By Natasha Crain

Christianity Today recently featured an article titled, “The Biggest Hindrance to Your Kids’ Faith Isn’t Doubt. It’s Silence.”

The article summarized the findings of researchers Kara Powell and Steven Argue on the faith of youth group graduates. They found that:

  • 70 percent of churchgoing high schoolers report having serious doubts about faith.
  • Less than half of those with doubt shared their struggle with an adult or friend.
  • Opportunities to express and explore doubts were correlated with greater faith maturity.

Powell and Argue concluded that, “It’s not doubt that’s toxic to faith; it’s silence.” They go on to explain how important it is for parents to regularly have conversations about faith with their kids, and I couldn’t agree more.

I saw this article shared a lot on social media, with people rightly encouraging one another to have more faith conversations with their kids. But each time I saw it, an underlying question glared at me:

If Christianity is true, why is there so much doubt to be addressed in the first place?

Quite frankly, if I were a skeptic, that’s the question would be asking after reading this research.

Skeptics often claim that Christians believe what we do in the face of serious cognitive dissonance; that is, they say we have to hold contradictory beliefs in tension because the evidence is against us. This article at least seemed to support the idea that if there is so much doubt, it should make us think twice about the validity of our views.

I’m always happy to think twice, so let’s do it. This is such an important subject for parents to understand today, but I rarely see it addressed.

Why So Much Doubt?

People throughout history have had questions and doubts about their beliefs, and that includes Christians. Christians have long grappled with big theological issues like the problem of pain and suffering, the morality of hell, and why God is seemingly so hidden. These things have led many thoughtful people—adults and kids alike—to have doubts.

But I believe much of the doubt we see today among youth and young adults is very different in nature. It’s doubt that is specifically a product ofcultural factors—not doubt that has arisen after a deep grappling with theology.

Here are five key factors I see.

  1. Kids today have the expectation that knowledge requires absolute certainty.

A dad emailed me recently because he had started to work through my book, Talking with Your Kids about God, with his skeptical 9-year-old daughter. After reading the chapters on the evidence for God’s existence, he said his daughter concluded there’s no certainty in her belief in God, and the discouraged dad promptly put the book away. He felt that I wasn’t forceful enough in my presentation and that, as a parent, he needs to be a more authoritative instructor to share what he knows “with absolute certainty.”

This dad’s revised approach is a tragic conclusion that falls prey to the same common error his daughter made: believing “absolute certainty” is both possible and necessary when it comes to a person’s worldview. This is often the assumption of kids who are analytically-minded, and it’s reinforced by some popular misunderstandings of the role of science today.

As a matter of definition, “absolute certainty” is something reserved for mathematics and logic. Even science—often heralded today as the way of knowing what’s true—does not provide “certain” conclusions. As (atheist) philosopher Walter Kaufmann put it, “What distinguishes knowledge is not certainty but evidence.” There is almost nothing we are “absolutely certain” about in life. If that’s what our kids believe the standard is for evaluating the evidence for the truth of Christianity (or any worldview), they have a dangerous misunderstanding. They’ll have a standard of proof that we don’t use for anything else in our daily lives and our bound to conclude they have too many doubts to believe in God just because uncertainties exist.

This dad’s “authoritative” doubling down on teaching with absolute certainty will likely only serve to push his daughter further away from God because he is setting her up to accept his conviction of certainty rather than help her evaluate the evidence herself. Had I concluded in my chapters that the evidence in nature points to God with absolute certainty, as I think the dad wanted, I would have mischaracterized the nature of evidence. That helps no one, but rather sets kids up to have unreasonable expectations.

Remember: Biblical faith is trusting in what you have good reason—evidence—to believe is true. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” The reason we can have confidence and assurance in our beliefs is because of the strong evidence God has given us for their truth.

  1. Today’s culture validates feelings as objective truth.

At the other end of the spectrum, many kids today completely throw out the idea of evidence and buy into the secular narrative that our feelingsdetermine truth.

If you feel you’ve been wronged, you’ve been wronged.

If you feel something isn’t true, it isn’t true.

If you feel you should have the right to do something, you should.

So what happens if I don’t feel anything during prayer? Or I don’t feel like God was loving enough for my personal standards in the Old Testament? Or I don’t feel like God’s moral commands are fair? Or I don’t feel hell is reasonable?

I then feel the Bible must not be true—without ever looking at the evidence.

Kids who haven’t been shown the weakness of feelings as the arbiter of truth may apply the “feelings test” to their faith and end up struggling with doubt because they haven’t learned to think more deeply about these questions.

  1. When you’re in an ideological minority, it’s human nature to question your views.

Last year, new research showed that committed Christians are now a minority. (I wrote a post about the implications of that for parents here.) When you believe something that is vastly different than what the majority believes, it’s simply natural to question it. Questioning, to some degree, is a function of which side of the numbers you’re on. Though the number of people who hold a worldview doesn’t have any bearing on what’s actually true, it’s human nature to give weight to what more people believe.

Those who hold majority views sometimes don’t question enough, while those who hold minority views sometimes question more than what may be warranted.

  1. The secular viewpoint is quickly becoming the only viewpoint taught in public schools.

This is related to the previous point because the primary place many kids experience the feeling of being in an ideological minority is in the public school system.

Every day, millions of kids head to school, only to be taught a worldview that is directly in conflict with that of Christianity. The breadth of that conflict is rapidly growing as states like California make sweeping revisions to curricula that affirms unbiblical views as the only acceptable views in multiple subject areas. Many people are championing the changes as being inclusive and diverse, but do not be fooled: There is only one view being taught, and it’s not the one held by millions of Christians. Sean McDowell recently wrote an excellent piece on this here. I encourage every parent to read it (not just Californians).

When we send kids to school for an education, they assume they should trust their teachers as authorities. We shouldn’t be surprised when their “authoritative” secular curriculum causes them to doubt what they learn at home.

[Please note that this is not to suggest that all Christians should pull their kids out of public school. There are many factors that go into educational decisions and I don’t believe one solution fits everyone.]

  1. Our culture raises questions about the religious worldview while ignoring the questions raised by a secular worldview.

Having read the many studies done on kids abandoning a belief in God, I’m fully convinced that they’re only thinking through the reasons they’re walking away from Christianity but not the reasons they’re walking toward atheism.

You see, it’s not just a Christian worldview that leaves questions unanswered. There is room for doubt in every worldview because no worldview answers every question. This is why I spent the last six chapters in Talking with Your Kids about God explaining the logical implications of an atheistic worldview, and how that compares with a Christian worldview. I show, for example, that in an atheistic world:

  • There can be no objective meaning of life;
  • There is little reason to believe free will (in any meaningful sense) is possible;
  • There can be no moral obligation to live in or treat others in any particular way; and
  • There can be no “right” or “wrong” in any objective sense (everything can only be a matter of personal opinion because there’s no higher-than-human moral authority).

All of these things are granted by many atheist philosophers—this isn’t my personal “criticism” of an atheistic worldview; it’s the logical outworking of the implications of a godless world.

An honest person should rightly have doubts about a worldview that implies these conclusions.

They go against our most basic intuitions.

But the secular world only questions the religious worldview. Popular culture rarely raises the questions inherent in atheism. This leads kids to a false sense that doubt is specific to religion, or that doubt in itself is a cognitive warning of falsehood. It’s not. When we’re honest, doubt is part of being human. It’s part of how we process the world.

It shouldn’t surprise us at all that so many kids doubt Christianity today, given these and other cultural factors.

It just means we, as parents, undoubtedly have work to do.

If you’re interested in the subject of doubt, I highly recommend Bobby Conway’s book “Doubting Toward Faith” and Travis Dickinson’s blog, where he writes often on these subjects.

 


Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2O2W7cp

By Natasha Crain

I was tempted to not write anything at all about the same-sex marriage ruling.

So much has been written on this in the last week that I don’t see how one more person’s take could possibly be valuable [Note: this post first appeared in 2015, but it’s evergreen…. keep reading!].

And, valuable or not, no matter what I say, I won’t be fired up enough for some people and I’ll be too fired up for others.

But then I started getting messages from people asking how parents should respond; what they should tell their kids; what it means for the future. I realized that to not comment would be sheepish avoidance of a topic that’s important right now to so many readers of this blog.

So, for those who would like to know what I think the same-sex marriage ruling means for Christian parents, I humbly offer these thoughts.

Getting Back to Basics

I have many wonderful memories of lake fishing when I was a kid. I loved sitting on the shore watching my big red cork out on the water, anxiously awaiting the moment when it would suddenly plunge under—a sign that a fish had grabbed the bait.

But the cork can also go under if the hook suddenly gets stuck on an underwater rock. When that happens, you end up reeling in weeds instead of a fish. As a kid, that was horribly disheartening. I remember crying to my grandpa one day, “BUT THE CORK WENT UNDER! That means there should be a fish!”

He patiently explained that the cork only suggests what is going on below the water, but you can’t count on it. You have to reel in the line to see what the cork is actually tethered to: the desired fish or a pile of weeds. Ultimately, that’s what mattered… not that the cork made you think there was a fish.

Our kids’ view of homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage is a lot like this. There are a lot of parents really concerned right now about how to manage the cork—their kids’ view on these questions—but still not thinking deeply about how to ensure the cork is actually tethered to the right thing—a robust understanding of their faith.

How do I know that? Research shows that fewer than 1 in 10 families read the Bible or pray together outside of meal times in a given week and that only 12% of kids have regular conversations about faith with their mom.

Maybe if I flip those statistics around, you’ll feel the greater force of it: About 90% of Christian parents are not even studying the Bible with their kids, praying with them outside of meal times, or having conversations about faith.

Does it really matter what your kids think about same-sex marriage if you’re not putting in the work to tether that view to a deep understanding of their faith? How effective can you be in discussing individual issues if your kids don’t have a strong worldview foundation to guide that thinking?

My honest answer to the question, “What does the same-sex marriage ruling mean for parents?” is this: It’s just another wake-up call that Christian parents need to get “back to basics” if they want their kids to have a lasting faith in a challenging secular world.

What Are the Basics?

By “basics,” I don’t just mean the things that kids learn by default after a few Sunday school exposures—that God exists, that Jesus died for our sins and was resurrected, and the Bible is God’s word.

Those are just a bunch of assertions.

When you live in a world that is hostile to your assertions, the “basics” have to start looking very different. The basics now have to include (1) the evidence for your assertions, and (2) a deep understanding of why those assertions even matter (application).

Here are the six basics I believe every parent today should be working on with their kids.

  1. There is a good reason to believe God exists (evidence).

If someone said to your kids tomorrow, “There’s no evidence for God!” would your kids (1) know that strong evidence (outside the Bible) does exist, (2) understand that evidence, and (3) be able to articulate that evidence? (For example, see my posts on three of the most significant arguments for God’s existence: the cosmological argumentthe design argument, and the moral argument.)

If not, do you want to start working on that this week? Lee Strobel’s The Case For A Creator is a great introduction. There’s even a kids’ version. Get both and study together.

  1. If God exists, that matters (application).

Many people believe God exists but don’t have a deep understanding of why that fundamentally matters to our view of the world.

Here’s the thing. If a moral law-giving God exists, He is the objective standard of morality. The existence of divine laws means it’s possible to break them—to sin. That means our actions can be right or wrong, regardless of our personal opinions.

If God does not exist, there are no objective standards of morality (no divine law-giver). With no moral laws to break, sin is a meaningless concept. Nothing can be absolutely right or wrong, and everything is a matter of personal opinion.

The question of whether or not sin is a real concept is the foundational divider on moral issues, and at its most basic level, it’s a question of whether or not God exists. If a moral law-giving God exists, it matters tremendously, as sin becomes real, and sin becomes a problem that must be dealt with.

  1. There is a good reason to believe Jesus was resurrected (evidence).

If someone said to your kids tomorrow, “There’s no evidence that Jesus ever lived, and even if he did, science conclusively shows he could not have come back to life. In addition, it’s clear the resurrection was just a story copied from pagan myths?” would your kids be able to respond?

If not, do you want to start working on that this week? Read The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona to understand the historical evidence for the resurrection and discuss with your kids. Here is an article on the evidence for Jesus’ existence, and here is everything you need to know about pagan copycat claims.

  1. If Jesus was resurrected, that matters (application).

First Corinthians 15:14 says that if Christ has not been raised, our faith is in vain. It all comes down to that. Throw it all away if the resurrection didn’t actually happen. If it did, it confirmed that Jesus was God, and that means we need to hang on His every word and those words must define our lives (see number 5 for why we should trust the Bible as a reliable record of what He said).

In other words, if our creator actually lived on Earth, it should automatically be the most important thing in our lives to know Him and live for Him. I went to church every week growing up and believed that Jesus was resurrected, but really couldn’t have told you why that mattered to my life so much. Don’t take it for granted that your kids get this. Understanding why the resurrection matters changes everything.

  1. There is a good reason to believe the Bible is God’s word (evidence).

If someone said to your kids tomorrow, “The Bible is a book of fairy tales written by ancient people who didn’t know how else to explain their world…” would your kids be able to confidently explain why there is a good reason to believe it’s actually the reliable word of God?

If not, do you want to start working on that this week? Read Cold-Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace as a starting point to learn about the reliability of the Gospels specifically.

  1. If the Bible is God’s word, that matters (application).

If I had to name a single takeaway I’ve had from watching the online comments from the week, it would be this: Many Christians and nonbelievers have a profoundly limited understanding of the Bible.

I’m not a Bible scholar and have much to learn, but there are some basic things every Christian should know.

For example, how many times have you seen someone comment this week, “But God loves EVERYONE!”? (usually with 48 exclamation points and even more caps for emphasis). Of course God loves everyone. No one (except crazy fringe groups like Westboro Baptist) is saying otherwise. However, it’s really Bible 101 to understand that God loves everyone but hates sin…and that the Bible identifies what sins there are.

Or how about the nonbelievers posting verses from the Old Testament that only applied to the theocracy of Israel and asking why Christians don’t follow those laws (as if that’s a big “gotcha”)?

Or how about Christians saying “who are we to judge others?” Christians are to judge! (If you’re unclear about what the Bible says on judging others, here is a brief article.)

If the Bible is God’s word, it’s really, really important that kids know how to study and use it appropriately.

But how is that possible if 90% of Christian parents don’t study the Bible with their kids on a regular basis? What good does it do to point out verses on various aspects of morality if your kids have no passionate conviction that the Bible is actually God’s word?

In my opinion, those are the basics. Does it look like a lot? No one ever said basics are easy. They’re just fundamental.

But What About Same-Sex Marriage?

This post is not meant to trivialize the need to discuss same-sex marriage with your kids. It’s a big deal and has the potential to fundamentally change the social structure. It is something to discuss with your kids.

But how our kids develop their views on any question of moralitypremarital sex, adultery, pornography, or anything else—should be the outcome of what is already a deeply held Christian worldview. 

How you should talk to your kids about same sex-marriage is really no different than how you should be talking to them about any other moral issue…

There is a good reason to believe God exists.

If God exists, that matters.

There is a good reason to believe Jesus was resurrected.

If Jesus was resurrected, that matters.

There is a good reason to believe the Bible is God’s word.

If the Bible is God’s word, that matters.

 …And here’s what the Bible says about (x, y, and z).

…And here’s where our society (legally and/or culturally) differs with the biblical worldview.

If you’re jumping straight to what the Bible says on something—without having done the foundational work of the basics above—you’re managing the cork without caring if there’s actually a fish underneath.

Imagine how much our world would change if every Christian had a deep understanding of these “basics” and could engage nonbelievers at the foundational worldview level, rather than one cork issue at a time.

It can.

It starts with you: The parents raising the next generation.

May we all help our kids become true fishers of men.

What conversations have you had with your kids about the ruling? What struggles do you have in addressing it?

 


Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2GfBmJw

By Natasha Crain

Last year, for various reasons, our family had the opportunity to attend a few different churches. Each time, we debriefed on what happened in Sunday school and what the kids learned. As they recounted their experiences, I was struck by how similar they were to the stories I’ve heard from so many parents in the last few years while speaking at churches and conferences.

Parents who take the discipleship of their kids seriously are typically disappointed by the quality of their kids’ Sunday school program.

For example, I asked people on my blog’s Facebook page a few weeks ago how they felt about the kids’ program at their church. The typical response was, “It’s OK. Standard stuff. Bible stories. Snack. Some songs. Maybe a video. Nothing very deep.”

It’s well known that at least 60% of kids are leaving Christianity by their early 20s today, most turning to a secular worldview. There are a lot of factors that go into that, but today I want to talk about how Sunday school programs fail to be more influential. More specifically, I want to talk about how their failure to be more influential results in kids becoming a particular kind of secularist: the secular humanist (secular humanists are those who reject a belief in God but believe they have a responsibility to be “good” people).

To understand why this happens, we have to first understand the role of culture in influencing our kids’ beliefs.

Sunday Schools

Cultural Influence is Stronger Than You Think

I recently read Dr. John Marriott’s new book, A Recipe for Disaster: Four Ways Churches and Parents Prepare Individuals to Lose Their Faith and How they Can Instill a Faith That Endures. Marriott has spent a large portion of his academic career researching factors behind deconversions from Christianity to atheism. In his book, he describes how churches and parents inadvertently set kids up for faith crises by “over-preparing, under-preparing, ill-preparing, and painfully-preparing” them for the world.

