Tag Archive for: Kids

Kids Christianity Worthless

3 Reasons Your Kids May Eventually Think Christianity is Worthless

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By Natasha Crain

During Vacation Bible School this summer, our church collected an offering to help an orphanage in Mexico. The kids were all encouraged to bring what they could to contribute toward the cause.

My daughter, age 7, has always been very generous with her allowance and came running down the stairs with a Ziploc bag of piggy bank money the morning after the collection was announced. I smiled with appreciation for her giving heart and told her, “I’m so proud of you. You always want to share your allowance with others. That’s wonderful, sweetheart.”

She looked at me, gave a slight shrug, and replied, “It’s JUST money I had in my piggy bank. It doesn’t really matter.”

My blood immediately went to a rolling boil. I have worked really hard to teach my kids the value of money and emphasize how grateful we need to be for every small thing we have. I couldn’t believe her cavalier attitude that morning.

I unsuccessfully tried to cover my deep annoyance and disappointment.

“You have got to be kidding me. I seriously can’t believe you just said that when we have talkedso much about gratitude and generosity. That’s several dollars you have in that bag! How can you say it ‘doesn’t matter’?”

She looked down at the bag, which held two dollar bills and a bunch of coins. Then she looked at me in confusion and said, “MOMMY. This is not ‘several dollars.’ This is two dollars and a bunch of change that doesn’t matter.”

I took the bag and dumped everything out on our floor, then made piles of four quarters. I counted it all up and told her that she had $8.36.

She was shocked.

She scooped it all up, promptly put it back in the bag and announced there was “no way” she was giving away $8.36. Before I could launch into a sermon on generosity, she was halfway up the stairs looking for her piggy bank so she could deposit her newly found riches.

I’ve reflected several times on that experience, but not as much on the subject of generosity as on the subject of what it means to accurately value something.

There was $8.36 in that bag before and after our conversation. But something happened that drastically changed the value my daughter assigned to it—to the point that I couldn’t pry it out of her little hands just a few minutes later!

Similarly, Christianity is objectively true regardless of the value a person assigns to it. But something happens to many kids that fundamentally changes the value they place on it. Ultimately, the statistics show that at least 60% of kids reject faith by their early 20s…they decide it no longer has value. It literally becomes worthless.

Why the change? I think it boils down to three things.

1. They never understood how to value it.

My daughter ultimately didn’t know how to add up all the spare change in the bag. She could plainly see it all but didn’t know how to add all those different coins together. She just looked at the two dollar bills and assumed that’s all there was to the total value.

In a culture where people chalk religious belief up to nothing more than a person’s opinion about what may or may not exist beyond our natural world, most kids never learn how to appropriately value their religious beliefs. They don’t, by default, come to understand that:

  • Christianity is either true or it’s not. It’s an objective truth, and can’t be a matter of opinion. People may have different assessments of whether or not it’s true, but it’s not something that actually can be true for some and not others. When kids understand that, they’ll be more likely to value their faith because they’ll realize there’s much more at stake than a trivial matter of opinion. (For help talking to your kids about the nature of truth and Christianity in the context of other worldviews, see chapters 9-13 in my book, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side.)
  • The truth of Christianity can be assessed by looking at evidence. Even if a person realizes that Christianity is ultimately an objective truth, they may place little value on committing to Christ because they believe there’s no real way of knowing Christianity is true. Our culture perpetuates the idea that faith is blind—a big leap in the dark. But that’s not the nature of biblical faith at all. Biblical faith is rooted in good reason (1 Peter 3:15). Again, kids don’t understand this by default. We have to shape their understanding so they know that they really can be confident that their decision for Christ is rooted in good reasons. That conviction makes all the difference in the world in how much a person values their faith.

2. They never had time to value it.

I’m guessing that if I had put my daughter in a room without distraction and plenty of time, she could have come close to totaling up the coins on her own. But between school, homework, piano lessons, soccer and chores, there’s no way such an exercise was going to get priority. She just didn’t have the time to appropriately value what was in the bag.

It’s really easy to play the victim when it comes to the perceived predator of time. I’m hugely guilty of this myself. “I have no time!” “I just wish there was more time!” “Where did the time go?” Those are things we all say. But the fact is, we all have the same number of hours in the day. It’s a matter of how we choose to use them. If your family’s spiritual life is crowded out by the constant shuttling between extracurricular activities, it’s time to really consider that. It might not be comfortable to look at it this way, but if we’re too busy to set aside family spiritual time at least once a week (for Bible study, faith conversations, prayer, etc.), we are quite literally choosing other activities over our kids’ spiritual growth.

It’s up to us to make time for them to learn to value their faith.

3. They forgot how to value it.

Last year, I actually had taught my kids how to add up coins of different values; there was a point in time when my daughter probably wouldn’t have been so cavalier with the money because she did know how to value it. But she forgot.

It’s easy to take for granted that whatever we taught our kids last month, last year, or three years ago is still part of their working knowledge. But planting seeds isn’t enough. We have to continually water them, tend to the growing soul, and plant more seeds. Otherwise, those earlier seedlings can easily be lost, and our kids can simply forget how to value what they may have know how to value in the past.

May we all help our kids develop a faith that they clutch like that Ziploc, realizing the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:8).

Visit Natasha’s website at www.ChristianMomThoughts.com

Resources for Greater Impact:

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3 Key Things Skeptics Will Say to Shame Your Kids for Being Christians

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By Natasha Crain

I haven’t blogged in the last couple of weeks because my family and I were on vacation. We went on a wonderful trip to the island of Grand Cayman! I successfully managed to avoid email while I was there, but that made for quite a backlog by the time I returned. As I started going through the emails to my blog address, I was struck by the nature of comment after comment left by atheists on various old blog posts while I was gone: one emotional attack after another and not a single discussion of evidence for/against the truth of Christianity.

I actually get such emails all the time and am very used to it. But seeing them all piled together made me realize how often the objective of skeptics is to shame Christians rather than to engage in fair-minded discussions about evidence—something highly ironic given how much skeptics talk in theory about how important evidence is.

Shaming can have an especially negative impact on kids, who are very susceptible to believing emotion-laden statements. But this, too, is something we can (and should) prepare them for. While shaming comes in all kinds of forms, I can roll 90 percent of skeptics’ comments into some version of three general claims.

Here is what your kids are most likely to hear…and what you can do about it.

1. “You’ve been indoctrinated.”

The Implied Shame Claim: You’re just parroting what your parents have drilled into your head throughout your childhood. You’ve been brainwashed and can’t even think for yourself. If you’re brave enough to look at [evidence/science/common sense] instead, you’ll see how crazy Christianity is.

I probably receive at least one blog comment each week about how I’m indoctrinating my kids simply by raising them in a Christian home. Skeptics love to say this. The problem is, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what indoctrination even means.  As I explained in this post, indoctrination is “teaching someone to fully accept the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group and to not consider other ideas, opinions and beliefs.” In other words, indoctrination is a problem with how you teach someone something. It’s not inherently related to any particular belief system, though religion is one type of belief system where indoctrination is possible. Atheists can indoctrinate their kids as well.

So, unless a skeptic has been inside the homes of every Christian in America, seen how we are teaching our kids Christianity, and then had appropriate reason to conclude that we don’tcollectively expose our kids to other ideas, it’s utterly meaningless to say that “Christians indoctrinate their kids.”

