Creating a Safe Place for Questions

By Lee Strobel
7.13.06

My first step toward atheism came when I was about eleven or twelve years old and started asking embarrassing questions about faith – for instance, “If God loves us, why does he send people to hell?” And, “If God is good, why does he allow bad things?”

Basically, I was told I shouldn’t be asking questions like that – and I figured if Christians didn’t want to talk about these issues, it must because they didn’t have any good answers.

My second step toward disbelief came when I was a freshman in high school and studied evolution. After learning how a scientific experiment supposedly proved that life could be created through purely natural means, I concluded, “God is out of a job!”

What about your kids? What’s going to happen when they start expressing their spiritual curiosity or encountering challenges to their faith? Based on my own experience as a former atheist and as a parent of two precocious children, here are some ideas I hope will be helpful.

Certainly we can pray for our kids. We can try to live out a consistent Christian lifestyle so they can see the love and grace of God in action. And we can look for opportunities in everyday situations to teach spiritual lessons. All of this is important – but I think it’s also vital that we create an environment in which our kids are encouraged to offer their opinions, ask their questions, and express their doubts.

When I was growing up, the message I subtly received was: “Shut up and believe.” So when questions would percolate in my mind, there was nowhere to safely ask them. And when questions remain unexpressed, they can fester inside of us to the point were they loom larger and more serious than they actually are.

We need to understand that it’s okay for children – and even for mature Christians – to experience doubt. After all, doubt isn’t the same as unbelief. In the Bible, unbelief refers to a willful refusal to believe or a deliberate decision to disobey God.
But doubt is something different. When we doubt, we’re being indecisive or ambivalent over an issue. “Doubt does not mean denial or negation,” wrote theologian Karl Barth. “Doubt only means swaying and staggering between Yes and No.”

Scholar Gary Habermas points out that even true believers can experience doubt. “In both the Old and New Testaments,” he said, “believers clearly express wide ranges of questioning, especially on such topics as pain and evil, God’s personal dealing with his people, and the issue of evidence for one’s belief. On each of those subjects, doubt is clearly expressed by prominent believers.”

Actually, doubts can help us develop a stronger faith in the end. “Through doubt we can learn more than through naïve trust,” said author Mark Littleton. “Truth can be tested. Doubt is the fire through which it passes. But when it has been tried it will come forth as gold.”

In raising Alison and Kyle, Leslie and I tried to create an atmosphere where no spiritual question was out of bounds. Bedtime was an especially good moment in the day to provide a wide-open opportunity to express any questions or concerns. Just as nightmares become less scary when we get a chance to talk about them, doubts become less threatening when we have the opportunity to discuss them in a nonjudgmental environment.

We quickly learned that how we reacted to questions was important. If we ignored the issue or sent signals that they shouldn’t be thinking about such things, we shut down the process. If we seized on the question as an opportunity to hear out the child’s concerns and then engage in a dialogue to help them get legitimate answers that they could understand, then we found they were more willing to express themselves in the future.

We also discovered that kids often send up “trial balloons.” They may ask a fairly safe question, just to see how their parents react. If their parents are encouraging, then the child is more likely to ask the deeper and more troubling questions that are lurking in his or her mind.

To give parents resources for creating a positive environment for questions – as well as to give kids solid reasons for following Jesus – I’ve worked with child communication experts to develop the newly published children’s editions of my books on the evidence for Christianity.

The Case for Christ for Kids, The Case for a Creator for Kids, and The Case for Faith for Kids, which I developed with Rob Suggs, seek to give “tweeners” – that is, kids between 9 and 12 – a strong basis for believing in Jesus as their forgiver, leader, and friend.

In addition, author Robert Elmer and I wrote Off My Case for Kids, which offers a variety of scenarios in which the faith of youngsters is challenged by others – as well as realistic ways of handling each situation.

Our goal in creating these resources was simple: help parents nurture their kids spiritually and give them a firm foundation for their faith.

Now that I’m a grandfather, my passion for helping children understand the love and grace of Jesus – and how they can become his “forever friend” – is greater than ever. There’s simply too much at stake to acquiesce as they take steps away from God as I did when I was a youngster.