When Children Question
“What do you think?” –Matthew 17:25
Children possess insatiable curiosity. Their questions about God often plumb the very depths of truth and leave us, their parents, scratching our heads.
“How big is God?”
“Does the Tooth Fairy know God?”
“Where is heaven, and what’s it like?”
Saint Augustine said, “If you understand, that isn’t God.” And yet, how we respond to our children’s spiritual questions is crucial to their faith development:
Dismiss their questions, and we only postpone them.
Shame their questions, and we teach them to fear examination and attach guilt to doubt.
If we answer with a dissatisfying cliché of bumper sticker theology—“The Bible says it, and that settles it”—we place belief and intellect at odds, denying our children the rich faith that emerges from wrestling with the Great Mystery.
An honest “I don’t know” is a better answer, yet only constructive when met with a further gesture: “…but let’s explore this together.” Jesus’ own rabbinic method of teaching hinged on exploring parables and questions, endless questions. Eighty-seven are recorded in the gospel of Matthew alone. Among them:
“But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15), and
“What do you think…?” (Matthew 17:25, Matthew 18:12, Matthew 22:42-45).
Emory theologian James Fowler has spent a career studying spiritual growth. According to Fowler’s research, young children see the world as a commingling of fantasy and reality. Their basic ideas about God, in these early years, are often confused with Santa Claus and wily garden gnomes. They then progress, as with an abrupt pendulum swing, out of fantasy to a very concrete, black-and-white concept of reality, which also informs their view of God.
If we don’t encourage our children to explore their beliefs—including the ideas they have adopted from us or from the religious institutions in which we raise them—we risk their settling for an unexamined faith that lacks the firm foundation necessary to sustain them through life’s trials.
What are the catalysts to progress our children—and ourselves—toward a more mature and examined faith? Curiosity. Questions. Yes, even doubts.
Like Jesus with his disciples, we are wise to teach our children it’s okay to wrestle with God and explore the tough questions. There is no harm in the asking, only the risk of humbly discovering that God is an infinitely Greater Mystery than our minds, at any age or stage, can comprehend.
Wendy Connelly is a mother of two and a host on the Alpha Course—where no question is too hostile or too simple—at her home church in Olathe.