How do I teach a child that God is real...

I too am in this boat as I was backslidden for the last couple of years and my younger children do not know anything about the Lord. it saddens me to see what I've done.. or rather not done in the lives of my children. I pray to just start being a good example to them. that they'll see the change in their momma and want to know what's going on and I'll have the opportunity to share with them again the Love of the Lord

okiemom79 said:

Hello all. I am a new Christian and suffer with my own doubts from time to time so this question is one that has been bothering me for awhile. I have been searching for answers to this thing we call life, God and Christ for about a year. I will not go into great detail about my past in this post unless ppl truly would like to know. I have openly discussed it with others in other posts from Deism to Agnostic to Christian to Agnostic to Seeker...I have been on this roller coaster since I can remember. Anyway- my husband and I have decided not to have our children believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny, or any of that. We still do cookies and milk for Daddy, and Easter baskets but WE are the ones who are given the credit not some fairy tale.
My husband has a strong faith in God and here I am wanting to be Christian and follow Christ but find myself questioning so much. I am wondering how on Earth I can begin to teach my children the God is real when I suffer from doubts? Many will say I need to get right with myself and my walk with Christ and become a true believer....would be AWESOME! But what if that does not happen? I would rather my kids live as if there is a God and 'find' out there isn't then to live as if there is not a God and find out there is. I know- so clique but it's how I feel.
For those that have young children what are your suggestions in teaching a child about God? Do we tell them that there are many who believe and many who do not? I know if I do that my kids will ask why, what do I say then? My kids are 5,3, and 1 so they are too young to grasp some things. Anyway-thanks to all those who may reply.

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You can't teach a child that God is real. He proclaims Himself through the creation to all mankind. What God instructs is -

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. - Proverbs 22:6 (ESV)

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I understand your plight! My daughters are 8 and 2, and I fear that the world will get to them at some point. So I pray. God hears your prayers, even if you don't feel like He does. Pray for him to give you joy your faith. And 1 thing I caution you, while it is important to have a regular routine that includes God-minded activities, teach them the reason why, that we should give of our time to God because we love Him and are thankful to Him for what He did. "Religion" should not define your faith.
Remember that Christianity is a growing process. It doesn't take 5 seconds to all of a sudden become truly focused on God. Your doubts are normal, and don't make you any less of a Christian. God bless you for wanting to give your children a Godly atmosphere to grow up in.

Having grown up in a Christian home, both my mom and my dad poured into my faith. There were all kinds of bedtime stories, both true and fictional. Bible stories were very common, if not daily, and it was explained to me that they were true. The morals of the stories were of course explained, and we prayed every night together. Sometimes Mom would do it, sometimes Dad would do it. And they of course insisted that we acknowledge the Lord and behave accordingly in our daily lives, integrating him with what everyone would teach their kids about right behavior. They took us to church every Sunday, too.

As far as your doubts go, those will be based in some kind of falsehood. The antidote to falsehood is truth. The Bible itself or plain logic can destroy so many falsehoods that cause people to doubt the faith. Unless we know what those are, we can't really address them point-by-point. But in any case, you should pray and ask for understanding and strong faith. James 1:5-8 tells us:

"If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do."

I used to be the very picture of that, I was highly unstable in my faith for a a few years in spite of what I was reared to believe (Satan is VERY good at what he does). I once believed that the best promises in the Bible were too good to be true, at least for me, and was in and out of depression in a large part because of it. I freaked out easily. But God went to work, I prayed for myself, and others prayed for me. God showed me that I could take hold of these promises, and it is he who made me strong in the faith. He is real, and what the Bible has to say about him is true. This is as real to me as the keyboard I am typing this on. Alongside this spiritual work, there were good books on Christian apologetic (The Case for Christ and I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist are two good titles, Mere Christianity also has some good stuff in there). Also, learning about logical fallacies, the rules of argument, and critical thinking have proven helpful. People in the world who spread lies about Christianity and reject the faith on false premises run afoul of them all the time. All truth which is really truth (you can't have truth that is not true) is God's truth, and God gave us minds to perceive it, and he holds the universe together to allow us to make use of them. If not for him, our brains would draw blanks, and even dissolve. We rely on him for this aspect as well, while making use of all he has given us to deepen our understanding of him. This does not mean we place observations ahead of the Bible. Rather, this means we can find how our observations fall in line with the truth it teaches us, and in doing so, deepen our understanding.

Around 8 or so I pushed away from God. I told the women who taught me at the church that they were all lying to me.

