Now, the program to help you and your family get fit and stay fit with a biblical foundation
without a one-size-fits-all plan.
It's Faith Family Fitness with your host, Full Armor Sports and National Champion Coach
Jason Lupo.
Good morning.
Welcome to another episode of Faith Family Fitness on 100.7 The Word.
The other day I was asked a question, and it's a question I get asked quite a bit, and
that question is this.
What is it like to coach today's youth?
And how does it differ from a number of years ago?
And as I've been coaching for a while, you see a drastic change in youth.
And it's not uncommon.
We see changes in society.
So why wouldn't it push its way over to today's youth?
But we see so many changes in our society and societal beliefs, and it's passed on through
our community.
And it's changed the way that we look at how we raise our children, and also how we coach,
and how we teach, and the lessons that we teach, and what is okay and what is not okay.
And we've turned into this society of being woke.
We've turned into this society of demasculinization.
We've turned into a society where teaching fundamental values to your children in your
households, in your families, is no longer okay.
And that's a huge issue.
And so today I want to talk about some of the things that I've seen in our latest attempt
to try to combat the issues of our world and our society in our own programs.
And so I hope you find this show interesting.
I hope it doesn't sound too much like a rant, even though it's probably going to be quite
a bit like a rant.
But it should be an entertaining rant, and hopefully educational, and get you guys just
to open up your mind and to think in a different manner about what's going on in our society.
So we're going to take a brief timeout when we come back.
We're going to talk about world problems.
I'll see you after this break.
Thanks for listening to Faith Family Fitness, a presentation of full armor sports teams.
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Learn more at fullarmorsportsteams.com.
Welcome back to Faith Family Fitness.
Today's topic, our world today and how it impacts our youth, how it impacts our sports,
our coaching, how we respond to issues.
And as I was saying in the intro, I was asked the question, what is it like to coach today's
youth versus youth of the past?
And we've always had this generational thing, you know, you're in the Y generation or whatever
it is.
You're a millennial.
And it seems like in the last 13 years, we can no longer break up groups by 15, 20 year
markers.
But really, it's like a three year process where you see youth continually changing and
changing very rapidly in their understanding of spouse values and what they believe and
what the schools are teaching.
And so we've seen a drastic difference and a drastic change in our world that has impacted
our youth in the generations coming up.
And there's a big difference between the kids that I coach today and the kids that I coached
10 years ago.
It's a drastic difference.
And so what has led to this?
What has led to these problems?
And part of it is a lot of the youth today have gone through the COVID era.
They've gone through this COVID era and it truly has changed the way that they act, the
way that they respond to situations.
And in some ways, sure, it makes them stronger, but in other ways, it makes them a little
weaker.
It makes them a little less, a little more gun shy, a little less likely to take the
lead.
That's what we've seen.
That's what I've seen in a lot of our youth.
And Paul, when he was writing his letter to the Corinthians, in First Corinthians, he
sums up his letter with a statement.
He closes it with a rather strong statement.
Watch, stand firm in the faith, be brave, be strong.
It's a strong statement.
It's a strong reminder to act like men.
And that's something we've missed in our society.
Society has now been called toxic, toxic masculinity.
And there's this drive from woke society to demasculinize men.
And we end up with a lack of leadership and we end up with a lack of strength in our organizations.
And it's not for the better.
And sure, if you want to call toxic masculinity alpha males that are self-centered, but that's
not what masculinity is.
That's not the crisis that we're talking about.
That's not the crisis that we're seeing in today's society where we have a lack of men
and a lack of leadership in organizations because we've forgotten to stand strong in
the faith, to watch, to be brave, to be strong because those are characteristics that have
by and large been removed from our population or an attempt to remove them from our population.
And that all goes back to this idea that everybody's got to be the same, look the same, act the
same.
We can't judge.
And I'm not saying that we should judge in a different way, in a different context.
I hate the saying don't judge because there's a difference between judgment and accountability
that we oftentimes lack.
And if you call somebody out on their wrongdoings that is not judging them, that is holding
them accountable, and we've lost that idea of society, just like we've lost the idea
of tolerance in our society, which we talked about the other day.
And Paul also mentions that we do everything with all this information.
We do all of it in love.
And so when we talk about the difference between alpha males and masculinity and self-centeredness,
being a man, watching, standing firm in the faith, being brave, being strong, we do it
out of love, love for one another.
And I think that's really important.
And so the first thing that we're doing in our programs at Full Armor is I created a
man card.
And it's not that we're trying to bring back toxic masculinity in terms of like alpha male,
but we have to bring back masculinity in our boys in our program because we run a lot of
co-ed programs and we need that leadership.
We need the leadership from the boys.
And so it's simple.
We created this saying, and I'm looking at the design example of our man card, a man
leads without complaint, fights for integrity, loves unconditionally, strengthens those around
him, finishes strong and completes the mission.
And sure, we're probably going to get a lot of flack for this.
We made these into patches, Velcro patches, they're PVC patches that'll stick to one of
those tactical backpacks that we just transitioned to and changed for all of our kids.
And they're going to be wearing them proudly on the outside of their backpack, man card,
walking into swim meets and in powerlifting competitions and competitions around the state.
And I'm sure that some people will be wholefully offended by the fact that we want masculinity
back in our boys.
But we want masculinity back in our boys, not in an alpha sense, but in the sense of
leading without complaint, fighting for integrity, loving unconditionally, strengthening those
around them, finishing strong and completing the mission.
And I think that's important because that is what we are lacking.
And a second big issue that we have right now in our youth, in our society, is the lack
of critical thinking.
We've lacked critical thinking because it's no longer allowed in woke culture to use your
brain.
We have created this sense that whatever comes out of the federal government's mouth, whatever
comes out of our schools is 100% accurate.
And that is what we need to reiterate.
That is what we need to memorize and replay to those around us.
And it's led to a crisis where we are no longer having youth truly making decisions based
on their knowledge of the facts.
And so as I've said before, I teach biology over at Great American Outpost.
I truly enjoy it.
And we've talked a lot.
Obviously it's a more Christian program.
We have a lot of Christian kids in there.
I'm sure we have kids that are not Christian in that organization, but it's a homeschool
co-op.
And I like to teach apologetics in biology.
And I like to teach how to defend one's understanding of creation, creation by an intelligent designer.
And we've talked a lot about that term, intelligent design on this show.
And I want kids to make decisions for themselves.
And so I lay out all of the information.
And we've changed the scientific method drastically, by the way.
If you look at science nowadays versus science the way that it was intended to be done, a
lot of times we do science to prove what we want to prove instead of doing science to
discover what needs to be discovered.
And so we look at things that we know to be true.
We look at the origins.
And then we just ask the question, with the knowledge that you have, do you believe that
everything came out of one single cell through a big bang?
And most of the kids, you can't fathom it because it doesn't make sense.
And on top of that, we teach how to truly read research, to truly understand how to
read a peer-reviewed article.
And we have to discover for ourselves what we've been missing is, especially in our high
school kids and kids under the college level, which by the way I attended, I got two bachelor's
degrees and a master's degree, so I went through plenty of the university.
And there are tons of kids that I went to school with sitting alongside me that did
not have the same understanding of critical thinking.
And that's a huge issue.
But you have to be able to critically think about the research that's being put in front
of you because the research that's coming out today is to prove what they want to prove
to the public.
Either they want to prove that their product works or they want to prove that their product
is safe and effective instead of looking to discover.
And we saw this drastic change in science, especially in COVID.
We have to use critical thinking.
We have to allow our kids to use critical thinking.
Because all we're trying to, all our schools are trying to do is get them to reiterate
what is woke and what is socially correct.
And I say that with quotation marks around it because what is socially correct for some
people is not socially correct for all.
And so if you've tuned into this show, you are probably on 100.7 the word because you
are listening to other pastors sharing the word of God.
And so I'm confident that I'm speaking to a majority of Christian households in our
society right now.
But our Christian households, our Christian values, what we espouse to be correct and
true is consistently being destroyed in the media, in our society, in our world around
us.
And so we are seeing today what Paul has talked about in the Bible time and time again about
standing strong, being strong, being brave.
And Paul makes references over and over and over about using athletics to prove his point,
using athletics as a means to transform and also relay the message of what our Christian
life is like or will be.
Running the race that's marked out with us with endurance.
It's not easy.
It's not easy in the faith to stand strong.
And Paul knows that and Paul is making that warning to us.
He's consistently warning us.
But this letter to the Corinthians and how he ends it, essentially saying, act like a
man.
That's saying that, hey, a time will come, and people listening to the show, that time
is now, a time will come when you will be required to stand firm if you are going to
stand in the faith.
And that is the time that we are seeing now.
And so we need to show leadership ourselves to the youth in our community as to what that
looks like.
We need to fight for what is right.
And we need to do all of this.
Remember that next verse, in love, not out of pure alpha male status and self-centeredness.
But we do all of this.
We stand firm in the faith.
We're brave and courageous.
We have a watchful eye in the name of love.
That is a critical aspect of what Paul is trying to say in that next verse.
And so with our youth, critical thinking is number one.
Number one, we have to make sure that we can lay out information for our youth.
They can take that information, they can process it, and then they can come to a decision themselves.
And so we have to allow our youth to make a decision.
I explain a lot of what we do and why we do it to our youth in our program to my athletes.
Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't.
But I tell them the science.
I tell them why we're doing what they're doing and how the body responds to training.
And then that allows them to make the decision as to how hard they're going to train and
push themselves.
And of course, we want them to push themselves.
We're leading them in the direction.
So I guess we're no better than the schools.
But we're trying to get them to understand why they're doing what they're doing, which
I guess is better than the schools.
But still in the same path, we're trying to direct their course of action.
And that is part of what leadership is.
And so I don't want to completely trash trying to lead kids in a direction.
But there's a difference between leadership and brainwashing.
And I think we all know that very clearly.
And so if we can get our youth to process information, come to the decision themselves,
understand our values, understand Christian values, and make decisions as to whether or
not the woke culture aligns with those values, that is the ultimate win.
That is what we are looking for in our youth.
We want them to process that information and come up with the decision themselves that
what they're seeing is not right.
I asked a ton of my kids the other day about furries in schools.
If you don't know about this, there's kids that identify as animals.
Some schools are even putting out water bowls for these kids in Colorado Springs.
We are not exempt from this situation.
Use critical thinking.
There is no way that any person is a dog.
Sorry.
Maybe I'll be canceled for that.
Anyways we are going to take a brief time out.
When we come back we're going to wrap up this lovely conversation on what is going on in
today's society.
Be back after a brief time out.
Thanks for listening to Faith Family Fitness, a presentation of full armor sports teams.
Teamwork is at the core of any successful organization.
At Full Armor Sports, led by national champion coach Jason Lupo, a Christ-centered approach
to sports fundamentals and fitness has earned his company the respect of athletes and their
parents.
Full Armor Sports is committed to helping youth in our community experience growth through
sports and to strive for improvement and excellence.
Further, youth compete as individuals coming together with a sense of teamwork, camaraderie,
and support for one another.
At Full Armor Sports, the reality is achievements, failures, wins and losses eventually fade
away but the bonds team members form through competition evolve into relationships lasting
forever.
Learn more at FullArmorSports.com.
Welcome back to Faith Family Fitness on 100.7 The Word.
Thank you for joining us today.
Thank you for listening in on our conversation as to how our youth has changed over a handful
of years and what it truly means to stand firm in the faith in today's world and the
woke culture that's going on.
And so I'm going to leave you with this.
Allow kids to come to their own decision.
Provide them with this set of beliefs that you espouse, the Christian beliefs, and then
allow them to make the decision as to what is going on whether or not it is correct.
Because I think for the most part, most youth when allowed to think critically will look
at woke culture today and find it absurd.
And sure, we need to lead.
We need to lead our families.
And so that might mean that we have to pull our kids out of woke culture for a while and
allow them to get out of the brainwashing going on in a lot of today's society in order
to make, in order to clear that mind, allow them to make those critical decisions.
Because we need critical thinking back in our society.
And we need men that act like men and lead.
And it's not toxic.
It's not toxic for men to be men.
Like our woke culture wants us to believe toxic masculinity is not an issue.
I mean, toxic masculinity in an alpha male sense might be because we have to remember
in Corinthians that we do these things for love and self-centeredness does not combine
with that idea.
This is Faith Family Fitness.
I appreciate you joining me.
You can find more information on our show at faithfamilyfit.org.
You can also find information about our youth programs at fullarmorsportsteams.com.
We invite you to join us on those sites.
Email us any questions that you may have and listen to some past episodes.
Thank you for joining us and we will talk to you again next Saturday.
This has been Faith Family Fitness with Coach Jason Lupo of Full Armor Sports Teams of Colorado
Springs.
Join him at the same time next week for Faith Family Fitness on the Word 100.7.