Author: admin

Young Earth Creationism 101: What Every Christian Parent Needs to Know

This is the fourth post in my series on creation and evolution basics, and the first to cover a single view in depth. Posts to date have included 3 Big Reasons You Need to Be Up to Speed on Current Views, The Six Key Views You Need to Understand and How Jesus Loving, Bible-Believing Christians Can Have Different Views on Origins.

Today starts the part of my creation and evolution series where I’ll be featuring detailed information on each of the views discussed here. As a disclaimer, I’m not a scientist, Bible scholar or theologian. I’m simply a Christian parent who has decided to dig deeply into the debate on origins because I’ve come to believe that an understanding of the issues is no longer optional when raising Christian kids in today’s world. I believe we owe it to our kids to be educated on major views and the cases for and against them.

I’ve read 16 books and countless articles representing the varied views. These blog posts will feature the points I feel are most critical for understanding each position. I personally am taking no side in writing these; it is my goal to present each view as objectively as possible.

Before reading this, you may want to refer to my earlier chart for orientation. Today’s post is on Young Earth Creationism, and we’ll work up the chart from there. I’ll refer to Young Earth Creationism by the acronym YEC and those who hold the view as YECs (Young Earth Creationists). Here we go!

1. YEC is the belief that God created the universe and everything in it during six 24-hour periods that happened 6,000-10,000 years ago.

A 2012 Gallup survey found that 46% of Americans believe in “young earth creationism.” The position is labeled “young earth” to contrast it with the mainstream scientific consensus that the earth and universe are billions of years old.Continue reading

How to Handle Questions God Didn’t Answer

The other night, during our family worship time, I was pelted by a hail storm of theological questions from my kids.

It started when we prayed for a family member with cancer who has not yet experienced healing. In the same prayer, we praised God for His healing of someone else. The tension between the answered and unanswered parts of our prayer was not missed.

Two seconds after we said amen, Nathan asked, “Mommy, why does God pick people to heal?”

As I launched into a mini-sermon on the mystery of prayer, and how God doesn’t tell us everything we’d like to know, Alexa (age 2) interrupted with her own pressing question.

“Will we see Zeus when we go to heaven?”

Zeus was our cat, who passed away last year. His passing opened an unending string of questions about death and dying. I explained to Alexa that the Bible doesn’t exactly tell us what happens to animals after they die.

Nathan then asked, “Why don’t we know when we will die?” Kenna immediately added, “And why do some people die old and some people die young?”

Though the answers varied slightly, the underlying chorus was pretty much the same: God didn’t tell us everything we’d like to know. We simply don’t have all the answers.

As I’ve written before, I believe it’s crucial for kids to understand in no uncertain terms that Christians don’t have all the answers (and neither does anyone else). But after I tucked the kids into bed that night, I realized that simply saying “God didn’t tell us everything” is insufficient.

Necessary, but insufficient.

There are three other pieces of understanding that need to accompany this truth. Though they seem straight forward on paper, it has taken me years to personally fit these pieces together.Continue reading

Creation and Evolution Basics Part 3: How Jesus-Loving, Bible-Believing Christians Can Have Different Views on Origins

(This is the third post in my Creation and Evolution Basics series. If you haven’t already, be sure to read 3 Big Reasons You Need to Be Up to Speed on Current Views and The Six Key Views You Need to Understand.)

I’m officially obsessed with the creation and evolution debate.

Three months ago, I couldn’t have cared less. In the last two months, I’ve read more than 2,100 pages of books on the biblical and scientific support for the varying views I outlined here!

Aside from wanting to understand this for the sake of my own faith and parenting, I greatly hope that my learnings will benefit readers of this blog as I work to distill those 2,100+ pages I’ve read into a series of manageable blog posts (just in case you don’t feel like reading thousands of pages on this yourself!).

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing posts explaining the key information you need to know about each view (while writing on other topics as well). As a starting point, however, I think it’s important to have a general understanding of why Christians have differing views on origins. Without that understanding, it’s easy to think that the only view a Christian can/should have is the one you have.