Marriott’s chapter on under-preparation and how churches and parents often fail to appreciate the power of culture is especially powerful. It sheds much light on why the church experience is so important for kids—and why it so often doesn’t have the impact it should. I can’t do full justice to Marriott’s work and insights here, but I want to highlight a key point from that chapter as it relates to my current topic.

Marriott defines culture as “a comprehensive, shared set of largely subconscious assumptions and values of a group that are the product of both history and institutions, and which constitutes for them a social ‘reality.’ It is the space in which we live and move and have our being. As such, it has incredible power to shape the kind of people we are and what we accept as reasonable and moral” (emphasis mine).

We generally assume that what we believe is simply what is most rational, as determined by our cognitive abilities. As Marriott points out, however, that is only part of the story. He explains, “Ideas do not originate, seem reasonable, and find acceptance in a vacuum; they do so within social settings and conditions that make them seem either plausible or not. But, and this is crucial, the role of culture in influencing claims as plausible or rational is subversive. By that, I mean that the plausibility and rationality of claims is felt, not apprehended cognitively. Culture does its formative work at the affective level of the gut, not the intellectual level of the head” (emphasis mine—more on those words in a minute).

What’s the implication here? When a society buys into a given interpretation of the world, it legitimizes that interpretation, and it does so at the deepest gut level, despite what your own thinking may otherwise tell you. Consider Europe in the middle ages, for example. Nearly everyone held a Christian worldview. The church played a role in every part of life and every level of society, including the economic, social, intellectual, and cultural lives of all Europeans. The prevalence of the Christian worldview in culture reinforced its rationality. If the medieval church didn’t do a good job of explaining to people why they should believe Christianity is true, it wasn’t as critical for justifying their beliefs—those beliefs were already legitimized by culture.

Today, however, it’s secularism that is legitimized by culture. Belief in the supernatural—that anything beyond the natural world exists—can no longer lean on society’s acceptance for its plausibility. Culture now shapes our kids’ gut-level reaction to God in a negative way.

It’s up to the church and parents to offer an even stronger response.

Where Sunday Schools Go Wrong

If you’re familiar with my writing at all, you know that I’m constantly beating the drum of how parents have the primary responsibility for their kids’ discipleship. None of this is to suggest I now think that falls to the church.

But the church has a tremendous opportunity to come alongside parents and be an alternative culture that reshapes our kids’ gut-level reaction to a supernatural worldview in a positive way.

As I said at the beginning of the post, research demonstrates this isn’t happening. Sunday schools are doing very little to offer a strong response to counter the culture narrative, and what they are doing is actively contributing to kids walking away to secular humanism.

While much could be said as to how that happens, I want to focus on four problematic themes I’ve personally seen in churches, and that I’ve inferred from my conversations with other parents about the Sunday school programs in their churches. Of course, this is a generalization. There are certainly Sunday schools out there that don’t match this profile, or only do so to a mild degree. But I’ve found these to be common problems.

  1. Lessons focus on character development without thoughtful ties to theism (a belief in God).

The predominant message kids get in many Sunday schools is that they should be good people. They should love others. They should forgive. They should share. They should give to others.

That’s nice. I want my kids to do all those things.

But there are critically important questions, given the competing secular narrative, that are rarely discussed, like:

  • Why is it that we can call anything good? If God didn’t exist, there would be no objective basis for calling anything good or bad. Everything would be a matter of opinion because there would be no higher-than-human moral authority.
  • Why should we be good people? If God didn’t exist, there would be no objective reason why anyone should live in any particular way. The word should imply a moral obligation that can’t logically exist in an atheistic world.
  • What evidence is there that God even exists?

No, these aren’t philosophical questions kids can’t understand. In Talking with Your Kids about God, I provide conversation guides for these and many related topics that are being used with kids as young as first grade. It’s not that it’s not possible; it’s that the church hasn’t woken up to the necessity. It’s easier to teach a lesson on being a helpful friend.

Many of these church kids will grow up to maintain the value of being “good,” but not understand how the existence of God is necessary to define that (nor understand why there’s a good reason to believe He exists).

  1. There’s not enough emphasis on understanding the identity of Jesus and why it matters.

Secular humanists often appreciate Jesus as a “good moral teacher” in a way that irreligious people without a Christian background do not. And if you listen to the average Sunday school lesson, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that was the basic church message as well. But whether Jesus was God makes all the difference in the world.

With the culture saying He was only a good moral teacher, Sunday schools should be responding by helping kids answer questions like:

  • Did Jesus really claim to be God?
  • Who did the disciples think Jesus was?
  • Why did people around Jesus conclude He wasn’t “just” a good moral teacher, as so many people believe today?
  • What difference does it make if Jesus was God incarnate or just a good moral teacher?

By not addressing these deeper questions, Sunday schools prepare kids to appreciate Jesus’s moral teachings but also to drop their vague belief in his divinity once the culture becomes the stronger narrative. Once again, we end up with secular humanism.

  1. Bible teaching is limited to what’s in the Bible, and rarely addresses questions about the Bible.

Kids hear all about amazing biblical miracles in church, then go into a world that says those miracles aren’t possible.

Repeat.

What are they to take from that intellectual tug-of-war?

If the Bible is going to be taken seriously, Sunday schools can’t just keep retelling stories. They have to address why there’s a reason to believe those stories are actually true. In a world that says the Bible is a book of fairy tales, Sunday schools should proactively be answering questions like:

  • How were the books of the Bible selected?
  • Why were books left out of the Bible?
  • How do we know we can trust the Bible’s authors?
  • How do we know the Bible we have today says what the authors originally wrote?
  • Does the Bible have errors and contradictions?

(If you’re not sure how to answer these, they are all chapters in Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side.)

Without this knowledge, kids can learn to appreciate secular humanist values like courage through David, leadership through Moses, or self-sacrifice through Jesus, but they won’t have any reason to conclude the Bible is a true telling of reality that’s authoritative for their lives. The stories they hear each week will become just one more source of literary moral inspiration for a secular humanist.

  1. Churches aren’t supporting parents enough in discipleship, so parents end up focusing on raising “nice” kids.

Something I consistently hear from parents is that the kids in their child’s Sunday school can be just as negative of an influence as kids outside the church. I’m not talking about things that would be natural for all kids to struggle with (general sinfulness), but things that you might expect to be different with church-going families. For example, it’s common that kids in Sunday school are now telling others in class that the Bible isn’t true or that believing in God is stupid.

In many cases, this is because parents—even those with deep faith themselves—don’t know how to equip their own kids for today’s world. The culture has already done its work at the gut level, the parents send their kids to Sunday school hoping to counter that, the Sunday school isn’t up to the task (for reasons already discussed), and the church ends up looking like the outside culture—a place filled with kids who adhere to a secular worldview, consciously or not.

It’s a vicious cycle. And few churches are working to equip parents with the understanding they need to respond faithfully to culture at home. Meanwhile, parents do what’s easier and focus on raising kids with the kinds of “good values” any secular humanist would be proud of. Those kids eventually discard Christianity in favor of simply being “good without God.”

The church and parents lose the culture war together.

Last year, a team and I started a ministry to change that: Grassroots Apologetics for Parents (GAP). GAP works with local churches to launch and host chapters that equip parents with a deeper understanding of the Christian worldview and apologetics. Chapters complete two 10- to 12-week studies each year. Dozens of pilot chapters launched in the fall or are launching this Spring. Click here to learn more about bringing GAP to your church—we would love to have you part of this movement.

It’s going to take a lot for the church to catch up to the impact of culture. But it can be done. Just as parents and the church can lose the culture war together, we can win the culture war together. It starts with the realization that the battle is happening whether we want to fight or not. The choice is then ours: Prepare and engage, or keep giving kids goldfish and playing games each Sunday.

If you’re interested in curricula designed to take kids to this deeper level in churches and private schools, check out Foundation Worldview Curriculum and Deep Roots Bible Curriculum.

 


Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2Rr1wPt

By Michael Sherrard

Time and time again, I hear the story of one who has left their belief in God in the bin of their childhood memories alongside Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. And more often than not, I’m given one reason that is quite strange. Well, it’s not strange to me anymore because of how often I’m given this answer. Too often, I have people tell me that the reason they do not believe in God anymore is because no one ever let them ask a question.

How Not Letting Your Children Ask a Question Leads Them to Atheism

Just recently a friend of mine had an old college friend who is an atheist find him on Facebook. The old college buddy sent my friend a nice message that said, “I know we had our differences, but I’ve always admired you and appreciated the respectful conversations we had.”

“It was strange to the get the note,” my friend told me. “Too random to not consider that maybe the Lord was orchestrating something here.”

