Young adults today have less friendships, genuine social interaction, abilities to make a decision, and live in constant fear—fear of things that are not scary. Fear of life. Shrier explains why. We live in a strange new world that overly values gentle parenting; trauma-based therapy (even where there’s no trauma); over-medicating of our children; and empathy over sympathy. In flame throwing fashion, each of these problems are addressed by Shrier—and she’s a convincing voice. 


Some of you need to fire your child’s therapist right away. Some of you need to figure out what interactions your school psychologist, counselors, and paraprofessionals are having with your children.
With.Your.Children.
Children are being ruined by therapeutic parenting and our therapeutic culture.
If you are a therapist you may need to be repenting due to causing more harm than good. Therapists and the therapizing of our children may be responsible for a large portion of the immaturity, anxiety, depression, and suicidality of our nation’s youth. We have created a generation of adults in “emotional snow suits” and have children that are afraid to live life at full volume.
Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up (Penguin Random House: 2024) was an eye opening look at competing peer reviewed literature pertaining to the psychotherapy given to children.
Shrier is not my religion, has a different view of human nature than me, listens to different podcasts than I do, has a very different worldview than me—and yet, I appreciated Shrier’s book immensely. 

I believe that everyone who has a child or grandchild needs to read this book. I believe that everyone that has children in public schools—and Christian—ought to read this book. I believe that all therapists, counselors, and all who are trained in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) ought to read this book. Pastors, elders, and Sunday school workers—the world is different than the one that you grew up in—and in part—it is because we have therapized our children. We have turned them over to professionals and turned off the parental instincts that God has given to us through the light of nature. In fact, all parents should read this book as it is the parental air that we breathe—coddling, empathizing, “partnering” with our children.
Now, some children need therapy. Let me say that again: some children need therapy. Most do not. Shrier discusses this fact, but overall this book is not for the genuinely abused, harmed, and neglected. This book is for everyone else. Those who believe that we all can benefit from therapy and believe that all need a professional to talk to. This book will be more beneficial to most parents than paying a therapist.
Shrier divides the book into three main sections.Read More
Related Posts:

If things such as Moore’s article represent the best that public theology can offer, then perhaps that project simply needs to be abandoned. For it seems to me that it entails conceding much ground to our opponents (who are craftier than we, Lk. 16:8) and attempting to put our beliefs in the language of our wider society, with the result that they get twisted out of shape and end up being largely shorn of their usefulness. They lose their distinctly Christian character and become mere moralism or rather banal political and cultural prescriptions, and frequently they contradict other statements of Scripture.

In a previous article I asserted that it is improper for those who have no acquaintance with the survivors of the Nashville Massacre to discuss that sad affair. I reiterate that now, but I have since stumbled across Russell Moore’s opinion upon the affair, which justifies a response, albeit one that seeks to elide as much as possible the matter of the late outrage itself. I offer this response because Moore’s article represents an attempt to engage the cultural moment that, like many others, simply fails.
If Moore had contented himself with saying that hatred is wrong and must be mortified lest it lead farther down the path of strife and bloodshed, his case would have thoroughly accorded with Christ’s teaching and been a useful reminder in a society riven with quarreling. Regrettably, Moore did not limit himself to that orthodox position but accompanied it with political ruminations that were mediocre and naive at best, and which gave practical aid to leftism at worst. Those are hard words, but they are given, not to disparage the gentleman, but because his recent article does not represent one of his finer contributions to evangelical discourse.
There was a time when he was conspicuous in arguing that the cult of personality and character of a certain businessman-come-presidential candidate were damaging the church’s witness, a position which required much fortitude and exposed Moore to much opprobrium – and in which he had a fair point. He was not alone in the wilderness of evangelical dissent from Trump, but of that set he was amongst the most vigorous and steadfast. But like many of Trump’s critics, Moore reacted by moving away from previous associates and institutional affiliations and to a position to the left of most evangelicals.[1]
He begins his article by taking a view of the recent outrage that regards it as representative of a larger problem of national concern, the same basic view of the left, whose utopianism aspires for universal reign: ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’ as one of its trite and dubious sayings puts it. If an evil thing is done in one place it is not the concern merely of those who have been affected by it, but of everyone, even strangers and outsiders who have no familiarity with the matter, place, or people involved; who live in cultures far different; who cannot directly do anything in response; or who gain nothing by knowing about it.
There is an alternate perspective on such matters, though it is practically unheard in our public discourse. This perspective holds that the view above entails ignorant, arrogant, and feckless (if well-meaning) meddling in the affairs of others and madness in one’s own mind. It holds that the mind and heart have a very limited capacity for grief and that, as creatures bound by space and time, humans are ordained by God to live in one place (Acts 17:26) and to concern themselves primarily with its affairs. In practice this means taking a vital interest only in one’s closest associates (family, friends, immediate neighbors) and affairs (work, community, etc.), and taking a vaguer interest the farther one moves out from the realm of personal familiarity. It also means refusing to take an interest in matters which one cannot control and the knowledge of which serves only to make one miserable.
Moore believes that we have become numb to grievous evil. But for many of us it is not apathy but prudence that is in view: if one disregards all limits of time, space, and personal familiarity and thinks that he is obligated to lament and ‘do something’ about every evil in the world he will find, if he is consistent, that he has no time for anything else and that he is perpetually miserable because of the difficulties of life. But of course, we do not lament every great evil, but only the few which the media bring to our attention because of their own business and political interests; and even being limited to this small number of incidents to bewail, there are multitudes in our society who are in continual despair because such things predominate in their minds.
Again, knowing one’s limits and guarding one’s heart from being overwhelmed by grief is not reprehensible apathy but good sense. As Proverbs 4:23 puts it, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” If one allows those springs to be poisoned with despair and unrealistic thinking foisted upon him by the often-misleading narratives of popular media (of all factions), he will not be able to love or aid those nearest to him, but will become morose and withdrawn, wallowing in misery and bewailing life. Moore himself is eager to discourage “resignation and cynicism, where we shrug our shoulders in an attitude of ‘What can you do?’”
And yet by urging people to care about things that are outside of their proper realm of responsibility, Moore is actually feeding a destructive social phenomenon that is filling our society with miserable people who are neglecting their actual social relations and responsibilities because they have allowed themselves to be incapacitated with worry related to events far removed from their control. And it is important to note as well that there are several other things which are not apathy that might appear in such cases. Love of liberty, distrust of shameless political opportunists, a refusal to panic or to act in haste, and respect for the dead, and grieving all come to mind in this respect.
When it comes to particulars Moore stumbles badly by asking “can we not all agree that something is seriously wrong when a person with this many “red flags” can purchase multiple weapons of that capacity without anyone noticing?” No, we most certainly cannot all agree on that point, and it is an example of that naivete and giving practical aid to leftism that I mentioned earlier. America has 330 million residents, quite a lot of whom have some of the characteristics considered red flags for violent behavior. A government large enough to monitor all those people would be enormous and expensive and would have wide-ranging powers that could be easily abused at the expense of long-established rights and legal processes. Just whom does Moore believe are likely to be the foremost targets of such a government, given the speed with which our nation is turning hostile toward our faith and the zeal and frequency with which those who most hate us attain to power and government employment?
In fact, we have such a government already, and it went from combating Al Qaeda to investigating people who get mad at school board meetings in the span of twenty years. Yet Moore wants an even bigger government with even more powers – for that is the practical effect of his argument, whether or not he realizes it. Also, it is a material fact of great importance that the vast, vast, vast – and I might justly write ‘vast’ about nine hundred times here – vast majority of people with red flags do not commit acts of mass murder, nor even contemplate them.
Moore then engages in some cultural commentary that asserts we have a culture in which opponents are needlessly regarded as “an existential threat to everything that ‘people like us’ (however that’s defined) hold dear.” This fails insofar as it presents a real phenomenon as an absurd exaggeration. No doubt there is much irresponsible hyperbole in our political rhetoric, but there are people whose desired policies do pose an existential threat to certain classes of people and their values. There are many people who wish to disarm the citizenry, eliminate the police, and abolish cash bail and incarceration for many offenses. There are people who wish to crush all dissent from the normalization of sexual debauchery with criminal penalties, and others who are allowing men to compete in women’s sports. All those things represent existential threats to gun owners, police officers, prison guards, bail bondsmen, people with traditional morals, and female athletes; and other examples could be provided. Moore is right that such things do not justify murder (nothing does), but his argument would be better if it remained in the realm of morality and did not mistakenly try to deny what is real in at least some cases.
Moore stumbles similarly when he says we should “put aside our theatrical hatred . . . to ask, ‘How can we stop this?’” Much contemporary hatred is not theatrical but, alas, real. And being real it does not lend itself to the “genuine discussions on public policy, justice, and safety” that Moore believes are needed. Such notions are naive in the extreme. The left does not want discussion but compliance; even when it says it wants dialogue what it really means is that it wants everyone else to keep quiet and nod their heads in agreement with everything it says. ‘Join our revolution – or else’ is the whole animus and manner of its public demeanor, as evidenced by the zeal with which it utters absurd slanders like ‘silence is violence,’ a bit of false testimony in which it accuses widows who knit at home of being as morally corrupt as highwaymen for not protesting in the streets.
One might be forgiven for thinking that the events of the last several days suffice to demonstrate the left’s essential incivility. It brooks no dissent and has no qualms about using behavior that is meant to silence, intimidate, or defame its opponents. Yet Moore would have us attempt dialogue with such people, as though prudence fails to commend refusing to interact with such people who only desire a pretext for forcing their will upon others (Prov. 9:7; 23:9; 26:4; Matt. 7:6).
If things such as Moore’s article represent the best that public theology can offer, then perhaps that project simply needs to be abandoned. For it seems to me that it entails conceding much ground to our opponents (who are craftier than we, Lk. 16:8) and attempting to put our beliefs in the language of our wider society, with the result that they get twisted out of shape and end up being largely shorn of their usefulness. They lose their distinctly Christian character and become mere moralism or rather banal political and cultural prescriptions, and frequently they contradict other statements of Scripture. Jesus did not come into the world to engage society or reform it, but to call his elect out of darkness (Lk. 12:13-15; 13:1-5; 17:20-21; 19:10; Jn. 6:15, 35-59; 18:36; Rom. 14:17).
And as I read Moore’s conclusion that “it’s never right to assume this is just the way things must be,” the words of our Lord echo through my mind that he “did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34) and that we “will be hated by all nations” for his sake (24:9). And with great somberness of heart do I recollect our call to endurance, that “if anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes; if anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword must he be slain (Rev. 13:9). Contra Moore, whose article savors of the notion that if only we are winsome and reasonable our opponents will join us in mutual good will and meaningful social improvement, Christ’s aim is not for us to improve our society with good faith discussions about public safety. In his providence he is sovereign over all things, and he intends for many of us to suffer hatred for his sake (Matt 10:16-39; Jn. 15:18-16:4). He has sent us out as sheep among wolves (Matt. 10:16), with the caution to be “wise as serpents.” I fear that in articles such as Moore’s it is the sheepishness that predominates, not the serpentine wisdom; and that will not suffice to protect us from those who would devour us.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name.
[1] In truth, Moore and other prominent evangelicals were already to the left of most of us before 2016, but since that time they seem to have moved yet farther in that direction.
Related Posts:

In truth, we deserve nothing but condemnation for our sins against our Creator God. Yet, the doctrine of election teaches us how God has made a way of eternal salvation, and for those who have been given life to believe, there are few doctrines more sweet and sobering. Such sweetness does not eliminate the challenge presented by this doctrine, but hopefully in this extended meditation on John 6 you can see what Jesus is saying, what God is doing, and what John’s Gospel is calling us to do—to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that he has revealed to us the Father and the Father’s eternal plan for salvation.

A number of years ago, I preached a sermon Titus 1:1. In that passage, Paul says, he is “an apostle Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth.” In that sermon it would be impossible and unfaithful to ignore the word “elect” (eklekton) and the way in which Paul labored for the faith of the elect.
And yet, despite the clear presence of the word in the text and its relationship to faith, truth, and Paul’s gospel ministry, my exposition initiated a cascade of events that resulted in my eventual resignation from my pastoral office. Such is the antagonism against the doctrine of election, which has often been flown under the banner of Calvinism.
In more recent days, I preached a series of messages from John 6, a passage that also touches the doctrine of election. And in these messages, preached in a church where the doctrines of grace are not eschewed but embraced, I was able to show from Scripture what Jesus says about God’s sovereignty in salvation.
In what follows, I want to bullet point some of the key truths uncovered in John 6 with respect to the doctrine of election. In many other articles, I have written how evangelism and election relate, what Scripture says about election, and what hyper-Calvinism really is. In this article, however, I want to stick to Jesus’s words in John 6—a passage where our Lord teaches about the ways God brings salvation to his elect, while passing over others.
Admittedly, this passage is a hard saying (v. 60) and election is a hard doctrine, but it is a true doctrine and one worth pondering. So, with the goal of understanding what Jesus says in John 6, let me offer nine truths about the doctrine of election.
Nine Truths about the Doctrine of Election
Before getting into the text, here is an outline of the nine points. Because what follows is rather long, you might consider picking which point is most interesting (or troubling) and starting there.

Election depends on the God who selects, not mankind who seeks.
Election is ordained in eternity and revealed in time.
Election in time mirrors God’s election in eternity.
God’s election results in faith, not the reverse.
Election does not deny the universal offer of Christ; it secures a positive response.
Election depends on the will of God, not the will of man.
The election of God’s people ensures that he will bring the gospel to them.
Election directs Jesus’s ministry, and ours.
Election is for the glory of God, not the glory of man.

1. Election depends on the God who selects, not mankind who seeks.
In John 6, we learn that Jesus is not compelled to save because some seek him; he is compelled to save because God sent him to save a particular people (i.e., the elect). This point is seen a few ways.
First, Jesus knows who are his. In John 6:37, he describes a people whom the Father has given him. These are the ones who will come. This language of “given ones” is Jesus’s way of identifying his sheep. Throughout John, the elect are described by this phrase—the given ones (see e.g., John 6:39; 10:29; 17:6–9, 11–12, 14, 24; 18:9). So Jesus does not randomly seek people to save, because in eternity past the Father already gave him a people to save. These are the ones who will come to him, and these are the chosen ones he has come to save.
Second, Jesus knows why people seek him. As John 6:26 declares, the crowds seek Jesus to fill their stomachs. Clearly, not all seekers seek from pure hearts. Jesus know this and shows, by the end of John 6, how many would-be seekers are not true seekers.
Third, Jesus knows who will not believe. In John 6:64, John writes, “For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.” This is a remarkable truth. As Jesus looked at a sea of humanity, he could see the heart of everyone before him (cf. John 2:23–25). And in his ministry, he spent as much time revealing unbelief in those who would not believe (cf. John 7:7), as he did producing faith in those who would. Perhaps, this approach to ministry seems foreign to our consumeristic minds, but read John 6 again. In John’s evangelistic Gospel (see 20:31), we will find an approach to evangelism that depends on God’s will, not appeals to man’s will.
In sum, Jesus is not the Savior of an unknown humanity, he is a Savior for all those whom the Father gave him before the world began.
2. Election is ordained in eternity and revealed in time.
As noted in Truth #1, Jesus works to expose the real condition of the heart. For instance, in his discourse with the crowds, Jesus brings his seekers to a place of grumbling (v. 41), disputing (v. 52), and leaving (v. 66). In this way, he shows the crowds that they are not truly seeking seek him. And he does this because he knows who will not believe.
Conversely, because he knows who will believe, he says and does everything for his elect, so that they would confess him as their Lord and Christ (v. 67). Remarkably, Jesus does not fear losing the ones God has given to him. Instead, he opens the door for them to leave and he challenges his elect to profess their faith—which they do. In John 6:67–69, we read this exchange,
So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
Indeed, the elect of God are unknown to the world until they are revealed by enduring faith.
To put it doctrinally, election is something God does in eternity past, which is then revealed in time. And because God has decreed the end from the beginning and everything in between, the result of Jesus’s word ministry perfectly matches what God ordained.
3. Election of the Twelve reflects, but does not reveal, God’s election in eternity.
The last statement in John 6 is one highlighting the divide which still stands among the Twelve.
70 Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” 71 He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.
Most directly, Jesus says to the Twelve, that he has chosen them. In context, Jesus’s words reply to Peter’s great confession (vv. 68–69), but they also explain why Peter confessed faith in Christ. When all the crowds departed, Peter remained with the Twelve because Jesus choose them. In other words, the ultimate efficacy of their discipleship was not their human will. It was Jesus’s divine choice.
Still, Jesus admits that one of his chosen ones, Judas, remains a son of perdition. As it will be revealed, God’s choice of Judas is different than that of Peter. For instance, Jesus prays to protect Peter from Satan’s sifting (Luke 22:31), but Jesus permits, even sends, Judas to follow his Satanic heart (John 13:2, 27). In short, the difference between Peter and Judas is ultimately up to God, not man. And this divide in the Twelve, like the divide between the Twelve and the departing crowds, reflects the eternal choice of God’s elect.
That said, we need to see a difference between the Father’s choice in election and Jesus’s choice of the Twelve. In other words, when Jesus speaks of the election of the Twelve, he is not describing the same reality as the Father’s election. Jesus chose Judas to be one of the twelve, but he chose him knowing that he would betray him. Hence, Jesus chose Judas for betrayal, not belief. Judas’s betrayal would be a result of his own choosing, when he followed the ways of Satan instead of Christ.
Christ’s of him then is not in opposition to the Father’s will. His choice is something different than the Father’s election unto salvation. Jesus’s choice of the Twelve was a choosing for service, of which eleven disciples were also appointed to believe in Christ, but one wasn’t. And this bifurcation in the Twelve indicates a difference between the Son’s choice and the Father’s.
To make the point finer. This does not mean that the Father and Son have two different elections; it means that Jesus’s election of the Twelve reflects God’s will to ordain some to life and service, while for others he orders their lives to glorify him in their unbelief. As Proverbs 16:4 states, “The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.” In short, Jesus choice of the Twelve reflects God’s sovereign decree for the elect and the non-elect, not God’s choice of the elect only.
In the Trinitarian theology of John, this is fitting. Jesus does exactly what he sees the Father doing (5:19) and that activity of the Father includes judgment and salvation (5:19–30). Sublimely, God is sovereign over salvation and judgment. And though the process by which God brings salvation to the elect and judgment to unbelievers is not the same (i.e., he condemns unbelievers for their sins in the body, not for being non-elect), the cosmic reality remains: God has declared the end from the beginning and he has determined the eternal reality of every creature.
In Christ’s choice of the twelve, we see this. His election of the eleven who believe on him and the one who will betray him, depicts the universal reality that God has made vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath and all the creatures in his world will ultimately render him the glory for which he created them (cf. Rom. 9:19–23).
4. God’s election results in faith, not the reverse.
As Jesus says in John 6:29, Jesus says that faith is not the work of man, but the work of God. Or to say it differently, faith is the fruit of God’s gift of eternal life (v. 47). Negatively, then, faith is not what man does to get God. But positively, faith is the work of God in man.
Man must believe in the Son to be saved, but faith in the Son comes from the Father (vv. 44, 65) by means of the Spirit (v. 63). And because the Father, Son, and Spirit planned salvation before the world began, we can say with confidence, election results in faith, not the reverse.
Even more concretely, John 6:47 leads us to see that faith comes from people who have received the gift of eternal life (“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life”). And as John 6:54 indicates, feeding on Jesus is only possible for those who have received eternal life (“Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life”).
Indeed, Jesus says you must eat of his flesh to have eternal life (v. 54), but such a participation in Christ will only come if God has granted life (cf. 1 John 5:1).
Read More
Related Posts: