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Recently, several people have asked me, “How do you actually do this apologetics stuff at home? How do you talk to your kids about these topics?”

When I get the question, the person asking usually looks a bit baffled, as if they are asking how I build rockets.

The word apologetics sounds serious, I guess. A lot of people assume teaching their kids apologetics would involve some kind of formal event: Dad comes home from work with his suit and briefcase, loosens the tie (only slightly), then sternly gathers the children and announces, “Kids, it’s time to talk about…apologetics.”

All kidding aside, it doesn’t have to be like that at all! Ideally, we should incorporate apologetics into the way we teach our kids about Christianity. Today I want to give you 14 examples of how I do that with my 5-year-old twins. Obviously, the details of how I communicate with them are age-specific, but I hope this will give you an idea of how the foundation of apologetics fits right into our regular Bible study time.

There are three things to note about these examples:

• We do our best to have a nightly Bible time with the kids. That’s when these discussions take place. If you don’t yet have a “God time” set aside for your family, consider how you might do that.

• The starting point for doing any of this is having a knowledge of apologetics yourself. When you become familiar with the common challenges to Christianity, you’ll naturally start tailoring many of your discussions with your kids to address certain points. The first step in teaching your kids is simply teaching yourself.

• No 5-year-old will be prepared to make a case for and defend their faith based on the examples you’ll see below. That’s not the point. Just as you have to learn basic addition before you someday learn calculus, these concepts are foundational.

 

Here are 14 examples of teaching young kids apologetics:Continue reading

When I was a kid riding my bike in the 80s, I never, ever, ever wore a helmet.

Neither did any of my friends. And neither did my husband, growing up several states away. He says he used to carelessly fly down undeveloped rocky hills behind his house on his bike and no one thought twice about it. (Perhaps they were too busy watching Full House?)

I’m not sure when our society decided that neighborhood bike riding is treacherous enough to warrant safety gear, but I didn’t notice things had changed until I had my own kids. Suddenly I became aware that every child on so much as a tiny tricycle must now be fitted with a skull-preserving, Disney character-promoting protective device.

I decided in a self-congratulatory way that I wasn’t going to buy into all this societal “softness.” My kids are going to ride a bike without a ridiculous helmet, just like kids have for decades, I thought.

Then one day my son fell off his bike and hit his head – hard – on the concrete sidewalk.

Fortunately, nothing serious happened, but it really shook me. He could easily have cracked his head open. I realized at that moment how crazy it was that I had so confidently kept my kids from wearing helmets just because kids in my own generation didn’t wear them. We made it to the safety gear aisle at Target before you could say “three helmets, sizes 3, 4 and 5, please.”

 

Do we really need all this stuff?

Last week, a reader left the following comment on my blog post “6 Ways You May Be Raising Your Kids with an Oversimplified Faith:”

Everything hinges on God, who is the one ultimately in control. It does not hinge on our eloquence, finesse, or intellectual prowess. We can do everything right (or wrong) and still two identically raised children may go into extremely diverse directions. Our children and grandchildren make their own personal choices.

This reader was effectively questioning apologetics in the same way I was questioning bike safety gear before my son’s accident: Do we really need all this stuff?

And it’s a great thing to ask.

After all, as Christians, we believe God is ultimately in control, as this reader pointed out. She is also absolutely correct that kids will eventually make their own choices, and that those choices will not perfectly correlate with what their parents did and did not do for their spiritual life.Continue reading

In the course of doing some research for my book recently, I came across the following “most helpful customer review” on Amazon for Jerry Coyne’s book Why Evolution is True:

I was raised in a very conservative Christian environment and taught Young-Earth Creationism (anti-evolution, anti-Big Bang, etc.). I bought into it for a long time. In college, I finally began to investigate some of the claims for myself – reading what was really being said by ‘the other side,’ rather than what I was being told was being said. The disparity I discovered can hardly be exaggerated: what I had been taught bore essentially zero resemblance to the real thing. Genuine evolutionary theory was virtually unrecognizable in the creationists’ caricatures of it. I learned that I had been lied to – intentionally, or not, I do not know – and that the quantity, diversity, and quality of evidence in support of evolution was simply crushing.

I felt so disheartened reading about this person’s experience. You can just feel the sense of shame she had when she discovered her understanding of evolution had been oversimplified by the Christians in her life (this is not to suggest that the young-Earth view itself is oversimplified; it was her understanding of evolution that had been oversimplified).

That feeling of shame is all too common amongst adults who turn away from Christianity. There are numerous comments on ex-Christian sites that read to the effect of, “Once I grew up and started encountering arguments from non-believers, I felt like a fool for being a Christian all that time.”

If we raise our kids with an oversimplified faith, we’re building a ramp to eventual shame when difficult questions arise.

Here are six ways you may be raising your kids with an oversimplified faith.Continue reading

With two 5-year-olds and a 4-year-old in our family, bad logic frequently permeates our home. Here are two conversations just from yesterday:

 

Me to my 4-year-old daughter: “Can you please put that blue ball away?”

My daughter: “Mommy, I’m not wearing blue today. I must not have gotten it out.”

Logic fail: Not wearing blue has nothing to do with whether or not you got the ball out. (But nice try.)

 

Me to my 5-year-old daughter: “It looks like you need to go potty. Please go.”

My daughter: “No, mommy I don’t need to go.”

Me: “Then why are you walking like a duck?”

My daughter: “Because I need to go potty.”

