Preparing for Persecution with Andrew Pudewa

[00:00:00] thanks a lot for being here today my name is kevin conover you’re listening to educate for life radio and we

[00:00:06] broadcast um down here locally in southern california on kpr z 12 10 am we

[00:00:11] also are on fm 106.1 in north county and of course then we’re broadcast all over

[00:00:18] the social media environment and you can listen to us on apple you can list us

[00:00:23] listen to us on google on youtube all those different uh social media platforms

[00:00:28] and um my guest this evening i’ll tell you a little bit about him um his name is mr putawa and ruperta and uh he’s the

[00:00:36] principal speaker and director of the institute for excellence in writing he’s a graduate of the talent education

[00:00:42] institute in matsumoto i’m not sure if i’m pronouncing that correctly japan he holds a certificate of child brain

[00:00:48] development from the institutes for the achievement of human potential in philadelphia pennsylvania um and i love

[00:00:54] this uh andrew it says on your website here his best endorsement is from an oklahoman

[00:01:00] third grade teacher who called him the most powerful influenced influence in

[00:01:06] modeling what kind of teacher i want to be and that’s a pretty that’s high praise

[00:01:12] right there uh thanks a lot for being on the program this evening oh it’s a pleasure kevin thank you for

[00:01:17] having me absolutely um you know i’m a teacher also and this is what i’m always

[00:01:22] working towards is trying to be a better teacher i really wanna um just do a good

[00:01:27] job of of loving the students and helping them grow to be all that god has called them to be you know and i think

[00:01:34] that’s the the heart of every teacher and i’m always looking for good teachers um who who can model what i’m hoping to

[00:01:40] become and there are several in the school that i teach at that i i look at and i go man how are they such a good

[00:01:46] teacher and that’s really my my question i kind of want to start off with you we have a really interesting subject that

[00:01:52] we’re going to talking about talk about today for those of you listening um we’re going to be talking about persecution and the potential for

[00:01:58] persecution coming up for um you know christians and homeschool families and these sorts of things uh but um i wanted

[00:02:05] to start off by asking you uh mr putawa um you know why do people like you so much

[00:02:11] because you are people rave about you and uh you know i go to the homeschool conventions and it’s like yes mr puttawa

[00:02:18] mr putawa mr and and i’m just like man what is it that this guy does that that

[00:02:23] um people love him so much and do you have you thought about that like what is it that you do that specifically people

[00:02:30] really are drawn to um well

[00:02:35] a little bit i part of it’s just being old you know you hang around long enough you meet enough people that there’s just

[00:02:41] a mask that know you so age you know has an advantage um but

[00:02:47] you know i have been very blessed to work with children of a very wide range

[00:02:54] of ages and demographic and circumstance i’ve taught music i’ve taught academic

[00:03:00] subjects i have traveled around the world and taught children you know all over the

[00:03:06] country and in different countries so i think that breadth of experience you know has allowed me to

[00:03:13] develop kind of this ability instinct if you will uh to

[00:03:18] connect with children of all sorts and

[00:03:24] one of the things that i suspect you use just from looking at you i don’t know much about you but i have found that

[00:03:30] when you can teach with a balance between humor and levity

[00:03:36] and then challenge you know those are the two things that children i think respond to very well

[00:03:42] they they like to laugh but they also like to be challenged and uh called up

[00:03:48] to do their best and so those would be the two things that i don’t necessarily walk into a room and

[00:03:55] think how am i gonna do that but it is part of just the way i you know operate

[00:04:01] and i’m also very blessed to have a a content to have content a writing system

[00:04:07] of teaching structure and style and composition that’s just profoundly effective i didn’t invent the thing i

[00:04:15] met some canadians 20 32 years ago and learned it from them and then

[00:04:21] accidentally made a business out of it and uh it worked so well

[00:04:26] that part of the magic isn’t me but the system and so you know all of those things uh

[00:04:34] kind of combined uh have put me in a position where people do tend to either like me or

[00:04:40] absolutely not like me so they’re kind of on the extremes but that’s usually the way it is yeah yeah

[00:04:48] well that’s great well you know um there’s so many different things you can teach right you can teach math you can

[00:04:53] teach chemistry you can there’s so many different subjects that are necessary to teach um so why english what is what

[00:04:58] drew you to english and why have you made that your your life’s calling um that that you’re teaching kids english

[00:05:04] what’s the what’s the impact of of teaching english yeah it’s it’s kind of funny because i

[00:05:10] don’t have any formal training in english or education i um i went to japan and lived there for

[00:05:18] three years i studied with dr suzuki of suzuki method and for the first 10 15 years of my

[00:05:24] adult life i was a full-time um music teacher suzuki violin early

[00:05:30] childhood and then uh because honestly it’s hard to make a living and keep your wife home

[00:05:36] and have kids and pay your bills by being a music teacher i was always looking for a side gig

[00:05:41] i was always looking for some little business i could do on the side that would allow me to

[00:05:47] continue to be able to teach music and i i just stumbled into this thing i i learned this program from these

[00:05:53] canadians i went and i i made a little flyer and got

[00:05:59] 20 people to pay 40 bucks to listen to me talk for an hour or for a day

[00:06:04] and i thought wow you know that has potential but over the years i’ve come to see that

[00:06:11] i think teaching writing is much more like teaching music than many other kind of academic

[00:06:18] subjects because it’s really about modeling it’s about technique it’s about

[00:06:25] progressive development of skills and mastery and confidence built through

[00:06:32] a solid understanding and so a lot of the things i learned in the context of teaching music

[00:06:39] um have cross-applied very very well into this world of teaching

[00:06:45] english composition and uh our company we have you know some phonics stuff for little kids we have a

[00:06:51] spelling program we have a literature aspect but most of what we

[00:06:57] do is we create these lessons and video courses and and

[00:07:02] materials for teachers as well to help children learn how to or collect up

[00:07:09] organize and present thoughts on paper as well as possible and so our little

[00:07:16] tagline is listen speak read write think and that’s that’s that’s fantastic

[00:07:23] yeah i i off your uh the what your website iew.com um

[00:07:28] and for those of you listening that’s the institute for excellence in writing uh you you wrote that your mission it

[00:07:33] says our goal is to equip teachers and teaching parents with methods and materials which will aid them in training their students to become

[00:07:39] confident and competent communicators and thinkers and um

[00:07:46] you know i want to get into the persecution aspect because uh you know that’s what we we told people we’re going to we’re going to be talking about

[00:07:51] here and so i want to talk about that but i feel like this is so important um i got this a quote from um have you

[00:07:58] heard of jordan peterson oh i am a huge jordan peterson fan i

[00:08:03] listen to his podcast religiously well there you go okay so we’re we have something in common there

[00:08:09] i love that guy and um uh thank god he’s actually recently um professed uh christ

[00:08:15] and actually become a believer in his own word so thank god for that and i’m praying for him but he has a quote that

[00:08:21] i wanted to read because i feel like it’s so powerful and um you know he’s he’s become so

[00:08:27] popular and he says the best way to teach people critical thinking is to teach them to write there is no

[00:08:33] difference between writing and thinking if you can think and speak and write you are absolutely deadly now he doesn’t

[00:08:39] mean that in a bad way he means that in a good way and then he says nothing can get in your way it’s the most powerful

[00:08:44] weapon you could possibly provide someone with um do you do you concur is that some

[00:08:50] something that you would you would agree with him on yeah i i absolutely do because you know uh to

[00:08:58] you know quote francis bacon he said um reading makes a full man

[00:09:04] or woman obviously reading makes a full man speaking makes a ready man and writing makes an exact

[00:09:11] man and so there is a level of precision which writing demands that we don’t really see

[00:09:19] in the rest of our kind of normal operations and you know i meet a lot of kids who

[00:09:26] don’t like writing in fact i would say possibly a majority of nine to twelve

[00:09:31] year old boys would self-profess i hate this um and you know part of the magic of

[00:09:37] what i do is i connect with them and then i give them a system that’s very

[00:09:43] at the beginning just nuts and bolts you know you don’t have to be creative you just have to apply this principle and do

[00:09:50] it this way and look you get a good result oh it’s not so bad but i always tell kids i say you know it

[00:09:56] doesn’t matter what you go into later in life you know you may go into the military you may go into engineering you

[00:10:02] may go into garbage collecting you may do something you can’t even imagine

[00:10:07] it doesn’t really matter what you go into if you can speak well and write well you will rise up in a

[00:10:15] position of influence and leadership and you know for christian homeschool kids

[00:10:20] which are the majority of kids that i bump into you know i point out god has a plan for

[00:10:26] you and you know you don’t have to like doing this but if you learn to do it

[00:10:31] decently well or learn to do it very well god can use you in a much greater way wherever you

[00:10:39] end up in whatever sphere of of work or application you find yourself i love that i love it i feel i feel like

[00:10:46] uh kids need to hear that more often um because sometimes they don’t connect the dots and they don’t see the relevance of

[00:10:53] it and i think that if that was made more clear to them that they might um be

[00:10:59] provoked to to enjoy it more and work harder at it maybe um but um

[00:11:06] you know i want to talk about because critical thinking i i it struck it struck me because you know i’m i teach

[00:11:12] kids apologetics i’m a 12th grade bible teacher and i teach them how to defend their faith and so critical thinking is

[00:11:18] it’s just uh you know saturated with uh that that the ability to think

[00:11:24] critically and so uh they have to or you you just can’t we’re just talking about logic in class

[00:11:30] today and the necessity of it in coming to good conclusions and these sorts of things and um you know your topic when when um

[00:11:37] my assistant jason uh was talking to you about coming on the radio program he said hey um you know mr putawa has a

[00:11:46] a topic on persecution and i thought well that’s interesting you know english persecution i wasn’t

[00:11:52] sure where where you know how that how that comes about but but honestly if you’re critical critical thinking and

[00:11:58] you look around today um you’re going to notice hey there are things happening today that

