12.23.2013

Teach the Children

Have you noticed how many children from Christian families go off to college and return minus their faith in God? Good, humble, church-going kids go out into the world and agnostic (or downright atheistic) kids return home. And it's all our fault!
It's easy to blame the atheistic professor, the worldly education system or someone else's 'wild children'. But the fault lies with us: parents, uncles and aunts, youth ministers. We tell the children what to believe, but not why they should believe it or even why it's believable! We give them scripture verses and Bible stories and think that's enough. They go away strong in faith but weak in theology and reasoning skills. They show up at college easy prey for atheistic professors who question their faith. They don't know how to defend their faith with sound doctrine and logical, reasonable arguments and cave to public humiliation. You can bet their professors are ready with logic and reason to defend their godless  arguments!
The Bible warns us to be ready to give a defense of what we believe. We need to be ready with an answer for why we believe what we believe. Faith is not the opposite of logic and reason. The Christian faith is both logical and reasonable. Our children are looking to make sense of this crazy world and if we don't answer their questions biblically, someone else will answer them for us.
Encourage your children to question their faith. Encourage them to ask questions and teach them that their faith is logically and reasonably defendable. Don't stifle their curiosity, but feed it. Of course if we adults don't study to show ourselves approved, then how will we be able to answer our children's questions?