In our Bible study class, one of the couples mentioned their bright 10 year old son was bringing up issues of conflict between faith and his knowledge of dinosaurs, no doubt brought about by being taught young earth ideas in his Sunday School. While our church is fairly moderate and accepting of most views of origins, the young earth segment is definately more vocal and expressive of their viewpoint, and bless their hearts, comprise a pretty large segment of the active volunteers and teachers in the children’s section.
This couple themselves seem fairly conservative in their views and probably lean YEC but open to discussion. How do you provide resources and help without offending or alienating them in this area?
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I’ve been looking over the integrate curriculum for that very reason. Chapter one is requestable on the BL resources website. I think there are some good ideas in the first few chapters.
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I think Christian parents should be encouraged to make their kids aware of what a range of Christians think. You can always say, “Mom and Dad prefer this idea, but some Christians think X, Y, Z.” When kids know that other Christians have wrestled with certain things and come down in different places, they don’t feel trapped and they don’t get the impression that Christians are so uncurious that issues that occur to a 10 year old have never occurred to them.
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Teach the kids that both sides believe in God, and that taking sides isn’t really all that important.
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Well ultimately it comes down to if we believe we have a right to interfere with the beliefs taught to kids by their parents. If the parents are YEC, and the kid is finding conflicting information between their YEC teachers, parents and their evolution accepting school teachers, then it really comes down to talking with the parents. You’ll have to convince the parents that it’s in the interest of their child to have multiple approaches to the questions he’s asking. I would never be comfortable with telling a kid from a YEC family non YEC stuff.
If it’s at Sunday school, then maybe the Sunday school teachers will be ok with it. Mostly, i would just mind my own business and let them do whatever they are going to. Almost everyone in my family accepts evolution. My nieces and nephew has an atheist dad and a mother who accepts evolutionary creationism and so it’s not an issue with them. Every single one of my cousins that I am aware of accepts evolution and has some form of Christian faith and so it’s never an issue with them. Outside of that, I just don’t have very much interactions with kids except at some of the nature walks and I never bring up God, just science when doing them and so never a conflict there.
But I can’t imagine myself being in a position where I go against the wishes of some parents to teach their small kids an opposing belief.
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Quite true, but this is a case where the parents are openly expressing concern and seeking advice on what to say and do. It feels like entering a minefield to get involved, yet eternal destinies are at stake.
I like the idea of suggesting the integrate curriculum, not sure if he attends public or private Christian school so need to learn more about the situation.
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At 10 years old, a child can be thinking deeply and independently. I would respond by, first and foremost, respecting this and assuring him that your love does not depend on thinking the same way on every issue in general and creation in particular. No child should be manipulated with guilt and shame over their honest and innate curiosity of life.
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I see. I’m always extremely blunt and straight forward. If parents were asking me, or anyone, about this subject i would dive right in with not all biblical interpretations are the same and some just quite simply don’t align with history and science such as all forms of intelligent design, especially young earth creationism. Then leaving science out of it i would cover why I don’t take genesis 1-11 literally yet still take the story of Jesus literally. It will take years for them to understand the science. They have a far better chance of at least accepting your beliefs as biblically valid.
I can convince someone that genesis 1-11 is mythological in nature way easier than I can convince them evolution is true. They will never accept evolution if they cling to the same theology. They don’t even need to accept inerrancy in order to understand genesis 1-11 is fictional like a parable. Fiction can still present truth.
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Definitely sounds like a gifted kid. You’ve raised a few of those and most likely (99% certainty) you were one yourself, so I’m sure you have some advice to share with them about the road ahead. The questions don’t stop and only get harder as the years go by. Haha.
I’m not certified in “gifted and talented” education, but I had to take plenty of professional development classes on it for my SPED certification. Gifted kids make connections that other kids overlook at the same age. The typical characteristics are easy to Google, but a couple of things are usually missed. One is the tendency of gifted kids to become bored and underperform in school, and a corollary is that many “rebel” as a result, which I encountered quite a bit teaching in juvenile detention. The same could be said of Sunday School and church.
