TPUSA Faith’s Make Heaven Crowded Tour made a stop in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday, at World Outreach Church. The event featured Director of TPUSA Faith Pastor Lucas Miles, Pastor Allen Jackson, Danny Gokey, Millicent Sedra, and Eric Metaxas.
Miles spoke with Christian apologist Millicent Sedra and recording artist Danny Gokey on their approaches to faith, and maintaining a Christian worldview amid certain cultural trends that are contrary to Christian ethics.
Sedra discussed at length parenting children under the Christian faith. She is critical of “gentle” parents who choose not to pass down their faith to their children, allowing them to determine whether Christianity is suitable for them or not. On the contrary, she is committed to her duty as a parent to instill faith in her children, recommending this to all Christian parents.
“I always see parents say, you know, I don’t want to force Christianity on my children, I want to let them decide. No, that’s your job as a parent to pass your Christian worldview down to your children,” she said. “I have a background in psychology and they teach us in developmental psychology, there’s a critical period where a child’s brain is like a sponge and quite literally they will be brainwashed one way or another.”
Sedra further elaborated on this topic, noting the ability parents have to influence the impressionable minds of their children with religion.
“If you were born in the Middle East,” she noted, “if you were born in another nation, you wouldn’t be a Christian. And… that’s largely true, because that’s the truth, you inherit the worldview of your parents, but what I’ve learned is as you get older, at some point you need to look at the worldview that you have been taught, and you have to analyze, can this worldview stand in the face of lies?”
Danny Gokey, a Christian recording artist and church music director, was asked by Miles about how he navigates the music industry “without fear” as a Christian. The singer responded by emphasizing the “fundamentals” of being raised “in a Christian home and with the Bible.”
“It has an effect on you. It rubbed off on me when I started seeing that there was such confusion about things that have never been confusing before. You start looking deeper into it and you start seeing that this is why we have the Bible, because people change, God doesn’t, right? So if we understand, the Bible is to help us remain objective so that we don’t become subjective with the ideology of the world… when you build on the principles of the Bible, you’re building God’s kingdom, and he supports that.”
