ideas that destroy nations. Join us, and prepare your minds for action!
Ideas Have Consequences
Pro-Child Politics with Katy Faust and Josh Wood
One of the primary, God-given roles of governing authorities is to protect its weakest citizens. This especially means a government must structure a society where vulnerable children can thrive. Does your government truly prioritize the needs of children? It’s time to bring back the Biblical model of authority, where the strong humbly serve the weak. Join us for the amazing opportunity to hear from Katy Faust and Josh Wood from Them Before Us, as they share about their new book, Pro-Child Politics: Why Every Cultural, Economic, and National Issue Is a Matter of Justice for Children. Their book paints a picture of what a child-before-adult approach would look like in 19 key political issues of our day.
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So I would say that why are we here? It is because we have been unburdened by what has been, in the sense of what has been in the past was a Christian worldview, restraint on our actions, our behaviors and our decisions that governed us in ways that said that actually, maybe you're not the most important thing in the world now, but, of course, because Christianity was framed as some kind of oppressive tool rather than the strongest implement of justice and well-being that has ever touched the face of the earth, we have thrown off the shackles and the restraints of the Christian worldview, and the result is unfettered hedonism.
Katy Faust:And when you've got unfettered hedonism, especially in the area of sex, marriage and relationships, it's always kids that are going to be the victims.
Luke Allen:Hi friends, welcome to. Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. Here on this show we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world, to all the nations, but our mission also includes to be the hands and feet of God, to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission and today most Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.
Luke Allen:Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode. My name is Luke Allen. I will be your host today and, yes, I am not normally the host. Normally that is my dad, scott Allen, but as of right now, I believe, he is flying down to Columbia to be teaching this week at a YWAM base down there about what a discipled nation looks like, which I think is a really interesting prompt from those guys. So I'm excited to hear how that goes when he gets back. Today I am joined by Dwight Vogt and Naomi Smith as my co-host. Thanks for joining guys. Hey, luke.
Naomi Smith:Thanks for having us.
Luke Allen:Yeah, and today we are absolutely honored to have two amazing guests joining us Katie Faust and Josh Wood. Katie and Josh, thank you guys for joining us.
Josh Wood:Glad to be here.
Luke Allen:Thanks for the invite. Yeah, of course, great to have you guys. For those of you who aren't familiar, katie Faust is the president and founder of them Before Us, which is an amazing ministry slash global movement to defend children's rights to their mother and father. So, in case you didn't catch it, the them is referring to children and the us is parents and adults. She is also on the advisory board for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, arc. She has spoken at the UN about parental rights.
Luke Allen:She is an international speaker, writer and author of now three books, one of which we're going to be highlighting today, and that book is brand new. By the time we release this episode it will be out and it is called Pro-Child Politics why Every Cultural, economic and National Issue is a Matter of Justice for Children. The co-author of that book is Josh Wood. Josh has spent his career in both nonprofit leadership and in church ministry and, as of this year, is the executive director of them Before Us. And, from what I hear, josh, you hit the ground running by being the inspiration behind this book right off the get-go. And yeah, there's a big deadline for this book, so it sounds like you guys had a bit of a rush writing this. With that said, why don't you just open up by telling us why did you write the book? Why now? And if you could give us a general thesis, that'd be great.
Josh Wood:Well, first, thanks for having us. I mean, we are honored to be here and to talk about this project which, as you mentioned, has been a bit of a sprint. So some of that is because we know there's a really important deadline coming up for our nation in the United States, which is coming up in November for our presidential election, and so we set out really them Before Us is always advocated very strongly in marriage and family to again put them before us. But we thought you know this worldview, the basic idea that children shouldn't have to do the hard things, that it is heroic parents who step up to sacrifice, that basic idea isn't just applicable when it comes to talking about marriage and family. Now, katie and I personally believe that marriage and family is the bedrock. We do think it's keystone, we think it's, you know, upon that you can build so much a strong community and we think it's, you know, upon that you can build so much a strong community, society, country and world. But when you start to kind of emanate out, you can take issues like debt, immigration, national security, education, all these different things, and start to ask that same question.
Josh Wood:You know what does it look like for the adult to do the hard thing here and it's critical because I mean, as everybody knows, children are that demographic within our society that really truly don't have a voice, they can't vote and oftentimes the consequences they bear.
Josh Wood:You know, ideas have consequences the consequences that they bear. They often don't get to share how difficult it was until years later, and we've seen that, even within some of the transgender movement, for some of the surgeries that kids have gone through, that they get older and they say the consequences of these decisions that were forced on me or I was led into have been massive and life-changing and irreversible. Where was the adult in my life to tell me no? Life-changing and irreversible. Where was the adult in my life to tell me no? And so the whole book just looks at all these different issues. We brought in all these experts to take each one and help to frame this issue as what are the major lies that society is pushing that harm children, and what truths do we need to believe to begin to protect children and reverse this trend?
Luke Allen:do we need to believe to begin to protect children and reverse this trend? Yeah and for yes. So you guys brought in a group of experts essentially to do the legwork in writing this book, which I think is such a good approach for something like this, where it's really kind of a guide for people on each one of these topics, and hearing from an expert on each one of those is really helpful, actually, just off the get-go, to get the topics we're going to be covering today on the table. This is a book of 19 chapters. Each chapter covers one of these political issues.
Luke Allen:Those include life, masculinity, femininity, family, race, gender, ideology, porn, the economy, taxes, debt, energy, esg. Slash DEI, religious liberty, education, education, digital technology, the environment, national security, policing and border security. Slash immigration. These are all so important, but again, I think a lot of people like myself, when I first heard this list, was like what does a pro child view of something like the environment look right? So so I'm excited to hear you guys unpack that. Naomi, I'm going to hand it over to you to get us started with the questions for today.
Naomi Smith:Yeah. So I have a question just about the title of your organization. When I started telling friends that I was going to be talking with you guys and I told them that your organization is called them Before Us, I think the initial sort of reaction that a lot of my friends who are believers had was sort of like is this on the extreme of child-centric, like, what about maybe the unit of the family or something like that. And as I explained it, I think they caught on more to what you guys are trying to do. But I just wanted to hear from you guys if you guys have ever had that come at you and, if so, how do you respond to that?
Katy Faust:We have a lot of opportunities to clarify about the work that we do, because what we're doing is really different than what anyone else has ever done, and so there is quite a bit of opportunity to say well, we're going to define ourselves based on what we're not. So certainly, when we talk about putting children before adults, we are not saying these are little beings that should self-direct and have no kind of guidance or discipline and be absolutely the pinnacle of everything that you think and do about your life and the family's life. So that's not what we're saying, and I actually think that there's some very unhealthy philosophies of parenting that are cropping up around that idea that your child can never do any wrong, that they need to self-direct, that you should never correct them, that there shouldn't be any discipline. That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is safeguarding, identifying and defending children's fundamental natural rights, and when you say it that way, it starts to make a little more sense, because a lot of us are already doing that on matters of defending children's right to life, like that's something that has been a part of the DNA of the church and of conservatives in general for a couple of decades. Now we understand that when you're defending children's right to life, that doesn't mean and then, once they're born, they get anything they want. No, we're talking about a movement that actually is there to protect and defend the most vulnerable. So we are doing that at them Before Us, beyond just the life issue.
Katy Faust:We are saying, if we were to prioritize children's genuine needs, their genuine interests and their natural rights, what would marriage and family look like if we then scaled the rest of our decisions, elevating children before the desires of adults? And the answer is you get the natural family of one man, one woman that have committed to one another for life. You also get the answers when it comes to when should divorce be permissible? Should we be promoting modern families? What should our response be to reproductive technologies like IVF and third-party reproduction and surrogacy, and what is adoption for and who is adoption for? And so the beauty about elevating and framing all of these conversations around children's natural rights is you get absolute clarity when it comes to good policy, but you also get the practical answers to your own personal decisions when it comes to those areas.
Katy Faust:And, like Josh said, this framework of putting children before adults, their natural rights before the desires of adults, has propelled them before us to a place of influence that, honestly, we don't deserve.
Katy Faust:In terms of like the size of our organization, we have had an incredible influence on the influencers on a variety of different large organizations, networks, um. And it's because this very simple framework of, like Josh said, um, insisting that adults do hard things for kids and not the other way around, um, it makes things very easy to understand. It's a simple template through which you can discern the right approach on almost every issue. And now, with this next book, we asked these 19 experts to take our framework of put children before adults and then tell us what energy policy should look like, and tell us what religious liberty is for, and tell us how we would really think and talk about race, and tell us what ESG and DEI does for kids or against kids, based on that rubric, and what you get is the same kind of thing incredible clarity and the right personal and policy decisions on the other side.
Dwight Vogt:I'm going to. I'm going to ask a question follow up question on that. Katie, you referred to natural rights several times and I'm going okay, natural rights. What do you mean? I mean rights. There's child rights. I mean, I grew up, worked in the relief and development field for many, many years and the UN pushed child rights for years and years and years and it was going a different direction. What do you mean? Not natural rights.
Katy Faust:We. This is another opportunity that we have to clarify quite a bit, because, first of all, there's a problem with rights talk these days, and it is simply that anything somebody really wants conveniently gets framed as a right, especially if they're an adult. You know, if they want subsidized housing, well, that's a right. Well, if they want government funded birth control, that's a right, you know. If they want to be able to abort the child in their body, that's a right. So, just because somebody says that it's a right, or because somebody really wants something or even some necessities, you can say that it's a right but it's not, especially when you look at it through the lens of natural law. So when we say natural rights, we are not just conjuring this up out of nowhere.
Katy Faust:Natural law is a system of philosophy that has been present through millennia, actually, and it's the idea that you can discover the ought of life, what you ought to do, the shoulds, based on looking at the natural world. And sometimes those natural rights don't necessarily line up with civil law, and that's actually how we determine whether or not something is a just or an unjust law. For example, martin Luther King Jr argued, based on the natural law, the natural right that blacks were fully equal to whites, even though our civil law did not recognize them as such, and so he said that an unjust law is no law at all. How do you determine what is just? Well, he was doing that based on natural law. And so natural law is a system of thinking and discerning the moral law without appealing to biblical authority or church teaching or revealed authority. It is a way of discerning what ought to be based on looking at the natural world. This is something that the founders were very familiar with as well, and so that's what we do with them before us.
Katy Faust:We make the case for children's natural rights based on natural law, and when you look at it through that filter, there aren't a lot of rights out there. You don't necessarily have a right to water. You don't necessarily have a right to water. You don't necessarily have a right to education. You have a right to pursue education. You certainly should have a right to access water, but we make a very, very clear distinction. We spend a lot of time in our first book, them Before Us, why we Need a Global Children's Rights Movement. Chapter one we talk about how do you know whether or not something is or is not a natural right. Because we think it's really important to understand this term, use it correctly, because when you do, there is a lot of power behind it.