On the YEC angle, you also have personal experience from years as a moderator here. You’ve run across many folks who lost (or nearly lost) faith because of what they were taught in church from childhood on. The main thing, I think, is not to paint the kid into a my-way-or-the-highway corner. (Apologies for mixing my metaphors.) The AiG indoctrination method doesn’t work. Secondarily, as a parent, I think it’s important to encourage a child’s curiosity and willingness to raise such questions. Don’t stifle their questions or squash them with “pat” answers at a young age. Their questions won’t go away. They’ll just stop asking their parents.
(Edits: I can’t help myself. I was an English teacher.)
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Are they? Perhaps so - but almost certainly not along the usual fault lines that get so much attention. You might already have your sights on the truly higher stakes, Phil, in that you’re concerned to preserve community relationships. Somebody can be 100% right about everything they declare (along the usual aforementioned fault lines) and still be a jerk and very unchristian in how they share it with others.
So one option could be to let the teachers teach as they will, and then privately “supplement” - and even correct as necessary what your kids bring home from the day’s lesson (because you would be asking them about it after all). And if that’s done well, your kids get an early start (hopefully good modeling from you) about how to maintain relationship with people who believe different things.
The drawback to that is it leaves the rest of the class - maybe with less resourceful and less knowledgeable parents than yourself, more completely at the mercy of whatever’s being taught. So there may be a season when, hard as it is, the disagreement just needs to come out in class so that others can see Christianity isn’t just one monolithic subscription to a particular partisan perspective.
Them’s tough waters to navigate.
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How about something from Denis Lamoureux? He’s very well educated in both theology and evolutionary biology. His faith journey took him from atheism to YECism and finally to evolutionary creation. Let me know if you are interested and I will direct you to free resources.
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Denis’s book on Ancient Science is great, and I may loan my copy to them. He goes through a lot of biblical interpretation in it as well, which is usually the area of greatest importance.
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Please show the parents the following interviews:
The Evolution of an Evolutionary Creationist: part 1
The Evolution of an Evolutionary Creationist: part 2
The Evolution of an Evolutionary Creationist: part 3
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Unfortunately simply doing that, and saying it isn’t all that important, is highly controversial….at least where I’m from. The “apologetic” is worming itself in as a “tenet of the faith.”
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Phil, I don’t think it matters at all what kind of school the kids go to. We’re a public school family from generations of public school. Since I’ve been reviewing the curriculum for BL, I’ve been thinking it is worth using parts of it for discussions after supper. Just the discussions regarding having hard discussions will be helpful (to me).
Christian kids whose families don’t wall themselves into an enclave will have to deal with these qustions one way or another for quite some time. Having tools and having thought things through now will help later.
Merv, we tried this at the Darragh household. Our church had invested in the AIG Sunday School (indoctrination and propaganda) program. Every . single . lesson brought in YEC dogma along with the consequenses of not “believing right.”
How can we teach our kids that any teachers at church are trust-worthy, when we have to deprogram them every week. We thought we could swing it. We should have left years before we did, honestly. There’s other damage to our kids that just comes from being in a church in such an insular community, where the congregation self sorts by how we educate our kids.
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Leaving a situation is a witness too - to your kids. And the manner in which you do it.
Do you shake the dust from your feet and pray for fire to come down from heaven and devour your enemies?
Or do you shake the dust from your feet and pray with angonized love for their deliverance?
Your kids know from observation which of those approaches you favored, and how much of that same spirit you still carry with you even as you try to leave it behind.
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We left quietly and wrote the staff, giving our reasons - 3 large ones, one of which was an umbrella that included the AIG stuff. We didn’t shake the dust off anything. I still believe these are good, godly men in leadership, but they are wrong about some things that can touch essentials (like AIG) and wrong about things that nurture a fragmented, unhealthy congregational culture. There was grief stayng and grief leaving. At least in the leaving we were able to move forward.
In talking to our girls since leaving, learning about the rejection they felt from other kids, I’ve had to apologize for not having left sooner. I am concerned about the long-term effects that that will have on faith in their lives as well as their ability to relate to other people in churches.
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Well it sounds like you did what you could (though I hear you - on agonizing whether it was enough or soon enough for your girls).
And come to think of it - as you say; perhaps the “shaking the dust off the feet” is more a move to let go of than to practice! I admire you for your words here. Looks to me like your girls are in great hands.
Thanks, Merv.
I would love to know for sure, but I can claim nothing really.
Except that we try.
The proof is in the pudding.
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