Lessons Americans Can Learn from Canada

Sean McDowell: Welcome to the podcast Think Biblically, conversations on faith and culture. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, professor of Apologetics at Talbot Theological Seminary, Biola University.

Our guest today is a friend of mine, Jojo Ruba, who's a friend of Biola that has a ministry called Faith Beyond Belief in Canada. We're actually recording this up as I'm speaking at your conference.

Jojo Ruba: Both of us are.

Sean McDowell: Both of us are. Yes. That makes sense, doesn't it? As we're at your conference here in Canada. We explored topics that we could cover in this that would interest our audience. When I asked you, you said, "What about lessons that Americans could learn from where Canada is at, in terms of religious freedom and socially?"

So let me just throw it out there and say, broadly speaking, what makes you think that there's certain lessons about where America is headed that we can learn from where Canada is and where Canada's going.

Jojo Ruba: Let me clarify. I'm not saying that we have so much to teach you guys. That's not what I'm saying at all.

Sean McDowell: Of course.

Jojo Ruba: In fact, the fact that I'm on Biola's podcast, it's an amazing thing. We love Biola. We like to promote them as much as we can. But no. We're so much ahead, maybe 10, 20 ... Not actually that much ahead, but maybe 10, 20 years ahead of where the States is at culturally, politically, socially. And so from the Christian perspective, there's much that you can do to prepare for what's going to happen. If the things that are happening here, and there's no doubt I think in terms of the trends, that you're following us, that it's going to happen in the States as well.

Foundationally, we're now at a point where, I think Greg Koukl mentioned this from Stand to Reason. He said, the battles on abortion, homosexuality, they're just previews of battles about faith and Christianity. Can we actually say that Christianity is true, for example, and not be accused of intolerance?

Where just last year in Alberta, we had a Christian school that was told by their school board, which is a secular school board, but they're a Christian school, that they were not allowed to teach parts of the Bible that were controversial or offensive to people. This Christian school principal agreed to that statement.

Now, they believe, the board said, "No, we're not going to do that," but it was on the issue of homosexuality, but it was a general ban on anything in Scripture that was considered offensive by anyone else.

Sean McDowell: So-

Jojo Ruba: And-

Sean McDowell: Oh, keep going. I'm sorry.

Jojo Ruba: At this point, the school might even close down because they might be shut down by the school board.

Sean McDowell: Now, from what I understand about Christian schools in Canada, some get funding from the government, and some don't. Is-

Jojo Ruba: Yeah. That's the case. Canada doesn't have a separation of church and state as in the States, and so that's good and bad. Part of it is, it's good that we don't have a club against us in terms of schools. We can still pray in school, but in practice, it's almost the same. A lot of the publicly funded, so-called public-funded Christians or Catholic schools, they end up being just as secular or even worse because they end up teaching young people that basically, your religious beliefs are just cultural practices rather than something that's true.

But in this situation here in Alberta, we have a unique situation. I won't go too much into detail. But what it actually says is we have school choice. We're one of the best jurisdictions in the continent to let parents pay for a education that they want to able to have. The student gets public funding for stuff that the government mandates, but anything else that they want to do, like religious education, death education, sports or athletes, they [inaudible 00:03:23] have to pay more. They can build a school base around that.

Christian schools, atheist schools can be built based on that model.

Sean McDowell: Wow. Is the concern that they're getting government funding, the government now gets to dictate what is taught and what is not?

Jojo Ruba: Absolutely. That's a big deal, but my point is actually, the religious education part doesn't get any government funding. That's what the private part of the school, that parents have to pay for.

What's happened though is the legislation is not just covering these kinds of things. Legislation has been passed in Alberta that mandates gay straight alliance clubs. Obviously, you're familiar with that in California, but these are promotional clubs. We have heard of a pastor, for example, a gay pastor saying to students in a public school that homosexuality is perfectly fine in the Bible at a private club.

These clubs, a new law that just got passed in Alberta again is that parents don't even have to know if their five-year-old is attending this sexuality club, taught by these kinds of pastors and activists who are teaching them that anyone who opposes this legislation wants to out and harm gay kids.

Sean McDowell: Let me take a step back and say, when we look at where Canada's at and where America sure seems to be headed, are the issues primarily over sexual issues, the body integrity issues?

Jojo Ruba: Like I said, if I could quote Greg Koukl again, he said, "These are just previews of the kinds of fights we're getting," so it starts there absolutely. But the standard they're using is, if it's offensive, it makes people feel bad, then we can ban you.

There was another situation out in Nova Scotia, out in the East Coast of Canada, which is north of Massachusetts. That area. They had a young man there who's wearing a T-shirt that said, "Life is wasted without Jesus." This was about a few years ago. He got suspended from his school because the students said that his shirt was offensive for telling them that they were wrong.

Now, the worst part of this, and it doesn't stop there, the government as well as the superintendent of the school, this is what she said, "We realize students have religious beliefs. They're of course welcome to share. We're not saying people can't have different religions. We're just saying you can't criticize other people's religions."

There was no irony or thought in her mind that if I were to wear that thought on my T-shirts-

Sean McDowell: Exactly.

Jojo Ruba: ... and walk into her school, that would be offensive to me as a Christian, right? So the lack of apologetics is coming from the churches, the fact that we don't engage as a Christian community, the fruit is being shown in how culture is treating us now.

Sean McDowell: Now, is it fair to say that Christianity is being singled out in this way? Is Islam being singled out? What about conservatives? People like Jordan Peterson, right?

Jojo Ruba: Yes.

Sean McDowell: ... who, right, refuses to go along with the line-

Jojo Ruba: Well, we're praying that Jordan Peterson finally becomes a Christian, right? That's one of the things. No. Well, Jordan Peterson has become a hero because he's pushed back and he's done it in the right way. Even though he probably hasn't heard it, the good ambassador, the model of being thoughtful, focusing on facts, pointing out the contradictions of those who are opponents and realizing people who are transgender are not our enemy. They're the victims. We need to help and show grace to them.

I don't know if ... I guess I could tell you this. I actually just said Biola, and I accidentally joined a protest against Biola.

Sean McDowell: Oh, yes. I did see your post on this.

Jojo Ruba: Yeah because what happened was I was interviewing a guy who's associated with people in Biola who was protesting because of the school's stands on sexuality, which obviously is a Biblical stance. We perfectly agree with that. We'd be actually very upset if you changed your policies on that.

He said, "Why don't you interview me in front of the school?" I'm like, "Okay. What's going on there?" I'm like, "Oh, oh." "Just come."

When I went there, it was actually a protest against Biola's policy on homosexuality. I ended up hanging around, figuring what I should do, not wanting to argue with the people there but just listening.

It was interesting. It's already there like in terms of ideas. What we're seeing is it's legislative here. They were holding signs that said, "Bad theology kills." I thought, well, that's true actually. That's very true. But in their mindset, they're saying, "Biola's policies on homosexuality kills gay people."

If that's your mindset, then you're going to create laws that are going to be, not just detrimental to the church on this issue, but on any issue because now, your conservative Biblical worldview that tells people that they're wrong, we can actually ban that. We can make it illegal. We can make it hate speech.

Just two days ago, in, again, in Alberta. This is where I'm from, so I know much of the laws. I can speak on some of the other provinces. They're planning to ban any pro-life speech, including peaceful prayers in a buffer zone so huge you can't even do it on the other side of the street, around the two abortion clinics in our province.

Sean McDowell: Oh, my goodness. Because the pro-life position actually brings harm to women, is the reasoning behind it.

Jojo Ruba: Right. And the pro-abortion people have deemed any opposition as harassment. So in another town in Alberta, in Lethbridge, they had a bus ad that simply said, "Abortion harms children," and it had a picture of a fetus. The abortion advocates were saying, "Well, no. We don't perform abortions after viability," which is not true. Abortions, there's no law in Canada. A nine-month-old baby is going to be legally aborted here. But they lied to the bus ad company where these ads were being placed, and they took those bus ads down because women were complaining that they might have miscarriages and these ads caused trauma to them. The idea of freedom of speech when it comes to covering pro-life speech now is being taken away.

The government is also planning to ban, it already happened in Ontario. I can tell you about that situation. In Alberta, they're planning to ban what they're deeming conversion therapy. In Ontario, what they've done is, it's the largest province in Canada, they've actually banned it. They've included transgenderism. Any secular counseling, particularly for young kids, and this is where they start and they want to bring it to adults, they want to ban any kind of counseling so that if a kid who's gender confused, who's a girl, but she thinks she's boy, is not allowed to see a counselor to change her mind.

