Teach your children well, an interview with Phil Robertson

In this episode of balancing the Christian life, we talk about how to be better parents with Phil Robertson. Welcome to balancing the Christian life. I'm Dr. Kenny Embry. We'll talk about how to be better Christians and people in the digital age. Let's go. Thanks for joining me. This week, I'm talking to preacher and camp director Phil Robertson. He and I have known each other for a long time, his early career was as a reporter in Florida, primarily covering NASA and the space program. However, Phil has since turned his microphone toward preaching, and directing a summer camp in North Central Florida near Gainesville. I've always thought of Phil as someone who is very gifted at working with teens. And as what I call a hurricane. He's both extremely intense and gentle at the same time, you'll see what I mean in just a minute. I wanted to talk to Phil primarily about kids. But the conversation ended up being about being a parent. At the end of our conversation, Phil gives three specific pieces of advice for how to be a better parent, frankly, I think he nails it. Phil, thanks for coming on program,man. Oh, Kenny, truly my pleasure. You've always impressed me as someone who relates well to younger people. what sparked this interest in that? My kids? You have kids, you better be involved with kids. That's really it. And is I was raising my kids. We were actually living in hueytown at this time. And so I got involved with the YMCA and coaching my kids teams. And I quickly learned that there's not a lot of parents who are willing to get involved. Oh, sure. They're bringing their kids. But you can always find parents who are willing to bring their kids. But how many kids have parents that are willing to coach and I was actually coaching three teams, and I only got two kids. Yeah, you know, but I enjoyed it. And I saw a need there. And then from the influence, and the urging, David banning, who got me to do a teen weekend out in Beaumont, when he was working with the dowlen road group, then he just really got after me and said we need more of this and the Brotherhood, we need more teen involvement. And so that's what sparked the interest. What's different about this generation than generations past? To me, the kids are the same. Technically the kids interest the kids desires, the kids attitudes. They're the same to me What's changed? Its parenting has changed. I don't see. And maybe it's just because it's my blinders on. I've got to be careful of not being the old curmudgeon who just sees things a certain way or just as limited to what I say. But I think parents have changed with respect to just involvement and doing things with their kids. For example, here's one thing that we've noticed, because of the pandemic, we had to go without services for a while, and we had discontinue Bible classes. Well, for some families, that was massive, they don't know how to teach their kids at home. It's almost as if Bible class at church became that's where their kids get their Bible. That's where they get their understanding of God. We found and this is one thing, something we've noticed as elders here with our group in Gainesville, we've got to do a better job of teaching our parents to teach their kids that's the biblical pattern, Deuteronomy six, your children should be reminded as they come in, as they go out of the home, when they rise up when they lie down of who their father is. There's been a little bit of a change in parenting. It's certainly different than when you and I grew up. I mean, I could jump on my bike as a kid in Lubbock, Texas, and just ride all over the place. Just be home at five, be home in time for dinner. You didn't even have a cell phone. You'd be home. today. It's clearly different. As parents, I just feel like sometimes we're not as involved. I would say if there is a difference, it's more in the parenting, not the kids. You know, Ikind of see it on both ends there. As I began my college teaching career, when I would give a student a bad grade, it would be Dr. Embry, what can I do to make this better later for a future assignment? Now, they look at that bad grade, and it's almost like the opening bid. Okay, how can we get this grade up? And I'm sitting here thinking No, this grade is done. I think one of the things that I see from my perspective is, this is a generation that has more answers than ever before, because Google is in their pocket. But they don't understand what any of those answers mean.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying. But I would say if you go back to it, that's still an accountability issue. That comes from the way you were reared. When you and I were growing up. The teacher was always right. Yeah, even if the teacher is wrong, the teacher is always right. That was the rule. We've lost that respect for authority. We've lost those absolutes in life.

I can't remember who it was. He said that the most destructive channel on cable was the Disney Channel. And I was like, really? And he said, he said, look at the attitude of the children to the adults

well, and dads the way they portrayed that.

Yes. And what he was saying there was the most incompetent people in the shows are the adults. Yep. The most competent people are the children. Yep. And you have now indoctrinated a whole generation, that you are intrinsically smarter than your parents.

Yeah, well, I'd say that's exactly right. I mean, I can remember our kids watching Hannah Montana. Of course, it was back when Miley Cyrus wasn't Miley Cyrus like she is now but but we can remember having those discussions? Uh, oh, yeah. You don't talk like that. That sassy. In many shows, I would say many of the Disney shows were not allowed, you know, but, but that's what it goes back to though. Kenny, my wife was there watching the shows with the kids. It didn't just set him down in front of it and say here, blow some time. It was valuable time. They only got precious TV time. And so choose wisely.

When I was single and had no children. I remember I'm never going to let my children watch television. By the time I was a father. I was so grateful for Elmo. I was so grateful that there was somebody who is going to take over my kids for me.

You're exactly right, dude, I get it. It's the parents got to make sure they choose those shows wisely. Our kids had veggietales

details. Oh, me too. we'd sing the songs. We had the Veggietales el CIG log in the cards? Yeah, no, but but you're exactly right. I mean, you got to have that time. But it's choosing those shows wisely. Not just anything. I've said several different times. I'm a big proponent of what I call digital discipleship. It's those online tools. And one of the things that's really a struggle for me as a parent, my kids, don't watch PBS, CBS, NBC, they don't even watch Netflix. They watch YouTube. And the amazing thing is, is there's not four channels, there's not 100 channels, there are 10,000 channels. And my kids have a pretty good idea of who the really cool influencers are. They don't all these people, but I have no idea who they are. Sometimes I have to get my sons to push me over there and say, Okay, dad, these are the people. And I'm just like, Who are these? And what are they talking about? You're out of touch Kenny. That's just it? Man. I think you're right. I think that hasn't changed. I know, that's been a constant for all of us. Yeah, that really is? Well, I've kind of tipped my hand on this. I am a big advocate of digital discipleship. You do a really good job of talking about this, especially to teenagers. What are the advantages to this? And what are the real dangers to this? I believe there's many more pros than there are cons. Now. That's my opinion. And I hope everybody understands as I'm talking to you. I'm just giving my thoughts. I'm just one guy with one train of thought to meet the cons. Have you seen the Netflix documentary? The social dilemma? Oh, yeah. Oh, my word? Well, I think that's something every parent needs to watch. And we need to be mindful of how devices are manipulating us. And we need to be mindful of what's being fed us. I encourage every parent that has given a phone to their child to know everything that their child is saying. Now, that sounds like a daunting task. But what you're doing is you're giving your child the freedom to be taught by anyone that they see on there. And we need to be mindful, there's a great danger in that. I mean, if a stranger was just walking down the street and came out and talk to your child, and you immediately stand in the breach and say, Whoa, who are you? You know? We'll give them a device where there's no holds barred? Well, that's scary. I think we've seen the dangers of it in what we've just seen in our world over the past few months. I was freaking out it. How in the world. Did those protests gather so quickly? And yeah, rage spread was such hostility so fast when whatever was the issue happened just a an hour or two ago, and now we've got 10s of 1000s gathering and protesting? Well, it's because of what's happening with social media, that we're easily targeted. And these things are thrown in front of us. And it can really build the outrage not just who's influencing our children, but there's so much isolation. What a great oxymoron. Social media has made us less social. And we see that in kids, I see boys who can't even go talk to girls. It's so sad, you know, they just they would rather be in front of a video game than even trying to mingle. Look at what it's done to parents, and adults, an old news guy, I have never in my life, seen people be so persuaded by fake news and conspiracy theories than what we've seen going on this year. And that's coming from a lack of the ability to recognize I'm being conned, I'm being manipulated. Our cognitive ability to reason has really been hurt by devices. And we need to be careful that those are my cons. I don't think most people would disagree with that. But those are big cons. The pros far outweigh the cons. I have text groups, with so many incredibly good, motivating, energetic and spiritual minded friends, whether it's preacher friends, whether it's friends from Camp, fellow counselors, whether it's brothers at church, whether it's kids in the college class, or even kids from Camp, text groups, that there's that constant communication, me and Facebook had a love hate relationship, but I made sure the love far outweighs the hate because I'm able to reconnect, and stay in touch with so many people whom I love dearly, even just a few moments ago, before I jumped on with you. There's a friend of mine, and I don't know her very well. But I just found out that this friend has a daughter who was just recently diagnosed with leukemia, my heart just broke for her. And I just wanted her to know I'm praying for and she immediately responds, I mean, think about the power now of not just just one family praying, but 10s of 1000s of families praying, we've seen it just in our church, this past year, we have finally been pushed out of our comfort zone to livestream our services to put our adult classes online. Well, frankly, we're never going back. And we're even talking about, we may make some big changes with helping to fix it in our assemblies. And even outside of our assemblies moving forward. There's so many great advantages, the pros outweigh the cons. But you got to keep the cons in check. I teach a class called digital literacy. And in digital literacy, we talk about what we call the five literacies. The first one is attention. Your greatest commodity is not time it's attention. Once they have your attention, then they have your time. That's how they make money. I can't remember who the quote came from. But it was one of these big, huge social media driven companies. Our biggest competition is this social company, this social media company, YouTube, and sleep. We got to figure out how to keep you awake longer. And and yeah, it it can easily, you know, keep you awake. Yeah, that's exactly right. The second part of digital literacy is curation, figuring out what's credible, and what's not. When you and I were in television, I don't know about you. I was in the promotions department, I was trying to tease the news product. Before I could say anything about any of the packages or any of the spots that you guys were producing. I had to get that through. And I counted this once I had to get it through seven sets of eyes. There's nobody who's curious anymore. No, the gatekeepers are gone. And I think the promise of the internet was, you're going to be able to hear so many different points of view, the reality of the internet is you keep on finding exactly the same point of view. And it keeps on looking exactly like yours. Because there's an algorithm behind it that says, okay, Phil apparently likes this stuff. If we keep on feeding in more of this stuff, he's going to stay on our website longer. So let's just reinforce those ideas which by the way, those might be totally crackpot ideas. Dude, you are preaching my sermon. I here's what I have to deal with all the time. And I get it. People don't trust the media, you know, just simple slogans, Kool Aid, you're drinking the Kool Aid or the drive by media and these things, and in granted, some of these monikers have been earned. But here's the deal. And this is what I've tried to tell people all the time. If I work for ABC News, if I work for Reuters, if I work for one of these companies, that has a desire to be credible, and has a desire to get it right, I can get fired. If I don't have facts get fired, that it's exactly what you were just saying if you're gonna go in promotions, we got to get our facts straight, or we're gonna get fired, you know? But when it comes to bloggers Anything on Facebook, anything somebody use was a thought, there's no accountability. Yeah. Now, don't misunderstand me. And I don't want to get everybody all excited because I realize even among our brotherhood, there's a huge outcry against the media slant slanted this way or this, any other, I get that. But at the end of the day, there's no accountability for everything that's shared on the internet. And we are getting destroyed, mentally, and even socially, and it's even hurting churches. It's dividing us, because we're allowing the negativity in the false information to seep in. And we got to be careful. Gotta be real careful of that the promise of the internet was that we could see a lot of different perspectives. And we still can, but the intention has to be there to go out and find them. that Facebook has become a dumpster fire of negativity. If you're looking for a dumpster fire of negativity, exactly. There are some people that are using Facebook all the right way. Yep. If you wanted to look for everything wrong with the internet, it's there. But if you're going to use this as a tool that's possible to Facebook is not a platform that needs to be redeemed, it needs to be used.

Deep down,we all want to be sold winners, what we want from everybody that we reach out to is for them to be open minded. To another point of view, we're begging them to open their eyes and their heart to what we believe what we've seen in our personal experience in relationship with Jesus. But we fail to recognize that's where we all need to be. If I'm looking for information, I need to be looking for that information in multiple sources. And it doesn't mean that this contrary source or this other source is right. But I need to open up my eyes, I can easily be manipulated,

the same thing that has ushered in canceled culture and the closing of the American mind has also ushered in john Krasinski, some good news. Oh, in that great.

Oh, yes.