Dwight Vogt:Let me just follow up for our audience. Ideas have consequences. The podcast, the Disciple Nations Alliance, and we talk a lot about biblical worldview. But, one distinction we make, and that is when you're talking about natural lights or natural law, you're talking about reality at its core.
Katy Faust:That's right.
Dwight Vogt:When we talk about worldview we're not talking about. Well, here's another idea that comes out of a book that's a religious book, happens to be the Bible. We're talking about what is the reality that God put in place, because that reality becomes the ultimate reality. That's why we say worldview comports completely with reality as it is. So worldview comport biblical, worldview comports with natural law. So we can use both terms and I like the idea that you can talk natural law or we and we do as well, and it it kind of de-religifies it and that was one of our questions too.
Dwight Vogt:How do you talk in a way that doesn't offend everybody because they don't like your religion?
Katy Faust:I'll let Josh answer that question, but I'll tell you the way that we say it at them before us, and it is that we don't necessarily base our work on the word of God, even though that's my own personal authority. We base our work based on the world of God, the design and the structure that God made. But because the word of God and the world of God have the same author, they perfectly complement one another.
Josh Wood:Yeah, we certainly work on presenting that piece of it what's revealed in creation, what we can point to, what we can measure. If you read our first book, it appeals heavily to data. How do children fare when they are put first, when they have a mom and a dad who raise them, when the mom and dad do hard things for them? And I mean the data is clear. And we Christians just happen to know why. We know why that data is clear. We know why that data is positive Because so much if you get family right, if you get marriage right, so much downstream becomes clear People flourish, families flourish kids do well, societies do well, communities do well. So we get to trace it all the way back to that and just focus on what we know God will reveal in his good creation, because he did have a good design.
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Naomi Smith:I have another question, kind of along the lines of the adults doing hard things rather than children. I was talking to another friend who and I could see how this could easily be used as an excuse and a justification for adult choices, so let me just preface it by that. So let me just preface it by that. But she was saying isn't it good in many circumstances for children to go through hard things in that their growth where I think you said that your parents got a divorce and that kind of flipped you into this strong sense of determination that you will stay married and you will have a whole family, and so I guess I'm my question is something along the lines of does adversity actually help form us, and how do you address that when it comes to your slogan of allowing parents to do the hard things so that kids don't have to?
Josh Wood:I mean, my personal opinion would be that kids are going to have a tremendous amount of difficult things go on through their life, whether by choice or tragedy, as they grow up, and I think the best thing we can equip them with is not a set of trials from our bad decisions, but a great and heroic example from their adult parents choosing to do very difficult things. I mean, I think it's kind of like those arguments for, you know, sending kids, you know on, you know, unprepared or unprotected, into public schools or into even if they are very bad, or under the leadership of bad coaches or teachers who do not share our values, with no training, no protection and no cares, because they are our missionaries out into the world. I personally do not ascribe to that at all. I mean, I think that doesn't mean you stay out of public schools or public institutions, but this idea that that's how kids learn and they're primarily here to be a light to those, you know, adult-centric institutions or other kids, I think is false.
Josh Wood:I think we have to prepare and protect our kids. They are being trained by us, they need to learn from our examples and we do need to let them experience failure and we need to let them experience. You know, I can think of being broken up with when you're growing up, not getting invited to a party, getting cut from a team. Those are plenty of things to work through with your parents that are good and healthy, and failing at a class, you know like those are good things to work through with a parent.
Josh Wood:I think having them pack a suitcase and spend Christmas in two different places I don't think that's something we should, you know, willingly put on a child and certainly, looking back, I think the adults should just say this isn't ideal. None of us would have chosen this isn't ideal. None of us would have chosen this. And I'm not going to try to make myself feel better by pointing out the good you may have gleaned in spite of it, you know, because we've got a wonderful God who can redeem all things. I mean I just think that that is beginning to just be kind of a medication an adult would take to make themselves feel better for the choice they made an adult would take to make themselves feel better for the choice they made.
Katy Faust:And I'll add to that, naomi, that very mindset is the thing that gave a lot of adults permission. I mean like we. Actually, if you start talking about family breakdown, two or three comments in on social media what you're going to hear is the phrase children are resilient and what that means is they're going to get over whatever I throw at them because they're resilient.
Katy Faust:But the reality is that when you are taught and that's true like we are adaptable, we are made to overcome challenges. A lot of times the challenges do strengthen us, but that's not what family breakdown is. We actually talk about it in our book, as there are three staples of a child's social, emotional diet. We have been studying family structure for decades and we know the things that it takes to build resilient children, children that can overcome all kinds of challenges, children who can flourish once they enter into the adult world. There are three non-negotiables that they need every single day, every day of their childhood. The first one is mother's love, the second one is father's love and the third one is stability. Now, if any one of those three are gone, we actually know, we can chart their the demise, the breakdown of their physical health, mental health, emotional health, academic health, relational health, when any one of those three is missing, because mom and dad have split up and so they only get 50% of mom and 50% of dad and there's no instability. Or mom raises the child alone, but it's completely stable, but dad is gone.