What Parents Can Do:

  • Make sure you’re not actually indoctrinating your kids. Make sure you are teaching them what other people believe. That doesn’t mean you should teach them that what everyone else believes is true (that’s not logically possible)—it simply means you’re appropriately comparing and contrasting other ideas, opinions, and beliefs.
  • Make it explicitly clear to your kids that you don’t want them to believe in Jesus just because you do. (Read why this is so important in my post, Six Scary But Important Words Every Christian Parent Should Say to Their Kids About Faith.) When you’ve actuallydemonstrated that it’s important for them to own their spiritual decisions, they’ll have no reason to later question whether they’ve been “indoctrinated” when someone suggests it.
  • Teach your kids the evidence for the truth of Christianity (you’re going to see a recurring theme on this bullet point). In that very process, you’ll be comparing and contrasting truth claims from various worldviews and your kids will know first-hand that you didn’t “indoctrinate” them.

2. “If you allow yourself to think critically, you’ll see there’s no reason to believe in God.”

The Implied Shame Claim: Don’t you want to be a critical thinker? Someone who is rational, reasonable, and uses their brain? If you have faith, you’re throwing all that out the door. You’re choosing to believe something in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

“Critical thinking” is a buzz phrase today. Technically speaking, critical thinking is the “objective analysis and evaluation of an issue to form a judgment.” The funny thing is, skeptics always assume that such thinking necessarily leads to their own conclusions. The logic goes like this:

  1. Critical thinking means forming beliefs based on evidence.
  2. There’s no evidence for God.
  3. If you believe in God, you’re not thinking critically.

The problem with this logic is the second statement—the foregone conclusion that there’s no evidence for God. A more honest assessment would be that Christians and atheists disagree over what constitutes legitimate evidence for God. As much as many skeptics would like to make critical thinking their own domain based on this implied argument, the reality is that neither Christians nor atheists are willing to believe in something without evidence; Christians believe there is evidence for God. That’s why conversations about who’s thinking more critically than whom are absolutely pointless. There are Christians who think well and Christians who think poorly; atheists who think well and atheists who think poorly. This says nothing about the evidence itself.

What Parents Can Do:

  • Be intentional in talking to your kids about definitions. So many times, Christians and skeptics talk right past each other with conflicting meanings of the same words. In this case, discuss the words critical thinking and faith (skeptics incorrectly assert that faith means believing something in spite of evidence —see chapter 8 of my book for help with this conversation).
  • Discuss the implied argument of the three points listed above and explain that this is the logic behind skeptics’ claims that Christians don’t think critically. When you expose your kids to the thinking behind the shame claim, they won’t be fazed by it later.
  • Teach your kids the evidence for the truth of Christianity (yup, here it is again!). It’s one thing to show them the faulty logic (see the point above)—it’s another thing to teach them how to combat a faulty premise themselves.

3. “Christians are less intelligent than atheists. Studies show it.”

The Implied Shame Claim: You’re stupid if you’re a Christian and that’s not just my opinion—it’s been proven.

You may be surprised to hear that a number of studies have found a negative relationship between intelligence and religiousness—in other words, they suggest that the more intelligent a person is, the less likely they are to be religious. Many passionate atheists are well aware of these studies and use them as ammunition for their arguments that religion is for the poor, ignorant, or unintelligent.

My professional background is in market research (I have an MBA in marketing and statistics) so I decided to personally review the studies that are constantly referenced by skeptics. I explained my findings in detail in my post, Are Christians Less Intelligent Than Atheists? Here’s What Those Studies REALLY Say, and further in Chapter 16 of my book.

Here’s the bottom line of what you should know: Over the last 80+ years, many studies have been done on the relationship between intelligence and religiousness. In 2013, researchers pulled together all the ones that quantified that relationship. Of the 63 studies they identified, roughly half showed no relationship at all. The other half showed at least some kind of negative relationship (the more intelligent you are, the less likely you are to be religious). That said, statistically speaking, it’s not very helpful to simply know there is “some kind” of relationship. You have to know how strong the relationship is to know if it matters. So researchers combined the results of all these individual studies to evaluate that question overall…and found the strength of relationship to be very weak. What do I mean by very weak? A -.17 or -.20 correlation is considered to be a trivial or negligible relationship by most statisticians. In other words, hardly worth mentioning. There is no reasonable basis for suggesting Christians are less intelligent than atheists according to this data.

What Parents Can Do:

  • Give your kids an appropriate framework for considering this kind of claim before you even discuss specific studies: Even if we could reliability measure which group is collectively smarter (we can’t), the answer wouldn’t tell us anything about the truth of Christianity. Intelligence doesn’t equate to always having the right answer. The important question we must constantly point our kids back to is, Which worldview is an accurate picture of reality? (Not which worldview theoretically has the smartest adherents.)
  • If your kids are teens, take the time to read my summary of these studies and findings and then discuss (links to my blog post and book above).
  • Teach your kids the evidence for the truth of Christianity (I told you this would keep coming up!). How else will they know how to set aside distracting claims like this one about intelligence and answer the key question, Which worldview is an accurate picture of reality?

 

So, you must have caught the recurring solution that combats all of these attempts at shaming:Teach your kids the evidence for the truth of Christianity.

Consider for a moment why that in particular is the antidote for almost any shaming attempt. Shame by definition is “a painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness or disgrace.” In other words, the root of shame is feeling inadequate.

In order for our kids to feel (more than) adequate when they encounter shaming attempts, they need to have the deep conviction that what they believe is really true. Only then will they be able to fully see these shame claims for what they are—shallow and baseless emotional attacks—and be able to say confidently with the apostle Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

If you need help talking to your kids about the evidence for the truth of Christianity and how to address secular claims with your kids, please check out my book, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith.

Visit Natasha’s Site @ ChristianMomThoughts.com

Resources for Greater Impact:

 

 

 

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What To Teach Kids About Unanswered Prayer

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By Natasha Crain

My son Nathan wasn’t feeling well recently so we all prayed together for him to feel better. The next night at prayer time, Kenna pointed out that we prayed for him already but he wasn’t feeling better. She had a look of simultaneous confusion and disappointment on her face.  In a total of about 3 seconds I had the thought that this is the beginning of a lifetime of seeking to understand why God does or does not answer certain prayers AND replied, “We’ll keep praying and trust God that Nathan will feel better.”

I felt a giant theological error well up in my throat. How often we casually imply or even consciously think that if we just “trust God” for a specific prayer outcome, He will answer the way we want!

“Everything will be OK! Just trust in God!”

Yes, everything will be OK . . . perfect actually . . . when Christ returns and God is glorified in His kingdom for eternity. In the meantime this life is a mess. We are sinful people with free choices, surrounded by other sinful people with free choices. There is illness, there is death. There are natural disasters. Christians live in this fallen world and are affected by its consequences as much as non-believers.

Yet, we are to pray. We are to ask God for our hearts’ desires in the midst of all this. If every Christian’s prayer for a specific (positive) outcome was answered, however, we would effectively be in control of the world through God.  Thank God that prayer doesn’t work that way!  It’s actually a little scary to think of millions of people (even if they are Christians) controlling God like a puppet through prayer strings. I would much rather God be in control, in His infinite wisdom and perspective.

The dynamics of prayer are really not unlike our children making requests to us . . . we encourage their requests, consider their requests, and want them to continue making requests, but may not grant them what they want depending on how it would impact themselves, us or others  . . .  just like God relates with us through prayer.

Jesus powerfully demonstrated this himself when he prayed in Mark 14:36: “Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” God CAN do anything but his specific answers to prayer are based on how our requests align with His will.

If we come to believe that God can or should be trusted for specific outcomes, our relationship with Him will be as variable as the ups and downs of life; a good outcome equals happiness with God, a negative outcome equals disappointment or anger with God. This is not what our relationship should look like, yet it is very common.

To put this in a simple framework for my kids, I’ve boiled it down to these 5 key concepts that I emphasize at home.

