Key Questions: Dad, is it OK for me to ask questions about my faith?
1. What if I don’t have the answer?
Encountering your kids' hard questions will be good for your faith.
It’s also not bad for your kids to see that you don’t have the answer.
It shows you can still believe even if you don’t have all the answers.
This is not a standard you hold anything else in your life to.
You believe your car will work without understanding everything about internal combustion (or electric) engines.
When you don’t have an answer, don’t panic, and don’t make one up.
Instead, admit it and work with your kid to find it.
Ask a pastor or elder with them or read a book together.
2. How, practically, do I expose my kids to secular thought?
This needs to be age-appropriate.
Build a foundation before challenging it.
It also needs to be in the right proportions.
Prioritize familiarity with sound theology over exposure to attacks against it.
With those principles in mind, here are some practical ideas:
Do movie reviews immediately after watching a movie to analyze the worldview it advocated and its strengths and weaknesses (see Dad, why does it matter what I watch?)
Take turns role-playing an atheist attacking Christian views to practice defending the faith (and better understand atheist arguments).
For high schoolers, watch Tim Keller’s Reason for God series, where he discusses Christianity with a group of non-Christians.
3. Will encouraging my kids to ask questions also encourage them to doubt?
We don’t want to raise skeptics who question everything.
We need to give our kids confidence that their faith is built on solid ground.
But not asking questions is not the same as not having them.
Questions that fester undiscussed are more likely to lead to doubt than those that are expressed.
Because our faith is solid, we don’t need to be afraid of engaging with challenges against it.
Discouraging questions convey a fear that our faith isn’t strong enough to withstand them.
There is an important difference between the Israelites’ grumbling (e.g., Num 14:2), which doubted God’s ability to provide for them in the wilderness, and the psalmists’ or Job’s laments and complaints.
The Israelites’ grumbling questioned God’s love and goodness.
The psalmists and Job questioned God because they believed in his love and goodness and couldn’t see how those traits could be reconciled with their situation.
Unlike the Israelites who complained to Moses, the psalmists and Job complain to God—their questions come from and seek to continue their relationship with him.
Rather than encouraging doubt, in the Bible, asking questions is both the result of and the pursuit of faith.
