Tag Archives: popular culture

What Revelation Does For Us

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biblical revelation - knowing God's will

I spend a fair amount of time online, perhaps more time than I should, dialoging with atheists and “skeptics” about worldview issues. It’s one of my favorite things in life. It helps me to see outside of my own frame of reference, and to understand my own beliefs better.

It causes me to empathize with those who see things differently than I do, and to take more care in how I present my beliefs. Sometimes it even moves me to change the way I think about an issue.

I’ve been doing this for several years now, and over time I’ve seen how rare it is for anyone on any side of any issue to be logically persuaded into changing his or her beliefs. This is true regardless of how ridiculous those beliefs might be, whether it be belief in a flat earth or a belief that life on our planet accidentally arose from non-living matter. I’ve come to suspect that we humans generally don’t believe things for logical reasons – instead we tend to use logic to justify what we want to believe, at least when it comes to the macro questions.

If one is clever enough, one can justify almost any belief.

To complicate matters, no one gets the luxury of 100% certainty that their worldview presuppositions are true. This is true of both theist and atheist, though atheists/materialists tend to strenuously disagree that their presuppositions rest on faith and dogma. But they do, and it is a simple matter to prove it.

Some recent conversations have set me to thinking about the role of biblical revelation in living a life where decisions proceed from belief. The question of whether or not the Bible actually is God’s revelation to us, and whether it is trustworthy, is another question. For the scope of this brief post let us assume that the answer to that question is “yes.”

Revelation describes the shape of reality
Revelation does many things for us. Perhaps most importantly, it gives us a linear, progressively unfolding story of God’s interaction with humanity throughout history – His “spiritual history” of humanity. As such it reveals and affirms very specific details about God that we could not otherwise know. It gives us an objective standard against which we can correct our misconceptions (2 Tim 3:16). That is immeasurably valuable.

But revelation gives us an even more basic picture. It authoritatively tells us the shape of the reality of our physical world, including our own inner makeup, and also gives us specific social structures that God designed for us. This enables us to have the confidence to pour our lives into the right things.

None of this is as obvious as it might seem. Especially today. For those without this transcendent authority, our already broken world is becoming even more confusing.

What once were considered the most basic facts of life are now being thrown into question. I see intelligent, well-intentioned people who are interested in fairness, justice, and compassion, bobbing like corks in an ocean of rhetoric, falling for unproven ideologies in the name of the fairness and compassion that they seek. Nowhere is this truer than in the issues of sex, gender, marriage, family, and parenting.

I contend that, apart from revelation, we can’t know true and compassionate answers around these questions.

As sex, gender, marriage, family, and parenting are redefined by secular culture, we are all going to have to independently choose what we believe is the compassionate course. Neutral ground is disappearing. Many in this culture will come to the end of their lives to find that they poured their lives into a course that they thought was compassionate, but which turned out to be harmful to children, and thus to the whole society.

Sex, Gender, & Revelation
Let’s see how this works using as an example what was, until very recently, arguably the most basic fact of human sexual reproduction – the concept of male and female. It’s difficult for me to believe that there is a serious movement to blow up this concept, and even more difficult to believe that so many young people are actually buying into it. But here we are.

The new claim is that “sex is what’s between your legs; gender is what’s between your ears.” The idea is that a person may have a perfectly functional male body, but if that person believes himself to be female, then he is in fact female and this is not to be questioned. This is a new idea.

To clarify, I do not dispute that gender dysphoria is a real thing, and I don’t believe it is something a person chooses. There is no question that “trans” people have existed throughout history around the world; sometimes thought of as a “third sex.” But the existence of trans people does not prove that a person can be biologically male, yet female in actuality because he thinks he is. There has been no new scientific discovery proving that such is the case. No one knows for sure what’s going on here. This belief is part of an ideological movement that seeks to establish the idea of gender as a fluid spectrum with an unlimited number of manifestations. (Google Postgenderism).

By contrast, the creation story in the Torah states that God made human beings male and female. Jesus affirmed this idea. Followers of Jesus can therefore have the confidence that this is the shape of reality as God created it. This renders the fact of gender dysphoria to be a manifestation of our broken world; a world which Jesus came to restore to unity in truth. A person whose mind tells them they are the opposite gender from that of their physical body is experiencing a profound separation. We should love such a person no less than we would love anyone with any other type of disability.

Revelation enables us to land on the side of compassionately affirming reality as God intended it. To seek reconciliation and community to every extent possible. To confidently teach and model to our children the truth about God and His creation.

Other matters that matter
There are other foundational truths which secular culture is attempting to obliterate. Revelation enables us to cut through the rhetoric and commit ourselves to a good course. This is critical for parents as we have small people in our care.

By revelation we can be sure that marriage is not merely an artificial cultural construct, but something ordained by God at creation and affirmed by Jesus. Lifelong, sexually exclusive, monogamous marriage between a biologically unrelated adult male and female is God’s design for human flourishing. That doesn’t mean it’s easy or “natural.” That doesn’t mean it always works. But I think it does mean that we’re not free to redefine something that God has clearly defined.

By revelation we can have a working “self-knowledge” regarding what is natural and what is supernatural. In a world that tends to equate what is natural with what is good, we can have clear direction as to what impulses to put down and what impulses to act on. Being born of and led by the Spirit gives us clarity for living life. Revelation affirms for us how that should look. In the brilliance of Gods plan, revelation shows us not a written code to follow, (that was Mosaic Covenant,) but instead offers us the good news of the possibility of internal change.

Finally, by revelation we can be sure that God created us for loving relationship, and that life is about relational unity – first with God, then with others. This helps us to make life decisions and daily choices about where to spend our time. To remember that people are more important than things. To invest in our children yet without making family into an idol. To bother to reconcile broken relationships. To not live in relational isolation from other human beings.

I’m grateful for God’s revelation to us because life can be confusing, and false voices can sound surprisingly convincing. Life will be hard whatever we choose. My hope for all of us is that we may find over time that we didn’t fight and struggle toward a goal for our entire lives only to find that we were fighting against the true shape of reality; that we missed the end for which we were created. May we pour our lives into pursuits that bear fruit for life. May God lead you into life!

God, Save Us from the Brilliant People

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social justice-parenting

Sometimes it’s astounding to hear the ideas that smart people will entertain.

I thought it would be fun to start off the year by joyfully ignoring some smart people’s wisdom. My hope is that you too will be encouraged and confident in your parenting by taking care to do the precise opposite of what certain smart people recommend.

In 2015, a couple of philosophers, Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse, released some of their thoughts on social justice. To be fair to them, their hearts are in the right place. Unfortunately, they seem to have the hearts of robots. I believe they are still at large.

Swift turned his blinking antennae toward the disturbing fact that certain parental practices can create an “unfair advantage” for kids who come from loving homes. He sees this as a problem.

‘I got interested in this question because I was interested in equality of opportunity,’ he says.

Well…I’m interested in equality of opportunity too. But somehow it never occurred to me to discourage good parenting as a way to level the playing field.

Swift muses, ‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.’   

Why even entertain this idea? The family is not “the source of unfairness in society.” That’s like wondering if food is the source of eating disorders. Or if cars are the source of auto collisions. Or if water is the cause of drowning.

Shouldn’t the possibility of user-error be considered here?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to wonder if it’s bad parenting and dysfunctional family dynamics that disadvantages kids? So much societal good comes from good parenting that it would necessarily harm society to “create a level playing field” by abolishing the family. Maybe Swift could direct his time and energy toward supporting and equipping disadvantaged families.

I can’t find the source of the following quote, but I think it explains a lot:

“Progressives seek to create a system that is so good that individual goodness and responsibility are no longer necessary.”

Swift’s comment goes to show how decisively one’s worldview will guide one to a particular destination, for better or for worse. Fortunately, he and Brighouse do reject the notion of abolishing the family. But unfortunately, they instead favor the “mere” redefining of marriage, family, and parenting.

Swift continues,

‘What we realised we needed was a way of thinking about what it was we wanted to allow parents to do for their children, and what it was that we didn’t need to allow parents to do for their children, if allowing those activities would create unfairnesses for other people’s children’.

Here he has in view economic advantages such as private schooling for kids. He’s against that. However, he is grudgingly willing to allow parents to read bedtime stories to their kids at night, so long as they feel at least a little guilty about it sometimes:

‘I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,’

I wish I were making this up.

Since this is my blog, I get to state the obvious: Benefitting your children through loving and attentive parenting does not “disadvantage other people’s children”! Please DO benefit your children to the very best of your ability! Daily! Use wisdom! Pray for them! Work at having a great marriage for the sake of your kids! These things will also not disadvantage or hurt anyone!

Yes, it’s true… Reading to young children does indeed benefit them in many ways. Notably, it helps to build empathy in them, and can transmit good values to them. The compassionate course for compassionate parents is to raise “advantaged”, well-adjusted kids who will become compassionate adults. Somebody is going to have to care for the disadvantaged in society, after all.

Not surprisingly, in his quest for equality Swift ultimately lands in the same place where our culture increasingly finds itself bobbing like a cork in the ocean with no anchor – the redefining of marriage and parenting:

‘Nothing in our theory assumes two parents: there might be two, there might be three, and there might be four,’ says Swift…Politicians love to talk about family values, but meanwhile the family is in flux and so we wanted to go back to philosophical basics to work out what are families for and what’s so great about them and then we can start to figure out whether it matters whether you have two parents or three or one, or whether they’re heterosexual etcetera.’

While I’m thrilled that these guys are working on figuring out all this stuff for us, I’m not super confident that they will arrive at the truth.

In fact, regarding his basic questions, natural law, empirical research, and the teaching of Jesus all coincide nicely:

“What are families for?”
Even from a non-religious standpoint, lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage benefits society in a way that no other social arrangement does, (to borrow a thought from Ryan T. Anderson.) If a man and a woman make a baby together, and they fail to raise that baby, then the costs to that child and to society can be great. If this happens on a large scale, pathologies will increase to the point where a free society will tend to disintegrate.

On the other hand, there is a mountain of research showing that children raised in a low conflict home with a married mom and dad statistically reap benefits, across the board. If society has an interest in seeing children grow up to be contributing citizens, then the traditional family is crucial for healthy society.

“What’s so great about families?”
Love. Love is great. Security. Acceptance and belonging. Identity. An environment where vulnerable children are cared for by adults who are utterly invested in their lives. The village and the state may or may not help, but they are a pale substitute for a married mom and dad.

Are the roles of “mom” and “dad” dispensable?
It is now fashionable among smart people to believe that family structure is not important; that what matters is 2 loving adults. This is an ideological fabrication that ignores science and research.

I don’t intend to be unkind here. I’m simply saying that biological connection matters, and that kids tend to yearn for relational connection with their biological parents. Adoption is wonderful. We all know many single parents who work heroically to raise their kids well. Gay couples can be just as capable as hetero couples when it comes to parenting. But this issue is not ultimately about love or competency; it’s about what kids are wired to need. Specifically, what a single parent or a gay couple cannot be to a child is a mom and a dad. These roles matter:

A boy simply cannot have his masculine identity imparted and affirmed by his mom. Not because she is incompetent but because she is female. At the same time he cannot experience and appreciate the unity-in-diversity of the deep emotional connection of maternal love with his dad. Not because he is unloving, but because he is male.

A girl cannot receive non-sexual masculine attention, affirmation, and acceptance from her mom. Because mom is female. She cannot receive intimate knowledge and shared, comfortable connection around her innate femininity from her dad. Because he is a dude.

This is simply the shape of reality.

No one is advocating chasing down gay parents and taking away their children, or shaming single parents, or stoning step-parents. We should all support each other in our parenting and create community to whatever extent possible. But parenting should ultimately be for the sake of children, and it is right to advocate for what is best for them when it comes to public policy. Redefining marriage necessarily redefines parenting, and intentionally denying the unique and complimentary roles of mothers and fathers will inevitably disadvantage kids.

Are you on Pinterest? I would be grateful if you would follow me as I try build momentum for marketing my books on Pinterest. (I’m using the name Scott Freeman) Thanks!

Jesus versus Santa

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Jesus vs Santa, true meaning of Xmas

I’ve hesitated to write about the topic of Jesus vs Santa because it can be a surprisingly divisive topic in church and family cultures. However, the holiday season is upon us and I think it’s interesting and even helpful to hear differing perspectives on how parents handle the issue. I would love to hear your perspective as well.

Here’s mine.

The church cultures in which Mollie and I raised our kids have been theologically conservative, highly biblically literate, and conducive to sincere devotion in following Jesus. I got the impression over the years that our family held the minority position in those churches in that we openly practiced the Santa tradition. (Either that or there were a lot of parents doing Santa Claus and keeping quiet about it!)

For some no-Santa Christians, the idea of Christians practicing the Santa tradition can seem incomprehensible. I don’t care to sway anyone to my position, but for what it’s worth I thought I would share my reasons why my wife and I chose to follow this secular holiday tradition. Our reasons may surprise you, because they ultimately have to do with Jesus.

Following are my responses to the most common reasons I’ve heard for not observing the Santa tradition:

1) We want Jesus to be the focus of Christmas in our family
Indeed. Of course we wanted this for our family as well. However, it’s not an either/or issue. I know this because I was raised in a Christian home that kept the Santa tradition, yet I and all of my sibs love Jesus today, and none of us believes in Santa Claus anymore. I can remember as a kid that, even though my imagination excited me about Saint Nick, my parents also taught us that the real reason for Christmas was the birth of Jesus. I believed them, and it made perfect sense to me.

I definitely got the idea that Jesus and Santa Claus were somehow on the same team.

Later, as a young parent, I had what I saw as a strategic reason for keeping the Santa tradition. From the time my children were small, of course they learned about the story of Jesus and His birth. However, I knew they could only understand so much, and I certainly couldn’t expect them to sit around and stare at their navels pondering Jesus all Christmas season. So we enlisted Santa Claus to help make the season of Jesus’s birth more exciting for them. We knew they would eventually drop the Santa belief as they left childhood, but I believed there would remain with them very positive feelings and fun memories that they would carry with them into adulthood. The reason behind it all would always be Jesus.

I believe this has proved to be true.

2) I’m not comfortable lying to my kids
I completely agree with this one. Our kids assumed Santa was real mostly because of songs and stories and the input of extended family members. Christmas mornings pretty much convinced them. However, as they got older and directly questioned us, we made it a point to never to lie to them.

However, I used it as a way to encourage critical thinking. I told them that I wanted them to figure it out on their own. I told them that all of their lives people would tell them things that were not true and that they needed to learn how to discover what is true. This wasn’t a very satisfying answer to them, but then it became sort of a game. They would begin to give me arguments and I would try to argue the other side. If their argument was a good one, I would say “that’s a good argument!”

More importantly, for each child I also used this moment to underscore the truth, saying something like: “I will tell you this – the story of Jesus and everything in the Bible is definitely true, and Mom and I believe it.” I wanted them to be rock solid about that.

I think there is something very healthy about a child learning to critically engage in figuring out the truth, even when it is against his or her interest to do so.

3) Christmas is a pagan holiday. Christmas trees and Santa Claus have pagan origins.
I have always thought this was a lame argument for several reasons. Primarily, regardless of what December 25 meant many hundreds of years ago, today, in America, it is not a pagan holiday. For followers of Jesus it is a time of remembrance and celebration of the birth of Jesus.

True, no one knows the date of Jesus’s birth. This is also irrelevant. So the church randomly picked a day to celebrate the birth of God’s Messiah. Or maybe the date is not so random, and the church picked a popular pagan holiday and redeemed it to become a holiday celebrating the true Creator. I just don’t see how that’s a bad thing. Even today many Christians attempt to do the same thing with Halloween.

Christmas is arguably not a biblically condoned holiday, but that does not make it a harmful practice. Behind this objection there seems to be a concern that the whole of Christendom is somehow accidentally participating is false worship because of the holiday’s origins. But worship is intentional and conscious. I have yet to see biblical support for the idea of someone accidentally worshiping Satan. I’m willing to be proven wrong on this.

4) I don’t want to encourage materialism and selfishness in my kids.
Another great reason. We didn’t want to encourage those things either. I probably don’t need to say much here though. I think we all recognize that Christmas has become very commercialized and money driven. Many people go deeper into credit card debt during the Christmas season. Not good.

I’ve heard a lot of great strategies that families use to get around this. Some don’t do gift giving at all. Some do, but make a point to give to a needy family each year as well. Some work at a shelter as a family as part of their Christmas season, serving those less fortunate than they are. Some do gift giving but limit the dollar amount that can be spent. Please feel free to share your ideas or traditions in the comment section!

But as for the topic at hand, it certainly hasn’t been my experience that observing the Santa tradition will necessarily encourage materialism and selfishness. My opinion is that the example of the parents over the long haul is foremost in encouraging or discouraging a materialistic lifestyle. In fact, ironically, Santa only exists because of the generosity of parents toward their children. When children figure out that it was mom and dad all along, this arguably encourages gratitude and models selfless giving to them.

On the positive side, there are a couple of other reasons that proved to be quite important to Mollie and me when we were determining what our family culture would be around Christmastime:

Extended family
I was raised by devoted Christian parents. Had Mollie and I refused to practice the Santa tradition on “spiritual grounds” I think it would have created an unnecessary offense against my parents and siblings. There were other things more important to us that my parents didn’t understand, like breastfeeding, homeschooling, and eating a whole food/organic diet. Creating a rift over something as fun and harmless as Santa Claus would have been just been super-annoying to my family.

To see it from my mom’s perspective: she and her 6 siblings grew up in St. Louis with an alcoholic father. As a result she grew up impoverished, and quit school after the 8th grade to start working. She told us that when they were young, she and her siblings would sometimes each receive an orange for Christmas.

So when she married my dad, I think she tried to make holidays with her own children everything that she missed as a child. I have wonderful holiday memories from childhood, and I still love the Christmas season. I think my mom would’ve been hurt had I implied that I saw her efforts as harmful.

Xmas 1960's childhood, reason for the season

Christmas morning with my siblings, 1962.

Joyful, Joyful
In our family, Mollie and I wanted to tip the scales in favor of making the Christian holidays transcendent and irresistible; something that our kids would look forward to all year long. Santa Claus is unnecessary. If you don’t include Santa in your repertoire of holiday traditions, I fully respect your decision. However, I would encourage you to figure out ways to make the holiday season an exciting and transcendent time for your kids, so that they will grow up loving the season of Jesus’s birth.

Ultimately, we all hope to see our kids continue to love the person of Jesus Himself.

For me the bottom line on Santa is this: he’s a harmless, if shallow, part of American culture. If we can figure out ways to use harmless cultural traditions to our advantage, I think that’s a good thing.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

My illustrated kids’ storybook, The True Story of Christmas, tells the story of Jesus in fidelity to the Bible, beginning with creation and the fall. Orders should be received by Dec 5 to ensure delivery by Christmas (or, please email me directly me with late orders at scottnmollie@yahoo.com.)

I Have a Movie Recommendation for You

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Movie review-The Case for ChristI was pleasantly surprised when I recently went to see The Case for Christ. Grab your spouse or a friend and see it while it’s still in theaters.

As an artist who is also a follower of Jesus, I guess I’m supposed to be a movie snob, especially when it comes to “Christian movies.” I think I’m not supposed to publicly admit that I loved this movie. But I did.

The movie tells the story of atheist Lee Strobel coming to faith in Jesus. (Whoopsie. I guess I just gave away the ending.) That’s part of why I didn’t have high hopes for the movie. Christian films have a reputation for being predictable.

But you know what? I knew how my dinnertime was going to end last night but I’m still really glad I sat down at the table.

The movie highlighted the Strobel family’s journey to faith, and the relational tension that ensued during the process. That story was believable, well-written, and well-acted. It felt like a love story to me, full of characters that I was moved to care about.

Some Things I Liked
Maybe it was just me, but the movie touched on several things I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ve been dialoguing with some atheists for several months, and the portrayal of the atheists in the film felt familiar to me.

I liked that the atheist Strobel wasn’t made out to be an evil character. He deeply loved his wife and was a great dad. He had a strong moral compass and sense of justice.

I’ve been doing some reading about brain science and social psychology. I’m fascinated with how and why people change their opinions when confronted with information that challenges their worldview. (Or how they don’t, as is usually the case.) It was fascinating to watch one person’s process, knowing that it was a true story.

A big surprise was a direct reference to the “father wound” issue. I’ve been a bit obsessed with this issue for several months, and I’ve come to think that it’s widespread and profoundly important. (See my previous post if that topic interests you.)

Also, an important truism for me is that biblical faith is evidential. This idea directly contradicts what “New Atheism” preaches – that faith is “belief despite the evidence.” The “New Atheists” are demonstrably wrong about what the Bible says about faith. It was nice to see a right perspective on the screen.

Finally, on an incidental note, The Case for Christ is not a white Christian film. The story takes place in Chicago and several black characters figure prominently in the journey. We see blacks and whites working, attending church, and doing life together. This isn’t talked about; it’s just assumed, as it should be.

I don’t recall anything inappropriate for kids, but very small children might be bored with it just because it’s an adult conversation. At any rate, I say “two thumbs up”!

Update:  I’m starting artwork for my next kids’ book, The Friendly City. I’ll keep you posted!

How and Why to Not Be Postmodern

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metaphor for postmodernism

Recently I had coffee with one of my adult sons. I wanted to hear his insights about his spiritual development growing up. One unexpected comment came to light as he compared our family’s culture to that of a close friend’s. He observed that Mollie and I had modeled a faith that permeated all of life, and that our values reflected this. By contrast, for some people, faith is something added on, like an extra-curricular activity.

He said, “For you guys, a biblical worldview was like a pair of glasses through which you viewed everything. For my friend’s family it was more like a pair of binoculars that they would pick up now and then.”

This got me to thinking about postmodernism – the cultural state of society that distrusts the very idea of objective truth.

What is Postmodernity?
Philosopher and author Paul Copan describes postmodernity this way:

“French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard said that, simplifying to the extreme, postmodernism is incredulity toward a metanarrative, which is a ‘world story’ that’s taken to be true for all people in all cultures and ends up oppressing people…”

So, postmodernity is a perfect example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because there are many horrific examples in history of people oppressing others over strongly held beliefs – both religious and secular – postmodernity seeks to solve the problem by getting rid of the notion of truth altogether. It’s like John Lennon’s song, Imagine. Copan continues:

“…When people are so certain that they’ve got the truth and believe their system explains everything, then people who disagree with them are on the outside. They end up in Auschwitz or the Soviet gulags. So instead of metanarratives, postmodernism emphasizes mini-narratives. In other words, each person has his or her own viewpoint or story.”

Postmodernity attempts to address a very real problem in the world. It’s true that there are many metanarratives, ideologies, worldviews, and religions in the world that are coercive. But in making all truth relative, postmodernity does the world the ultimate disservice if there is, in fact, an objective, loving Authority who has communicated a true story that includes all of us. Followers of Jesus should confidently and joyfully ignore postmodernism and instead, prove the life giving nature of the story and message of Jesus in our own lives and families.

“All Truth Claims are Wrong!”
Copan points out that the relativism that stems from a postmodern worldview is self-refuting. It simply doesn’t work as a worldview.

“…the relativist believes that relativism is true not just for him but for every person. He believes that relativism applies to the nonrelativist (‘true for you’), not just to himself (‘true for me’). The relativist finds himself in a bind if we ask him, ‘Is relativism absolutely true for everyone?’…There’s no reason to take seriously the claim that every belief is as good as every other belief, since this belief itself would be no better than any other.”

But having noted the self-contradictory nature of postmodernity, what about the problem of metanarratives being necessarily oppressive? Specifically, does the big picture presented in the Judeo-Christian scriptures necessarily marginalize those “on the outside”?

Self Righteous and Holier-Than-Thou?
I don’t buy that. The Bible specifically teaches that self-righteousness is not even possible (Ps 14; Ro 3:10-18.) Salvation is a gift from God and something none of us can claim to have earned (Ro 3:23,24; 6:23; Gal 2:15,16; 3:2-5; Eph 2:8,9; 3:7-9.)

From a biblical worldview Jesus is the only human being who could rightfully claim to be without sin, claim to be righteous in-and-of-Himself, and claim to be unerring in His knowledge of truth. Yet He was the perfect picture of love and inclusivity. His life was characterized by loving, healing , and reaching out to the marginalized: those on the fringe of respectable Jewish culture, women, lepers, the sexually unchaste, traitors, servants, children, Romans and other non-Jews, and so on. He typically did this even though it was inconvenient for Him and often got Him into trouble with His critics.

Not only His actions but also His teachings explicitly taught that following Him must mean reaching out to and welcoming the marginalized in a broken world. Several parables come to mind:
The parable of the Samaritan
The parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector
The parable of the prodigal son
The parable of the wedding feast and the uninvited guests
The parable of the widow’s offering
The story of the rich man and Lazarus

Rather than oppressing the marginalized, a biblical worldview acknowledges our common humanity. It roots human worth in the idea that all people bear the image of God, and yet it humbles human standing in the idea that all people “fall short of the glory of God’s ideal.” It is notable that two of the most combative personalities in the New Testament repeat the quote, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5.) Humility invalidates oppression and marginalization. A quote attributed to D T Niles rings true to me:

“A Christian witness is not like a rich man who has a lot of bread which he hands out to the poor beggars who have nothing. He is rather like one beggar who tells another beggar where he has found bread.”

A Bedtime Story
Accordingly, this all affects what we say to our children. As a young father it was my job and privilege to tuck my children in at bedtime. I would sing and pray with them each night. I remember a period of time when one of my boys was very troubled. He would tearfully express that he was a “bad boy.” Those are the words he used. He was probably 7 or 8 years old at the time. I was a bit taken aback by this because Mollie and I made a point of never telling our children that they were “bad,” even when correcting them.

He didn’t seem to be trying to confess a specific hidden offense that was troubling his conscience. Instead, he seemed to be expressing a recognition that there was something generally wrong within himself. I remember thinking carefully and prayerfully before answering him, because he expected an answer. Should I assure him that he wasn’t all that bad? Should I point out how he favorably compared to serial killers and drug dealers? This was my first impulse – to minimize his feelings and build up his self-esteem by pointing out all the things on the “good” side of his scale.

But a biblical worldview compelled me to say something different. Instead, I essentially agreed with him. And, holding him close in the dark, I sympathetically let him know that I was also “bad,” and so was every one else in the world; that what he was feeling was accurate. I explained that this is why God sent Jesus to us, because we all need a Savior. My son’s recognition of his brokenness was simply the first step toward the spiritual rebirth that Jesus offers to us all. Jesus promised to give us His Spirit to live inside of us, and after that we help each other to live a new life in that Spirit.

I’m certainly not recommending that we as parents teach our children that they are pure evil. The truth is more nuanced than that. I think the Bible’s description of the fallen human heart as “inclined” toward evil is helpful (Gen 8:21.) When I think of an incline, I notice it’s possible to roll a ball up an incline, but it takes deliberate effort. A ball naturally will roll down an incline. So it is with our hearts.

Speaking the Truth in Love
I assume there are those who would say it is appalling to say such things to a child. I imagine that a time may come when a secularist government will see fit to intervene in cases where parents teach such things. But truth is that which corresponds to the way things really are. What if a child is taught that he or she is naturally good and perfect? Where does that leave the child when he or she sees within himself or herself a tendency to lie, cheat, and hurt others? I contend that it leaves the child in a truly hopeless position.

The fact of human brokenness should never be used to shame or manipulate others. But neither does a biblical worldview indulge secularist, utopian, wishful thinking about the natural goodness of humanity. In fact, ironically this kind of thinking is actually dangerous when it comes to granting human beings governmental power over others.

I would like to hear about your experience as a child or a parent. How did you understand the state of the human heart? How was it communicated to you, and what effect did it have on you?