How Do I Talk to My Kids About Their Hard Bible Questions?
My seven-year-old daughter loves to ask hard questions about the Bible.
Recently, we read about the parting of the Red Sea. The Jesus Storybook Bible tells this account beautifully, and as I read it with our kids, I was looking forward to the clear gospel application in the end: God made a way for the Israelites just as he made a way for us through Jesus. Amen and bedtime.
The last page of the story shows a picture of a Jewish family celebrating their escape from slavery. A small girl in a pink dress waves a tambourine above her head while her mother dances behind her. A father throws his son in the air. On the page to the left, though, the beach ends and a picture of the sea hints at the casualties they left behind. Half of a wagon wheel floats in the center along with a helmet and four hooves of a horse—all lost in the sea. The text explains that when the Egyptians followed the Israelites into the ocean, the walls of water crashed over them.[1]
As we finished the story, I emphasized redemption. We talked about how God is in the business of doing miraculous things to rescue his people. I explained that this was exactly what he did for us when he sent Jesus to die on the cross.
My daughter’s wheels were spinning though, fixated on the picture of the sea. “But what about those soldiers? And the horses?” she asked, pointing to the four upturned hooves in the picture. “Why did God make it so they all died?”
I paused, tempted to bypass her question altogether and refocus her on the redemption of God’s people. That’s a hard question—one I didn’t feel sharp enough to answer after a long day. But it was a good question, and one that deserved an answer. If we want to teach our kids to love and know the Bible, we must not skip over the difficult places. After all, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). There are no asterisks here. All means all.
The more we read the Bible with our kids, the more questions they’ll ask, and understandably so. There’s so much to wrestle with and think through—something we understand even as adults. So, as we attempt to embrace these conversations, here are three things we can do to equip ourselves with God-honoring responses for our kids’ hard questions about the Bible.
Ask for Wisdom
First, we can preemptively ask God for wisdom. An earnest prayer for godly wisdom will not come back empty. We’re promised this. James tells us plainly, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5). We don’t need to wait until a need arises to make this request though; instead, we can make this petition part of our daily prayer life.
Study the Word
Second, we must study the word. To teach our children who God is, we must know who God is. This means we need to read the Bible—study it with intention and focus—and ask the same questions our kids will. Finding blocks of focused time is hard—I know this because I took a break to throw a load of clothes in the washing machine before I typed this sentence. While we don’t need to try to free up an hour of uninterrupted quiet time every day, we do need to find ways to be students of the word ourselves. This could happen any number of ways—waking up thirty minutes earlier, utilizing our kids’ screen time, or setting our phones aside during nap time—but it’s a necessary piece if we want to answer our kids’ questions with truth.
Encourage Honest Conversations
Finally, we can encourage honest conversations by sharing our own thought processes. It’s tempting to water down the Bible and skip over the parts that are hard to explain—especially if we have difficulty understanding something ourselves. But it’s good for our kids to ask hard questions; it means they’re thinking critically and for themselves. We should praise this. And when we don’t know the answer, there’s no shame in admitting this to our kids. Instead, we give them a gift when we model active learning and discernment as we seek answers. We can teach them how to find wise sources for help and show them what it looks like to believe even as we search for understanding. Remember: God generously gives wisdom. He delights for us to seek him, and he will often give understanding if we take the time to ask.
My answer to the question about the Egyptians who died in the Red Sea was far from perfect. We talked about God’s deep love for all people, his perfect justice, and the reality that there is an ultimate punishment for those who don’t follow God. I stumbled over my words as I explained God’s goodness in all situations and admitted I don’t always fully understand everything God does either. Finally, I thanked my daughter for asking the question. “It shows me you’re thinking,” I told her, “and I love that you’re thinking so much about the Bible.”
There are no formulas when it comes to talking to our kids, and there’s also no way to predict all the challenging questions they will surely ask. But we are not ill-equipped in these conversations. We have been given the Holy Spirit to guide our responses and the living and active word of God to lean on.[2] God is with us in our prayer, preparation, and conversations. He will use these good efforts for his glory, and we can trust him to speak to the hearts of our children, even though our words will be far from perfect.
[1] Sally Lloyd-Jones, The Jesus Storybook Bible (Grand Rapids: Zonderkidz, 2007), 92–99.
[2] Hebrews 4:12