Katy Faust:There are no studies that show that those kids fare just as well. We actually talk about that as you're starving kids. It's a starvation diet. The child is being starved of something that the world or the word of God says that they require if they are going to grow into thriving, healthy, fully functional adults. So, yes, kids do need to work through the disappointment of not getting invited to the birthday party and being cut from the team and failing the class and dealing with that on their own. But when a child is malnourished emotionally, do you think they're going to be able to handle the disinvitation to the birthday party? No, they need to have that bedrock, that fully nourished social, emotional foundation, so that they know how to overcome the challenges in the future. So Josh is exactly right. Unfortunately, those kinds of sayings and rationale medicates the adult into feeling better about foisting their hard choices on the shoulder of kids.
Dwight Vogt:You have a chapter on DEI, don't you?
Katy Faust:Oh darn, it, we sure do, and it's really good. I wasn't actually sure how they were going to do it, because I'm like, how do you make, how do you talk about DEI from the perspective of the child? But we got Justin Danoff to write the chapter and he's one of the original founders of of Strive, vivek Ramaswamy's organizations. I mean, this boy knows what he's talking about and his chapter is fire.
Dwight Vogt:I'll have to read it, but just thinking about it, I was talking to a friend last week and and basically, well, he was doing kind of a presentation. I saw him on video and he was apologizing for his privilege. Well, I know his family and I know his dad and I know his mom and I'm thinking you had a loving mother, you had a loving father, and that love was defined as they provided provision for him, they provided safety for him, they encouraged him. They encouraged him, they loved him and helped him move along in life. Now he's apologizing for that because it's defined as privilege, and I'm thinking, no, that's just having a good family, and yet we've almost said no, now that's bad because others don't have it.
Katy Faust:Well, through the lens of equity, where everybody has to be the same rather than saying all children should be feasting on the three staples of mother's love, father's love and stability, because that would require adult to make sacrifices, not just any sacrifices, but sexual sacrifices, and that's the thing you cannot tell adults to make. So instead of raising every child up so they're feasting on those staples, we are going to bring down the people who were able to feast on those staples. And I will say that when he says that's my privilege, he is exactly right. When you look at outcomes for kids, it is the privilege of having a married mother and father raising you from birth until adulthood. That is what privileges you, not race, not even socioeconomic, not class. So I would say that why are we here? It is because we have been unburdened by what has been in the sense of like. What has been in the past was a Christian worldview, restraint on our actions our behaviors and our decisions that governed us in ways that said
Dwight Vogt:that actually maybe you're not the most important thing in the world now, but of course, because Christianity was framed as some kind of oppressive tool rather than the strongest implement of justice and well-being that has ever touched the face of the earth.
Katy Faust:We have thrown off the shackles and the restraints of the Christian worldview, and the result is unfettered hedonism.
Josh Wood:And when you've got unfettered hedonism, especially in the area of sex, marriage and relationships, it's always kids that are going to be the victims, kids that are thriving and doing well, from a married mother and father, and I do think we, as Christians especially do have to be a bit of a PR program for marriage and be proud of the fact that we stuck it out.
Josh Wood:We went through hard times. Our kids flourished as a result. When we see studies that affirm that we should be advocating having lots of kids, sacrificing certain material things or independence for kids, has become a little like out of step or style that you need to wait, you need to get so much stuff done before you do it and really putting some of those other things as more important, like you're going to get more out of traveling than you would out of raising kids. I just haven't found that to be my experience or any of the experiences of the people that I've met who have followed a similar life path to me, and I think we've got to be careful that in trying to be compassionate towards people raising kids alone things like that that we don't rip down an ideal either that has been very beneficial to society for millennia.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I think conservatives in general, christians in general, just don't do a good job of personalizing our stance on things very well and I think you know that appeal to emotions of just here's a story of someone that went through this and this is what happened I think could be used a lot more, a lot more effectively. I don't know if it's like you were saying, josh, maybe because we feel bad that you know me. I grew up in a really stable household. I feel bad that I had such a. It was a huge privilege and I don't want to tell other people like, oh, you know you didn't and you know you have it worse off than I do, um, but it's true, it's a beautiful story. I grew up in an amazing household with two amazing parents and, um, you know we have a tight, loving family to this day.
Luke Allen:Um, in this book I uh, you guys brought in a lot of stories, though I really appreciate that. I think you open every chapter right With a personal story of um, what happens if we don't have a child centric view, or is it? Is it a pro? Is there a good stories and bad stories, or is all just the negative side of this? Because there's a lot of those.
Katy Faust:So the challenge of doing a project like this where you have 19 chapters I don't know if there's another book that's ever been written that brought together such diversity of titles, all by a different author, and did it in like about six months. So what we were undertaking was very, very challenging, just from a logistical perspective. But then also, how do you bring cohesion to a project like this? But that wasn't the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that when people on the right, or conservatives, or even natural lawyers, or even Christians, when we talk about these issues, we have always had the data, the research, the common sense, the natural law. We've even had the five major religions of the world on our side for most of this. What we have not had is story. Just like you said, luke, we absolutely underutilized the power of humanizing these issues, and so we were not going to make that mistake with pro-child politics. So when I invited all of these different authors and experts to collaborate on this project, I said, for the sake of cohesion and for the sake of potency, here's how this is going to go.
Katy Faust:Every author begins with the story of a real life child who was victimized or harmed because we got the issue of immigration wrong, or national security wrong, or education wrong, or masculinity wrong, or ESG wrong. Then I want you to outline the major lies of immigration or the environment or education or transgenderism. Then I want you to tell me how those lies harm kids. Then I want you to tell me the truth about digital technology or race or religious liberty, and then I want you to tell me how kids would be protected if we were to believe and act on those truths. And then at the very end, I said I don't want this just to be theoretical. You then need to wrap up the chapter by showing me somebody that has done it right, who has reformed ESG and DEI well, and how can we follow their example? What states and municipalities have actually enacted protections for children around pornography? Who did it? And tell me how it's done so that we can do it too.