So my friend kept the conversation going, and at one point he asked him, “What is your biggest objection to the existence of God today?”

His friend’s answer is a sad indictment on the state of many churches. He said, “No one would let me ask a question.”

The friend went on to explain how in High School he started to have some questions, and so he brought them to his pastor and other church leaders. And rather than acceptance and a healthy conversation he was practically shown the door. He was told on more than one occasion that believers don’t ask these questions. They just trust God and have faith. He concluded that his questions didn’t have answers and that Christianity is a fable.

This is not a unique story. I hear this all the time.

How many of you have heard or even said yourself, “If we had answers then we wouldn’t need to have faith.” But Jesus welcomed skeptics and questioners and gave them answers and so should we. If we do not, we will affirm the doubts that cause questions and send our children to atheism.

But we are on the side of truth and have nothing to fear. We need to encourage questions and welcome the questioner. So what can we do to encourage and allow teenagers to ask questions so that they don’t have to just ask Siri or Google, or worse, decide that there are no answers to their questions and abandon their belief in God?

There are three things we can do to create an environment that allows teenagers to ask questions.

First, we build relationships. Many articles and surveys are showing that the younger generations want community. They want relationships with adults. And it is our responsibility to create them. It is the burden of the older generations to build bridges to the younger ones. We need to de-segregate the generations in the church. Teenagers need to know people that have answers and they need to trust them enough to be able to ask a question.

Second, respond to the questioner, not just the question. Teenagers and all people for that matter use questions for purposes other than getting an answer. Sometimes they ask a question to rattle you. Sometimes they ask a question to get to know you. Sometimes they ask a question to test the waters so to speak. Your response will often tell them more than your answer. So control your facial expressions, anticipate as many scenarios as you can, and get in the habit of affirming questions by saying things like, “That’s a great question,” “I’ve wondered that myself” or “That is the right question to be asking.”

Third, ask questions yourself. Get teenagers thinking about important things while they are in a safe environment. Don’t let the first time they hear a question regarding the reliability of scripture be in the classroom of a professor who wants to convert your child to naturalism. My goal is to ask my children the questions I know they will have before they have them. And I make it a point to tell my children to never stop asking questions. “The important thing is to never stop questioning” is probably what my kids are going put on my grave marker.

I had such a proud moment the other day. My six-year-old daughter was jumping on the trampoline, and we were talking about taking care of other people. Something happened at school that day, and it was a natural opportunity to talk about protecting the weak and how we always need to be nice and invite other kids to play.

At one point I said, “Sherrard’s always…” and I waited for her to finish. I was expecting her to say, “take care of those weaker than us.” But she blurted out, “Ask Questions!” I smiled very big and slept very good that night.

There does not exist a question for which there is not a good answer. So welcome the questioner and find an answer to their question. Do not be afraid of not knowing everything and being asked a question that you can’t answer. There are countless books and resources. And there are organizations like Ratio Christi that can help train you and point you to the resources that can help you along the way. And there is always me. Always feel free to reach out for guidance or support. I like to do more than write.

 


Michael C. Sherrard is a pastor, a writer, and a speaker. Booking info and such can be found at michaelcsherrard.com.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2VGJ2Zw

By Luke Nix

Introduction

Several years ago, cold-case homicide detective J. Warner Wallace wrote the book “God’s Crime Scene” where he details his investigation, as an atheist, into the evidence for God’s existence. In the book, he explains that investigating the universe for an outside cause is quite similar to the investigation of a death scene. If the evidence at the scene can be explained by “staying in the room,” then an outside cause (murder) can be reasonably removed. Likewise, if all the evidence within the universe can be explained by “staying in the room” of the universe, then an outside cause (God) is not a reasonable conclusion. In both cases, though, when evidence requires an outside cause, then the conclusion cannot be avoided. You can read my chapter-by-chapter review of “God’s Crime Scene” here.

Book Review God's Crime Scene for Kids

God’s Crime Scene” is the second book in a trilogy that includes “Cold-Case Christianity” and “Forensic Faith.” Because of the popularity of this series, Wallace and his wife adapted the content of the books to a younger audience: kids! Today’s review is the second in the kids’ series: “God’s Crime Scene for Kids.

The Story

In this second story, the young cadets find themselves investigating a new mystery: the source and purpose of the contents of an old box found in one of the cadets’ attic. Detective Jeffries takes the cadets through a new series of investigative principles, giving them new tools to apply as they investigate. Detective Jeffries, like he did with the previous mystery of the skateboard, uses the principles to guide the cadets through an investigation of ultimate concern: the purpose and cause of the universe. The cadets use the contents of the box to determine if they must look outside the box for a cause or if the explanation exists in the box; likewise, they use the contents of the universe to determine if they must look outside the universe for its cause or if the universe is sufficient to explain its own contents. As the investigation into the box, its contents, and possible explanations progresses, Detective Jeffries asks the cadets eight specific questions about the universe’s contents and possible explanations:

  1. Was the universe an inside or outside job?
  2. Who or what is responsible for the universe’s being here?
  3. Does information require an author?
  4. Is there evidence of an artist?
  5. Are humans more than just the “stuff” of the universe
  6. Can humans really make choices?
  7. Is “right” and “wrong” more than just a matter of opinion?
  8. Can an all-powerful and all-loving God exist with the evil in this universe?

Just as in the first mystery, the cadets simultaneously build their case for the source and purpose of the contents of the old box and the same for the universe. As each question is asked and possible explanations are considered, the possible explanations are narrowed down until only one for each remains reasonable given the contents of box and the universe.

The Case-Maker’s Academy

The Wallaces designed the book to not just be read but to be interactive. They bring the kids into the story by providing the Case-Maker’s Academy online for the kids to follow along with the story’s cadets as they go through the investigations. Once completed, the kids receive their own certificate they can show to their friends.

Reviewer’s Thoughts

As with the first book in the series (Cold-Case Christianity for Kids), the Wallaces did another masterful job of taking the content of a more advanced book and presenting it in an entertaining and easily understandable way for our children. I can’t wait to get my kids into this book (really, the whole series). No doubt, this book will help spark many conversations about God and the universe, and the Wallaces made it easy to find answers, for even those beginning to become familiar with this material, by having the content follow the order of the original “parent’s” edition (God’s Crime Scene). Just as I highly recommended the first book, I highly recommend this one as well. Now, on to the third in the trilogy- Forensic Faith for Kids, but something tells me there is no need for you to wait for a review… just go get it!

 


Luke Nix holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and works as a Desktop Support Manager for a local precious metal exchange company in Oklahoma.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2rWOUAg

By Natasha Crain 

I’ve recently had a lot of people asking for recommendations for Christmas gift ideas, for both kids and adults, so I’ve put together this detailed list of my top picks! They are almost all books, but there are a few other ideas as well. Gift ideas for kids come first (mostly for the under 12 crowd, since that’s where my own kids are), followed by gift ideas for adults. Enjoy!

30 Christmas Gift Ideas for Christian Kids

Children’s Bibles and Bible Reading Tools

For kids not ready to read a complete Bible, children’s Bibles are a great starting point. They feature selected Bible accounts, a simplified narrative, and engaging pictures. The problem with many children’s Bibles, however, is that they include too little of the Bible (you’ll always get Noah’s Ark, but how about Nehemiah or Job?) and have overly simplified narratives that leave out important points. I’ve looked at lots, and lots of Bibles in this category and the following is my favorite by far:

 

60 Christmas Gift 1The Complete Illustrated Children’s Bible includes a much greater breadth of biblical accounts than most other children’s Bibles. I love that. The narratives themselves are simple and direct, so they are very accessible. At the same time, you won’t find them watered down in kiddie language as in many books. The illustrations are beautiful. This is almost 300 pages, and there’s nothing I’ve seen that even comes close to the quality here for younger kids. The website says this is targeted at 5- to 8-year-olds. (If you have a child 9+, don’t get a children’s Bible. It’s time to move up to learning to read a full Bible!)

 

60 Christmas Gift 2Exploring the Bible: A Bible Reading Plan for Kids isn’t a children’s Bible, but rather a Bible reading plan. Kids won’t read every word of the Bible using this, but it’s a solid selection that takes you beginning to end. Each day there are verses to read with a small box for them to answer a basic question about the reading. For kids who enjoy writing, this makes it more engaging than simply a list of passages to read. I’ll be honest and say I got this for my 9-year-old twins last Christmas and they didn’t get too far with it despite liking the concept and presentation. But I am recommending it because it’s a unique book that would work really well if the parent is committed to focusing on using it as the primary Bible reading tool for the year.

 

60 Christmas Gift 3Bible Infographics for Kids is a 50-page book with beautifully designed spreads that present the Bible in infographic form! My 10-year-old son read through this in a day and loved it. Periodically he comes up with some kind of Bible fact that he learned from reading this, so it really stuck with him. It’s an engaging presentation for any kid, but I especially want to highlight this for parents who may have a child who really resists Bible reading. You certainly aren’t reading the actual Bible with this book, but it can be a stepping stone with it’s appealing visual design to get your less-than-focused elementary age boy to sit down and look at the biblical story through different eyes. I think this book is seriously undermarketed, as I have never heard anyone talk about it. I would never have heard of it myself had the publisher not sent me a copy. It would make an excellent gift and is very unique!

Children’s Devotionals (12 & Under)

I am extremely picky about devotionals. I can spend the whole afternoon at a Christian bookstore taking them off the shelf, reading a few selections, and deciding to put them back because 1) they are too simple/watered down, 2) they are theologically not even quite right, or 3) they are focused on character development (“here’s how to be a good person!”) far more than Jesus himself. I also want to be clear that I would never recommend devotionals as a substitute for reading the Bible with your kids. But, as a supplement that kids can read on their own or with you, they can be helpful…if they aren’t bad. With that in mind, here are a select few I have chosen and appreciated (note my kids are all 10 and under, so I, unfortunately, do not have recommendations yet for the teen crowd). I’m listing them in order from youngest to oldest audience.

 

60 Christmas Gift 4Hope for Each Day: 365 Devotions for Kids is listed as a devotional for 6- to 10-year-olds, but I would say it’s more for 4- to 8-year-olds (older kids need more meat than this provides). For the younger crowd, these are solid, theologically accurate devotions that get beyond the surface and are great discussion starters (not that that’s what you want before bed!).

 

60 Christmas Gift 5Grace for the Moment: 365 Devotions for Kids is another solid choice for younger kids. This one, too, is listed for 6- to 10-year-olds, but I would say it should skew a little younger (more like 5 to 8 or 9). These are short devotions that end with some questions for self-reflection. I liked that the book (in both design and content) is appropriate for boys or girls so you can use them for family time with multiple kids.

 

60 Christmas Gift 6Building Faith Block by Block [An Unofficial Minecraft Guide] is a devotional for boys who are Minecraft lovers. Each devotional features a Minecraft story and then applies it briefly to a Bible passage with some questions for reflection. Unlike the other devotionals, I did not evaluate this in depth before getting it. My son loves Minecraft, and I trust his judgment, so I decided to let him read and tell me what he thought of it. He really liked it but concluded it was heavy on the Minecraft and light on the biblical learning. Still, I wanted to include it here because if you have a boy who isn’t inclined toward devotionals but likes Minecraft (I bet there are many!), this could be a great way to begin getting them to engage more with the Bible. I’m shocked the website says it’s for kids 12 to 18. I would say 8 to 12.

 

60 Christmas Gift 7Indescribable: 100 Devotions about God & Science has 100 devotions for science-loving kids (boys or girls). They focus on amazing facts about God’s creation, and there’s some really interesting stuff in here! The whole idea is to help kids realize how powerful, intelligent, personal, and purposeful our Creator is. It’s also an attractive book, with cute illustrations throughout. As I’m sure some will be wondering, this book is mostly appropriate regardless of your view on the age of the Earth. However, there are a few devotionals that are specific to a young Earth view (e.g., a chapter on “Shooting down the Big Bang”).

 

60 Christmas Gift 8For Girls Like You: A Devotional for Tweens is a good choice for tween girls who are drawn more to girl-specific examples and a relational approach. While it’s not in depth, it’s theologically solid. My 10-year-old daughter, who sometimes has trouble holding interest to finish whole books, finished this one on her own with no prompting from me. If your daughter likes this one, Wynter Pitts has a second book which I would equally recommend, called You’re God’s Girl. There’s also a matching coloring book which would make a nice complementary gift!

 

60 Christmas Gift 9The One Year Everyday Devotions: Devotions to help you stand strong is a good choice for both boys and girls in the 9 to 12 age range. The readings are quite short, but they make some deep points and apply to everyday situations. If you have a girl who isn’t super “girly”, this is a perfect choice (no pink princesses here!).

Apologetics Books

Apologetics is the study of how we know Christianity is true. If you want to raise faithful kids in a challenging secular world, teaching apologetics is crucial. Raising your kids with this understanding ultimately must start with you (so see my book recommendations under the parents’ section below), but there are a few excellent apologetics books for kids under 12 as well. These should go hand in hand with all else you’re doing!

60 Christmas Gift 10 60 Christmas Gift 11 60 Christmas Gift 12

The most comprehensive set of books in this category is the trilogy by J. Warner Wallace. Wallace is a cold-case homicide detective and former atheist who became a Christian after applying detective methodologies to the investigation of biblical reliability. He has three adult books that investigate the truth of Christianity from a similar detective’s perspective: God’s Crime Scene (evidence for God’s existence), Cold-Case Christianity(evidence for Christianity specifically), and Forensic Faith (the necessity of having a faith based on good evidence). I recommend these all the time, and now he has excellent kids’ versions of the same books: Forensic Faith for KidsGod’s Crime Scene for Kids and Cold-Case Christianity for KidsThey are written for 8- to 12-year-olds and correspond to the chapter sequence of the adult versions so you can study together. Because they are written in a detective style, they are really engaging. These books are easy reads that are packed with value for 8- to 12-year-olds. There’s even a free website with corresponding videos and worksheets. I’d recommend getting all three, but if you start with just one, I’d go with Forensic Faith for Kids because it establishes the importance of apologetics before they dig deeper.

 

60 Christmas Gift 13You’re probably familiar with Lee Strobel’s best-selling book, Case for Christ. You may or may not know he has a whole series of similar books that make a case for the truth of Christianity from a journalist’s perspective, and great kids’ versions to go with them. Check out the following titles and see which might be of greatest interest to your 9- to 12-year olds: Case for Miracles for KidsCase for a Creator for Kids, Case for Christ for Kids, Case for Faith for Kids, and Case for Grace for Kids.

 

60 Christmas Gift 14 60 Christmas Gift 15 60 Christmas Gift 16

Melissa Cain Travis has written a trilogy of illustrated storybooks that explain key apologetics concepts through an engaging tale (to be read in a single setting). These are very cool because most books for 9- to 12-year-olds aren’t designed to be read in a single session. These are great for the family to read together and then discuss. Kids can then go back and read them on their own. The three books are: How Do We Know God is Really There?, How Do We Know God Created Life?, and How Do We Know Jesus is Alive?

60 Christmas Gift 17

If you have kids in the 5-8 age range, who aren’t ready for the books I just talked about, start here! The Picture Book Apologetics series talks about apologetics concepts at the most basic level, and have sweet, simple pictures to capture a young child’s imagination. Pig and the Accidental Oink! (Volume 1) introduces the cosmological argument (that the universe had to have a creator), Chameleon’s Can of Worms (Volume 2) introduces the problem with moral relativism (some things are not a matter of opinion!), Possums and the Empty Tomb (Volume 3) introduces evidence for the resurrection, Fox and the Hard Day helps kids understand the problem of evil, and Pooch and the Pearly Gates teaches kids about heaven and the new Earth. In addition to these story books, the authors have a kid’s book on logical fallacies (i.e., errors people make in reasoning, and how to think more critically). The content of this one would be more appropriate for kids 8+: Pitfalls: A Quick Guide to Identifying Logical Fallacies for Families.

60 Christmas Gift 20

What Am I?  is the story of a boy named Amare, his robot Bobo, and his little sister Nya. Amare makes a variety of things, like a tower and a cage, and asks his robot what he thinks. The robot always replies with a description of what those things are made of–“Excellent collection of colourful plastic parts.” Amare explains that they are made of the same parts, but they are made FOR very different things. He then explains all his inventions and what they are made FOR even though Bobo, as a robot, can only detect what they are made OF.  Eventually, Amare goes to his mom to ask what HE is made for and learns that if you want to find out what you were made for, you need to ask the one who made YOU. Amare and Nya go on to learn what God told us he made humans for. I LOVE that this book tackles the naturalistic worldview (that we’re nothing more than our physical parts) head-on at a level perfect for elementary age kids to understand. It’s a 30-page picture book and easy to read, yet will facilitate deep conversations.

Non-Book Gifts

While this post is focused on book gifts, there are a couple of awesome non-book gifts I would highly recommend.

60 Christmas Gift 21.jpgBear & Squirrel is a company that puts out a yearly prayer calendar. The images are amazingly adorable each month and every day tells you what to pray for! It’s such a great way to give kids ideas of how to pray in more diverse ways than “thank you for today.” We bought one for 2018 for all of our kids, and they loved them.