Then I saw the hypocrisies of the bible. I still struggle to find a way to get around that.
But I must say that I only began to wonder after reading slightly higher science textbooks from my school than the grade I was in. I thought a lot about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, and how I was sure that they had more proof of existence than God.

And I spent many years confused. I am still confused, a decade later. (17, almost 18) And I'm looking for the answers.

But my peers who grew up still believing fully in Christ their Savior, they did not read what scientists had to say, they were forced to go to church and pray before food (I do say force because no kid WANTS to wait before eating or WANTS to go to a long, boring ceremony at 6AM on a weekend.) But they kept their faith.

AlmostAdult said:

Around 8 or so I pushed away from God. I told the women who taught me at the church that they were all lying to me.

Then I saw the hypocrisies of the bible. I still struggle to find a way to get around that.
But I must say that I only began to wonder after reading slightly higher science textbooks from my school than the grade I was in. I thought a lot about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, and how I was sure that they had more proof of existence than God.

And I spent many years confused. I am still confused, a decade later. (17, almost 18) And I'm looking for the answers.

But my peers who grew up still believing fully in Christ their Savior, they did not read what scientists had to say, they were forced to go to church and pray before food (I do say force because no kid WANTS to wait before eating or WANTS to go to a long, boring ceremony at 6AM on a weekend.) But they kept their faith.

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If scientists like Francis Collins and professors of philosophy like William Lane Craig can believe in Christ, you can.

AlmostAdult said:

Around 8 or so I pushed away from God. I told the women who taught me at the church that they were all lying to me.

Then I saw the hypocrisies of the bible. I still struggle to find a way to get around that.
But I must say that I only began to wonder after reading slightly higher science textbooks from my school than the grade I was in. I thought a lot about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, and how I was sure that they had more proof of existence than God.

And I spent many years confused. I am still confused, a decade later. (17, almost 18) And I'm looking for the answers.

But my peers who grew up still believing fully in Christ their Savior, they did not read what scientists had to say, they were forced to go to church and pray before food (I do say force because no kid WANTS to wait before eating or WANTS to go to a long, boring ceremony at 6AM on a weekend.) But they kept their faith.

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Tell us what you mean by "hypocrisies of the bible" you are having trouble with and maybe we can help.

Sketcher said:

If scientists like Francis Collins and professors of philosophy like William Lane Craig can believe in Christ, you can.

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It's not for lack of trying. D8

TomZzyzx said:

Tell us what you mean by "hypocrisies of the bible" you are having trouble with and maybe we can help.

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My friends like to debate me on my faith. Recently one brought up all the scientific inaccuracies in the bible. She made her main point on Genesis, mostly on creation and light and the sun and stuff.

They also brought up a few things that the bible said that I don't think I can agree with. But I still believe in God.

Perhaps thought this conversation should be private, so we don't get off topic on the thread. ^^;;

AlmostAdult said in post 30:

My friends like to debate me on my faith.

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Don't debate them. For they won't gain faith through debate, yet you could forfeit your faith through debate.

They won't gain faith through debate because everyone on his own is wholly corrupt (Rom. 3:9-12), & so it's impossible for people on their own to ever believe in Jesus & the gospel & be initially saved (1 Cor. 15:1-4, Jn. 20:31, 1 Jn. 5:13) through their own will (Rom. 9:16, Jn. 1:13, 6:65) or through their own intellect (1 Cor. 1:18-2:16). Unsaved people can't possibly understand the gospel (1 Cor. 2:14, 1:18) because only initially saved people, who've received the miraculous gift of some measure of God's own Spirit, can understand it (1 Cor. 2:11-16). The nonelect can't possibly ever believe in Jesus & the gospel & be initially saved, even when they're shown the truth (Jn. 8:42-47, 10:26, Mt. 13:38-42), for the ability to believe in Jesus & the gospel comes only to the elect (Acts 13:48b) wholly by God's grace as a miraculous gift from God (Eph. 2:8, Jn. 6:65, 1 Cor. 3:5b, Rom. 12:3b, Heb. 12:2) as the elect read (or hear) God's Word the Bible (Rom. 10:17, Acts 13:48, 26:22-23), just as the ability to repent comes only as a miraculous gift from God (2 Tim. 2:25, Acts 11:18). Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers so that on their own they can't repent & acknowledge the truth of God's Word (2 Cor. 4:4, 2 Tim. 2:25-26).

Recently one brought up all the scientific inaccuracies in the bible.

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There aren't any, for nothing proven true by science has ever proven anything in the Bible to be false.

She made her main point on Genesis, mostly on creation and light and the sun and stuff.