Luke Allen:I'm going to buy the book. I'm excited to read it. Yeah, you're going to like it, dwight, and then you're going to read it.
Naomi Smith:Yeah, you're gonna like it, dwight, and then you're gonna tell me what you think, okay that kind of leads into another question that I have for you guys, which is what would be your dream outcome for this book?
Katy Faust:I'll let josh go first. I actually want to hear his answer well it's.
Josh Wood:It's a really unfortunate. I think it is unfortunate that our country has gotten to a point where it is rare to talk about or glorify sacrificial adults. It's not popular anymore. You look at our politics, people who sit in decision-making seats, everyone's living for the movement. It's it's soundbites, it's it's thinking one election cycle ahead, massive investments you know planting trees, that that we are not going to be able to sit under in. You know 30, 50 years, that's just not a practice we see anymore. In 30, 50 years, that's just not a practice we see anymore.
Josh Wood:I think if we want to be a PR program for marriage, this book is also trying to glorify, trying to celebrate when adults choose to do very difficult things even though it's not going to be politically expedient for them right now. And I think that's a Christian ideal. I mean we believe deeply in heroic adults voluntarily bearing sacrifice or bearing difficult things, sacrificial acts for others I always go back to. You know a generation of young men being shipped abroad to fight for freedom, who left young families behind, so many of whom we'll never know about, who died on a tropical island in the Pacific, who didn't have a story written about them. No one knew. Maybe it's an unmarked grave, that's brutal and doesn't get a TV movie about it, but that person went with a sense of why they were doing it and what it could provide for the next generation. And they knew they weren't going to get a parade, they knew they weren't going to get a movie made about them, but they did it because they felt a sense of purpose and I do think we want to recall that spirit here.
Josh Wood:God's going to give each one of us a specific platform. It may be education for some, who want to get involved in their local school board and really fight to keep out over-sexualized material from libraries. And it might be for another, running their small business in a way that hires a specific type of person who desperately needs opportunity, and they believe that's really their contribution to getting people back on their feet, giving them all opportunity, not equity. I mean, god's going to call us all into those spaces and I think we really want to. You know, even if hiring those couple more people may cut into their profits as the owner, but they believe this is a part of my mission as a small business owner. That's that kind of sacrificial spirit that built this country. We need that again, but living in a microwave culture where we want to push the button and get our result in five seconds, we're never going to continue this inheritance that we've received with that kind of attitude.
Katy Faust:Joshua gave a really beautiful and poetic and true answer. My answer to what is my hope for the book is global takeover. That's what I want. I want everybody that reads this book especially in this country, because it really is directed at the policies and the ideas that are permeating the United States right now to. I want this mindset, this child-centric mindset, this put them before us mindset this is prioritize the kids before the adult identity, feeling ideology.
Katy Faust:I want this to take over how we talk about every political issue, because the incredible thing is that when we do, when we prioritize kids in environmental policy or in taxes or when thinking about the debt or national security, you know what you get Fantastic policy. That's what you get. You not only protect children and safeguard their rights, you actually get conservative policy. There seems to be something about prioritizing the next generation that filters out the garbage ideas and allows for the best ideas to take center stage. I actually think that centering the child is the main glue that holds together sort of the three legs of the stool of the conservative coalition the social, the economic and the foreign policy. Like there's something about prioritizing the next generation that not only gets you great policy, but it really is the overarching meta narrative that pulls it all together.
Luke Allen:Yeah, I mean, here at the Disciple Nations Alliance, we're not afraid of big goals as well. Disciple Nations Alliance, would you say. There is a time, katie, when we've seen this modeled well. Is it a pro-child politics view? Was it in the US? You said the founders had a great idea of natural law theory. Was it somewhere else? What did that look like?
Katy Faust:No, I don't know of any nation that has said we're going to send her everything on the child. You can see, for example, hungary doing some of that, because they understand that demographics is destiny and so, especially around things like the birth rate, they're very seriously trying to reinvigorate the birth rate and the marriage rates and they do make some kind of calculations about the impact on the family when they're passing new laws. That's not exactly what we're talking about here in terms of a very child-centric view of every issue. For example, talking about pornography not as a free speech issue but as a child protection issue. Right, looking at education not as a jobs program for adults but rather genuinely what it needs to be, which is the place to cultivate and educate the youngest minds of our country. So I don't think anyone has done this well of our country. So I don't think anyone has done this well. But I will say that the founders' original vision of individual liberty and a moral society. It got us pretty close to a pro-child nation in many ways. But now I think that we've fallen away from a lot of those kinds of ways of thinking about the world, because it seems antiquated, it's too theoretical. But when you look at the pro-child perspective of these topics, it's very tangible. It's too theoretical, but when you look at the pro-child perspective of these topics, it's very tangible, it's very immediate. Like I said, it is a simple template. It's not necessarily easy to execute these ideas, but it is simple Put kids before adults. So it's something that is very digestible and accessible to a lot of people and I think people will grab the book because they're like, oh my gosh.
