If you’re a parent, then you want your kids to live well. You want them to flourish. You want them to follow Jesus all the days of their lives. This is a prayer I regularly pray for my kids. But how does this happen? What does this look like? What’s at stake? It starts with building a biblical worldview.
Three Reasons Why Kids Need a Biblical Worldview
(1) Kids need to know how to navigate reality–all of it. As new parents we want our kids to learn their colors, shapes, and ABC’s as soon as they can. As well we should because this knowledge is essential to navigating life. But what about their spiritual and moral ABC’s? There’s more to life than just the physical.
As parents we need to
equip our kids with how to navigate spiritual and moral reality too. They need to understand concepts like truth, forgiveness, love, justice, authority, creation, faith, and history–just to name a few. So let’s get excited about them reading for themselves but let’s also be intentional about narrating key aspects our faith so they can absorb them into their spiritual and moral vocabulary.
(2) What kids find reasonable as they grow will depend on what kind of worldview they are building. While its true that worldviews are more often caught than taught, that doesn’t mean we don’t teach. By the way, this is why unfiltered screen time and media has such a powerful influence on our kids. It’s also a mistake to assume that public education at school doesn’t shape our worldview–it’s not neutral to the big questions that matter. Kids default assumptions about reality and how it works (i.e., their worldview) are being set without them (or many times their parents) even realizing it.
The good news is they can catch a biblical worldview in the home too! And they can be taught the truth. This means that not only what we say but how we say things in the home is really important. Our kids are absorbing both. Attitudes matter. Here is what God’s Word says:
“Better a dry crust eaten in peace than a house filled with feasting—and conflict.” – Proverbs 17:1
Our words, attitudes, and reactions set the table for the truth we are trying to impart to our children. We can have air tight theology we want to communicate but it may fall like water on hearts of stone if our relationships with our kids are filled with conflict. As parents, we need God’s grace and help every day with this…I’ll stop now because that is convicting for me as a Dad.
(3) Most people tend to make commitments to God earlier in life. The National Survey on Youth and Religion revealed that 59% of kids “made their first commitment to live their lives for God before the age of 14.” That is in comparison with about 5% from the teenage years (ages 14-17) and almost 5% of emerging adults (ages 18-23). (For more on this, check out Souls in Transition: The Religious & Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults by Christian Smith)
This indicates how formative and important the early years are to establishing a lasting faith. Introducing kids to a biblical worldview early in life makes a difference. But let me be quick to point out that God can do what ever he wants and that plenty of people come to faith later in life. In fact, that was my story. I became a follower of Jesus at 17 as a junior in high school. So it’s never too late, but it’s great if you can start early.
Remember the goal? We want them to live well. And if Christianity is really true (and it is!) then that means grounding them with a biblical worldview. By God’s grace and empowered by the Holy Spirit, this is what we are after:
“The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green.”—Ps. 92:12-14
I know life is crazy busy and some days its all about survival mode. And we need to apologize quickly when we blow it. But every little conversation or bedtime story in the context of a loving secure relationship with Mom and Dad makes an eternal impact. Here’s a place to start. I’ve created a pdf that has my top 5 biblical worldview resources for kids. Order one of these resources today, and start reading it together. You can do this!
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Do you have a teenager? then check out my top 10 list of biblical worldview resources for teenagers.
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Don’t forget to check out >> Your Worldview Minute Podcast – Are We Raising a Generation of Almost Christians?