After reading books from every viewpoint, I’ve concluded there are four major reasons Christians come to varying conclusions on origins. I’ll discuss two in this post and two in the next due to length.

Please note that I am not offering a personal opinion on any of these views. This is only to explain how Jesus-loving, Bible-believing Christians can differ in conclusions. Continue reading

Don’t Let Your Kids Drown in a Sea of Faith

While we were on vacation last month, we spent a lot of time in the swimming pool helping our kids learn to swim. On the first day we were there, my daughter let go of the edge of the pool for the first time and kicked her way several feet forward without help! It was so exciting to see her make those first independent swim moves.

Things didn’t go so smoothly for my son. He had the confidence to jump off the steps and try swimming over to me, but he was choking every time he came out of the water.

“I got water in my mouth and nose AGAIN!” he would wail, in between coughs. He choked on every swimming attempt for the first two days we were there.

Each time, I reminded him, “Nathan, You HAVE to hold your breath! You DON’T open your mouth under water!” Then I set him back on the stairs to try again.

After a couple of days, I was becoming exasperated. I couldn’t figure out why he refused to hold his breath. It was so simple and foundational for any swimming progress he could make.

Then a light bulb went off! My eyes must have been as big as saucers as I realized the likely problem.Continue reading

7 Faith Considerations When Raising Introverted Kids

A couple of weeks ago, we took our twins to a birthday party at a bounce house. It was the first one we’ve been to for a friend at school, and it was interesting to see how our kids interacted with the other kids in their class. After a while I didn’t see Nathan, so I went searching.

I found him sitting alone inside a tunnel in the corner of the room.

“Buddy! What are you doing in here?!”

“I’m tired. I wanted to get away.”

I didn’t even know what to say. My 4-year-old son was tired of playing with other kids so he just “left.” On one hand, I was embarrassed my kid was sitting in a tunnel at a birthday party (bad, I know). On the other hand, I totally understood.

I had always known Nathan was an introverted kid, but it wasn’t until this experience that I realized just how introverted he is – just like me, and just like my husband. Contrary to popular belief, being an introvert isn’t the same as being shy. An introvert is a person who is energized by being alone and whose energy is drained by being around other people (here’s a checklist of traits); conversely, an extrovert is a person who gets their energy from being with other people.

The implications of being introverted extend much further; introverted people process their whole world differently than extroverted people do, and that has a lot of implications for faith as well! If you have an introverted child, here are seven things you’ll want to consider in their faith development.Continue reading

6 Keys to Raising Kids Who Aren’t Ashamed of Being a Christian

In my last post, I provided an overview of the six major views on evolution and creation. On the Facebook page for this blog, I shared the corresponding flow chart I made to go with the post. The photo upload of the flow chart went “viral” in the last few days…amongst atheist groups.

Within a few hours, it had reached over 26,000 people and received 272 comments – many of which were personal attacks against me and/or the intellectual level of Christians. Not every atheist engaged in such insulting ways, but these kinds of attacks dominated the thread.

I want to share a sampling of the commentary here. I debated doing so because I don’t want to give such comments more “air time.” However, I wanted to write about shame as it relates to being a Christian today and these comments couldn’t provide better context for the discussion that follows.

“Yeah facts and rational thought isnt very important for these crazies”
“Poor woman, she is obviously in dire need of psychiatric care …”
“Intelligent and religious are mutually exclusive. There is no god. End of debate.”
“Please, don’t tell me people actually believe this.”
“Christian Mom needs to go back to school and ACTUALLY LEARN SOMETHING. What tripe.”
“Debating a Christian is impossible. They rely on “Faith” (fantasy) where an Atheist relies on evidence. Where there is no evidence in the existence of some supernatural deity, there can be no actual debate as debates rely on facts and evidence to create a point of view.”
“If your children are smart, they will ask for proof… unless you already brainwashed them to the point they won’t DARE ask why out of fear that some imaginary sky being will torture them for eternity for asking such a simple question.”Continue reading

Creation and Evolution Basics Part 2: The Six Key Views You Need to Understand

In my last post, I explained 3 big reasons Christian parents need to be up to speed on current views of creation and evolution. Today I’m giving you an introductory guide to the six major views you need to know about.

My intention with this post is not to get into the scientific or scriptural basis for (or arguments against) each view, but rather to provide a brief overview of what each view means. Leading adherents to each view here can provide extensive scientific and scriptural evidence to support their position…and similar evidence to counter each of the other positions. I plan to dig into the key pieces of evidence for and against each view in future posts.

For now, I created the following diagram to give you a lay of the land. It can be confusing to figure out how all these views fit together and understand the key differences. Take a look at this chart to understand the key distinctions, then dig into the descriptions below.

Continue reading

Creation and Evolution Basics Part 1: 3 Big Reasons You Need to Be Up to Speed on Current Views

I just returned home from vacation and had a wonderful amount of time to read each night after putting the kids to bed. I powered through seven books! After I finished the first four, I decided it was time to dive into an important faith topic I’ve avoided to date: views on creation and evolution.

To be honest, I’ve never felt this issue impacted my faith much. I knew very little about the competing views of origins other than that evolution was “man from apes” and creation was “man from God.” Last week I devoured three books by Christian authors on the topic and they couldn’t have reversed my previously passive interest more.

I was absolutely enthralled by the complexity of views discussed, from both a scientific and biblical perspective. I now feel the origins debate is crucial for Christians to understand, and especially for Christian parents to understand in order to proactively guide kids on these issues. Here are 3 big reasons you need to care too.

Happy Mother’s Day, But Please, Don’t Just Be a Mom

As I write this, I’m on vacation. We got to our condo yesterday and everything looked great. Until I walked into the laundry room.

A scale.

What?! WHY would someone put a scale in a place where people are on vacation, eating with reckless abandon and enjoying every minute of it? It’s not that I’m unaware I’ve been eating so freely here. It’s just that I don’t want to take premature inventory of the results. That should happen when I get home.

Of course, whether I know about it or not doesn’t change the reality of any added vacation weight. I just want to ignore it because it makes me happier right now.

On Mother’s Day, most of us (myself included) just want to sit back and celebrate – not weigh how we’re doing. But I recently took note of a scale we moms really need to step on. Not the one in my condo’s laundry room (please not the one in the laundry room), but a measuring stick nonetheless:

A recent survey showed that only 16% of Christian women rate faith as their top priority in life, well below family at 53%.

If you’re a Christian mom, there’s no time like today to weigh your priorities. Is your life measuring up to an identity based around family or an identity based around Christ?Continue reading

Preparing Your Child to Get Hurt by the Church

Today I’m excited to share a guest post on this important topic from Dr. Daniel Christensen.

“What can I do now to help my children commit to church when they are adults?”

I ask myself this question a lot because I want my children to have a life-long dedication to church. I want them to have mornings when it seems like the sermon was just for them; to experience what it’s like to have a song pass through their emotions and come to rest in their soul; to find a Jonathan to their David or a Ruth to their Naomi; and to use their God-given gifts to edify others.

I even want them to break down in the middle of nowhere while riding in a dilapidated youth group van, just so they get the full church experience.

“How can I protect my children from the world, the flesh, and the evil one?”

I ask myself this question a lot, too, because I hate when my children get hurt. I adamantly protect them from dangers like sunburns and moving vehicles, so how much more should I protect them from greater threats like a sinful world, a coaxing flesh, and a lying devil?

I want my children to experience both ends of the shepherd’s staff. I want the staff’s hook to guide them into the flock and the staff’s end to keep the wolves of the world at bay.

“Then my children will be well,” I tell myself.

This security, however, is only an illusion. My experience as a church member and a pastor has convinced me that the greatest threat to my children’s life-long commitment to church may not come from outside the flock, but from inside it. The teeth of wolves may be long and sharp, but in the church it is the bites from sheep that always seem to penetrate deepest.Continue reading