Katy Faust:Billboard Chris, you know, wrote the transgender chapter. Or Mom for Liberty, co-founder Tiffany Justice, wrote the education chapter. Oh, I love them. I'm going to read this and you know, in the meantime, they're going to get a total education on the environment and why the environment actually is a matter of justice for children it's. This serves as a primer for all the major, evergreen political topics and it helps people understand what is going on and why all of them really do connect with child rights and well-being. So it's going to be a fantastic resource and I do hope that it does something in terms of the mindset and mentality that we've never really seen before in this country or elsewhere.
Luke Allen:Dwight, you look like you have a question that we've never really seen before in this country or elsewhere. Dwight, you look like you have a question yeah, I had a.
Dwight Vogt:I'm wondering if you've had a conversation where, because you went back to putting the child first, like the book and like your organization, you were able to actually come to an understanding with somebody who was maybe politically on the other side of the fence from you. I mean do you have a story or example?
Katy Faust:I will say in the first chapter of our book, the first book, first chapter of the first book, them Before Us, why we Need a Global Children's Rights Movement. I make the suggestion that this should be the one thing that knits together Democrats and Republicans, because nobody gets anything they want if you don't prioritize kids. Because nobody gets anything they want if you don't prioritize kids. Governments Republicans do not get small government, low taxes, individual liberty and freedom unless you get incredibly strong mother-father units raising their children together in a married household.
Katy Faust:My friends on the left who care about social justice issues, like minority children who are thriving, reducing high school dropout rates, reducing teen suicide, decreasing child poverty, reducing homelessness you don't get any of that unless you put them before us. So I actually think the child centric perspective can and should be the dominant message of both parties. Unfortunately, in this country we have one party that seems to be aligned and understand at least the outcomes of this and argues for principles that better align with children's rights. The GOP and unfortunately, the DNC, seems hellbent on destroying kids in every single way.
Dwight Vogt:A child can be destroyed, unfortunately but politically what's interesting is, one presents itself as the child protector and the other is big.
Josh Wood:Big government is bad, so I, I would say you have a strong argument I'd say education was one area where you did see, through COVID, a rash of shutdowns, for sure, but there were. You know, my wife was a nurse during that time period. She went out every single day without, didn't stop. There wasn't a break, there wasn't a shutdown period. Come back when it's. She was in the hospital every day. Well, similarly for teachers. We right, we all. Every day.
Josh Wood:Well, similarly for teachers, we all saw headlines of schools that got shut down and stayed closed and unions that advocated for closures. But there were Democrats and Republicans who were both very scared of the virus in its early days, who said hold on, the hard thing here, which is this fear of getting the virus, isn't able to just be alleviated by shutting a school, because if we shut the school, there's another hard thing that comes up that contends with this fear, which is potentially disastrous outcomes for a generation of students. And so you did have teachers and parents in some places come up with very creative solutions, and sometimes it was pushing to take over their school boards to open the schools back up. Again, that wasn't all the conservative movement, but you saw them say we have to choose a hard thing, there's no alleviation of the hard thing, and I do think that's critical with the book when we talk about even all the way back to marriage and family. For us it's divorce doesn't remove a hard thing. It just transfers the difficulty in your marriage to your children.
Josh Wood:In the same way, with schools, it really was a decision of okay, the kids are going to get their Wi-Fi from Taco Bell for the next year and a half, they're going to lose their tablet, they're going to be unable to log into Zoom and at best, 70% maybe are going to get a decent education or teachers risk it. It's like whew, we now have to do hard things as adults. And who do we want to make pay, and I'm not saying that's an easy calculation, but I'm saying there was not enough recognition of the fact that it was a calculation, that there was a decision to be made there, and I do think there was. There was coalitions and you can find stories of Republicans and Democrats that came together, oftentimes in purple states, to open earlier than they should have, because there was unity going after the school board saying this this is a hard choice and the adults need to do the hard thing Open these back up.
Dwight Vogt:I want to applaud.
Luke Allen:Yeah, it's true, it was great yeah, I think that's a good example. Um, katie, I've heard you say a lot of times we live in a adult centric time. Um, I think that's definitely true. Ever since that phrasing the first time I heard you say that really helped. It gave me a lot of clarity and it's it's one of those things where I can now look at the world through that lens and it just makes more sense when I'm looking at issues and whatnot is well, that's an adult, adult centric issue. Um, what you know culturally, cultures upstream from politics we talk a lot about that around here. Culturally, if that's true, we live in an adult centric society. How did we get there? What are the lies that brought us to this point and what are the truths that need to that we need to confront those lies with in order to change that direction we're heading in.
Katy Faust:So, even though we are a natural law organization, it's, it's, it's a worldview Christian problem.
Katy Faust:That's just the bottom line is there is, by default, we all put ourselves first and by default, the strong are always going to make the weak sacrifice for them, unless they have a higher governing principle that insists no, no, no, don't you touch those kids, don't you touch the weakest among you. I mean, why do you think that we've got 613 laws in the Old Testament, a vast majority of them detailing how the strong should not victimize or show partiality against the weak? It's because it's so ingrained in human nature to put yourself first. In fact, god has to talk with us about how loving one another, on the presumption that we love ourself first, right it's so. It's so like germane to the human condition. So I would say that why are we here? It is because we have been unburdened by what has been in the sense of like.
Katy Faust:What has been in the past was a Christian worldview, restraint on our actions, our behaviors and our decisions that governed us in ways that said that actually, maybe you're not the most important thing in the world now, but, of course, because Christianity was framed as some kind of oppressive tool rather than, rather than, the strongest implement of justice and well-being that has ever touched the face of the earth.