There was this wonderful clinic in Toronto had a 85-95% success rate in helping these kids readjust to accept their bodies for what they are. That clinic got shut down because of legislation.

Now, I know things are pretty bad in California as well. We've been following the law there.

Sean McDowell: Yeah. That's right.

Jojo Ruba: But in terms of ideology, this is the worst part, churches aren't saying anything.

Sean McDowell: This is my next question for you. Is the church awake to this? Is the church pretending it's not happening? Is the church moving left? Give me a sense of where the church is at.

Jojo Ruba: Right. In Canada, we've always had a strong idea of the mainstream churches were the dominant ones. That's obviously changing particularly because of immigration. The immigrants are really the ones who are growing the churches. They're the ones who are active against these issues.

In Ontario, it's going to be interesting to see because there's a conservative politician who's running now, who's actually winning in urban areas because these are the areas where immigrants and including Sikhs and Hindus and Muslims who are conservative parents, are voting him in because they hate the kind of legislations that's being created. The problem is their kids are adopting the values of the culture. If we don't help them now, the next generation will be lost to us as well.

But in terms of the church, so I mean the issue I think for the church is in Canada, we've had a mindset that we shouldn't be involved. We don't want to rock the boat. There's a stereotype that we're really proud of that Canadians are super nice. We're really, really glad for that because we're not Americans. Sorry guys because we're really nice.

However, and this is what I point out when I speak to churches, the Bible never commands Christians to be nice. He commands us to be loving. I was speaking at another school, and it was on sexuality and gender identity. We have a project called the Identity Project. We actually help the Christian schools respond to some of this legislation by challenging them to talk about sex from a Biblical perspective.

Sean, you have to see their faces because they've never done it before. What I tell them is, "Look, if you guys don't talk about it and show how good God's design is, someone else will fill that gap, and they're not going to agree with our worldview."

Sean McDowell: So really, it's a worldview issue at its heart-

Jojo Ruba: All of it is. All of it is worldview [crosstalk 00:11:45]

Sean McDowell: ... more than anything else.

Jojo Ruba: Absolutely.

Sean McDowell: One of the things I'm discovering is that typical barriers, historically speaking, across cultures and differences are kind of fading away.

Jojo Ruba: Absolutely.

Sean McDowell: We almost have a global culture now. I've experienced that in Singapore. I've experienced that in South America. I've experience that here in Canada as well. What are the core issues when you work with students, Christian kids and non-Christian kids, that you just find confusion about, where they have just bought lock stock and barrel into certain ideas in our media and television and film and music today?

Jojo Ruba: Well, one of the key things, and I always start off with this. I started as I mentioned today in my introduction to one of our speakers, I started in pro-life apologetics and had gotten to Christian apologetics. The reason why that is is because my passion for pro-life hasn't diminished, but when I spend 45% of my pro-life presentation talking about and making the case for truth, making the case for right and wrong, making the case for saying, not only that truth exists, but it matters and that the Christian worldview is both true and good, I realized, gosh, we need to fix the church first and that what's happening the culture is merely the result of what's happening in the churches.

That, in terms of speaking to youth, what I've been finding is they have this mindset that my opinion matters even if I don't. What I mean by that is, if you were to disagree with what I believe, that isn't a personal attack or affront to me. They can't separate the two. They're confusing the two. So any kind of disagreement on sexuality or gender, for example, becomes now an attack on a gay person.

You talk about that all the time. One of the key lines I like to use from Sam Allberry from Ravi Zacharias Ministries. He's a same-sex attracted speaker but who's celibate. He says, "My sexuality is not my identity."

When I share that with young people to say, "Look. You may not be able to choose how you feel, but you can choose what to do with those feelings, and here's the other thing. You can choose your identity. By the way, Jesus gives us the best identity ever. His own." That gives them a real thought process to think about to say, "Now, wait a second. Am I just my sexuality or am I made for something more?"

That positive response is something they need to hear because the second point just quickly is that young people need to know that there's goodness. They need to know where that's grounded in even if they don't ask that question, that second part. They're asking the first part. They're told they're good, if they do thee things.

Now, we just had you debate Bart Campolo, which was awesome by the way. We're looking forward to sharing that with others. We'll have in our website FaithBeyondBelief.com.ca.

But one of the challenges I have with people, talking with people like him or the social justice warrior type is their presupposition of what love looks like. I was going to share this story. I was up in Edmonton, and I spoke on this project, the Identity Project. There was a pastor there during Q&A time who was hostile, who wasn't supposed to be there. So I didn't realize he was. He was part of a pastor's breakfast that met there, and then he was invited to this event that I didn't realize. He pushed back and said, "Look. Our church, our denomination has now accepted everybody. We're a loving church. We accept everyone. Love is what matters." Of course, implying that we're not loving, and so I didn't push back on the issue of sexuality. What I did was push back on his definition of love.

You know how it always is. You think of a response after the fact [crosstalk 00:15:03]

Sean McDowell: I do that all the time. Just for the record.

Jojo Ruba: I did respond. I think it worked really well. No one got mad. It made him think. But this is how I would've responded. I think this is even better. I would've said to him, "Sir, do you have a wife who loves you?" I think he was married. He would say, "Yes." "Has she ever corrected you to help you become a better person? Do you think she stopped loving you when she corrected you? So if love is willing to correct, then love doesn't just accept you for what you are. Love also wants you to become a better person, doesn't it?"

Sean McDowell: Man, I bet you wish you could step back and say [crosstalk 00:15:37] I told you. I always have those moments afterwards, but your point is powerful. Ironically, he thinks his position is loving, so he's correcting you-

Jojo Ruba: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: ... and you're just pointing out saying, "Okay. Wait a minute. This is what love does." I find the same kind of conversations. I oftentimes, rather than debating the particulars of whatever the policy is, I want to look at the assumptions, the presuppositions.

Jojo Ruba: Absolutely.

Sean McDowell: Because I give the courtesy to people who disagree with me that they're doing what they think is right and what they think is loving. I want to say, "Will you give me the same courtesy and think that I'm at least motivated by love?"

Jojo Ruba: That's great because that's what young people need to hear as well. They need to be affirmed that they're trying to do something good. Most social justice warrior type people are trying to do good. The problem is their definition of what goodness is.

I'm working on a paper. I'm working on a book hopefully. The title I have, this working title, I think is really good. The title is "Redeeming Love."

Sean McDowell: I like it.

Jojo Ruba: It's a double entendre. It means both God's redemptive love, but the concept is that we need to redeem the concept of love for this culture, especially on issues of sexuality and gender. That's what the whole book is about. It's apologetics on homosexuality because the debate at the end of the day is not about sex. The debate at the end of the day is the character of God.

Sean McDowell: Hey, amen to that. When that book is out, we'll have you back on to talk about it.

Jojo Ruba: It sounds good. I want your endorsement if it's good.

Sean McDowell: Oh, my goodness. I would love to. Let me ask you this. Back to the question of where-

Jojo Ruba: Of Canada. Yes.

Sean McDowell: ... America's seemingly fallen. I agree with you, some of the tracks, kind of the secular movement within Canada. If you could go back 5 or 10 or 20 years in Canada, what should the church do differently, which would apply to what you think the church and even places like Biola should do at this moment?

Jojo Ruba: Absolutely. Well, things like ... One of the things I'm just really proud of is during pro-life apologetics really gave me some practical concrete ways to practice apologetics. Where you're on the streets everyday talking to people. We're always training people the Stand to Reason model where we're kind and gentle. They may hate my pictures. I have people say that so many times to us. A professor came by and said, "I really hate your pictures, but I love talking to you." I'm like, "Thank Greg Koukl," right? That's his model.

Sean McDowell: That's funny.

Jojo Ruba: That practical approach has really gotten me a lot of worldview experience. If we get Christians doing that, learning how to model, how to talk about these tough issues, right off the bat, even those young people, it blows their minds how much it makes sense once they get to those places.

Sean McDowell: By the way, these are pictures of aborted babies.

Jojo Ruba: Aborted babies. That's right.

Sean McDowell: You go on college campuses, you show them, people get upset, but you engage them graciously and talk about the topics.

Jojo Ruba: Absolutely. In fact, we pray for these people beforehand because we see them not as enemies, but as victims.

