Don't Let Them Hate Jesus Because of You
... plus, kids & technology, and Wes Huff's social media apologetics. This week on the Shock Absorber Podcast.
This week on The Shock Absorber, Joel and I found ourselves reflecting on some confronting data about childhood today.
Half of kids surveyed say their parents should be worried about their screen time. Technology is now the number one reason children say they fight with their parents. And perhaps most tellingly, 62% of kids say they wish they could take their parents’ phones away.
We began by talking about Wes Huff’s recent appearance on Diary of a CEO. It’s a fascinating example of someone communicating the gospel in a way that resonates with a generation that seems genuinely curious about Jesus again.
From there, we worked through Jonathan Haidt’s After Babel Substack piece, “30 Facts About Childhood Today” [EDIT: the article has since been retracted]1. Some of the statistics are sobering — particularly the growing number of children who have no siblings or cousins — and it led us to think about what the church might uniquely offer in response.
Joel and I are both preaching from John 15:18–16:4 this weekend, where Jesus prepares his disciples for the reality that the world will hate them. One observation from our conversation stuck with me: the order matters. The world should hate us because they hate Jesus, not hate Jesus because they hate us. When Christians behave badly — hypocritically, arrogantly, or weaponising faith — people often reject Jesus because they first reject us. That reversal is worth sitting with.
We also drifted into some “behind the scenes” preaching talk: how sermons actually get put together, the difference between teaching and preaching, and the strange experience of discovering that sometimes the sermons you felt least prepared for are the ones the Spirit seems to use the most.
My encouragement this week is simple: go and listen to Joel’s sermon on the passage. It’s already up on YouTube and the podcast feed — and I’d love to hear what you think of it.
Check out the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.