Me: “You just said you didn’t.”

My daughter: “Right, because I don’t.”

Logic fail: Totally inconsistent responses.

 

It’s pretty easy for adults to call out kids when they’re using poor logic. It can be a lot harder, however, to identify bad reasoning coming from other adults, particularly when it comes to claims against Christianity.

Consider the following statement that commonly gets tossed around the internet. You might realize it doesn’t sound like good reasoning, but can you explain why? More importantly, can your kids?

“Religion is just an accident of geography. If a person is born in Kansas, he’ll probably be a Christian. If he is born in Saudi Arabia, he’ll probably be a Muslim. Religion is man-made and you were simply brainwashed into it.”Continue reading

(This is the original announcement for my book from 2014. If you’re coming upon this post now, please visit the official book page for Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith. The book comes out March 1, 2016!)

I have a big, exciting announcement to share with you today…

I got a book deal!

A few months ago, a wonderful senior editor at Harvest House Publishers came across my blog and contacted me to see if I would be interested in meeting to discuss book possibilities. (As a blogger who was indeed interested in writing books eventually, that was a moment that almost made me fall off my chair!)

He understood the need Christian parents have for equipping their kids to make a case for and defend their faith and was interested in seeing how I might develop an apologetics book specifically to help parents do so. He recognized that while there are many apologetics books available, there are very few resources specifically designed for the needs of parents – to help them prioritize the challenges that are most important to discuss with their kids (who has time to learn everything?), to help them learn how to answer those challenges in an easy-to-understand way (no fancy lingo!), and to give them practical guidance for having these critically important conversations with their kids.Continue reading

I suppose this a funny title for a post on a Christian parenting blog! But, as I often explain, we can no longer teach our kids about Christianity in a silo and expect them to automatically stand spiritually strong. The challenges today are too great. As I discussed in my last post, the atheist worldview in particular is a threat to the faith of young people.

In today’s post, I want to give you some very practical ideas for teaching your kids about atheism. The first seven are appropriate for kids of all ages, while the second seven are appropriate for middle school and older kids.

I should note that the first several ideas on this list are not necessarily for teaching the specifics of the atheist worldview. They do, however, lay an important foundation for future learning on the topic (e.g., with the last seven ideas on the list).

Without further ado, here are 14 ways to teach your kids about atheism.

1. Be intentional in pointing out that not everyone believes in God.

Depending on where you live and your kids’ educational setting, they may or may not have this basic fact fully on their radar. When I was growing up, I was very aware of different religions, but was hardly aware that there were people who didn’t believe in God until I was in high school!

The fact that God is invisible often comes up in our Bible study time with the kids (ages 5 and 3). I use it as an opportunity to acknowledge that it takes effort to understand a God we can’t see or touch, and that some people decide God must not exist if we can’t see him. I emphasize that God doesn’t just make us guess that He’s there, however; He has left us much evidence in what we can see. (See this post for discussion pointers.)

2. Discuss reasons why some people don’t believe in God.

One night per week, instead of our planned Bible study time, we let the kids ask any questions they want about God. This week, my daughter asked, “Why doesn’t everyone believe in God if the Bible tells us all about Him?” I was so happy she asked that question, and it led to a great introductory conversation about why some people reject God. At an age-appropriate level, we discussed how some people just don’t want to believe in God because they want to live without objective moral rules; how some people see all the bad stuff happening in the world and decide a good God can’t possibly exist; how some people think the world has just always existed without a creator; how some people think the world would be very different if God existed; and so on.

This can lead to a great conversation about how the decision to accept or reject God (and Jesus) is the most important decision people must make in life.

(For more help discussing this subject, please see my book, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side: 40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith. Each of the 40 chapters explains what skeptics say on the topic and offers a concise, easy-to-understand Christian response to discuss with your kids.)

Continue reading

Last week, the world’s first ever all-atheist TV channel officially launched. According to the press release, “Atheist TV brings consistent, quality, superstition-free programming for children and adults, on the air and on-demand, right from your regular television” (emphasis mine).

I saw a link to the press release posted in several Christian Facebook groups and watched the responses with interest. When I commented that this is a good opportunity for Christian parents to watch in order to better understand what atheists are saying to our kids, I was surprised by some of the responses.

One person commented that “we can’t fight every battle.” Several commented that they would just make sure it’s blocked from their kids. Others said there will always be non-believers, so we need to accept it and move on with teaching our kids the Bible.

While there is certainly truth there, I think these casual responses are missing an important point:

Atheism is not just one more possible challenge to our kids’ faith. It is THE most likely challenge today.

With this post, I’d like to raise awareness of why Christian parents should care so much about understanding atheist views and why we should proactively address these specific challenges to Christianity with our kids. Here are four key things you should know.Continue reading

I’ve been asked several times lately for book recommendations in the area of apologetics (learning to defend your faith), so today I’m giving you my top picks!

I’ve broken my recommendations into four areas, plus a bonus category of books that didn’t fit neatly elsewhere:

• Nature of Truth and Worldviews
• God
• Jesus
• The Bible

I’m giving you three picks in each category. The “required” pick is what I recommend as the starting point. The “extra credit” pick will take you deeper. The “advanced” pick will challenge you significantly.

Remember, we can’t equip our kids to meet today’s faith challenges unless we first equip ourselves. No matter where you are on your faith journey, you’ll find something here that will deepen your faith and better prepare you to raise kids who love the Lord.Continue reading