Sean McDowell: So one thing, and this is what your movement is about across Canada is a worldview apologetic training-

Jojo Ruba: Absolutely.

Sean McDowell: ... but learning how to talk with people in a gracious manner. We're on the same boat. That is what Biola's about.

Jojo Ruba: I know that. That's what I love about-

Sean McDowell: Give me another one the church needs to do, or would that be enough?

Jojo Ruba: Well, that's part of it because it's ... There's three things, actually. You need to provide the truth. You need to show the truth and explain why the truth matters. This is something that we did badly. For example, again, we'll just bring up the marriage issue. We debated the issue of homosexuality by focusing on marriage, which is great. We should do that, but we should also focus on intimacy and friendship because that is something that God offers. The idea of a relationship is both for same sex and opposite sex. God designed us for that. We want to create a counter-narrative to what the culture is saying on these issues that actually Biblical, but also showing that it's good, right?

Secondly, you need to show the methodologies. Just like with the pro-life approach. We want to be able to talk well as ambassadors for Christ. Our motto for our organization is: effective ambassadors for Christ in every day conversations because those conversations matter.

That's the other part I think too is we want to be able to show role models to people. People who they can look up to, especially young people. Just say, "Hey, that guy has not fallen. He maybe not be perfect, but he treats me like a human being," like your dad mentioned last night. We have a relationship, and he actually believes this stuff. That's so important.

What happened in Canada is we have wonderful leaders but no actual I think national leaders who are able to say, "I actually handle those issues like abortion and homosexuality and do it well and do it graciously, and by the way, do it because Jesus loves you." That needs to be heard, and so those role models are necessary.

Look, it's so important to fight these issues, but when we look to the States and look to other places, oftentimes, people don't know how to handle it or they don't want to talk about it. When that happens, there's no role models, there's no methodology, and then the facts we hear are just it's wrong, but no reasons for it. That has to be addressed right away or else you're going the same path we are.

Sean McDowell: That's a great, great model, so to speak, of things we need to do. Not just God says. "Don't do this," or, "Do this," but the reasons why, especially for a generation that's skeptical and that has a million voices.

Jojo Ruba: And has Google.

Sean McDowell: They can Google anything.

Jojo Ruba: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: How do you balance when you speak to young people? Because we hear people talking about this is a snowflake generation, so easily offended, see the world through their feelings. If you say anything wrong, you're going the offend people, but on the flip side, you're talking about some pretty thorny issues-

Jojo Ruba: Absolutely.

Sean McDowell: ... with people who aren't even Christians. How do you do it in a way where you get at truth? Are young people wanting to hear this stuff? Are you're facing resistance? I'm curious of your experience.

Jojo Ruba: Well, right now, I speak to mostly Christian schools, but even then, we get pushback. I was just doing a set of these talks-

Sean McDowell: But there's a lot of non-Christians at Christian schools. A ton.

Jojo Ruba: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. No, for sure. But some of these are so-called Christians. I think there has to be leadership from the churches, and this means now, to be able to clarify what that means. Just because you go to a church, just because you claim this or say you're a really nice person, like Bart Campolo's definition of Christianity really blew my mind, if I could be honest because a lot of it was, "Let's go help the poor." Well, atheists do that. Frankly, Jesus said to love the poor, take care of them, but loving them doesn't mean you have to make everybody the same class as you. That's Marxism. That's not Christianity, right?

But in terms of speaking to young people, this is what I do. I remind them that they matter, not because I say so, but because God says so, if they're Christians. But the way that God makes them matter is not by taking their feelings and making it the most important thing.

One analogy I like to use is this. Look, feelings are great. God gave them to us. They're not wrong to feel things. But feelings can lie to us. Feelings are like a beautiful flower. If you put them on a vase, they last a couple of days. Then, they die. But if you want that flower to thrive, you have to put it in cold, hard dirt for it to survive. That dirt is truth. So truth has to be the foundation for feelings because one is the foundation. Those feelings will actually be better in the long run. Those feelings will actually matter in the long run.

One of the examples I use is there's a T-shirt you can buy on the internet. I think it's on Amazon that says, "There's more than two genders." When you try to buy it, you can only buy it in male or female sizes, right?

Sean McDowell: Of course.

