Have your kids ever asked you questions about God, or the Bible that you just didn't know how to answer? What about creation? Now there is a subject that kids are very curious about, but after seeing what the Discovery Channel, teachers, Church, and the Bible have to say about it, they are often left confused and sceptical.
More often than not, kids in this generation and era are left feeling sceptical, after they hear about events like creation. Kids have TV, movies, school and the Internet competing with what they hear in church about "the Truth", and what the truth is. When I was a kid, entertainment had a much less "real" quality to it...it was easy to figure out what was real and what wasn't. Look at the Internet...last week there was a "viral video" that had even spread to TV news. It was a video of a guy in a helmet riding down a giant slip n slide, up a ramp, flying 100 yards through the air and landing in a small inflatable swimming pool. It was impossible...and it looked real. Even the news anchors couldn't explain it, and presented it as a fluke reality...My own daughter saw it and thought that it was miraculous. Days later it was exposed as an advertisement stunt that had parts of it digitally altered so that it looked real.
Our kids are surrounded by this kind of virtual-but-not-quite-real reality constantly...and that is just the way the world is now...it's not bad...just the way it is. It changes the way that our kids think about "truth"...they are naturally going to doubt things that I, as a child of the modern era would believe simply because someone I trusted told me so.
So what do we say when kids ask us "How could god make the world in 6 days when the History channel says that dinosaurs roamed the earth thousands and thousand of years before there were humans on the earth"? I think that its OK to tell our kids that sometimes we don't know...the Bible doesn't really spell out exactly how God did it...I just know that He did it. I think that its OK to tell our kids that time is something that God made just like trees and that time doesn't affect Him like it does us. We get old, God doesn't, so a day to God might not be like a day to us.
With a kid in this generation and era, if you act like you have all the answers and don't wonder or question anything about God or the Bible, they are going to disregard and dismiss you in a heart beat. I think that its OK to tell kids that there are things about God and the Bible that are a mystery, and that is the way God wants it. I think He didn't spell everything out in the Bible so that we could spend time looking for Him, learning about Him, finding Him. If God gave us all the answers in the Bible like a text book for school, we could know everything about Him and then we would get cocky, too big for our britches, if you know what I mean...kind of like Adam and Eve. They had God right there, in a way I can only imagine, and all they had to do was not eat from that tree. The tree that the snake said could make them like God...
I love to sit with a curious group of kids and talk about the questions they have about God...sometimes I know the answers and sometimes I tell them "you know, I don't know...what do you think...let's see what the bible says about that...You know what I do know? I know that God made me, I know that God loves me, and I know that God sent His one and only Son to be my best friend, and way back to God." These are the truths that the Bible tells me...and I can spend a lifetime searching and learning about all the wonderful ways he has done these things.
I love to day dream about the mysteries of the Bible...I think kids do to. Imagine what creation was like...read the beginning of the Bible with a child's eye, and then day dream with your kids and celebrate the mystery of it...Its like this cool secret that God has and someday if we keep looking and believing in spite of the things we don't know, we will find ourselves at the coolest Storytelling event ever...sitting at the feet of God hearing The Story.
Praying for your journey,
Dana
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment