In my previous post, I provided some rather shocking statistics on when our children are “checking out” vs. when most parents think this is happening. In that post I had also challenged you to talk to your children and ask them if they think everything in the Bible is true and to ask them about specific events in the Bible. Were you surprised by the answers they gave you? Were you able to tell them the truth?
In this post I want to try and put a little reasoning as to why we are seeing the mass exodus from the faith by our young people.
Like most things in life we are not losing our children overnight. It is a gradual process that starts as early as kindergarten (i.e. cubbies) and continues as our children grow (AWANA, Trek, Jr. and Sr. High). The problem starts with the way we are telling our children “Bible Stories” and not telling them that the Bible contains actual historical accounts of real and verifiable events. When these children grow older and go off to school, they are repeatedly told about the “facts of evolution” and that the Bible is great for literary reading because of its “stories/fables” and allegories for spiritual growth. There are two examples that come to mind where we are inadvertently actually building a foundation that will help move them away from God and the Bible as they grow older.
Noah’s Ark
When you ask the younger children to draw a picture of Noah’s Ark and the animals you will see something like figure 1 when the truth lies more along the lines of figures 2 and 3 below.
FIGURE 1
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 3
While Figure 1 is cute and appeals to children, it is setting them up to more easily walk away from the “stories” they learned earlier on. As the children grow older, if they have not been told the actual facts as seen in figure 2 and figure 3 (pay close attention to the animals in Figure 2) they will remember the stories and pictures they saw first and will discard the truth because they most likely have not seen or heard the actual truth.
Creation and Dinosaurs
One of the biggest things that will cause children and youth to walk away from the Bible is not telling them the truth of creation and how dinosaurs were part of the original creation who also walked the earth with man. I do not think you will find many pictures of Noah’s Ark that shows dinosaurs on the ark, but they were there. Children are taught in school from the very beginning that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and all died millions of years before man “evolved”. Almost any children’s book about dinosaurs will start out with something like “Millions of years ago…”. The Bible is quite clear that all things were created in a literal six days. If you interpret scripture with scripture you will see that all other places in the Bible that talk about a literal 24 hour day uses the same words and basic phrases of those in Genesis 1. Why would we accept it 400 times to mean six days and replace the meaning in Genesis with millions of years? Do we believe that the entire Bible is true or just parts of it? If only parts, which parts? Is Ephesians 2:8-9 or Romans 10:9-10 true? How do you know?
Can you answer their questions?
Remember this from my last posting?
Would you say that questioning was the beginning of your doubting the Bible?
Yes 55.61 %
No 31.12 %
Don’t know 13.27 %
55% say that they had questions and could not get them answered in a truthful and logical way. Most people would answer the hard questions like this:
The Old Testament and the creation “story” are not important. Just trust in Jesus. He loves you and has a plan for you. Do not worry about the other stuff.
There is some truth in this line of thinking because our salvation does not depend on whether we believe in six days or millions of years. However, the Bible text is very clear and can be validated by any true Hebrew scholar. Yet we still tell our kids that science is correct and the Bible is wrong (sometimes more by what we do not do and say.) In so doing, we undermine the authority of the entire Bible and set our kids up to walk away because they do not know what to believe anymore.
What kinds of questions are the kids today asking?
You might be surprised to find out the kinds of questions being asked. I recently had a conversation with some of the youth at our church and the first question from one of them was, “Why does the Bible say it is OK to stone your kids when they misbehave?” As the discussions went on, another question was along the lines of, “Why do we not do the things that the Old Testament tells us to do and only do what the New Testament says to do – are they not both from the same Bible and God”?
Can you provide an adequate answer to these questions? (If you have paid attention to the sermons lately you can answer one of them.) I have actually heard these same kinds of questions from other youth at various times. If they are asking hard questions like this, they must really be searching deeper than “just trust in Jesus and everything will be OK” truth. Here are some other things you will hear asked by youth and adults alike:
· If God is loving and caring why does he allow so much pain and suffering?
· Why does God let the bad people live a long time and take the young believers who are in the prime of their life and living for God?
· How can a God so big care anything about me? I am so insignificant he could not love me.
These kinds of questions are some of the biggest reasons why people walk away. (Charles Darwin and Ted Turner are good examples.)
I would encourage you to put your answers to these questions in the comments section of the blog and discuss them with other readers and your families. You may be surprised at what you learn from the experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment