Subscribe to Every Post:If you still have children living at home I want to encourage you with the difficult task of training them to be critical thinkers. Parenting is not one of the easy things of life. We all need to be encouraged and challenged at times with how we parent. It is hard work. One of the many challenges of parenting is the balance of teaching our children to respect and obey authority, while at the same time teaching them that it is OK to question authority.
My six year old son came home a couple of weeks ago with a book from the library at his school he wanted me to read to him. As I started to read it, I realized the book was coming from an evolutionary perspective on the origin of life. Our kids don’t go to a Christian school, therefore, evolution is what they get taught.
Evolution is what many people in our society believe, and so I am thankful they are learning it. It also gives my wife and I a great opportunity to train our kids how to be critical thinkers – that it is actually OK to question authority. We want them to learn that not everything their teachers teach is ALWAYS right, that not everything their church teaches is ALWAYS right, and that not even what their parents teach is ALWAYS right.
We want our kids to be submissive to authority and respectful, but we also want them to learn how to use the lens of Scripture to decipher truth from error and to evaluate what they get taught. Teachers, church leaders, and parents can and will all make mistakes but everything must be tested by Scripture.
We recently sat our third grader, second grader, and kindergartner down and talked about evolution and then talked about Genesis one. We want them to know that there is a disparity between what the world often believes and what God says. It was a great conversation.
We have also already had some brief conversations about other issues in this same vein like homosexuality, abortion, sexuality, the way our society views boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, modesty in dress, friends they have of other religions, etc.
Out in the world they will and already are engaging in so much stuff. We want to train them how to think these things through biblically. At the same time we want them to learn how to respect people who believe differently. We don’t want them to be judgmental against people who may believe abortion should be a choice or homosexuality is simply an acceptable sexual orientation or that all religions lead to God. We are trying to train our kids to believe differently based on Scripture regarding these and other things, but we also are just as motivated to train them how to love, serve, befriend, and get along with people who believe and practice things we believe are not right. We want them to avoid relativism (everyone’s views are equally true), and we want them to avoid arrogance (a prideful demeanor of “I’m right and let me prove to you how wrong you are”).
Like I said, parenting is not easy. It is hard work. Whether your children go to a Christian school, public school, or are home schooled, I encourage you to teach your children not only what God says but what the world teaches as well (and teach them the delicate balance of how to respect people who believe differently). Counsel them how to navigate through a world that will bombard them with challenges to their young faith (as well as the delicate balance of respecting authority while at the same time questioning authority). We don’t simply want clones of ourselves, we want independently thinking children who are following Christ and influencing other children to follow Christ as well.
And lastly, let me say, it is not too late to teach teenagers these things (or even adults for that matter), but if at all possible, let’s begin instilling these things in our elementary children. The earlier we can train them to think critically and biblically, the more potential they will have to be leaders of those around them and not simply followers of the masses.
If you are in the trenches right now with this stuff (like we are), and feel like you fail more times than you succeed (like we do), be encouraged and don’t lose heart. Keep going after it. You are not alone. It is worth it in the end.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:54 am
Chris -
What you have said runs parallel to what we feel. Parenting today is incredibly difficult. Children are exposed to more in the media than any generation before them. We want our children to respect authority, but also question it at the right time and in the right forum. We do our best to teach our children both to be critical thinkers, and to be tolerant and respectful of others. So many children that we encounter are judgmental and self-righteous because their parents have taught them that their beliefs make them better than other people.
You are raising wonderful kids and our children are happy to be friends with your children!
May 20th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Thanks Kat for posting on my blog. I had no idea you even knew I had one. Thanks for the encouraging comments as well. Kathy and I have a lot of respect for you and your family (and how you parent). We are privileged to be friends with your family as well. Take care!
October 17th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Chris-
Your thoughts are not based on fact; they are based on emotion. You, like so many before you have been led to believe something that is not based on scientific evidence, and therefore is not factual in nature. It’s time to wake up. If you want your children to believe this, then at least do your homework and tell them the truth. Tell that what is based on fact, not myth. It is what many believe but it is not based on scientific evidence. Check out the work of scholar Acharaya S or the http://www.Christpalgerized.com website. Both will give you over 150 years of research that prove not only evolution is correct, but that it also has withstood every effort to drag it down. Your ‘lens of scripture’ gives them a tainted version of the truth. Dare to check out the facts present by the true historians of the time- Pliny the Elder, for example. OR check out Hypatia of Egypt. Find out what the church did to a brilliant woman who dared to support science and didn’t even actively go after the church. She didn’t have to- all she did was encourage people of the time to think. For her efforts she was killed. Take off your self-imposed lens. What have you got to loose? If you are sure what you’re saying is true then taking it off will only prove it. If you take off and learn something new- you’re still ahead.
For the record, I am a teacher and I will continue to encourage students to think- to get information from at least three different primary sources and then to draw their own conclusions. I challenge you to do the same- and to remember that you too can still learn- but you have to be open to learning the real truth- not a story perpetuated over time at the expense of our children.
January 6th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
To EB:
I appreciate your comments, even though I believe them to be understandably erroneous. I say “understandably” because you are viewing the world through the “lens” that the secular world provides. The “truth” that the secular world promotes is not always really the truth. Though I will admit readily that what we have learned through scientific data and experimentation often offers us a more clear view of the workings of the world, there is also much that is interpreted wrongly, and then used to support a particular agenda or philosophy.
Though I do not profess to be a scholar, theologian, or scientist, I do believe that Christianity is very definitely not based on a myth. I encourage you to read a book by Lee Strobel, called “The Case for the Christ.” In it he interviews and challenges dozens of recognized scholars from around the world to explain historical evidence for the life of Jesus Christ. There are also virtually endless accurate volumes of information available wherever one chooses to look, to substantiate not only the life of Christ, but creation as well. I would encourage you, as you did Chris, to “remember that you can still learn.”
As a young student, I bought into the lies I was taught in school. Then many years later as an adult, I did more research past the recommended reading offered by my teachers, and found that what I was exposed to in my early years, was just not true.
You mention the killing of a woman by the church who tried to support science. In response to that comment I would say that it is known throughout the ages that evil things have been done by people professing to be Christians. Such atrocities are not condoned by God, however. As Christians, we are certainly not perfect, but strive to be the person our God would like us to become. Evil actions by humans do not prove Christ to be a myth, but does prove that mankind is inherently sinful, and hopelessly lost without God.
Again, I am thankful for your comments because they have encouraged me to do more research. And I can attest to the fact that knowing my God personally is indeed exciting and yes, I can be quite emotional at times. But it is not possible to remain unemotional when you know the real truth!!
February 10th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Do you also teach your children to question Biblical authority?