    1. God wants us to continuously pray. (e.g., Philippians 4:6-7; Ephesians 6:18)
    2. God hears our prayers. (Implied in the fact he wants us to pray, plus Psalm 34:15)
    3. We can and should pray for our hearts’ desires. (e.g., Matthew 21:22; Matthew 7:7-11; John 14:13-14)
    4. God CAN answer our prayers for specific outcomes, but may not, depending on His will. (e.g., Matthew 6:10; Matthew 26:42; Mark 14:36)
    5. God works all things together for good. This statement, from Romans 8:28, can easily be taken out of context. Paul is not saying that God works all things together for OUR good (at least as we would commonly perceive “good” in this life). He follows in verses 28 and 29 by explaining that the good he is referencing is God’s overall plan for the world leading to His final glorification.

Here is is how I apply these truths for my (young) children:

“We just prayed for (fill in the blank). Do we know God WANTS us to pray? (yes) Do we know God hears ALL of our prayers? (yes) Do we know that God CAN answer any prayer he chooses? (yes) Does God answer EVERY prayer the way we ask? (no) What is important is that we always pray because God wants us to, but we have to remember that only God can decide how he is going to answer our prayers.”

In this way I hope to teach them that we should not limit or censor our prayers, but at the same time we need to respect and trust in God’s infinite wisdom . . . not our own.

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Don’t Be Afraid to Be the Cause of Your Kids’ Questions About Christianity

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By Natasha Crain

A couple of weeks ago, I started teaching a 5-week “Introduction to Apologetics” class to adults at a local church. In the first session, we talked about the evidence for the existence of God in nature—the origin of the universe, the design of life, and our innate moral knowledge.

During the question time at the end of the first session, one of the men raised his Bible in the air and said, “This was empowering! It gave me even more appreciation for God’s Word!” Other people had similar positive comments. I left feeling like things went great.

A couple of days later, my husband ran into someone from the class and asked what he thought of the first session. The man hesitated, then said, “Honestly? It really shook me. I know others said it was empowering, but it really made me start thinking about things—like all the atheist claims she talked about.”

My husband relayed this conversation to me…and I subsequently went into a funk for several days.

I felt like I totally failed. So many thoughts ran through my head:

How did I mess this up?

What could I have said to better demonstrate how powerful the evidence for God is?

How could one person say this was empowering and another person say it shook his faith to the core?

I must not be a very good apologetics teacher if my class had a negative impact on someone’s faith.

What if my class ultimately becomes the trigger that sends him away from the Lord?

Then, one morning, I woke up and realized something very important: I was having the same fears about apologetics causing a person to question his faith as many parents have about it causing their kids to question their faith. And I always tell those parents they need to promptly conquer their fears and forge ahead for the long-term spiritual benefit of their children.

It was time for me to take my own advice.

Conquering the Fear of Causing Doubt

I’ve received a number of emails and comments over the last couple of years from parents who say they don’t know if they want to get into all this “apologetics stuff” with their kids because they “only want to teach them truth” and don’t want to risk leading them astray by alerting them to all the challenges posed by nonbelievers.

But, as I point out to them, you don’t get to choose whether or not your kids will hear challenges to Christianity. In today’s world, they will hear those challenges! The only choice you have as a parent is if they’ll hear them first from you—in an environment where they’ll have your guidance readily available—or if they’ll hear them first from nonbelievers—in an environment where they’ll be processing what they hear on their own.

I shared a (true) story in a blog post a few months ago that so readily demonstrates the reality of that choice that I have to briefly recount it again. A young Christian I know was taking an undergraduate humanities class. He said that, so far in the semester, he had “learned” the following: Jesus never even claimed to be God in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), Christianity borrowed ideas from earlier pagan myths, and the church arbitrarily picked which books to include in the Bible according to its own biases.

He noted, “The reactions of other students are of shock and disbelief. Yesterday the professor asked a student how these facts made her feel. She said she was mad and couldn’t wait to go yell at her pastor and parents. The professor egged her on. It was like watching a commander rally up his troops to tear down his enemy.”

The girl in the class was presumably ready to throw out years of Christian upbringing after a couple of months in a single college class.

All because she heard the “other side of the story” for the first time.

This is exactly what happened to the student in my class.

When I teach apologetics, I don’t simply present the case for the truth of Christianity. I acknowledge what skeptics say at every step of the way. I explain why things like the origin of the universe, the apparent design of life, and our innate moral understanding are best explained by the existence of a universe-creating, life-designing, and moral law-giving God—but I also describe the naturalistic (non-God) explanations offered by atheists. It was hearing those alternative claims for the first time that shook my student’s faith.

Parents, please take this to heart: When we explain the claims of skeptics to our kids and it raises questions they might not otherwise have had yet, we’re not damaging their faith…we’re actually strengthening it for the long term, even when that means our efforts may be the very thing that causes their questions now.

Parents make choices with a similar tradeoff all the time. We let doctors give our kids shots that cause temporary discomfort for the good of their long-term health. We take the training wheels off their bikes, knowing they’ll take some falls before becoming a confident rider. We allow them to struggle through difficult homework problems without giving them answers so they’ll better understand the material in the future.

So why do parents fear causing temporary spiritual pain for the good of their kids’ long-termspiritual health when these other examples seem to be no-brainers?

I think the difference is confidence—parents are more confident that they can effectively manage the process of teaching their kids to ride a bike than they are that they can effectively guide their kids’ spiritual development. To overcome that, parents need the confidence of knowing two things: 1) that Christianity really does have compelling answers to secular challenges, and 2) that they personally are equipped to offer those answers.

Gaining both types of confidence is in your control. You just have to commit to deepening your knowledge of Christianity. I didn’t say you have to become an expert. There are plenty of experts you can point your kids to. But you do need to become a well-trained guide.

Make your summer reading really count this year. If you’re just getting started learning about making a case for and defending Christianity, check out my reading plan specifically for parents here (it starts with my book, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith, and takes you through four more books that will round out your core apologetics knowledge). If you’re ready to go to the next level, I have five other reading plans here.

And through all your reading, remember this: Truth has nothing to fear.

 Your willingness to tell your kids what other people believe makes that statement loud and clear.

 

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30 Things You Can Do This Summer to Deepen Your Kids’ Faith

30 Things You Can Do This Summer to Deepen Your Kids’ Faith

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By Natasha Crain

It’s now officially summer!

For many families, that means a (slightly) less hectic schedule for a few glorious weeks. At the same time, it can mean small-scale panic at what to actually do with the extra time your kids have.

Solution: Take the opportunity to get more creative with engaging together spiritually as a family. Here are 30 ideas to get you started!

 

  1. Choose a gospel to read as a family (Matthew, Mark, Luke or John). Decide on a timeframe (days or weeks) and divide the chapters accordingly.

 

  1. Pick two chapters per week from my book to discuss as a family. You probably have about 10 weeks of summer vacation. That means you can cover about half of the 40 critical conversations from Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side in that time! It’s a perfect opportunity before another hectic school year.

 

  1. Watch the “What’s in the Bible?” DVD series together. This 13-DVD series takes kids all the way the way through the Bible. It’s perfect for kids who need entertainment combined with their learning in order to pay attention. My 7-year-old son, for example, thinks it’s hilarious AND learns from it. However, kids who learn better from a more A-to-B approach will likely find it too chaotic. My 7-year-old daughter (my son’s twin) hates it because she has “no idea what’s going on.” I end up pausing it every 5-10 minutes (in a 25-minute episode) to explain. Nonetheless, it’s meaty WHILE being crazy, so it’s a great option for kids with certain personalities and learning styles.

 

  1. Schedule a “questions night”—a time for your family to get together and discuss any questions your kids have about God. Here’s how we do that in our family. Don’t just do it once! Do it throughout the summer, and hopefully beyond.

 

  1. Have your kids interview a nonbeliever. This could be a family member or friend. Help them come up with some questions, then discuss the responses later.

 

  1. Choose a news story with a faith angle to talk about. The sky’s the limit here. The Christian Post has a ton of material to consider.

 

  1. Find a way to serve others together as a family. Then discuss what the Bible says about serving others, so your kids have a meaningful understanding of how their beliefs tie to their actions.

 

  1. Attend Vacation Bible School. VBS is a fun week offered by many churches for kids to play and learn together. And you don’t have to just go to the one offered by your church–attend one at another church and get to know more people!

 

  1. Pick a relevant single word to focus on and discuss. Some good words for discussion from my book are faith (chapter 8), objective truth (chapter 9), justness (chapter 3), miracle (chapter 24), and evolution (chapter 37).

 

  1. Invite your pastor over for dinner. Depending on the size of your church, your kids may never have actually interacted with your pastor. Invite him to dinner and give your kids the opportunity to ask questions they may not want to ask you (or that you may not know how to answer)!

 

  1. Read or watch a debate between a Christian and a nonbeliever. Debates make for great discussion opportunities with older kids. Here’s a debate on the existence of God you can use, and here’s one on the reliability of the Bible.

 

  1. Do an internet research project together. Pick a faith-based subject to Google with your kids (e.g., “Did Jesus exist?”). Look at several of the articles from different viewpoints together. Talk about how to evaluate all the conflicting ideas you see online.

 

  1. Watch a science DVD series from a Christian perspective. This collection is great: The Intelligent Design Collection – Darwin’s Dilemma, The Privileged Planet, Unlocking the Mystery of Life.

 

  1. Learn about Christian persecution worldwide. In many countries, Christians are being persecuted. Open Doors USA is one organization that works on raising awareness of this. Use their site to help your kids gain more perspective on what the cost of following Jesus can be (and talk about how you can help).

 

  1. Encourage your kids to invite a friend to church. Have a conversation with your kids beforehand to help them fully understand why sharing our faith is important.

 

  1. Get The Belief Book by David McAfee and discuss. This is an atheist book written directly to kids which explains that religious beliefs are just holdovers from ancient people who didn’t know how to explain the world. It’s filled with inaccurate caricatures of faith and would be an excellent discussion tool for older kids.

 

  1. Introduce logic games. Critical thinking is so important in faith development today! Here’s a game we do regularly in our family that can help even the youngest kids think better.

 

  1. Visit a different church (another denomination or religion). Then discuss the difference in beliefs and practices versus your own…and why they differ.

 

  1. Break down the meaning of a worship song. If you ever stop to pay attention to the words in the songs we AND our kids sing at church, you’ll note that the meaning isn’t always obvious. Kids can learn a lot from discussing the songs they’re used to singing and it makes the songs more meaningful at the same time. (As an example, think of the song, “Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord, I Want to See You,” and how not obvious that meaning is to a child.)

 

  1. Get a new Bible game to play as a family. Search for “Bible games” on Amazon and you’ll find many options.

 

  1. Take a family spiritual inventory and act on it accordingly. Have each family member write down what they feel is good about your family’s spiritual life and what could use improvement. Get everyone thinking by identifying categories like prayer, Bible study, church attendance, service, and conversations. Take action on areas for improvement!

 

  1. Write letters to God. Have each family member take 10 minutes to write a letter to God. Pick a topic that is relevant at a given time for your family–it could be something light-hearted like complaints you’d like to “file” or something more serious like expressing disappointment about unanswered prayer. Share your letters.

 

  1. Print an internet meme to discuss. Google “religion memes,” click on the search results for images, and you’ll see all kinds of discussion-worthy topics.

 

  1. Do a Bible timeline activity. In my opinion, one of the greatest problems with biblical literacy today is understanding how the whole Bible fits together as one story of salvation history. When kids grow up without that understanding (as I did), the Bible is just a jigsaw of unconnected stories with questionable relevance. If you search on Amazon for “Bible timelines for kids,” you’ll see many activity options for kids of different ages. Pick one and work through it this summer.

 

  1. Go to a Christian bookstore together and pick out a devotional. It doesn’t have to be January 1 to start a devotional habit. Take your kids to a Christian store and select a devotional book to start.

 

  1. Pick a magazine and hunt for examples of the secular worldview throughout the articles. For example, with a teen girl, you could pick a popular teen beauty magazine. Get two copies—one for you, one for her. Have each of you go through and circle examples that are in conflict with a Christian worldview. Compare and discuss.

 

  1. Play “What would you say if…”. Certain personality types love intellectual challenges. My daughter, for example, loves open-ended questions that she can try to answer in the best way possible. If you have a child like that, you can facilitate conversations in a game format by asking “What would you say if…” Here are a few examples: What would you say if your friend’s mom said God doesn’t exist? What would you say if someone told you the Bible is 2,000 years old, so it’s not relevant for our lives today? What would you say if someone told you Christians are hypocrites so they never want to be a Christian? What would you say if someone told you they believe in science, not God?

 

  1. Create a family prayer list. Write down the biggest needs for your family and those you know and commit to praying together consistently throughout the summer.

 

  1. Role-play being an atheist and have your kids try to convince you that Christianity is true. This can be an eye-opening experience for all involved and show you what subjects you should study together going forward.

 

  1. Read a religion research study together and discuss. The Barna Group does a ton of interesting research about religious belief and activities in America. Their studies could lead to many interesting conversations with older kids and trends in our country and what it will mean to them to be a Christian in an increasingly secular world. Here’s one research example that just came out: The End of Absolutes: America’s New Moral Code.

 

If you have any other ideas that you’ll be using in your family, please share in the comments!

www.christianmomthoughts.com

 

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5 Things Christian Parents Must Do to Raise Godly Children in a Secular World

5 Things Christian Parents Must Do to Raise Godly Children in a Secular World

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By Natasha Crain

In the last couple of years, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at several Christian conferences and churches on the importance of parents teaching their kids apologetics (how to make a case for and defend the truth of the Christian faith). When I speak, I often begin by asking the following two questions.

First, I ask parents, “How many of you have come here already knowing that our world is becoming very secular and that your child’s faith is likely to be challenged in some way because of it?”

One hundred percent of the hands go up…every time.

Second, I ask parents, “How many of you would go to the next step of saying you’re confident that you know specifically what those big faith challenges are, how to effectively address them with your kids, and how that translates into parenting responsibilities on a day-to-day basis?”

Zero percent of the hands go up…every time.

As I’ve blogged about Christian parenting for the last four years, I’ve had the opportunity to hear from hundreds of parents. This gap between 1) knowing our secular world will influence our kids’ faith and 2) understanding what exactly that means for parents, is nearly universal. And it often leads to fear and frustration—parents know there’s a problem but they don’t know the solution.

It’s that gap that led me to write Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith(released in March). I wanted to help parents identify and understand 40 of the most important faith challenges they need to discuss with their kids so those challenges no longer feel ambiguous and unmanageable. But even once parents gain this critical understanding, the question remains: How does this translate into parental responsibilities?

Here are five key things to consider.

  1. Parents must commit to continually deepening their understanding of Christianity.

In a secular world, kids will frequently encounter challenges to their faith—especially from vocal atheists. Atheists are often well prepared to lay out their arguments against God and Christianity in particular. Unfortunately, many Christian parents are not equally prepared to teach their kids the case for the truth of Christianity and how to defend their beliefs. Questions like the following are critically important for kids to understand today, but few parents are equipped to proactively address them: What evidence is there for the existence of God? Why would a good God allow evil and suffering? How can a loving God send people to hell? Is faith in God the opposite of reason? What are the historical facts of the resurrection that nearly every scholar agrees on? How can Christians believe miracles are even possible? How do we know the Bible we have today says what the authors originally wrote? Does the Bible support slavery, rape, and human sacrifice (as skeptics allege)?

In the past, when society was at least more nominally Christian, parents may have been able to avoid addressing the more difficult questions of faith with their kids (not that they should have!). But today’s challenges require much more from faithful Christian parents. We must learn what the big challenges are, equip ourselves to engage with them, and commit to continually deepening our understanding of our faith so we can guide our kids accordingly.

      2. Parents must intentionally make “spiritual space” in their home.

It’s not enough to deepen your own understanding of Christianity, of course. Somehow you have to transfer that understanding to your kids, and that transfer requires carefully set aside time. The kinds of faith conversations we need to be having with our kids today (like the questions listed in point 1) are simply not going to happen in a meaningful way unless you make spiritual space for them. By spiritual space, I mean dedicated time for your family to engage together in growing your understanding of and relationship with God. There’s no reason such a time shouldn’t be scheduled just like all the other (less important) activities in your life. If you’re not currently doing this, start with just 30 minutes per week. That’s reasonable for any family, and you can always work up from there.

  1. Parents must study the Bible with their kids. Really.

Even if you know Bible study is important, statistics show you’re probably not doing it: Fewer than 1 in 10 Christian families study the Bible together in a given week. If your kids perceive that you’ve effectively relegated the Bible to the backburner of relevancy, they’ll have little reason to see it as the authoritative book Christians claim it to be. It’s absolutely pointless to talk about the Bible being God’s Word if you’re not treating it as such.

Meanwhile, the Bible is a favorite attack point of skeptics and our kids will have ample opportunity to hear how it’s an ancient, irrelevant book filled with inaccuracies and contradictions. If you’re not regularly studying the Bible with your kids, there’s a good chance they’ll eventually stop caring what it has to say. (See my article, Don’t Expect Your Kids to Care What the Bible Says Unless You’ve Given Them Reason to Believe It’s True, for more on this.)

  1. Parents must proactively and regularly ask their kids what questions they have about faith.

In a secular world, where kids are constantly hearing competing worldviews, questions are guaranteed to continually arise. But there are many reasons kids may never actually ask them—they have too many other things going on, they’re afraid of your reaction, or they are simply not interested enough to bring them up.

In our house, we’ve implemented a scheduled “questions night” to help with this. You can read about how to start your own in my article, How to Get Your Kids to Ask More Questions about Their Faith.

  1. Parents must ask their kids the tough questions they don’t think to ask.

If you regularly encourage your kids to ask questions about faith (see point 4), you’ll have lots of great conversations. But many questions that are important for kids to understand in preparation for the secular world they’ll encounter are ones that might never cross their mind to ask. For example, most kids don’t think to ask how we know the Bible we have today says what the authors originally wrote. But that doesn’t mean they won’t almost certainly encounter skeptics who tell them the Bible is completely untrustworthy for that reason. Just as we don’t wait for our kids to ask questions about World War II before deciding when what, and how to teach them about it, we shouldn’t wait until our kids encounter challenges before we address them. They’ll undoubtedly hear about these topics from skeptics at some point, so there’s no reason they shouldn’t hear about them from us first.

Greater Impact Resources: 

 

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/2AKrp2J

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Heaven and Hell: How to Explain God’s Love AND Justice to Kids

Heaven and Hell: How to Explain God’s Love AND Justice to Kids

By Natasha Crain

Lately, my two daughters (ages 6 and 4) have been arguing incessantly every morning. It’s the first thing I hear every day, echoing from down the hall:

“Stop staring at me!”

“Then leave my room!”

“You’re so mean!”

“No, you’re the meanest in the world!”

The other morning, my older daughter ran into my room, crying, “Mommy! Sister pushed me to the ground! I got hurt!”

In utter fatigue and frustration, I just looked at her blankly and replied, “I just don’t care anymore. I don’t know what to tell you.”

She burst into tears. “It’s NOT FAIR! Why don’t you care she did something bad?”

I shrugged and said, “I should. I’m just too tired of all this fighting to do anything anymore.”

I ushered my wailing daughter out of the room and finished getting ready, feeling like a total failure.

Little did I know my failure would serve as a great lesson about God’s love and justice only a few hours later.

 

Explaining God’s Love and Justice to Kids

That evening, when I was tucking my daughter into bed, she said, “I don’t totally understand who goes to heaven and hell.”

We had talked about this topic on many occasions before, but of course it’s something hard for kids to understand. At that moment, God placed it on my heart to use the example from the morning to explain the concepts in a more tangible way. I saw the lights really go on in her eyes through our conversation, so I want to share it with you today in dialogue form. I hope it will help you have this discussion with your own kids (you can use your own similar failure, or set one up as a lesson!).

Me: “That’s a really important question and I’m so glad you asked it. When you were younger and couldn’t understand a lot yet, we simply explained to you that if you love Jesus, you’ll be with Him forever in heaven. But you’re big enough now to understand much more. I want to start by answering your question with an example. Do you remember this morning when you came to my room because your sister had done something bad to you? How did I respond?”

My daughter: “That you didn’t care. That it didn’t matter. That you weren’t going to do anything about it.”

Me: “Right. How did that make you feel?”

My daughter: “Sad. I didn’t understand why you didn’t want to do something about her pushing me. It was unfair.”

Me: “So was that loving or not loving of mommy?”

My daughter: “I didn’t think it was loving at all.”

Me: “I don’t think it was either. I shouldn’t have responded that way. I’m sorry. The most loving thing for me to do would have been to give your sister a fair consequence. Can you see how part of being a loving mommy is being a fair mommy too?”

My daughter: “Yes.”

Me: “OK, so now think of what it’s like for God. As we’ve talked about, God has taught us His perfect rules of what is right and wrong in our hearts and in the Bible—just like mommy has rules about pushing that your sister broke. Everyone knows that God is more loving than we can ever imagine, but a lot of people don’t understand that means He is also perfectly fair. He could never just ignore that we sin and break His beautiful, perfect laws of what is right. If He just said, “Whatever! I don’t care anymore!” like mommy did this morning, He wouldn’t be loving, just like mommy wasn’t loving. So God has to do something about our sins because He is so loving. The big question is, what should He do?”

My daughter: “We would, like, have to die or something because breaking God’s rules is BAD.”

Me (laughing in surprise): “Wow, that’s an amazing guess, because the Bible actually tells us that the consequence of our sin is death. We all die. But God loves us tons and doesn’t want us to be separated from Him forever. So He has made a way to forgive us without ignoring our sin. He sent Jesus—His own Son—to be punished for our sin instead of us. That’s what it means that “Jesus died for our sins.” If you understand that, then I’m ready to answer your question about heaven and hell.”

My daughter: “I do, but we’re still punished. You punish us.”

Me: “Great question. We do experience consequences in this life for breaking rules. If you break mommy’s rules about hitting, you’ll go to your room, for example. If you break the rules at school, you’ll stay in from recess. If you break the rules of our government, you can go to jail. What we’re talking about right now is what happens when we breakGod’s rules our whole lives. We will never, ever be perfect, so we will sin against God’s rules until we die. We’re talking about what God should do about His rules being broken. Does that make sense?”

My daughter: “Yes.”

Me: “OK! So let’s answer your question now. The Bible says we will be with God forever if we accept the gift He gave us of being forgiven when Jesus died on the cross…”

My daughter: “What does it mean to accept?”

Me: [I took her stuffed animal and pushed it toward her.] Take the animal and hug it tight. You’ve accepted what I was giving you. [I took it back and pushed it toward her again.] Now push it away. You’ve rejected what I was giving you. When we accept the gift of forgiveness  that God is offering to us, it means to hang on tight to it our whole lives, like your animal right now. It means saying, “Yes! I know I’m breaking your laws and will never be perfect. Thank you so much for taking my punishment through Jesus. I accept your gift and will live my life for you in response.” Living our life for Jesus means making Him our highest priority…spending our lives getting to know Him through prayer and Bible study…wanting what He wants…and not sinning just because we know we’ll be forgiven. I want you to understand one thing really clearly: that means we don’t get to be with God just by being good or doing good things. We can never be good enough. When people do not accept God’s gift of forgiveness, they cannot be with Him when they die no matter how many good things they’ve done in their life on Earth. They still need His forgiveness for all the bad things they’ve done…and if they don’t accept God’s gift of forgiveness through Jesus, they are choosing to take the punishment themselves. That means every person chooses whether they go to heaven with God or if they are separated from God forever in hell.”

My daughter: “What if someone has never heard about Jesus?”

Me: “Great question! A lot of adults ask that too. The Bible doesn’t tell us for sure, so Christians have different ideas about it. But what we do know is that God is perfectly fair and perfectly good, so however it works, we can know that God will handle it the right way. He’ll never sin like mommy this morning and just say He doesn’t care.”

With that, we ended our conversation and said goodnight. And I was a wee bit grateful for messing up that morning.

For more articles like: Heaven and Hell: How to Explain God’s Love AND Justice to Kids visit Natasha’s site at ChristianMomThoughts.com

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How to Get Your Kids to Ask More Questions About Their Faith

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By Natasha Crain

The most popular post on my blog is one I wrote last year called, The Number One Sign Your Kids are Just Borrowing Your Faith (and Not Developing Their Own).

That post has been read by more than 80,000 people and shared almost 14,000 times. Clearly it resonated deeply with people.

So what was the sign that your kids are just “borrowing” your faith?

They rarely, if ever, ask questions about it.

Many parents wrote to me and said the post made them realize that they were doing a lot of talking about God…but their kids weren’t doing a lot of talking back.

If your kids aren’t showing much proactive interest in talking about faith, I have a very easy and effective solution to share with you today: Start a questions night.

For the last several months, our family has set aside a night each week in order to simply sit and answer any questions our kids have about faith. They absolutely love it. And I can tell you that they weren’t asking these questions before we started the questions night. They knew they could always ask us questions, but that doesn’t mean they actually did. Setting aside a special time for questions opens the doors of communication in ways that don’t necessarily happen otherwise.

These question nights have facilitated some of the most important conversations we have ever had with our kids.

Here are 9 tips to help you get started with your own!

 

1. You don’t need to know how to answer all your kids’ questions before you launch your questions night.

Whenever I mention to someone that we have a questions night, the first response is always, “I don’t think I could answer my kids’ questions!”…followed by an uncomfortable laugh. If that’s what you’re thinking as you read this, please don’t let that concern stop you from doing it! You will never know how to answer all of your kids’ questions. No matter how prepared you are, they will ask questions you’re not sure how to answer…so there’s no point in waiting.

 

2. When you don’t know an answer, there’s no need to be embarrassed…just use it as a chance to teach your kids how you find answers yourself.

I’ll never forget one of the first questions my daughter asked: Why did Jesus have to be baptized if He wasn’t a sinner?

I have to admit I had never thought about that (if you’re interested in the answer, here’s a nice quick article). I laughed and told her that was a really great question that I hadn’t even thought about. Then I showed her how we could use my study Bible to find an answer.

Here’s the thing to remember: When your kids stump you, they’re proud of themselves…not ashamed of you. Praise them for asking a great question, then use it as an opportunity to demonstrate how to find the answers together. My kids love thinking of questions so good we can’t answer. And we love it too.

 

3. Explicitly tell your kids that any question is OK.

If your kids are old enough that they may have doubts about their faith, they may not open up with those questions by default. Other kids might fear their questions are too basic and won’t want to admit they don’t understand something they feel they should. Be sure to explicitly tell your kids up front that all questions are welcome and you’ll never bedisappointed by or angry about something they want to know.

 

4. If you think your kids might need time to warm up to the idea of asking questions, have some ready to go in advance.

If you’re not sure that your kids will hit the ground running with the new questions night, pick a couple of interesting questions in advance to throw out on their behalf. That way you won’t be sitting around awkwardly staring at each other in silence. If you need some ideas, check out my list of 65 questions every Christian parent should learn how to answer.

 

5. If you have more than one child, “open the floor” to questions but make sure everyone has the chance to ask something.

When we first started doing this, we went around in a circle, having each of our kids ask a question on their turn. The good side of doing it that way is that it encourages everyone to be thinking. The bad side is (1) that it can kill the momentum of the night if one kid is not feeling particularly thoughtful (everyone will be sitting around waiting for them to come up with something), and (2) that if your kids are competitive (as mine are), they’ll spend more time thinking up a good question for their impending turn than listening to the current discussion. We found the whole night flows better when you simply let everyone throw out questions as they have them. Just make sure that if someone didn’t ask something on their own, you give them the chance to.

 

6. Don’t assume young kids don’t have big questions to ask.

For a while, it was only my twins (age 6) asking questions. My 4-year-old rolled around on the floor, seemingly bored by the more “advanced” conversation going on around her. When I asked her each time if she had a question, she gave me an embarrassed look and said, “Nooo!” She was intimidated by the questions from her older siblings.

But one night she finally spoke up and said she had a question.

“Mommy, why did God create soldiers who kill people?”

I was more than surprised that this was a question on my 4-year-old’s mind (I still don’t know where it came from).

If you have young kids, don’t assume they don’t have big questions. Kids as young as 3 or 4 can benefit from doing this! It might take time for them to speak up, but you just might be surprised how much they’re already thinking.

 

7. When your kids ask a question that the Bible doesn’t clearly answer, be honest about that and use it as a key teaching opportunity.

Quite often, I find myself answering a question with “the Bible doesn’t tell us for sure” or “the Bible doesn’t give us all of the details on that.” For example, my kids often ask questions about heaven—what it will be like, what we’ll be doing, etc. I tell them that the Bible doesn’t give us all the details, and that there are many things like that.

But I don’t like to leave it there. I think it’s an important time to teach them about the three points I described in my post, How to Handle Questions God Didn’t Answer: God’s revelation is not broken, we can trust that God has revealed all we need to know, and it should be our life’s work to understand the answers He has given us.

 

8. When your kids ask a question that’s been a struggle for you personally, tell them as much.

This might sound counter-intuitive, but I actually love when the kids ask something that’s a difficulty in my own faith. As for many people, the problem of suffering in the world has always greatly troubled me. When the kids ask questions on this subject, we discuss free will and its implications, but I’m quick to tell them that this has always been hard for me (and many others) to understand. I explain to them that it’s easy to look at those things and see them as evidence against God. I’m very honest about it. But after I acknowledge that, I use it as a perfect opportunity to talk about how much evidence there is for God and why we are Christians despite those difficulties.

Getting real about your own faith challenges gives you credibility with your kids and helps give them a more realistic understanding of what a living, breathing faith looks like.

 

9. If you miss a week…or two…or three…don’t give up on it.

There was a period of about a month when we got busy and didn’t do our questions night. It would have been easy to let it go at that point. But when we told the kids one evening that it was time to do it again, they cheered and all ran into the living room to sit down. They started waving their hands in the air to be the first to ask something. And we literally couldn’t stop the questions from coming.

After just one month.

Again, they could have asked us those questions at any time. They didn’t need a “questions night.” But in the hustle and bustle of life, those questions often don’t naturally arise. So give it a try in your own family. It could completely transform your kids’ spiritual life.

 

Here’s a challenge to all of you as an easy start toward this. Ask your kids today, “What is one of the biggest questions you have about God, Jesus, or the Bible?” Come back and share what they asked and what happened in your conversation!