[00:12:04] are alarming and that we should be thinking about and planning for and

[00:12:10] um you know also uh figuring out how do we respond to these issues in light of scripture in

[00:12:16] light of what we know and so can you share with our listeners uh what what caused you to end up deciding to

[00:12:23] put together a uh message on the issue of persecution

[00:12:29] well you know as i’ve traveled around and done a lot of speaking mostly at christian homeschool conventions over

[00:12:35] the past couple decades you know i have expanded from just how to you know do

[00:12:42] outlines and write papers to how do you think about the world and you

[00:12:48] know these words critical thinking are are kind of buzzwords and people have a very hard time

[00:12:54] defining them and of course if you go off to a college or university mostly critical thinking means if you can tell

[00:13:01] the professor what he wants to hear then that’s good critical thinking but one of the things i

[00:13:08] uh discovered early on in trying to help kids get stuff out of their brain because the biggest problem is i don’t

[00:13:13] know what to write i can’t think of anything i don’t know what to say and what i put together was the trick is

[00:13:20] questions if you know how to ask yourself good questions

[00:13:26] then you can come up with ideas and that’s true for the world itself

[00:13:32] that’s true for life you know someone who wakes up in the morning says how can i get enough money so i can buy

[00:13:37] a new iphone well i have one quality of life someone else can wake up and say how can i grow today in wisdom and

[00:13:44] virtue that i could better serve my fellow man and god well that’s a totally different question and and so the

[00:13:51] quality of the questions you ask will determine the quality of your life

[00:13:57] so you know as we headed into 2020 and everything shut down i had been

[00:14:03] moving in this direction of you know are we teaching our children to ask good

[00:14:09] questions and what’s the technique of doing that and you working in apologetics obviously you

[00:14:15] you are are all over that and of course jordan peterson is all over that as well

[00:14:21] but yeah so many things demanded questioning uh in that year

[00:14:27] and we we saw just outrageous expansion of government power

[00:14:35] uh which should be something that we would all instinctively question if

[00:14:40] we have the background of having you know read the right literature and have the right conversations and have a

[00:14:47] biblical foundation and understand what is god’s role for government

[00:14:53] um so so looking at that and then this spew of misinformation that was coming

[00:14:59] out and of course the joke is what’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and a and

[00:15:06] the truth you know three weeks yeah every everything’s just so i i i

[00:15:13] didn’t want to do it i didn’t want to create a talk called preparing for persecution a curriculum proposal

[00:15:19] because i thought who wants to come and hear about that actually the first one i did honestly i titled it

[00:15:25] preparing for martyrdom and i thought well that’s just too depressing no one’s gonna come to hear

[00:15:31] about that um but i was contemplating the fact of of you know how have how have christians

[00:15:38] educated their children throughout history and i am pretty darn sure the christians

[00:15:44] in the first second third centuries didn’t say oh i want to educate my children so

[00:15:51] they can go to a good school so they can get a good degree so they can get a good

[00:15:57] job so they can be comfortable so their children can be comfortable no

[00:16:03] they they train they prepared them to suffer and possibly die for the truth

[00:16:10] capital t truth incarnate word of truth and i thought we’re just so far away

[00:16:16] because the normal conversation i have with parents about homeschooling or schools is well what about college what

[00:16:24] about you know career well i don’t think that college and career is the most important thing that parents should be

[00:16:30] thinking about right now and there’s so many indicators that we are moving into

[00:16:35] i would say if not inevitably at least potentially a very very chaotic

[00:16:43] time where people who believe in truth will be persecuted and people who profess

[00:16:49] jesus christ will be hated for that we’re not used to

[00:16:54] it you didn’t grow up that way my parents and your parents we don’t even know anyone in this country who is

[00:17:00] persecuted for their faith that’s why i found out perhaps you came across rodriguez book live not by lies i saw

[00:17:08] that in your notes that’s actually one of the things i noted that i wanted to ask you about um but yeah please share

[00:17:14] share with yeah i would put that as as one of the most important books in print right now it was by far the best book of

[00:17:21] 2020 uh that i read and you know what he did is he met people who had relatives

[00:17:28] or who lived in eastern europe during the soviet era and they said this

[00:17:33] country is going exactly the way that we went in

[00:17:38] bulgaria and hungary and czechoslovakia in east germany and russia so he actually went over to east eastern

[00:17:46] europe and spent quite a bit of time there meeting and interviewing and talking to people with this basic

[00:17:53] question what happened from your perspective did you know it was happening and how did

[00:18:00] you survive with your family and your faith intact so i would say the first

[00:18:05] half of the book is kind of depressing because he he creates this this mass of things where you see okay

[00:18:13] with the cancel culture and the media censorship and and all that it’s kind of like 1984 in the memory hole and then

[00:18:21] you’ve got brave new world and absolute licentiousness without with no concept

[00:18:26] of morality or family or any good thing and then you look at the nazi era and

[00:18:32] the total control uh the government had over the propaganda that everyone and

[00:18:38] taking the kids out of home and getting them into you know hitler youth and all that and then of course the whole soviet

[00:18:45] bloc era uh where people basically were just be continuously lied to

[00:18:51] and so by re by the end of the first half of the book you just feel like you’re right in the middle of all that

[00:18:57] horrible stuff and oh gosh is there any way to turn it back short of a massive

[00:19:03] revival in this country i don’t see any way that we that we undo the direction that we’re

[00:19:11] going but the second half of the book uh you’ve got to get through the first half and it’s kind of depressing but the

[00:19:16] second half is so inspiring because he tells the stories of these families and

[00:19:22] these individuals and these these christians who who resisted who were able to

[00:19:30] hold on to their faith and the truth in the faith of all those lies

[00:19:36] and uh i think the book is well summed up uh in the statement at the end which he took from

[00:19:42] a letter by socia nitsan actually the title is from social nits and live not by lies but the point is you may have to live in

[00:19:51] a world of lies but you do not have to let those lies live in you

[00:19:58] so that’s where you know i started with this and then you know i read a few more

[00:20:03] books the rise and triumph of the modern self by carl truman which uh we don’t have time to go into that but it does a

[00:20:10] great job of explaining kind of how we got to where we are

[00:20:16] uh with the early romanticists who were dissatisfied with

[00:20:21] the the standard of uh monogamy and family and then how that

[00:20:27] rolled into the uh 1800s period with you had freud and

[00:20:34] darwin and marx kind of all interspersed there and

[00:20:40] that and and what we saw was the total failure of of

[00:20:46] economic marxism we have a gr we have great examples still existing in this day of the total failure of class

[00:20:54] struggle based on economics and resolving that through a government control so instead and what carl truman

[00:21:01] points out is we now have essentially sexual marxism we we have a level of

[00:21:08] cultural marxism where it’s pitting class against class not economically

[00:21:14] but by identity and so you and i we are i would assume

[00:21:20] you are as well as i am a white cisgendered

[00:21:25] heterosexual middle-class male and i can i i’m told i can identify as

[00:21:32] whatever i want nowadays right so right but no i’m just kidding you know if that’s how people would identify us

[00:21:39] they would class us that way we’ve just become the most oppressive group of

[00:21:44] people on the planet in that whole ideology and so uh truman explains this very very

[00:21:51] well um he’s got a that book is called the rise in triumph of the modern self and then he’s got another book i’m not

[00:21:57] sure the title which is kind of a shorter version more of a it’s philosophy light and then

[00:22:02] his next book is philosophy really light but it’s good because people have to figure out how did this happen because

[00:22:09] think would you have imagined 10 years ago what we have today with things like

[00:22:17] drag queen hour for kindergartners in public schools and libraries i mean it’s just

[00:22:24] it’s beyond the beyond yeah i was just talking with my students about this today i just said i said this was not on

[00:22:30] anybody’s radar when i was in high school this was a non-issue these were not even they were nowhere nobody ever people

[00:22:36] would have laughed at you if you said uh this is what’s coming and this is what you’re going to be experiencing

[00:22:41] people would have said get out there is no way that’s going to happen i i was showing a video and put out by the

[00:22:46] family policy institute in washington where he interviews college students asking them specifically

[00:22:53] if he can identify as a woman and they all agree yes you can identify as a woman but then he takes it further

[00:22:59] i don’t know if you’ve seen this video it’s all over the place now he says could i be a chinese woman and all the

[00:23:05] students say yeah you could be a chinese woman and then he says could i be seven years old and then he ends with could i be six

[00:23:12] foot five and by the time one guy actually says i think you could persuade me that you’re six foot five and you’re

[00:23:19] just like my students are like what what is going on right and um it’s just uh

[00:23:24] astonishing but we were emphasizing you know uh the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom

[00:23:30] and that fools despise uh knowledge you can’t you can’t uh i mean this is where

[00:23:35] you go it’s it’s i never in the past when i when i would read that verse about um

[00:23:41] you know a fool you become a fool when you abandon god the

[00:23:47] it was more like okay well the bible’s you know telling you you’re not real bright but now i look at it and i go wow you that

[00:23:54] could not be more clear that you truly do become a fool when you abandoned when you abandoned the foundation of god uh

[00:24:01] it’s it’s stunning well and when you have whole groups of people who’ve done that

[00:24:07] and profess foolish things together

[00:24:12] and then become active in demanding their right not just to

[00:24:18] say what they want to say but demanding that you agree with them and capitulate

[00:24:23] to their demands then you know you’ve moved into a completely different zone

[00:24:30] so i you know i came to this whole thought of okay

[00:24:36] if we need to prepare our kids and ourselves

[00:24:41] for a time when well maybe it’s beyond the inconvenience

[00:24:47] of being cancelled or being disliked or people saying bad things about you maybe it’s even beyond the inconvenience of um

[00:24:55] getting a chip in your hand so you can go shopping at whole foods maybe it’s actually a situation

[00:25:03] where you have no job and no money and no vehicle and no place to live or maybe

[00:25:10] even you’re imprisoned for some reason separated from family or friends or any like-minded

[00:25:16] people how do you survive that

[00:25:21] because no one i personally know has ever survived that so

[00:25:27] my point is we need to create a curriculum that helps kids be ready in case that

[00:25:35] happens and then my my extension on that is even if it doesn’t happen

[00:25:41] well then we’re all better off for having been ready for it yeah absolutely

[00:25:46] you know and you said um you said earlier uh that the greatest goal for our kids is you know when

[00:25:53] teaching them english how to read write uh to think the greatest goal is not college what is the greatest goal what

[00:25:59] is the greatest goal do you believe um it is

[00:26:05] well i i would address that with something i have said many times in fact one of my

[00:26:10] favorite things to do is when i get invited to do a commencement address

[00:26:16] um because i like to talk to teenagers and say don’t buy into this idea

[00:26:23] that you should try to find out what you want to do and do it and that’ll make you successful and happy

[00:26:29] because how do you know right instead try to figure out the next

[00:26:37] right step of what god wants you to do and do that and then you will be

[00:26:44] happier because you will be doing the lord’s work and you don’t know what it’s going to look like in fact you

[00:26:50] can’t imagine your life 10 years from now and yes maybe you have deep in yourself

[00:26:55] okay i want to be a doctor i know god wants me to do that okay well there’s some hoops you got to jump through um

[00:27:02] you know i have a strong interest in flying airplanes or aviation or

[00:27:07] farming pursue interests but always keep in mind the question what

[00:27:15] does god want for me to do and that will lead to greater satisfaction

[00:27:20] greater happiness and i would argue probably greater uh success in the overall measurements

[00:27:26] of life absolutely uh on your in the notes that i was i was looking

[00:27:32] over um you you referenced a book called the coddling of the american mind and

[00:27:38] you mentioned three great untruths this was really interesting to me um you put the untruth of fragility the

[00:27:45] untruth of emotional reasoning and then the untruth of us versus them um can you

[00:27:51] can you break those down for our listeners what what’s the answers here yeah i would say for any

[00:27:56] parent of a student or any teenager who’s college bound in any way

[00:28:04] this is a very important book capital v capital i um because what hate and looking off do

[00:28:11] in this book is they basically point out that the entire

[00:28:16] world of higher education now believes deeply espouses continually

[00:28:22] promotes these three lies so the first one is the lie of fragility in other words

[00:28:29] if it doesn’t kill you it will make you weaker that’s why we can’t allow someone with

[00:28:35] opposing views to speak on our campus because we’ll be triggered and offended and suffer emotional distress and all

[00:28:41] that you know that’s that is a lie that is a lie

[00:28:46] against the very biology of everything it is actually the opposite

[00:28:53] you know um that if it doesn’t kill you it generally

[00:28:58] will make you stronger nietzsche said that but this is true at a biological level if you create stress or you

[00:29:05] restrict food or you put extreme temperatures for yeast cells or mice guess what they

[00:29:13] get stronger they live longer it’s called hormesis and so you know if you’re at all in the

[00:29:18] world of of fitness nutrition uh intermittent fasting any of that stuff that makes you

[00:29:25] stronger and better you realize that stress generally will make you stronger

[00:29:32] up to a certain point the right curve and so that’s the whole idea of a college is iron shepherd’s iron let’s

[00:29:39] invite people with opposing views so that we can both practice critical

[00:29:44] thinking in the true sense of the word so that’s that’s the first uh great lie

[00:29:50] and he says that you know if the professors aren’t professing it all the students around you are believing it and

[00:29:56] it’s just it’s the inculcation of that lie very hard to escape yeah and i uh

[00:30:03] you know um we’ve been talking about jordan peterson here uh one of the things he said that uh really hit me when i was watching one

[00:30:10] of his his interviews became very famous went viral uh whereas the the interviewer asked him uh why do

[00:30:18] you have why does your right to tell the truth uh take precedence over my right

[00:30:24] not to be offended and then he says if you can’t risk offending somebody

[00:30:29] then you can’t ultimately get the truth and i was like oh that is it that is that was so good and that now that’s

[00:30:36] become so popular but that that’s basically what you’re just what you were just explaining well we thank god for jordan peterson

[00:30:42] that’s for sure he is the biggest voice of sanity that we can see

[00:30:48] in the in the larger public now uh the second one uh what was it the second one you said

[00:30:54] the untruth of emotional reasoning right so you know trust your feelings

[00:30:59] you know make your decisions based on how you feel well this goes back i mean this

[00:31:05] contradicts every philosopher that’s ever lived all the way back to the most ancient ones who basically said don’t

[00:31:11] trust your feelings trust your mind trust your reason trust your logic trust your your elders trust

[00:31:19] tradition trust anything except your feelings yeah well why i mean you make

[00:31:24] an important decision when you are feeling something that’s inherently

[00:31:30] dangerous you’re feeling happy you’re feeling sad you’re feeling angry you’re feeling frustrated you’re feeling

[00:31:35] hopeless you don’t want to make important decisions in your life or even unimportant decisions

[00:31:42] when you’re in that world of emotional reactiveness and hate and lucky enough do a really

[00:31:48] good job of unpacking this and talking about how this this actually violates

[00:31:54] the very principle of sanity and they do talk about behavioral

[00:31:59] cognitive therapy as a way to help people out of you know mental illness

[00:32:06] and and basically that’s the bottom line is don’t trust your feelings think it

[00:32:12] through with someone who can help you think well a mentor so yeah and yet you see all these people

[00:32:20] you know i feel my truth i sat next to a young woman on an airplane a month or so

[00:32:27] ago she’s probably around 30 and she was you know in a phd program

[00:32:33] at usc or something she worked for the veterans administration she was you know on this career track

[00:32:40] and i really didn’t want to this is so funny i did not want to talk to her yeah he was like the only person on the whole

[00:32:46] airplane wearing a mask and i really didn’t want to talk to her and this little voice said talk to her i didn’t

[00:32:52] know i’m not going to you need to talk to her well funny thing is we both fired

[00:32:58] up our computers tried to get the internet and it didn’t work so she talks to me says is your internet working i

[00:33:04] know no i don’t think it is and we talk the whole rest of the time

[00:33:09] but you know it was a very good conversation i had to be very careful obviously

[00:33:15] um but for me it’s good to meet someone who is not like-minded so that i can

[00:33:20] remember that everyone is not like me but she used an expression i thought was

[00:33:26] just so foreign to my way of thinking about anything and the

[00:33:32] expression we hear people say it all the time my truth like my truth how how could you have

[00:33:39] your truth i mean truth is truth it’s true it’s it’s objective that’s the

[00:33:44] whole purpose of it being truth is to be objective and yet it struck me how many

[00:33:50] people in that millennial and younger age range walk around saying well this is my truth and

[00:33:57] therefore it trumps everything else you’re never going to wear in life with

[00:34:03] that yeah these are buzz words i mean it’s crazy and uh it is what has dominated our culture is this whole my truth kind

[00:34:10] of thing which is mind-boggling and uh that’s what we’re what we’re actually talking about in my class right now is objective

[00:34:16] versus subjective and um you know the big question of course is is morality objective or

[00:34:23] subjective and uh and i never thought we’d get to the point where where somebody would say

[00:34:29] that you know it’s it’s subjective whether you know um

[00:34:35] water is wet or something like that you know where there’s there’s they’re making facts uh

[00:34:41] science quote science is subjective all of a sudden uh it was one thing to debate morality but now all of a sudden

[00:34:47] it’s hey you can’t really know truth because everybody has their own truth which is it’s in insanity it’s back to

[00:34:54] the what is a woman movie how ridiculous so yeah you know that

[00:34:59] then the third and this kind of leads right into that and that is everyone is either good or

[00:35:05] bad and and hey look enough and hate don’t have a

[00:35:11] christian perspective on this so they don’t go to where i would go thinking but i would quote chesterton back at

[00:35:18] that and say you know gk chesterton said what’s wrong with the world i am

[00:35:24] it’s my sin it’s sin that is the problem and we all

[00:35:29] have it and and when you begin to deny the existence of sin

[00:35:35] which is the popular psychology then you remove

[00:35:41] your personal responsibility for bad things that happen in the world and and so now

[00:35:47] here’s the problem if someone else is bad in your view then

[00:35:54] they must be all bad if because you’re not bad so if they disagree with you they must be bad so if

[00:36:01] i believe this and someone else disagrees with me well i can’t be wrong because i don’t sin they must be

[00:36:08] absolutely bad and we see the polarization politically we see it you know with the critical race theory

[00:36:15] stuff sneaking into classrooms and and you know i don’t know how we ever

[00:36:20] get back to sanity unless we get back to the fact that we have original sin

[00:36:26] and that is a problem that we fight um individually and collectively and our

[00:36:32] only real tool to fight that is the grace of jesus christ and the

[00:36:37] example of christ and the the saints that that have come before us so

[00:36:43] you know it’s it’s a i i don’t know how we get

[00:36:48] kids who are i mean in a very short five years high schoolers are going to be voting

[00:36:54] and working right oh yeah that’s scary yeah and

[00:36:59] the college students right now are going to be you know basically running a lot

[00:37:05] of stuff and and that’s just going to continue i don’t know how we get back to the point

[00:37:12] where we can have people understand the fundamental point

[00:37:18] of humanity which is we are a fallen creatures and we need a savior

[00:37:23] without that i don’t i don’t see much hope for for society rebuilding

[00:37:29] yeah so uh you know and i i you know god god can flip things on its

[00:37:35] head like you know very quickly he he’s good at that um he can change things and and steer things in the other direction

[00:37:41] very very quickly i’m always encouraged by the different stories i’ve read where god moved in in maybe even a single

[00:37:48] individual and all of a sudden you know everything changed but um i’m sure our listeners are wondering you

[00:37:54] know because we’re talking about persecution here um you were talking about we need to we need to prepare our

