Last year in an interview with CT, first-time Olympian and gold medalist swimmer Maya DiRado reported that when she started “questioning [her] beliefs as a teenager,” her Christian parents “were supportive.” She went on to say that “through some investigating and lots of reading and talking with mentors, I came to know and follow Christ and make my faith my own.”
According to William Wilberforce, “authentic faith cannot be inherited,” which means we have to help our kids grow into full ownership of their faith in the same way that DiRado’s parents did. As our kids grow up in a post-Christian age, we need to help them understand what we believe and also the excellent reasons we have for those beliefs.
It’s not a question of if our children’s views will be challenged, but when. My kids both encountered objections from non-Christian peers before the age of 10, and they’re both homeschooled. I’m hearing from public-schooling families that kids tend to start talking to each other about religious beliefs somewhere between third and fifth grade. How should they respond when they encounter a skeptic who thinks the Bible is a collection of legends and fables? That the exclusivity of Christianity is intolerant? That Jesus never existed? Or that modern science has disproven Christianity once and for all? (Incidentally, my nine-year-old son heard one of these from a friend less than two weeks ago.)
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