Jojo Ruba: I point this out, and I say, "Look, you can not escape reality." That's the point. Rather than trying to change reality by your feelings, which is what a lot of these issues do, you have to be able to say, "Look, at the end of the day, why do I want my feelings to matter that much? Isn't it fair to say that you can disagree with someone and still love them?"

One quick way I do that with students just to get them completely nodding at the start is I ask these teenagers, and you know how this works: how many of them love their parents? Most of them put up their hand. A few of them, "Yeah." I ask, "How many of you agree with everything your parents believe or say?" I had one hand up in one talk. I've done this for five years or so. I looked, and it was really dark. I realized it was one of the dads who raised his hand [crosstalk 00:23:18]

Sean McDowell: Oh, none of the kids.

Jojo Ruba: So I've never had a kid raise their hand and say, "I agree with everything my parents said." But then I asked them, "Okay. Well, wait a second then. Doesn't that mean that you can love your parents but still disagree with them? Doesn't that mean that you can love people and still disagree with them on these issues?" I start there.

Sean McDowell: And they see it, right?

Jojo Ruba: They see it because it's obvious.

Sean McDowell: See, that is such an obvious point, and yet I found myself with this generation, having to go back and point out things-

Jojo Ruba: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: ... that were obvious to generation ago.

Jojo Ruba: Exactly.

Sean McDowell: The way I do it, an illusion I like is you take a beach ball, push it under the water, and it pops up. I assume that this generation knows they shouldn't guide their life by their feelings or it hasn't been pointed out to them. I assume they know there's such a thing as truth. We got to take a step back in how we approach them.

Jojo Ruba: That's right.

Sean McDowell: Let me ask you this last question.

Jojo Ruba: Sure.

Sean McDowell: Where do you get your courage and your boldness from? Now, you're probably talking to pastors, to students, to parents. I want to frame it this way because there's a lot of people right now in America that are concerned for the future of the church, concerned for religious freedom. Where does this boldness and confidence come from? What would you say to people that are a few years behind Canada and need a little shot in the arm to kind of fight the good fight?

Jojo Ruba: Well, I had a conversation actually in this church with a young lady who came after she heard my talk on conversation training. She said, "You know, I'm a really shy person. I don't know if I can do the stuff." It was a God thing, of course. I asked her this question in return. I said, "Do you have any shy friends who are like you?" She said, "Of course." "Do you think they'd be more willing to listen to someone like you than someone like me?" She nodded. I said, "Look, this is the point. We don't need," as you've said many times, "It's wonderful we have a million dollar apologists. It's wonderful we have great speakers out there, but the most powerful thing we can do is be Jesus in every day conversations and remember that those conversations don't just matter to the person you're speaking to. They matter to God."

And so in wisdom, I look at this and that's why we chose this model to say anyone can do this. We have 85-year-old ladies and 12-year-old kids who take our worldview program. They come back to us, and they say, "I actually do this. This is great. I'm so encouraged."

This is the point. What I see in the church, what we're trying to do now, what we should've done 20 years ago is empower young people, ordinary people to say, "I can have these conversations that matter. I don't have to wait for Sean McDowell or Jojo Ruba or have all these programs put together or big conferences. I can do it in my every day life because Jesus did that for me."

Sean McDowell: Jojo, we're grateful for you, your boldness, your ministry. When I came to Canada a decade or so ago, there was minimal apologetics and worldview. Now, it's taken off. 1,500 plus people at the conference.

Jojo Ruba: I know. It's great.

Sean McDowell: Be encouraged. Keep fighting the good fight. Remind our audience really fast your website.

Jojo Ruba: FaithBeyondBelief.ca.

Sean McDowell: We'll put a link that you can find and followup with all of your ministry. Again, thanks for coming on. It's an honor to do this-

Jojo Ruba: My privilege. [crosstalk 00:26:09]

Sean McDowell: ... especially from Canada.

This has been an episode of the podcast, Think Biblically, conversations on faith and culture. To learn more about us and today's guest, Jojo Ruba, and to find more episodes, go to Biola.edu/ThinkBiblically. That's Biola.edu/ThinkBiblically.

If you enjoyed today's conversation, give us a rating on your podcast app and share it with a friend. Thanks for listening and remember, Think Biblically about everything.