[00:37:59] kids with a mindset that knows how to deal with this if it comes and and and

[00:38:04] you put the disclaimer out there that hey maybe it won’t that’d be wonderful if if we didn’t have

[00:38:10] to deal with what they did and you know had to deal with in places like communist romania and these sorts of

[00:38:15] things i mean that that just sounds insane but and uh god willing he’ll have mercy on

[00:38:20] us but but um do you have an outline for that as far as like okay how do i prepare my

[00:38:27] children to be able to think through these difficult potential decisions that that are coming down the

[00:38:33] pike maybe well my um my argument here is that when you’re

[00:38:39] stripped of everything and you have nothing what’s left it’s your identity

[00:38:46] and that we need to we need to learn and teach and practice ourselves and teach

[00:38:54] our children how to identify ourselves correctly and i believe that that’s all about

[00:39:01] relationship so you know if i were to identify myself if someone said andrew putawa who are you

[00:39:08] right yeah i would try to start with the top and most important things well i am a created being

[00:39:15] i have a relationship with a creator that is an identity that supersedes all

[00:39:21] other identities and it’s a relationship this is why darwinism has been so

[00:39:27] pernicious is because if you’re a created being everything flows from that

[00:39:33] differently than if you believe you’re an accident of the universe

[00:39:38] secondly i’m i am a follower of christ so that adds more to my identity

[00:39:46] that that and that i would argue that identity is expressed in code and creed the rules

[00:39:55] the precepts the laws the guidelines what do we what do we do

[00:40:01] and then the creed what do we believe that helps us do what we should do and you know if we look at

[00:40:08] the old testament the code preceded the creed first thing god did was said you are my

[00:40:13] people do this do this don’t do that don’t do that don’t do that he didn’t really explain why in too much great

[00:40:20] detail that all comes later so um i’m i am a created being i have a

[00:40:27] relationship with a creator there’s a code and a creed there are things that i do and don’t do

[00:40:34] and things that i believe because of that i’m a follower of christ that makes the code a lot harder because the

[00:40:40] commands of christ are impossible for humans to to accomplish

[00:40:46] without the grace of christ um and there and there’s a creed and and

[00:40:51] we say these things again and again then i might go down one more step and i would say i am

[00:40:58] a member of a church that church has a code and a creed if i were to go down another step i am a

[00:41:04] husband a spouse uh that has a code in creed you think about wedding vows it’s basically here’s the code i promise to

[00:41:12] do this i promise not to do that here’s the the theology of marriage

[00:41:18] there’s the creed then i would go down and say i am a father and a grandfather

[00:41:23] i would get down to the point of saying you know i am a business owner and there’s you know things that i do and

[00:41:30] don’t do and things that i believe that shape that relationship between me and the people i work with

[00:41:36] and and you know then i probably get down to i’m an american citizen you know and there’s a code in a creed i

[00:41:42] mean we all grew up saying the pledge of allegiance what is it it’s a cr it’s a creed we we believe in our constitution

[00:41:49] it’s a code so my argument is that the best way to prepare children

[00:41:54] for being stripped of everything they have in in a position of

[00:42:01] perhaps having to suffer even a physical pain and persecution is for them to know

[00:42:07] deep level who they are and that we communicate these codes and creeds through

[00:42:15] um song scripture story

[00:42:21] uh community and culture that that’s what builds into children

[00:42:26] the the understanding of who they are and that’s why you know i think

[00:42:32] christian tradition has been very strong on um being able to memorize recite

[00:42:39] scripture what would you want to be able to say to yourself

[00:42:44] if you’re stuck in you know a prison cell in the most miserable of situations what would you

[00:42:51] want to be able to say to other people who are stuck there with you well okay so select the scriptures do it

[00:42:59] intentionally make a list and and what i said to the audience is find five songs

[00:43:06] five um scriptures or quotes five poems and

[00:43:13] what was the other thing five stories that you want to know these really really well

[00:43:20] so well that you can recall them under duress and stressed

[00:43:25] so well that you can share them with other people who are going to be desperate for

[00:43:30] a word of truth that’s fantastic uh that is uh thank you for sharing that i think that’s a big

[00:43:36] blessing too it’ll be a big big blessing to a lot of people um and i love that um because even if even if we aren’t under

[00:43:43] intense persecution that’s relevant and important to our lives um just from a decision-making process you don’t have

[00:43:49] to you don’t have to uh you know muddle around uh trying to figure out what you’re gonna do next when you have that

[00:43:56] ingrained within you oh under this circumstance this is what i do right here’s how i respond to somebody who

[00:44:02] treats me this way this is what i do in my workplace when this scenario happens and so um that’s great um because

[00:44:10] um i just i like that the identity of who i am as a bible-believing

[00:44:15] god-fearing christian um and that of course all plays out in scripture um i had one more question where we’re we’re

[00:44:21] running up against the clock here but i had one more question i wanted to ask you that i was curious about um you know

[00:44:26] there’s been a big uh change in our culture obviously with video kids are on video constantly and uh even books are

[00:44:34] digital now and excuse me and there’s a book that came out um

[00:44:39] called reader come home i’m not sure if you’ve heard of it or not have you heard of the book reader come home it’s it’s on my shelf

[00:44:45] and ironically i have only read the very first part of it um okay so i i was just

[00:44:51] loved the book yeah i was curious if you had an opinion on

[00:44:56] how digital uh text is affecting kids ability to process information i’m gonna

[00:45:02] read the book i haven’t read it yet uh it was referred to me by um one of our phenomenal english teachers and um

[00:45:10] and i wanted to just i was just curious as somebody who’s so involved um do you think that

[00:45:16] the the digital um environment is making it more difficult for kids to think

[00:45:22] critically about what they’re reading um do you have an opinion about that oh very much so um

[00:45:29] you know it’s interesting because all the research all the research that has been done

[00:45:35] on education and screens versus paper is all in favor of paper

[00:45:43] whether you’re reading whether you’re learning to read whether you’re writing whether you are

[00:45:50] studying paper always has a better effect on the brain on memory on retention

[00:45:57] and there’s a whole lot of reasons in fact i actually have an hour-long talk on this very subject called paper and

[00:46:04] what the research says um and the saddest thing to me is that the school districts are are

[00:46:11] careening away from that denying the science denying the research

[00:46:18] wanting to go digital everything so that yes you know we have to have a paperless classroom that’s the ideal we

[00:46:25] have to have tablets and ipads for six-year-old children to learn to read

[00:46:32] and do math and you know by the time

[00:46:37] the empirical evidence the clinical evidence will will come out

[00:46:45] it’ll be a whole generation of people who’ve been handicapped in this way so

[00:46:50] uh you know i i do have uh several talks where i strongly encourage

[00:46:55] parents to not use screen-based educational or

[00:47:00] entertainment materials with young children now obviously at a certain

[00:47:06] point there is a tremendous value of a device like a kindle in that you can carry

[00:47:11] around a whole library and you can market you can use it but it is not the best way to learn to read

[00:47:19] and there’s all sorts of research as to why that’s true okay

[00:47:24] i’d be happy to send you some of those studies if you’re interested in looking into it at a another point in time but i

[00:47:32] am interested yeah and and you know just in our heart we know you know sitting sitting in the living room reading a

[00:47:40] book of poems reading you know lord of the rings to your children in a book is way

[00:47:47] different than looking at your computer screen or your tablet or whatever so yeah yeah and it’s been my experience

[00:47:53] without even having it even been brought up that it is more difficult to um i don’t know what it is

[00:47:59] compartment compartment compartmentalize the content in a way

[00:48:05] that is easy to to uh recall um i don’t know what it is there but i i’m i’m very

[00:48:11] uh interested in that and um uh shout out to mrs breden thanks for uh recommending that book mrs breden so uh

[00:48:18] she’s our our 12th grade english teacher and uh our school does a phenomenal job in the english department so

[00:48:25] um but um for those of you listening my guest is andrew putawa and

[00:48:30] iew.com institute for excellence in writing if you want to look more into that and uh mr putawa you you did say

[00:48:36] that uh there’s a free resource on your site that they can uh go to can you um

[00:48:42] reference that yeah it’s a iew.com slash free hyphen

[00:48:48] lessons free dash lessons and you can get uh three

[00:48:53] weeks of any of our writing courses three weeks of our fix it grammar program uh level one i believe of our

[00:49:00] poetry memorization program and then of course if you have any questions about any of it we’ve got

[00:49:05] people standing by all the time to help help you figure out what you might like to take a look at it’s all free it’s all

[00:49:12] digital and then if you want to buy a product as a result of that we’ll help you do that too that’s great well i am

[00:49:18] so grateful that you came on the show and for everything you’re doing uh thank you so much for being here

[00:49:24] it’s been a pleasure keep up your very important work kevin thank you andrew i’m gonna end with uh one more with

[00:49:31] jordan peterson’s quote here because i like it so much and uh and andrew likes jordan peterson too so

[00:49:37] so um here’s the quote the best way to teach people critical thinking is to teach them to write there is no

[00:49:42] difference between writing and thinking if you can think and speak and write you are absolutely deadly in a good way

[00:49:48] nothing can get in your way it’s the most powerful weapon you could possibly provide someone with wow what a uh what

[00:49:55] a testament to getting better at writing and reading and thinking and my website

[00:50:00] is educate4life.org if you need resources for apologetics learning how to answer the

[00:50:05] tough questions about god in the bible all kinds of content is available for you on that site and

[00:50:11] you can check it out great for your family a home group church whatever the case that’s educate4life.org and i just

[00:50:17] want to thank you so much for being here we have some wonderful guests coming up including mark armitage

[00:50:22] who uh founded found uh one of the largest triceratop horns ever found that actually has soft tissue in it

[00:50:29] incredible so you can join us next week and the week after some other fantastic

[00:50:34] guests coming up so uh thanks again andrew and we’ll see you next time