Katy Faust:We have thrown off the shackles and the restraints of the Christian worldview and the result is unfettered hedonism. And when you've got unfettered hedonism, especially in the area of sex, marriage and relationships, it's always kids that are going to be the victims. So, anyway, like there's no way to answer that without coming back to the root of the issue, which is worldview, and in this sense it is an abandonment of the Christian worldview. And I'm not saying that our country's always been Christian it hasn't. I'm not saying that 100% of us acknowledge Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, but there's actually quite a bit of cultural fruit and protection that comes from a dominant number of people who ascribe to the Christian worldview, and there's a lot of benefits to simply the morality that comes with Christians infusing the public square with their ideas. We pulled back, we have failed to disciple the nations, we've let the nations disciple us. And what are we going to get? We're going to get the fruit of a me-centric tree, and children don't grow on that tree, and if they do, oftentimes they rot.
Josh Wood:And I'd go further to say. The truth, then, is you know, it's a gospel-centric truth it's losing your life to gain it. And I do think it's one of those things that you know it's hard to describe to a runner how bad you can feel before a run and then how grateful you can be that you did the run after. But it really is a deferred gratification thing. It is a which that you know. That's why physical training is of some value.
Josh Wood:But you know, we all know, that there are much more difficult things, like I don't think there's anyone bigger than forgiveness, you know, reconciling in a marriage, because you know that is the best thing for you to do for your children. Well, you know, people say unforgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. It can just rot your soul forever. And then, the minute you do the thing you thought you were incapable of doing, which is to lay down your right to be mad, your right to be angry, your you know, scare quotes right to be unforgiving, you're released from it and you realize, you know, over a period of years, as that pain goes away and you reconcile, this was so much better than what I thought. It was worth every moment of tears and prayer.
Josh Wood:But again we got to get that back into the public square. There's got to be an advocacy for you know, doing something difficult, sacrificing and getting the reward far down the road. But again I think we've lost that. But that's again. I just think that's a gospel truth To Katie's point. That's a Christian thing that we got to start being really great advocates for, not necessarily by Bible thumping, but by demonstrating it even within our marriages. How did you guys survive that? Well, we prayed a lot and I think God gave us the grace to forgive and we moved on.
Luke Allen:Wow, yeah, those are great answers. One more time, guys, for our audience. The book is called Pro-Child Politics, why Every Cultural, Economic and and national issue is a matter of justice for children.
Naomi Smith:We are running a little bit low on time, so it's time for final questions. Naomi, I'm going to tag you. I had a question. I heard a conversation, katie, that you had I think it was with Seth Gruber about Dave Rubin and um. I heard, um Dave Rubin speak about hiring a surrogate and you know, longing for this child and all of these things, and I wrestled a lot with it, but it brought up something for me, which is that the reality is we're in a total mess right now. So my question for you would be how would you talk to a guy like Dave Rubin, who's already done this thing and, yeah, how would you navigate a conversation with him about what you're so passionate about?
Katy Faust:Well, it's not just Dave Rubin. It's the people in my life who are divorced or are single parenting because they refuse to do hard things. There's a lot of single parents who are single parents because they were the only parent willing to act like an adult. But there's a lot of single parents today who simply put their own desires above their children's rights. I mean, all of us are surrounded by people that, in essence, transferred their burden to the shoulders of their children for a variety of different reasons, many of them now because they've seen their kids struggle or they've observed the father hunger that they simply cannot satisfy for their single mother by choice child or you know the instability that they're or the regression that their kids have gone through post -divorce, because now their 10 year old is wetting the bed or whatever, and they start to go. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe maybe all of the kids are resilient, talk and moms and dads don't matter, they just need to be safe and loved. Maybe that was a lie. I mean, there's a lot of adults that, after watching their kids struggle, realize they actually did need their father and their mother loving each other and loving them every day. So what do I say to those adults, because I have those conversations a lot. Number one you need to be the safest place for your kid to talk to about this, because they are mourning, they are going through loss, they are going to be set up. They are set up for increased struggles. The thing that makes it worse is doing that in isolation, feeling like they cannot talk to you, they cannot ask you questions, they cannot confront you. You know and say you know, I really want to know who my father is. Why did you purchase his sperm from an anonymous bank and not even allow me to know the identity of the man who contributed half of my biology? Right, you need to be okay with your kid coming to you with honest questions, because the alternative is for your kid to wrestle through that alone and that is a recipe for significant distress, even more significant distress. Number two you need to be willing to name it and validate it, and so I. This is especially true if you're the parent. This actually does take quite a bit of courage to say you are right.
Katy Faust:Your father and I did not do everything that we should have done to work on our marriage. There were, there were challenges. We had struggled for a couple of years. But you're exactly right. Our decision to stop struggling meant you are going to start struggling, and that is not how it's supposed to be. The adults are not supposed to ask kids to do hard things on their behalf, and that's exactly what we did, and I am sorry that you are living through this.
Katy Faust:I would say that what's probably more common for your listeners is not necessarily to find themselves in a situation where they are working through the conviction of creating a surrogate born child with somebody of the same sex using donor gametes. They're probably much more likely to be in the orbit of somebody who did right. Your listeners are probably struggling with their sister and her partner, who now have the sperm donor conceived child, or the neighbor who just went through the divorce and the kids are constantly coming over to their house because mom and dad split up and mom is working late and there's no adult at the home when they get there. So what do you do in that situation? What do you say and that's what I call gentle validation right, you, as the adult that's in the proximity of the child who experienced mother or father loss or family breakdown, you're in a very, very powerful position to seek to mend the wound of the child by gently validating. I would say you don't bring up, hey, how's that two mom thing going for you? What you're going to notice is that child is going to express some father hunger in your household because they're always following around your husband and like wanting to help him in the garage when he's tinkering with the car. Because children hunger and need male love, not just two stable women in their life. So you can gently validate those kids by saying you deserve to have a dad. You know, if they say, gosh, you know, I really wish I had a dad, like your kids have a dad. You can say you deserve that and you do have a dad somewhere and he's missing out because you're a great kid, you know, without fingering the decisions of the parents, but validating the child.