 

For more articles like: How to Get Your Kids to Ask More Questions About Their Faith visit Natasha’s site at ChristianMomThoughts.com

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17 Ways Your Kids Will Encounter Challenges to Their Faith

By Natasha Crain

In conjunction with my new book, I’ll be doing several speaking events and seminars. In those events, I’ll be explaining to parents the key faith challenges that their kids will encounter, and what they need to do to equip their kids with a faith that’s ready for those challenges.

One of the event coordinators sent me a couple of questions that her prospective attendees had sent in response to the outline of my talk. The parents who had seen the outline wanted to be sure I included information on how kids will encounter challenges to their faith. In other words, it’s one thing to have a general understanding that challenges lurk in the world, but it’s another thing to be able to put your finger on what, specifically, we’re talking about.

Today I want to give you a bunch of very practical ways your own kids will encounter challenges to their faith. There are many others, but this is a list to just get you thinking. If you don’t believe your kids are being challenged on their faith (or will be soon), I pray this opens your eyes.

 

1. Your kids’ own thoughts.

Who has never had doubts about their faith simply based on their own life experiences? Even if you kept your kids in a tiny bubble for 18 years so they would never encounter an external challenge to their faith (something neither possible nor desirable), questions would still naturally arise. How do I know an “invisible” God is actually there? Why is there so much bad stuff in the world if God is good? Why am I trapped in this tiny bubble? The list goes on.

 

2. Other kids.

With fewer Christian adults in America, there are now fewer kids being raised as Christians as well. Just as we want to raise our kids with a belief in Jesus, most atheists want to raise their kids with a belief that God doesn’t exist. If your kids are in a public school, they will certainly hear conflicting comments from other kids about Christianity…and friends are powerful influencers.

What if you send your kids to a private Christian school? They’ll probably encounter fewer challenges from friends, but that doesn’t mean they won’t encounter challenges at all. My own kids go to a private Christian school and last year a Kindergartener told them that only her mom believes in God—she believes “in science,” like her dad.

Wherever you engage with other kids—school, extracurricular activities, and even church (see number 17)—your kids may very well encounter challenges to their faith.

 

3. School teachers.

While public school teachers are supposed to be objective, it should surprise no one that such objectivity doesn’t always play out in practice. I received an email from a parent a few weeks ago saying that her daughter mentioned something about her faith in class one day and the teacher replied, “You believe all that stuff?” The girl was embarrassed and the mom who emailed me wondered how to talk to her child about the issue of respecting authority figures (like teachers) while understanding they may also be wrong.

 

4. School subjects.

Evolutionary biology is an obvious subject where kids will be challenged by what they learn, given the apparent conflict with the biblical creation account. But issues of worldview arise in many other subjects as well: history (e.g., a teacher may present the historical actions of Christians very negatively), literature (e.g., in the messages/worldview presented), civics (e.g., how the relationship between “church and state” is presented), anthropology (e.g., how we should accept the values of other cultures as equally right), and any science (e.g., that the only things we can know are those things proven empirically through science).

 

5. Kids’ books.

Maybe you very carefully select books for your kids. That’s great. But don’t forget your kids also have access to books at their friends’ houses, the community library, the school library, and a number of other places. Last time we were at the public library, my 4-year-old at the time brought us a cute little book about penguins. I flipped through it to learn it was all about how families with two daddy penguins are the same as families with a mommy AND daddy penguin.

Aside from books with different values in general, there are plenty of books now being written for kids that directly attack religious beliefs. Check out The Belief Book by David McAfee, as one example (McAfee is a vocal atheist). I read this last night, and it’s all about how religious beliefs are holdovers from ancient people who didn’t know how else to explain the world…but today we have the scientific method. It’s written in a fun, kid-appropriate tone, as if explaining something as innocuous as what baby pandas eat for dinner. More of these books are surely on the way.

 

6. Magazines (for adults OR kids).

My twins love National Geographic—both the adult and kid versions. Even though they’re only 6, they love to look through it. This month’s cover features the face of an ape with the headline, “Almost Human.” The article talks about the newest member of the “human family tree.” Whether or not you’re a Christian who accepts evolution, that’s a magazine cover that warrants conversation. The sky’s the limit on what kids will find in magazines that challenges their worldview. My kids have asked a ton of questions just based on what they see in line at the grocery store.

 

7. Nonbelieving family members.

In recent months, as I’ve written more about atheism, I’ve received a lot of comments and emails from parents who either have a nonbelieving spouse, or nonbelieving family members with whom their kids regularly interact. For many families, this is the most difficult kind of challenge because it’s often more personal in nature. Depending on the relationship between your kids and a nonbelieving family member, the influence can be very strong.

 

8. Movies.

We all know that there are plenty of adult movies that outright attack religion or Christianity in particular. It’s pretty easy to either steer clear of those movies with your kids or intentionally watch them with the purpose of having a discussion afterward. What many parents don’t realize, however, is how often movies have more subtle messages that can really impact their kids’ worldview over time. The children’s movieHappy Feet, for example, looks adorable, but is a mockery of religion. Don’t be deceived…challenges often come in cute little packages.

 

9. Music.

Music is just like movies. While most parents are certainly aware there are musical artists they wouldn’t allow their kids to listen to, far less attention is given to the stealth secularism that creeps into mainstream lyrics. As one example, you can read my recent post about the pervasive lyrical message that “being true to yourself” is an ideal(something it shouldn’t be from a Christian perspective).

 

10. Commercials.

Even if you carefully pick TV shows for your kids to watch, you can’t control the commercials. Need an example of how commercials are increasingly becoming a challenge? Check out the Chobani Simply 100 commercial.

 

11. Freeway billboards.

Take a second and Google “atheist billboards.” Click on the results with images. There you will see the kinds of signs popping up all over the country. Here are a few:

  • “Are you good without God? Millions are.”
  • “There is no God. Don’t believe everything you hear.”
  • “You KNOW it’s a myth. This [Christmas] season, celebrate reason!”
  • “Please don’t indoctrinate me with religion. Teach me to think for myself.” (with a kid’s picture)
  • “God is an imaginary friend. Choose reality.”

These seeds of doubt may well be planted when your kids notice such signs from the back of your car…and, if they don’t comment, you won’t even know. (If you see a sign like these, talk about it!)

 

12. Results of purposeful internet searches.

Perhaps your kids have a question about Christianity that they don’t feel comfortable asking you (for any number of reasons). Type ANY question about Christianity into your search engine and you will bring up a massive database of anti-Christian responses. There will be Christian ones as well, but you can be sure those aren’t the only ones your kids will click on.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s important for kids to hear other answers. But the quality of those answers varies so much online that there’s no way of knowing where they’ll end up (that goes for the “Christian” sites as well). The internet is a bottomless pit of hostility toward Christianity.

 

13. Results of unrelated internet searches.

Your kids don’t even have to be searching for something related to religion (see number 12) to end up on sites opposed to Christianity. I was looking for something the other day and ended up at a site for pastors who are closet atheists. I wish I could remember what I was searching for as an example, but all I know is that it was something completely unrelated to religion.

 

14. Viral videos.

If your kids have access to social media, they will undoubtedly encounter viral videos that challenge their faith in any number of ways. And it’s not always as obvious as you think. Last month, a video called “I’m a Christian, But I’m Not…” went viral. It features a bunch of young people saying things like, “I’m a Christian, but I’m not homophobic”…”but I’m not close-minded”…”but I’m not uneducated”…”but I’m not judgmental”…” It’s a ridiculous video that promotes the idea that most other Christians are those things. Such a video could sound good to your kids while altering their perception of what they believe.

 

15. YouTube comments on videos.

This is related to number 14, but is worth calling out separately. Under every YouTube video, you’ll find comments. On the one I just described, there are over 13,000. If you want the opportunity to bang your head repeatedly on the table next to you out of spiritual frustration, please read some. The comment sections often take on a life of their own, where your kids will have the opportunity to read all kinds of additional challenges to their beliefs (be assured that nonbelievers often comment on Christian videos as well, so this isn’t a matter of somehow protecting your kids from secular media).

 

16. Social media conversations.

 Again, if your kids on social media, they’ll have front row seats to watch conversations between their friends about religion and current hot topics. In case you haven’t noticed, these conversations can come up in all kinds of ways. I think the most vicious I’ve seen in my own Facebook feed was when an atheist friend talked about how devastated she was over the killing of Cecil the Lion this summer. Someone else asked why she wasn’t as upset about babies being aborted. That spun into hundreds of comments between people over animal rights, abortion, the existence of God, where we get morality, and so on.

 

17. Church.

What? Church? Yes, church. And for all kinds of reasons. For example, just as we should expect, the church is full of hypocrites because the church is full of sinful humans. As kids notice the difference between what people say and what they do, it can be a natural challenge to their faith. Alternatively, I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about church leaders/teachers quietly acknowledging to kids that they don’t really believe, or that Christianity is just one way to God, or that what’s really important is that we save the Earth, etc. Don’t assume that church is free from the possibility of faith challenges.

 

So what should you do about all these challenges? Contrary to what may be your instinct, the goal shouldn’t be to simply minimize them. Your kids will be swimming amongst them someday, whether you teach them to swim now or not. If you avoid the pool while they’re at home, they’ll just drown later when there’s no choice but to swim. Instead, jump in with them now, be alert to where the challenges are, learn how to answer them yourself, and teach your kids how to swim through with confidence.

 

Which of these challenges have your own kids encountered? What challenges should be added to the list? I’d love to hear your experiences.

 

Visit Natasha’s Website: ChristianMomThoughts.com

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Kids

Why Your Kids Can Spend 600-Plus Hours in Church and Not Get Much Out of It

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By Natasha Crain

The other day I was reflecting on how much time I spent in Sunday school and youth groups growing up…and how little I understood about the Christian faith by the time I left home. For some reason, I decided to calculate roughly how much time that actually was.

I scratched out the following on a piece of paper:

  • Kindergarten through 12th grade = 13 years (I went to church from the time I was a baby, but I just wanted to include the core learning years in my calculation)
  • 52 Sundays per year
  • 90% attendance rate, to allow for illnesses or being out of town

13 years of Sunday school x 52 Sundays per year x .90 attendance rate = 608 hours

608 HOURS.

And that’s not even counting the corresponding worship services…that’s just the Christian education time!

I don’t know about you, but that number made my jaw drop.

I spent more than 600 hours in church growing up, but by the time I left home, here’s all I really understood about Christianity:

People go to heaven or hell depending on whether or not they believe in Jesus. Once you accept Jesus, you are saved. Christians need to be as good as possible and not sin just to be forgiven. It’s important to tell others about Jesus so they can be saved too.

The result is that I lived the next 12 years with an incredibly blah, shallow faith. I didn’t actually lose my faith—as do more than two-thirds of other kids who grow up going to church—but it was only hanging there by a thread.

Where did those 600+ hours of Christian education go? How can it be that so many kids spend this kind of time in church and don’t leave home with much more understanding of Christianity than could be taught in a week of church camp?

I think I know the answer.

 

The Problem of Unconnected Puzzle Pieces

This is a problem of unconnected puzzle pieces.

Over the years that a child attends Sunday school, teachers vary, curricula vary, and churches vary (as families move). Kids are handed various pieces of Christianity during that time, which they collect and store internally. But unless there is a consistent, focused, goal-oriented spiritual trainer in their life—a parent—those pieces will almost certainly lie around unconnected.

Here’s why.

 

1. Having a bunch of puzzle pieces doesn’t necessarily mean you know what the completed puzzle is supposed to look like.

Imagine that someone handed you all the pieces to complete a 5000-piece puzzle but didn’t give you the box top picture to see how they all fit together. You’d be able to connect a few pieces here and there, but you’d face a lot of difficulty because you wouldn’t know what picture you’re working toward.

Kids collect “puzzle pieces” of Christianity over the years in Sunday school, usually in the form of individual Bible stories. A piece might be the story of Moses at the burning bush, Joseph with his multi-colored coat, or any one of Jesus’ miracles. Most kids who have spent hundreds of hours at church can describe these individual puzzle pieces quite well.

That’s not the problem.

The problem is that they don’t know how those pieces fit together into a meaningful, complete picture of salvation history. In other words, why on Earth should they care to learn that God spoke to Moses in a burning bush? Could anything seem more disconnected from a kid’s reality in the 21st century? After my 600+ hours in Sunday school, I certainly couldn’t have explained the connection between this event and the Exodus, why the Exodus mattered, what that had to with Jesus, and why that’s relevant to my faith today.

It was just an isolated piece of the puzzle of Christianity.

And isolated pieces do not join themselves together to make a beautiful picture.

As parents, we can’t expect that the pieces our kids pick up at church will fall into obvious places, even after 600+ hours. It is our responsibility, and our responsibility only, to be the intentional hand that guides these pieces into place on a bigger picture over time.

 

2. Having a bunch of puzzle pieces doesn’t necessarily mean those pieces will create a picture with meaningful complexity.

When kids first start doing puzzles, those puzzles usually have just 12 giant pieces. They make a picture, but a very simple one–nothing like the artistic complexity of one with 1000 pieces or more.

In Sunday school, kids tend to be continually handed the same pieces over and over: individual Bible stories, help with building Godly character, and some basic life lessons.

If this is effectively the extent of a child’s spiritual training, skeptics will eventually point out that their faith is equivalent in complexity to a toddler’s 12-piece puzzle.  Sunday school tends to be focused on the basics, but kids need so much more than basics today given the challenges they are sure to encounter.

As parents, we are responsible for helping our kids develop a faith with a meaningful level of complexity. The 40 questions in my book are critical for kids to understand today, yet very few of those questions would even be touched on in a Sunday school class. The level of spiritual depth kids need to stand strong in a secular world simply won’t come from the typical Sunday school curriculum.

 

3. Having a bunch of puzzle pieces doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll know what to dowith the puzzle even if you finish it.

When my kids finish puzzles, they want to leave them out for a while to display their work. Their puzzles linger in the corner of the room until I can’t stand it anymore and tell them they’ve enjoyed the puzzles “long enough.” We don’t know what else to do with them other than put them away.

Similarly, when I left home with 600+ hours of church tucked safely under my belt, I truly didn’t know what to do with my faith, other than continue to wear the Christian label and bide my time as a good person until I was zapped up to heaven someday. Those hundreds of hours hadn’t taught me what it means to actually see all of life differently than someone who didn’t believe in Jesus; I had no idea what it meant to have a Christianworldview.

As parents, we are responsible for placing the picture into a real-world context for our kids. 600+ hours of Sunday school may never directly answer questions like, “How does the fact we are created in the image of God impact our view of the sanctity of life?” “Why is it sometimes the most loving action to tell people truth they don’t want to hear?” or “How can we make career decisions that glorify God?” Parents must be proactive in helping kids know what to do with their puzzle of faith. Otherwise, it will likely be pushed to the corner of their life, where it will eventually be dismantled and put away for good.

 

Don’t leave your kids “puzzled” by outsourcing their faith to church. Whether they spend 600 or 6,000 hours in Sunday school, there’s simply no replacement for you.

Visit Natasha’s Website: Christian Mom Thoughts

 

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