Spiritual Foundation #2 Intellectual Preparation
In the previous blog in this series, we recommended starting spiritual college preparation with the faith-based foundation of Bible study and prayer. To that, we suggest adding several intellectual disciplines, which together help us love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We start with the faith-building strength training of apologetics.
Intellectual Challenges Your Kid May Face
For a while now, the stats haven’t been good for Christian kids’ faith to come out intact after they hit the college campus or even after high school. (If you want the facts, just read a summary here.) In recent months there has been some better news about Gen Z: they are more open spiritually, and young men are attending church more. However, there are still questions about that “spirituality” leading to Christianity and whether the habit of church attendance sticks.
No doubt your child will need some intellectual muscles to stand strong against key challenges they will face in college. These include the gender/sexuality issue, competing worldviews (Marxism in particular), science, and how to integrate their faith into their chosen profession — just to name a few.
When it comes to the gender/sexuality issue, we recognize the difficulty in navigating it, much less understanding all its nuances. Critical thinking skills, conversational tactics, and a strong knowledge of the why behind God’s laws all come into play when dealing with this hot topic. We’ll give you general resources below to help with all of these intellectual challenges, but the greatest resource we can point you to about gender and sexuality is our book, Mama Bear Apologetics Guide to Sexuality and Gender Identity: Empower Your Kids to Understand and Live out God’s Design — especially the updated and expanded version that comes out in March 2026. We also recommend our various podcasts about these issues. We can’t refute what we don’t understand, so let’s start understanding!
How Apologetics Can Help
Anyone working out realizes that strength training can be uncomfortable in the moment (can you really do one more bicep curl?!). You push through a tough workout for the long-term results. Likewise with apologetics. If the thought of apologetics makes your heart rate increase, don’t sweat it. It will be worth it in the end for you and your child. This is partly because apologetics is more than just an intellectual exercise. It helps answer doubts, build confidence about Christianity, and protect your kids from the ideological mind viruses being spread on campus by any worldview which “sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Apart from these obvious benefits, apologetics also:
- Enhances worship. As students explore the reasons why Christianity is both true and good, they will learn much more about the character and nature of God. This increases their love for Him because they now love Him with their minds, not just their hearts. It also develops their trust at times when His involvement in their lives might not be as easily traced. By learning that He is immaterial, timeless, spaceless, powerful, intelligent, purposeful, morally perfect, and personal, they can’t help but worship Him.
- Fosters discipleship. Digging into apologetics can develop relationships and therefore discipleship, both between the teacher and the student and between the student and the Word. That discipleship multiplies to others relationally as students share what they’ve learned. We are called to both be disciples and make disciples, so learning apologetics is a way of fulfilling God’s purpose for us.
- Promotes evangelism. Let’s be honest. When it comes to sharing our faith, the church is more like a 90-pound weakling than a strong man. The statistics from Barna are downright embarrassing: evangelicals have among the highest rates of failure in follow-through from conviction to action when it comes to sharing their faith.[1] Many of us do not share because we have not developed our intellectual muscle for contending for the faith. Learning the reasons for our faith is like taking an evangelism energy drink.
- Develops critical thinking. Studying apologetics is also a great exercise in critical thinking. Learning the reasons for and against Christianity (and how to refute the deficiencies of other worldviews) is a spiritual warm-up for the academic environment they are about to enter. It will help them listen more carefully, think more clearly, and speak more accurately.
That’s where instruction in critical thinking and tactical conversations is important. Greg Koukl’s book, Tactics, is the premiere resource here. In summary, Tactics puts you in the driver’s seat and diffuses defensiveness by learning to engage with three questions: 1) What do you mean by that? 2) How did you come to that conclusion? and 3) Have you ever considered….?”
Studying logical fallacies sharpens critical thinking—key not only for religious claims, but educational, political, and more. There are several books and/or online courses you will find helpful like the Filter It Through A Brain Cell and Fallacy Detective.
We’ve Got You Covered
When I started studying apologetics 20 years ago, the resources were few and far between. Not so today. And they no longer exist just in book form. Websites, apps, podcasts, and videos abound. We direct you to our Resources page, which includes a link to our Recommended Resource list and our Busy Mom’s Guide to Apologetics.
You might also show your kids how to use their phones as their intellectual strength training workout partner. For those who would like to get started with younger kids, there are what I call digital forms of “flashcards” available in the following apps:
- CrossExamined — “Quick Answers” section. There’s even a “start here” section followed by four main content sections covering the basic questions Christians come up against: Truth, God, the Bible, and the 4 Es (Evolution/Evil/Ethics/Eternity).
- Stand to Reason Quick Ref App — Includes several hot topics (morality, other religions, tolerance, same-sex marriage, and abortion) icons with a brief written overview of the topic and a link to a podcast for more depth.
In addition to using apps, encourage your kids to develop apologetics playlists of podcasts and YouTube videos that can exercise their minds.
Michael Sherrard, president of Apologetics, Inc., sums it up well: “… after an apologetics conference a young man told me that for the first time in his life, he saw that Christians weren’t dumb. It was encouraging for him to see that you can love God with your mind and that Christians have reasons for their belief.”
Conclusion
With discernment, consider sharing your own strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, doubts and fears from your college years. Your vulnerability could go a long way to keeping the communication lines open. Parental influence is still key in the college years when it comes to faith, and as you engage in building the intellectual foundation of faith with your kids, you both will be loving the Lord with all your mind and strength.
References:
[1] See https://www.barna.com/research/sharing-faith-increasingly-optional-christians/ and https://www.barna.com/research/is-evangelism-going-out-of-style/
Recommended Resources:
Jesus, You and the Essentials of Christianity by Frank Turek (INSTRUCTOR Study Guide), (STUDENT Study Guide), and (DVD)
How to Interpret Your Bible by Dr. Frank Turek DVD Complete Series, INSTRUCTOR Study Guide, and STUDENT Study Guide
Intellectual Predators: How Professors Prey on Christian Students (DVD) (mp3) (mp4 Download)
Can All Religions Be True? mp3 by Frank Turek
Julie Loos combined her passion for prayer and apologetics in her contributions to three Mama Bear Apologetics books. Her apologetics training came from campus ministry and certificates from Biola University and the Crossexamined Instructors Academy. Julie has been teaching, writing, and speaking on prayer for Moms in Prayer International for more than 23 years. She lives in Missouri with her husband, Todd, has two married sons, two grandchildren, and enjoys working out, Bible study, chocolate, coffee, and deep conversations.
Originally posted at: https://bit.ly/3J49XMD