You know, talk about something with fairly low production values, if you want to have people be good and decent around you be good at decent other people. Exactly. You know, the algorithm can work for you as well. You know, Wes McAdams, he wrote a blog this past week that was on reasonable ness. And it's a word that is shared to us by the Apostle Paul, in Philippians, four, verse five, let your reasonableness be known to all men. And it simply speaks to the idea of having an attitude of being willing to relinquish your rights to maintain a relationship or to just show that you're willing to listen to somebody else. And I think that's it. That's who we need to be. mediums are great when they connect people to one another, when they are bridges that create relationships to other people, I think it's fabulous. But when you have the relationship with the technology, rather than using the technology for the relationship, I think that's when it becomes destructive, and quite honestly, addictive. Well, and for kids, when it's used as a bridge to relationships and other people, that's great, but it needs to be the right people. And the right relationships. And as parents, I think that's where we need to be extremely involved. Yeah, and who and how and what is being communicated to our children. I am probably a little more conservative than most, but like our kids, they didn't have cell phones. So they were 16. When you start driving, then you need a phone. I realize I'm a little dated. But I just up until that age, I wanted their major influence to be me and Cheryl, and the people we put in their lives moving forward. I know their devices are very important to them. They're both in their 20s. Now, every blessing can easily be a curse, don't let it be a curse. Well, how would you define what a curse is? Anything that's hurting your relationship with the Lord. That's a curse. I've seen a lot of young boys just kind of floundering. And you've kind of taken an interest in this. What's different about today's young man, what's the challenge of growing boys into young men? Well, they're soft. And I don't mean that ugly. We can just see it in camp, how kids have changed over the years and again, it goes back to how they're reared. The kids today spend way too much time in front of the screen and not enough time in interaction. You know, if you think back to biblical times, all right now I'm really becoming an old fogy. The young man and even the young women grew up with their parents. by their side all day, yeah, they learned how to work. They learned how to associate with others, they learned how to relate. But I believe our young men especially need to be surrounded by godly men. This is one of the things that we tried to do with our kids. Now, this was just what we did. Cheryl, and I called it the Jedi. This was our Jedi. This is where you want to go, this is what you want to do. And so you would put people and environments in your kid's life, where it wasn't you directly teaching them, but others who were teaching them who held jury views and desires. For example, it was important for our kids to go to camp, because we knew they would be surrounded with other people that share our same values. But as they get older, they're going to be more likely to listen to that person, even more than me at church, I make sure our children, we're surrounded by these individuals who shared our values. Even now, when my son comes home from school, he don't want to hang out with me, he wants to go hang out with these men at church. And I am all for that. Because he's getting that reinforcement of here's what a man is, here's what a man does. Here's how a man provides a man loves the Lord, you know, a man's involved in things. And I just think that As parents, we need to do what we can to show our children. It's not about them. Yeah, you find a lot of us spending all of our time going to kids functions, kids programs, kids, there's kids that your bowl team, your recital, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. But they need to be going with mom and dad, to work to service projects, to visit the hospital. You know, my children never died, going to a hospital to visit with us kids. Now, they may have thought it was a near death experience. You'll live trust me, you'll live through it. Life's not about you teach them service. And especially for men. We got to teach our young men to be leaders, to be workers to be servants. I think if you teach them that, they become better husbands, they become better fathers, they become better employees. I was the one who taught my kids how to ride a bike. And I did it the old tried and true method, which was telling my kids, you're gonna fall you're just gonna fall. And it's gonna hurt sometimes. But you know, you fall 100 times and you're gonna know how to ride a bike at the end of this. Yeah, exactly. I think one of the things that you're kind of describing there is that toughening up of young men, and they don't mind falling, and they also don't mind taunting one another. And the taunting isn't necessarily for pride. But the taunting is often to get better, we will often encourage them to rise to that level. Absolutely. One of the things that we try to do with the kids at Camp is face your fears, I can promise you, everything at Camp is safe. Just because you haven't done it before, is why you're scared, right? You do it once and you're going to want to do it again, you don't miss tube right behind this boat, you will survive, jump off that platform land on the blob, I know it's scary, it's high. But once you do it once, you're going to want to do it again, that constant challenge that all of us need. I'm the meanest parent in the world, okay, I'm just gonna throw that out there to you. And I'm the meanest parent in the world. I made my kids ride the roller coasters. Which, once your head is high enough to be allowed to get on it, you are tall enough. And you are riding, you know, some kids, they're daredevils, they're ready to go. But some are not. I believe it's our role as a parent to challenge them. Now, once you do it, if you still hate it, that's fine. You live through it. But there's a sense of accomplishment. There's a sense of achievement that comes with overcoming our fears. And and I think that we need to be mindful that failure is not the end of the thing. It's really just the beginning. David Kinnaman,who is a Christian researcher, he basically calls this a post Christian era. Do you agree with him or disagree with him?

Looking at society? That's true. I think the census has shown us the growing demographic and the religious category is none. All your major denominations are shrinking. I would say from that point of view, yeah, probably true.

Do you think that's concerning?

To me? It's not a negative. I think now more than ever, we're learning who's really in and who's just pretending. Yeah, I think it's a good thing. I don't think it's a bad thing at all. I I know that we there's a lot of us Want to hold on to that America's this Christian culture, and we're going to keep it this standard in this and the other, and I get that. But I don't believe that America has always been this Christian place. I believe a lot of it's just been show. And I believe for brethren and even prepare, it's today. This is a great time for us. The first century church did not grow in a Christian culture. But it grew. You learned real quick, who's really in who's out who's really committed because commitment meant something, then adversity doesn't cause issues within us. It doesn't cause our insecurities. It doesn't cause our rage. adversity just reveals what's inside us.

You kind of tipped your hand on this a couple of times. I'm just going to go ahead and ask about it. What do you think are some of the blessings that we've had from Coronavirus? I've had a great blessing. I it's made me reevaluate my life. And for Cheryl and I both we've reevaluated how we spend our time and, and what's important and what needs more attention. I have read dedicated myself to reading a lot more and being focused on the first things first more, I think, as a church, we've had the opportunity to reach more people. Oh, my word, are we reaching more people? Now? Granted, they may not all be sitting in the pew. But they're listening, and my opportunity to even share my faith and my hope and my trust in the Lord. Even to those in the community. There was a group of people, it was a group from the gym, and that environment that were so down by the Coronavirus, they were looking for motivation. They asked me to just meet with them on Monday nights. And it was Monday night motivation with fail. This is great, you know, look, look at how you've been able to persevere and survive. And granted, a lot of people have lost a lot of things. Yeah, but a lot of people have been able to reevaluate and learned I can survive this. Is it been a rough year? Yep. But it's also been a great blessing. And I think many of these things we're going to carry forward. Well, let me ask you about that. What do you think changes as a result of all this?

Well,

this doesn't sound too crazy, we're probably going to really reevaluate our adult Bible classes and how they're taught at church, we may use zoom, a lot more moving forward. Let's just say everything comes back to normal the vaccine, you know, there's a herd mentality, whatever, we're technically back to normal. I see our church family, continuing to use zoom gatherings, continuing to use adult Bible classes online, I see us continuing to do some things that we've done in the pandemic moving forward, that we've been forced into live streaming our services and efforts like that, I definitely see that continuing. I see us looking for opportunities to definitely gather away from the building that you're assembling is not just what you do on a Sunday morning, I wouldn't have been even thinking about these things. If I wasn't pushed out of a comfort zone. I'll confess I was one of those that needed to be pushed. And now I see it. I think you're onto something there. I think for a long time. We understood that the church was not the building. But everything that we did that had any importance as a church happened at the building. And we would all ruffle at the idea that no, no, no, we're not building centric. But we'll see you this Sunday at the building. A Wednesday night singing. Yeah. Yeah, the building. Yeah, I think we have always had that gigantic auditorium class, which is essentially a lecture. And then then we've had those smaller adult classes that that will meet in other smaller rooms, where actual conversation goes on. If you see that there's a bunch of teenage boys that need to meet, don't make them go to the building, make them to go to Starbucks or something like that. Yeah. But one of the things that I love about these digital platforms, you know, how many times something's being viewed or listened to, you know, a general area where they are, you have a pretty good idea of who's listening when you can start making plans based on that kind of stuff. Here's a topic that we put out last week, did it hit or not? Did anybody listen or not? One of the things that I'm really kind of heartened by with with digital discipleship is, we can finally start getting a feedback loop instead of the feedback loop that we've had for decades, which is, boy, it was a good sermon, preacher. Whoever comes up to a preacher and says, Hello, terrible. You absolutely did not hit any of the points that should have been made there. And by the way, I know you're trying your best, but you could get better We don't have those kinds of conversations. Well, unfortunately, I have videos. But But you're right. It's definitely given us the opportunity to not just reach more people. But to get more feedback, you know, is one of the coolest things I've been able to do this summer. It was so cool. Kenny. I had kids, Camp kids, who said, Mr. Phil, we've got this Divo that we've started on Tuesday night. Will you come and speak? Yes. And I jumped on there. And there were kids all over the nation, California, Illinois, Indiana, Florida. Yeah. Get kids from everywhere. And they they did this on their own? on their own. Yeah. And, and, and so I, every time they invited me, I'm on it. And it wouldn't have happened if we weren't forced into that. And so it's been good. I think we've realized our community is much larger than we expected. I'm so encouraged by the people who watch our assemblies, who don't even live in Florida. My mom, she's the best. I've got the greatest mom in the world. Let me just throw that out there to the world. She sets at home, Kenny, and she'll watch for assemblies every Sunday. she she she watches me my friend Lance back in Lubbock. Show, watch this group over here and then show this over here. And then Wow. I mean, think about that. And she feels so connected. Even with our group here. She's in Texas, she feels like their family. Well, they are. And are your family. You know, the Lord's family goes outside. But you know, we always talk about universal and local church. Now we're the universal church in a way. And that's, that's been a good thing. What kind of advice do you have for parents, parenting is not for sissies. Like that, if I can just kind of speak to it as a camp counselor, and somebody who's had the privilege to do a lot of teen weekends and work with kids throughout the year. There's three things that I would just encourage parents, and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to think about this question. Number one, I believe it's an imperative that parents teach their children, the Bible, that's on parents, you are the one who is having either the daily debose with your children, reading together with your children, spending time praying, or talking about spiritual things, or visiting or doing the Lord's work with your children, that that that becomes who you are. He created. Teach your children, the Bible. The second thing would be for parents is look for all the tools around you to help strengthen your child's relationship with the Lord and help them grow socially. I'm a big believer in camp, send them to camp, even if they don't want to go make them go, they'll live through it. Teach them to live outside their comfort zone to go to camp to go to teen weekends, to help them. Find a community that's outside you. That's going to reinforce what you want your children to learn and grow. And then the third thing, do all your can to teach your children to have a relationship with Jesus, not just the religion, make it real with them, teach them how to pray, let them hear you pray, pray with them. Don't be afraid to even discuss the hard things with them, help them see the value of relationships and teach them to be servants. Those are the three things that I would have advice for parents, what would you tell kids?

What would I tell kids? You're great. Our kids are great. I don't think we say that enough. We have so many great kids all around us who love the Lord, who are serving the Lord and, and that's what I want them to hear. You're great. And my advice to young people is just keep being great.

I end all of my podcasts with basically a paraphrase or something Abigail Adams said, which was that Christianity can be summed up as be good and do good. What is good, man.

First of all, that's a great send off you have there. To me, this is good. Living like Jesus, in every way that you can, is good.

Well, how would somebody be able to get ahold of you if they wanted to get in touch with you?

I'm easy to find on Facebook. Don't you want to reach out to me that way? I'm also working with the Glen springs road church here in Gainesville, Florida, so they can reach out to me through our church and our church website is no money. Jesus kn o w m why jesus.com attached to the song? Do you know my Jesus? So no my jesus.com or they want to reach out to me via email, just spell out my name Phil Robertson at Cox dot.

Phil, thank you so much for doing this man. This really meant a lot to me and I think you did a great job.

Well, Kenny, thank you so very much. And God bless you and all your work with this podcast and God bless all those who are listening and growing from it.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Phil. I'm a huge admirer of what he does. I was also fascinated by how his congregation may be using digital tools after the pandemic fell. Thanks for what you do, man. So until next week, let's be good and do good.