 

60 Christmas Gift 22I am constantly inspired by the amazing work that author Kristen Welch from We Are That Family does around the world to create jobs. Earlier this year I subscribed to her fair trade bracelet of the month club. For $15 each month you receive a beautiful handmade bracelet that empowers women in difficult economic (and other) circumstances. I have two daughters, so they take turns getting to have the bracelets that come. They look forward to receiving them every month and learning about the women who crafted them. This is an extremely meaningful gift that your daughter can receive throughout the year.

 

60 Christmas Gift 23We don’t watch a lot of videos, so this list is conspicuously missing recommendations in this area. However, I am absolutely crazy about Owlegories. There are six DVDs with a total of 18 episodes so far. Each episode is short, adorable, and actually quite funny (as in, makes an adult laugh with its clever humor). They teach great lessons about the Bible that get away from cliches and feature special messages at the end of each by a well-known Christian teacher such as Matt Chandler. My son AND daughters like these. They would make a wonderful stocking stuffer!

 

30 Christmas Gift Ideas for Christian Adults

Since almost all of my reading is on apologetics and theology, I’m going to focus these gift ideas on books in these areas. There are so many great books that can be recommended, but my goal here is to give one great idea for each type of gift recipient I list. Since this is recipient-based rather that category-based, I won’t include detailed descriptions as I did above. If you are looking for a gift for someone matching the description, just click over to Amazon to read more. In no particular order…

For both prayer warriors and those who struggle to pray: 

60 Christmas Gift 24

For those going through a difficult time caring for others:

60 Christmas Gift 25

For those who want (or need!) to begin learning about the reliability of the Bible (this is a FABULOUS new, short, and accessible book):

60 Christmas Gift 26

For newer Christians, or Christians who want to have a better understanding of how the whole biblical narrative fits together:

60 Christmas Gift 27

For Christians who want to better understand the evidence for the deity of Christ:

60 Christmas Gift 28

For Christians struggling with doubt in their faith:

60 Christmas Gift 29

For Christians interested in a theological and scientific critique of theistic evolution (the idea that God created everything through evolutionary processes):

60 Christmas Gift 30

For Christians who want (or need) to begin learning about the importance of apologetics for their faith:

60 Christmas Gift 31

For Christians who are interested in the intersection of culture and faith on topics of sexuality:

60 Christmas Gift 32

For Christians who are interested in a critique of the atheistic worldview and better understanding its logical implications:

60 Christmas Gift 33

For Christian parents who want to start learning apologetics so they can be better prepared to have deep conversations about faith with their kids of any age (yes–this is my own book!):

60 Christmas Gift 34

For Christian parents who want to start having conversations with their kids about the evidence for God’s existence, the relationship between God and science, the nature of God, and the logical implications of a Christian vs. atheistic worldview (my second book!):

60 Christmas Gift 35

For Christians who are struggling with or want to better understand the existence of evil and suffering:

60 Christmas Gift 36

For Christians who want to study the book of Psalms in a creative way (e.g., coloring and journaling):

60 Christmas Gift 37

For Christians who want a primer on basic theology:

60 Christmas Gift 38

For Christians who are passionate about apologetics and love meaty reference books (this is the recent complete update to the classic–it’s incredible!):

60 Christmas Gift 39

For Christians who have read everything you’ve heard of on apologetics and you want to find something probably off their radar (I randomly discovered this book a couple of months ago, and it was so enlightening, yet I’ve never seen anyone talking about it!):

60 Christmas Gift 40

For Christians interested in the topic of free will vs. God’s sovereignty from a non-Calvinistic view:

60 Christmas Gift 41

For Christians interested in Old Testament issues of violence, slavery, morality, etc.:

60 Christmas Gift 42

For Christians interested in understanding Islam:

60 Christmas Gift 43

For Christians who want to better understand the attributes of God:

60 Christmas Gift 44

For Christians who are interested in the intersection of faith and science (and how science supports faith):60 Christmas Gift 45

For Christians interested in the evidence for God’s supernatural involvement in the world:60 Christmas Gift 46

 

For Christians who enjoy a clever, edgy sense of humor and critiques of atheism:60 Christmas Gift 48

For Christians interested in early Christian distinctiveness in the Roman world:

60 Christmas Gift 49

For Christians who aren’t necessarily into apologetics but would enjoy reading answers to common tough questions asked by skeptics:60 Christmas Gift 50

For Christians interested in how modern scholars distort the Gospels:

60 Christmas Gift 51

For Christians going on or returning from short-term mission trips:

60 Christmas Gift 52

For Christians who have read basic books on the reliability of the Gospels and want to dig deeper:

60 Christmas Gift 53

For Christian women who struggle with perfectionism:

60 Christmas Gift 54

If you found this post helpful, please share with others!

 


Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2A0V0E4

By Mikel Del Rosario

How can we help our children understand evidence for the Christian faith?

When people ask me about apologetics for children, I think back to the time when my son was in kindergarten. A classmate would tease him at school by sarcastically asking, “Why do you still believe in the God thing?”

This confirmed my suspicion that it’s never too early to begin talking to your kids about what we believe and some of the basic evidence for Christian truth claims. Even children who don’t encounter skeptical friends at school can ask big questions about some of the most important things in life.

How prepared are we to explain key elements of the Christian worldview to kids in a way they can understand? It is so important for us to be able to contextualize apologetics for children. In this episode of the Table Podcast, I shared a Skype conversation with my friend Melissa Travis of Houston Baptist University (HBU) to talk about this very question.

We discussed how to use stories to explain the Christian worldview to children, focusing on her Young Defenders series of children’s books. These books would make great gifts for your kids, grandkids, or other young children in your life.

Explaining the Christian Worldview to Children

From Series: “The Table Podcast

 


Mikel Del Rosario helps Christians explain their faith with courage and compassion. He is a doctoral student in the New Testament department at Dallas Theological Seminary. Mikel teaches Christian Apologetics and World Religion at William Jessup University. He is the author of Accessible Apologetics and has published over 20 journal articles on apologetics and cultural engagement with his mentor, Dr. Darrell Bock. Mikel holds an M.A. in Christian Apologetics with highest honors from Biola University and a Master of Theology (Th.M) from Dallas Theological Seminary where he serves as Cultural Engagement Manager at the Hendricks Center and a host of the Table Podcast. Visit his Web site at ApologeticsGuy.com.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2SuuvxJ

By Natasha Crain 

A reader of this blog posed this question on the Facebook page because her boys –ages 10, 12 and 15– are uninterested in church. It’s a very important question that I wanted to address with this post.

At the risk of trivializing the question itself, I’m going to offer a brief rationale for my own answer and then provide an alternative question which I think is more at the heart of the issue.

A home is like a microcosm of society. There are laws (requirements for living there) and freedoms (options you have while living there). Each society/family sets its own laws based on what it feels is most important for its members. The laws a society/family chooses to reflect its core values. As Christian parents, a core value to impart to kids should be that God comes first in our lives. Part of acknowledging that is going to church each week. By classifying church attendance as a law and not a freedom, we are making a statement that God’s priority is a core value in our home. Parents generally don’t care whether a child wants an education or not in determining that going to school is a household “law”; likewise, parents shouldn’t care whether a child is interested in faith or not in determining that going to church is a “law.” Christian parents should not feel church is any different than any other parental choice when declaring, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).

That said, required church attendance has to be a rule made for the reason stated here (a statement about family priorities) and not because the parents assume it means children will become believers from it, that they will come to salvation from it or that they will even be spiritually changed by it. Church is not a spiritual “cure-all.” If your children don’t want to go to church, there is a much more important question to ask:

WHY don’t your children want to go to church?

The answer to this question is your gateway to impacting the spiritual life of your kids much more than how you go about physically getting them to church.

Perhaps an immediate answer comes to mind. “They just want to do other things,” or, “They think it’s boring.” These answers, however, are really symptomatic of a child’s underlying beliefs about God and his/her relationship to God. Those beliefs must be identified.

I would break underlying beliefs into two categories: 1) They don’t believe in God or 2) They believe in God but don’t think church is important.

1. They don’t believe in God.

Perhaps your child is saying “I want to stay home and play video games”  but what he/she really means is “I don’t really believe all this God stuff,” and doesn’t want to tell you (maybe he/she hasn’t even identified that consciously yet).  What they need most is to have conversations with you about God. They need to know it’s OK to doubt, and that you are willing to talk to them about those doubts.  It might be intimidating to be the one who has to present the case for God’s existence, but if you aren’t going to be that person in your child’s life, who will?

(Need help teaching your kids why there is good reason to believe God exists and Christianity is true? Check out my new book, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith.)

2. They believe in God but don’t think church is important.

It’s not enough to say that church is unimportant – again, we have to understand the underlying premise to address the spiritual issue. Consider these three possibilities:

a. I believe in God, but I don’t believe He’s really involved in my life (therefore church doesn’t matter). 

Theologically, this is referred to as “Deism” – the belief that there is a God, and He probably set this world in motion but isn’t really involved with the world or our personal lives today. From a spiritual standpoint, this isn’t much different than not believing in God in the first place. Even if your child is saying, “Yes, I believe in God, I just don’t want to go to church… “don’t take it at face value. What does your child believe about God? You might be surprised what you find out; it might not be much different than not believing in God at all (see the first category above).

b. I believe in God and believe he cares about my life, but I don’t believe he cares if we go to church.

The reasons Christians should go to church would be the topic for a whole book, but if I could point to a single reason, it would be that Jesus set the example for us. Luke 4:16 says (about Jesus), “…on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom” (emphasis added). If Jesus thought weekly church was important, so should we. Are we in a position to decide that church is not necessary for us when it was necessary for Jesus?

Without going into significant detail on this giant sub-topic, it must be addressed here that church is first and foremost for God (yes, the Bible is clear God wants us to worship). Most people who have the attitude that “God doesn’t care about church” are seeing the value of church in terms of what it gives to them. While church is absolutely necessary for us as well in terms of spiritual growth and fellowship with other believers (Hebrews 10:25, 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Thessalonians 5:11, James 5:16, Acts 2:42, Romans 12:5), church must be seen as being for God’s glory. Timothy Keller, in his book, “The Reason for God,” eloquently addresses this:

“But wait,” you say. “On nearly every page of the Bible God calls us to glorify, praise, and serve him. How can you say he doesn’t seek his own glory?” Yes, he does ask us to obey him unconditionally, to glorify, praise, and center our lives around him. But now, I hope, you finally see why he does that. He wants our joy! He has infinite happiness not through self-centeredness, but through self-giving, other-centered love. And the only way we, who have been created in his image, can have this same joy, is if we center our entire lives around him instead of ourselves.

c. I believe in God, believe he cares about my life, and believe he wants me to go to church, but I don’t want to go to this church because (any number of reasons).

There may be a very real reason why your children want to avoid your specific church. Maybe they don’t fit in with the other kids; maybe there is a disconnect between them and the pastor or youth leader; maybe there are too few other kids their age, and they feel isolated; the reasons are infinite. If it’s a legitimate, overarching issue, it would be reasonable to seek another church out of respect for the faith development of your kids.

The bottom line is this: The underlying reason for kids not wanting to go to church shouldn’t change your “law” that they have to go, but that reason should be searched for in order to best determine how to guide them spiritually at home.

What do you think? Should you force kids to go to church? Is there an age at which they should have a “say” in the matter?

 


Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2QeYqfG

By Natasha Crain

“The light of common sense, thrown on the stories of making snakes out of rods, of the Red Sea dividing itself, of Christ’s making wine from water, curing blind men by rubbing spit in their eyes, walking on water, the story of the flood, God’s making the world in six days, of making a woman from Adam’s rib and all the mythical, miraculous stories of the Bible would cause any sensible man to question the veracity of the whole book, including all the stories of the gods, spirits, angels, devils, and the things that common sense tells us are not true.”

This quote, from a website devoted to atheism, is similar to so many I have received from skeptics over the years. The basic claim is this: Christianity defies common sense.

In other words, the very existence of miracle claims in the Bible immediately discredits it.

While there certainly are many Christians and skeptics engaging in deeper, more scientific or philosophical battles online, simplistic appeals to common sense are the down-and-dirty weapons often hurled through social media. You don’t need to know one thing about logic, theology, history, biblical scholarship, philosophy, or science to cobble together an emotionally impactful statement that can make someone feel utterly stupid for what they believe. That’s why appeals to common sense can be so powerful: They’re easy and effective. The general message is that what Christians believe is so ridiculous, anyone with just a little common sense can see it’s not true.

Common sense is presented as a one-size-fits-all bulldozer against faith.

And if your kids haven’t been trained to think critically about the nature of miracles, their faith will be easily crushed by that bulldozer.

Here’s a 10-step framework to help your kids think well about this subject. Each point builds on the last. You can easily use these brief explanations to discuss a point each day on the way to school or at the dinner table.

  1. Just because something sounds crazy, that doesn’t mean it’s false.

This is a basic starting point for discussion. A practical example is that we live on a big rock that jets around the sun at an average speed of 66,600 mph and we don’t feel a thing. If our test for truth is what happens to make sense to us, we’ll indiscriminately reject almost any idea that strikes us as weird. Instead, we need to look at what evidence there is for the truth of any claim.

  1. People use the word miracle in a lot of different ways, so it’s important to define it as it relates to biblical claims.

Philosophers can argue all day about the most appropriate definition of a miracle, but for all intents and purposes, a good working definition is, “An extraordinary event with a supernatural cause.” This is very different than the colloquial ways in which people sometimes use the word. For example, we might say that it’s a “miracle” our kids cleaned their room. But when we’re talking about the kinds of miracle accounts found in the Bible, we need to be very clear that we are specifically talking about claims that God (a supernatural cause) intervened in the world in an extraordinary way.

  1. If God doesn’t exist, miracles are NOT possible.

Given the definition of a miracle, if nothing exists beyond nature—nothing supernatural exists—then miracles aren’t possible. This is where Christians can find common ground with skeptics. When skeptics say miracles aren’t possible, it’s typically because they are assuming God doesn’t exist. We can simply reply, “If nothing (such as God) exists beyond nature, and a miracle is something with a cause from beyond nature, then I agree with you! Miracles by definition wouldn’t be possible. But you’re assuming nothing supernatural exists.”

  1. If God does exist, miracles ARE possible.

The flip side of the logic we just saw in point 3 is that if a supernatural being such as God does exist, then miracles are—once again, by definition—possible. God can choose to intervene in His creation in any way He sees fit.

Note that in points 3 and 4, we’re only talking about logic. We haven’t even made any claims about whether or not God actually exists. This logical framework is extremely important for kids to understand. I began teaching this thinking to my kids when they were in kindergarten: If God exists, miracles are possible. If God doesn’t exist, miracles are not possible.

  1. The possibility of miracles is, therefore, tied to the evidence for God’s existence.

We can now see from the last two points that the question of whether or not miracles are possible is ultimately a question of the evidence for God’s existence. If there’s good reason to believe God exists, there’s good reason to believe miracles are possible.

Explaining the pieces of evidence for God’s existence is beyond the scope of this post, which is meant to give a broader framework for thinking through the question of miracles. For an explanation of key pieces of evidence for God’s existence and conversation guides to use with your kids, see my book Talking with Your Kids about God.

  1. Believing that miracles are possible doesn’t mean Christians believe every miracle claim that is made.

Skeptics sometimes think that Christians are willing to believe anything is a miracle if we believe miracles are even possible, so this point bears mentioning. When we acknowledge that if God exists, miracles are possible, we’re not saying we believe every miracle claim people make. If we did, we would be gullible. We have to look at the evidence to determine if there’s good reason to believe a miracle actually happened in any given case.

  1. The truth of Christianity depends on the truth of ONE miracle.

If we need to test miracle claims, as we just discussed, then we need to be really clear on which miracle claims ultimately have bearing on the truth of Christianity. People often get caught up in discussing modern day miracles (or lack thereof), but there is only one miracle claim that is the ultimate test for the truth of Christianity: the resurrection. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:14, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain.”

  1. There is strong historical evidence for the resurrection.

Now that we’ve established the miracle claim we need to test, we need to consider the evidence for it. There are several historical facts surrounding the resurrection that nearly all scholars agree on (both Christians and skeptics)—for example, that Jesus died by crucifixion, that the disciples at least believed Jesus rose and appeared to them, that the church persecutor Paul was suddenly changed, and that Jesus’s own skeptical brother James was suddenly changed as well. The pertinent question is, What is the best explanation for these facts?

I discuss the competing theories and why a supernatural resurrection best fits the facts in chapters 21–23 of Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side. For a deeper book-length treatment of the topic, see The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona.

  1. There is strong evidence for the reliability of the New Testament.

The Gospels describe many miracle accounts. If we have good evidence that the Gospel writers were credible eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus, we have good evidence of such miracles—and that’s exactly what we find. Again, I give an introduction to this subject in chapters 25–28 of Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side, but for a deeper book-length treatment, see Cold-Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace (there is also a kid’s version available for 8 – 12-year-olds!).

For those who have already read Cold-Case Christianity, an excellent book that looks at New Testament reliability from another angle is Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts by Lydia McGrew.

  1. Jesus validated the truth of the Old Testament.

Finally, you may be wondering about the many Old Testament miracle accounts—what about talking animals, burning bushes, and walls falling around Jericho, for example?