Katy Faust:And here's the other incredible thing that you can do. Like you said, things are a mess. You look at marriage and family issues and it is an utter mess. You don't even know how. You don't even know how to untangle the kind of knots that we are just absolutely like handing to children when it comes to their origins and their family structure.
Katy Faust:But we have this saying that we talk about a lot at them Before Us. You don't know how crooked a stick is until you lay a straight stick next to it. Talk about a lot at them before us. You don't know how crooked a stick is until you lay a straight stick next to it. There are a lot of kids growing up with a lot of crooked family situations brokenness, instability, devastation, loss. They don't even know that an intact family that loves one another, where mom and dad live together all the time with all of their kids they don't even know that that exists. So you, the neighbor, the aunt, the sister, you might be the straight stick. You might be the family where the child looks at it and says that's it, that's what I want. I didn't know that that was possible and just by being present in their life you actually show them what they deserved and what they can aspire to when they grow up themselves.
Luke Allen:Yeah, by the way, guys, we had Katie on the podcast a few months ago and we talked in more depth about that issue and all the knots that our society is in today because of the breakdown of the family, so I would highly encourage you to go back and check out that podcast. Josh, as a final question for you, I know you wrote the conclusion to this book, this book, 19 chapters, written by experts. There's a lot of information here. How did you sum up the book and what are some, you know, one or two takeaways that people can implement in their lives to start living out a pro-child view?
Josh Wood:I'd say to make it practical, first be careful of what kind of information you're consuming. You know, I think, switching from headlines to reading a couple of things in depth, culling, cultivating who you follow on social media, try to get some different kinds of voices, because this isn't a left-right thing, I think. There is plenty of good and bad voices. Try to get a lot of them. Read and listen widely, I think be careful to get lots of information. Don't live in an echo chamber, I'd say. Then part two is don't be overwhelmed. You know, just being careful not to get lots of information. Don't live in an echo chamber, I'd say. Then part two is don't be overwhelmed, you know, just being careful not to get into this kind of well.
Josh Wood:I'm evil and everything I'm doing is evil, and I can't buy food, drive a car or, you know, shop at a store without contributing to. You know the evil villain living in Switzerland. You know it's like that. You got to get out of that mindset and just start going. Okay, but are there little things I can do? I know this store doesn't share my values. I could shop somewhere else. That's not a big deal. I could go local. I could buy from this person that I know. Think through the little things that you're doing. That could shift on the most egregious of issues, the things where you know it can be that maybe the gym that you go to is not separating boys and girls. I mean you can go, hey, this place just doesn't need my money, I'm not going to shop there, because, guess what? I believe that women should have a safe space, men shouldn't be in there and we can call boys and girls girls, like that is just stopping. I'm changing my gym membership, so find some of the low-hanging fruit, these things. You can stop doing places. You can start shopping and then, last, speaking to a Christian audience here, pray through the one small issue that God's calling you to get involved in Now.
Josh Wood:You may not be an energy expert. You may read that chapter and go holy smokes. I don't understand any of this. But maybe you're really great on and have a heart for immigration. Maybe you've been a welcoming neighbor before with a massive immigration group that brings refugees over and they gather together church members and they welcome them and set up their apartment. Maybe that's like your issue.
Josh Wood:Okay, well, read widely about that and get involved. Like, find your one thing. Maybe it is running for school board? Maybe it is. Maybe marriage and family is your thing and you just need to start having younger couples over to your house and talking about how great having kids is and how fun being married is Like. Don't underestimate some of these things, like what is the small area of the world that God's calling you to build his kingdom and build influence? So I would say, kind of those three things, get the information, pick up the easy ones. Stop doing some of the obvious things that you know are harming children that have been made aware of through this book. And, by the way, when it comes to information, our authors are a great place to start. You can follow them. Then last, pray through your one piece that God's calling you to get involved in and shameless plug, buy the book and give it to someone. Let's add to the team of people who think this way.
Luke Allen:Yep, yeah, I would highly encourage you guys go find Pro Child Politics. At the time we release this episode it will be out. You can go buy it, katie, real quick. Where can people buy it? And then also, where can they learn more about you guys and the work of them before us?
Katy Faust:You can get Pro Child, child politics at amazon, any other place that sells books. The best place to learn about our work, the hub, is them before uscom. You can go. Please subscribe and follow everything that we have going on. Please donate. We are, we are on a war path to defend kids and we need every single person here to get on board with us. Um, we do aim to take over the world and it doesn't happen by free, unfortunately, so we would love your partnership on this.
Luke Allen:Right on Yep, thembeforeuscom, and the book is available everywhere you can get books. That's great Audience. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for listening to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. Katie and Josh really appreciate the time. I hope this message gets out to as many people as possible so they can learn about the book and get their copy. And Naomi and Dwight, thank you also for your time and joining again today One last time. This is Ideas have Consequences, the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. We'll catch you next week.