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Regarding "light and the sun", are you referring to Gen. 1:3-5? If so, it could mean that God had some light source in space temporarily light up half the earth as bright as day, three days before he created the sun (Gen. 1:14-19).

Regarding "creation", are you referring to the idea that evolution contradicts creationism? If so, evolution per se (random mutation and survival of the fittest) doesn't contradict creationism. Instead, it can coexist with creationism, just as an automated process created by a human (e.g. a computer program which makes random, colorful pictures which can be seen as art) can coexist with that human sometimes performing a task himself, directly (painting some pictures by hand). That is, evolution per se can simply be a process created by God to allow new, adaptive species to arise naturally over time, and this process can coexist with God sometimes creating new species himself, directly, i.e. miraculously, whenever he wants to (cf. punctuated equilibria).

Creationism includes what could be called the double-gap theory, meaning that there could have been two different gaps of time in Gen. chs. 1-2, the first gap between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, and the second gap between Gen. 2:4 and 2:5. Gen. 1:1 could have occurred some 4.5 billion years ago, when God first created the planet earth and its atmosphere (the first heaven, in which the birds fly: Gen. 1:20b). Between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, some 4.5 billion years could have occurred, in which God could have allowed his own created process of evolution to serve as a mechanism by which new species arose on the earth. During those same 4.5 billion years, God could have also sometimes gone outside of evolution and created new species miraculously, whenever he wanted to.

Gen. 1:2 could refer to the condition of the earth only about 12,000 years ago (at the end of the Paleolithic period), after some cataclysm, such as a comet strike, had killed off all life on the planet (both evolved and miraculously created), had submerged all land areas in water (comets contain huge amounts of water), and had ruined the atmosphere. The impact of the comet could have also knocked the earth out of its orbit around its original star, so that the earth was sent hurtling into the darkness of interstellar space. Gen. 1:3-2:4 could then refer to God, over a period of six literal, 24-hour days (some 12,000 years ago, at the start of the Neolithic period), miraculously restoring to the earth light, a good atmosphere, dry land, and life, including a race of male and female homo sapiens sapiens, after God had miraculously restored land plants (Gen. 1:11-13) and land animals (Gen. 1:24-25) to the earth.

Then, only about 6,000 years ago, God miraculously created on the earth an individual male homo sapiens sapiens named Adam in an uninhabited desert land (Gen. 2:5-7; there, the original Hebrew word translated as "earth" can simply refer to a certain "land": e.g. Gen. 2:11). After that, God planted the plants of the Garden of Eden in that desert land (Gen. 2:8-9) and God placed Adam in that garden (Gen. 2:15). After that, God miraculously created the animals of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:19). After that, God miraculously created in the Garden of Eden an individual female homo sapiens sapiens (Gen. 2:22) whom Adam named Eve (Gen. 3:20).

Because Adam was created only about 6,000 years ago, but there are homo sapiens sapiens fossils said to be as old as about 200,000 years, God could have first created homo sapiens sapiens (or it could have evolved by God's created process of evolution) as far back as about 200,000 years. Also, all the different hominid forms the fossils of which long predate or are as old as the earliest fossils of homo sapiens sapiens, and which preceding or coexisting hominid forms we don't consider to have been fully human like us (such as homo sapiens neanderthalensis), could have all been created by God (or could have evolved by God's created process of evolution) over millions of years prior to the first appearance of homo sapiens sapiens on the earth.

Perhaps thought this conversation should be private, so we don't get off topic on the thread.

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Actually, what you've brought up is on topic, because many people think that science has somehow proven that God isn't real. Of course, science has never done any such thing, and it never will.

Hi Okiemom!

I have only read your started post so I apologise if there is an important part of the discussion I have missed.

I just wanted you to know that my parents told me from the word go that santa wasn't real and that there was no such thing as the easter bunny etc. My dad assured me and the rest of my siblings that he would never lie to us or make us believe in something false. We grew up with a great deal trust and love. And better yet, I still remember when I was 5 years old and the rest of the kids believed in Santa and I chuckled to myself because I knew the truth and I didn't feel left out but rather I felt like I knew something the rest of the kids never - the truth. I'm glad I wasn't fooled into believing in Santa and no fun lost either because of that.

There are true stories where christian parents told their children santa was real etc and when they parents came to tell the about God they wouldn't listen becuase they thought it was just another false belief.

It's not worth the risk and kids don't lose out knowing Santa isn't real, I'm talking from experience and all my siblings would tell you the same.

As for your questions about God, I would be happy to answer any you have, feel free to PM me anytime!


May God bless you and your family!