If we’ve established points 8 and 9, we can also establish the veracity of the Old Testament as a whole because Jesus Himself validated it. Jesus:

  • appealed to the Old Testament as a source of authority (Matthew 4:4,7,10);
  • acknowledged the need to correctly understand Scripture (Matthew 22:29);
  • referenced the existence of Old Testament persons such as Adam and Eve (Matthew 19:4–6), Noah (Matthew 24:37–38), and Jonah (Matthew 12:40);
  • said He did not come to abolish the “Law or Prophets” (a term for the Scriptures at the time; Matthew 5:7); and
  • taught how the Old Testament bears witness to Himself (Luke 24:27).

The bottom line is that miracle accounts simply don’t automatically discredit the Bible. Anyone who thinks they do hasn’t thought critically about the subject. Please help your kids understand this, so they’re prepared the next time someone tries to make them feel like a fool by making simplistic appeals to “common sense.”

 


Natasha Crain is a blogger, author, and national speaker who is passionate about equipping Christian parents to raise their kids with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend their faith in an increasingly secular world. She is the author of two apologetics books for parents: Talking with Your Kids about God (2017) and Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side (2016). Natasha has an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA and a certificate in Christian apologetics from Biola University. A former marketing executive and adjunct professor, she lives in Southern California with her husband and three children.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2F81A0E

By Natasha Crain

I grew up in a smallish town in Arizona (about 25,000 people at the time). Almost everyone I knew fit into one of four buckets: 1) committed Christians, 2) nominal Christians, 3) those who didn’t call themselves Christians but accepted “Judeo-Christian” values, and 4) Mormons.

In my view of the world at the time, believing in God—and being a Christian specifically—was the default for most people. There were certainly a few kids who fell into other buckets (atheist or New Age), but they were the exception; there was something different about them.

My beliefs were “normal.”

Oh, how things have changed.

According to Pew Forum research on the religious landscape of America, Christians statistically are still the majority. But those statistics are highly misleading because religious categorization is based on self-identification, and the “Christian” category includes a wide range of beliefs and commitment levels.

The Pew Forum, however, just released an eye-opening new method of categorizing America’s religious beliefs, and it reveals a more realistic picture:

  • Less than 40% of Americans are “highly religious” (seriously committed to their faith; this includes non-Christian religions such as Judaism and Islam).
  • About a quarter of the “highly religious” are what researchers call “diversely devout,” meaning they mostly believe in the God of the Bible but hold all kinds of views inconsistent with Christianity, such as reincarnation.

From the publicly available data, I don’t see a way to break down the remaining 30% of highly religious people into those who hold beliefs consistent with historic Christianity, so for our current purpose, we’ll just have to say that committed Christians represent some portion of that 30%.

In other words, a minority.

I’ve noticed lately that my subconscious assumption that this has become the case has had a number of implications for how I talk with my kids. For example, some phrases that have regularly worked their way into our daily conversations are “the world tells us,” or “the world would like us to think,” or “the way the world is.” In other words, I find myself constantly placing an emphasis on making sure my kids know that what they are learning to be true about reality is literally opposite of what the world around them—the majority—believes.

This is so different than how I—and many of you—grew up. We were part of a pack. We moved along without having to think much about our beliefs versus those of “the world.” Our parents didn’t have to coach us on why we were so very different… because we weren’t very different. Sure, there were probably some great differences between our homes in how prominently faith actually played out, but we didn’t readily see that on the playground. We didn’t have social media to make the differences abundantly clear. We didn’t have the internet to give us access to the many who are hostile toward our beliefs.

In a world where your beliefs will constantly rub up against opposing views, however, you need parents who will give it to you straight:

Our entire view of reality is unlike the view most others have. We. Are. Different. And that will affect your life in profound ways.

I don’t say this as a mere suggestion that this is a conversation we should have with our kids at some point. I say this believing it’s a critical part of how we approach our parenting every single day.

It has to become a way of life.

Here’s why. When you raise your kids to understand they have a minority worldview, it does three important things:

1. It sets expectations.

This is, perhaps, the most important function of all.

If kids expect that their views will be like those of others, they will be shocked when they consistently see how different they actually are.

If kids expect that holding a minority worldview won’t result in sometimes being treated poorly by others, they will be wounded by what they weren’t prepared for.

If kids expect that divergent worldviews won’t lead to heated debates about how our society should best function, they will be frustrated by lack of agreement between Christians and nonbelievers.

But when we consistently help them understand that their worldview will clash frequently with the world around them, they will begin to have very different expectations that lead to healthier outcomes.

They will expect to be different, and not be surprised when they don’t fit in.

They will expect that the world will hate them for their beliefs, and understand that has always been part of what it means to be a Christian (John 15:18).

They will expect that divergent worldviews will often affect their relationships with others, and be motivated to learn how to navigate those differences with both truth and love.

Action point: Find ways to regularly compare and contrast what others believe and what Christians believe. Make sure your kids understand how different their beliefs are, and, importantly, the implications of that—it affects how we see where we came from, why we’re here, how to live while we’re here, and where we’re going. It’s no small matter. You can point this out in movies, song lyrics, news stories, things that friends say, things that other parents say, signs you see, billboards, messages on clothing, and much more.

2. It allows us to emphasize that different isn’t (necessarily) wrong.

Humans have a tendency to assume that there is truth in numbers. My twins are in fourth grade and are getting to the age where they notice what their peers do a lot more. They tell me, for example, that everyone else has their own phone, that everyone else gets to go to sleepovers, and that everyone else plays Fortnite. They assume that if the majority gets to do something, then that must be what’s right.

Similarly, when kids eventually see that most people believe something very different about reality than what they do, it’s natural to wonder if their minority view must be wrong. Here’s the conversation we should be having with our kids from the time they are very little: different doesn’t mean wrong.

It doesn’t necessarily mean right, either.

The question we must plant firmly in our kids’ hearts and minds is, What is true? The truth about reality isn’t a popularity contest. It’s a question of which worldview is the best explanation for the world around us.

Action point:  Find ways to regularly compare and contrast why others believe what they do and why Christians believe what we do. If we don’t want our kids to assume that different is wrong, they need to have good reason to believe that their different view is right. They need to hear regularly from their parents that Christianity is a worldview based on evidence, and that faith is not blind. If you have kids in the 8-12 range, J. Warner Wallace has three kids books that are amazing for helping them start to think evidentially about their faith: Cold-Case Christianity for Kids,God’s Crime Scene for Kidsand Forensic Faith for Kids (this one JUST came out this month and is a perfect place to start). Even if your kids are a little younger, they can benefit tremendously from reading these with you. My 7-year-old is reading Forensic Faith for Kids and is super excited about doing the corresponding worksheets and watching the videos available for free at www.casemakersacademy.com/forensic-faith/. Honestly, these books should be required reading for every kid in this age range.

3. It fosters worldview vigilance.

Talking regularly about “the world” versus Christianity leads kids to constantly have a worldview radar up. Because they expect to constantly see ideas that clash with the Christian worldview, they become vigilant about sorting everything they see into “consistent with Christianity” or “inconsistent with Christianity.” This is extraordinarily important today, as kids so often quietly absorb secular views into their thinking without even realizing it. But the more they know that most of what they will see and hear will not fit with Christianity, the more they learn to vigilantly separate Christian ideas from others.

Action point:  Encourage your kids to spot the “secular wisdom” all around them. These examples are everywhere but they are, of course, never marked with worldview labels. The more you point out examples, the more kids learn to think critically. When this becomes a habit in your family, your kids will see it on their own and show you examples. We were at a store the other day and my 9-year-old son came around the aisle carrying this sign:

All you need is love

He looked at me with a big, disappointed sigh and said, “Mommy. Look. Love is all you need.”

He recognized this as bad secular wisdom as soon as he saw it. I asked him to explain what’s wrong with it, and he said, “there’s no moral setting.” As I pushed him to explain what he meant, he said there’s no context for making this statement. If God doesn’t exist, then what love means is just a matter of personal opinion—and no one has the authority to state that anything is all you need. I concurred and (gently) hit him on the head, saying, “I could claim that love means hitting people on the head in that case!” But if God exists, then He defines what love is. When we follow the greatest commandment—to love God—it informs what it means to follow the second commandment—to love others. It’s no longer up to us to define the word. This sign means nothing outside of a worldview context—a “moral setting” as my son put it.

It’s clear that being a Christian (or even holding Christian values) is no longer the default. Whether we like it or not, it’s the reality of the world in which we’re parenting. It’s our job to help our kids swim faithfully against the tide so they can be constantly aware of the waves around them and know how to respond.

 


Natasha Crain runs her Christian apologetics blog for parents, ChristianMomThoughts.com. She obtained her MBA in Marketing and Statistics from UCLA and obtained a Christian apologetic certificate from the University of Biola. She currently resides in California with her husband Bryan along with her three young children.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2PMb0PI