This article was published exclusively online in the Christian Research Journal, volume 48, number 02 (2025).
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Parenting is hard. Parenting well is even harder, especially as Christians in a confusing culture. Many people facetiously lament that children don’t come with instruction manuals. It could likewise be regretfully expressed that parents don’t receive maps for the road ahead. Unfortunately, there is no GPS app to warn of the sharp turns and roadblocks along the path or to provide alternate routes when the unexpected sends us on a detour to our desired destination — that of children raised to maturity in Christ. We are left to navigate the streets the old-fashioned way — looking to the Bible as our road atlas and asking trusted individuals for help along the way, all the while paying careful attention to the road signs in order to avoid a disaster.
While some street signs tell drivers what to do (Yield, Stop, etc.), many more street signs tell you what not to do — Do Not Enter, No Left Turn, No Turn on Red. Even speed limit signs indicate the specific velocity that you should not exceed. Violating these “don’ts” could have catastrophic consequences for you or for others on the road. This can also be true about navigating the streets of Christian parenting. There are certainly things you must be careful to do, but just as important are those things you should not do. If you violate these “don’ts,” they could have catastrophic consequences for your children’s faith, particularly when they come to you with questions and doubts about Christianity. When you find yourself guiding your kids through the streets of life toward a more confident Christian faith, here are five “street signs” to pay attention to, five don’ts for Christian parents.
#1: DON’T Freak Out!
When your kids come to you with doubts or questions, the last thing you want to do is overreact. Keep your composure and offer a gentle response. Kids want to know that you are a safe person to talk to about tough issues. If you freak out, it could have the opposite effect, potentially pushing them away when they need you most. No matter how much you might be panicking on the inside, you should make every attempt to outwardly maintain your poise.
Responding to children’s doubts and questions in an overblown manner — or in a way that the child perceives to be out of proportion — will not accomplish the desired effect. Try not to make a big deal about it. On the one hand, the child might just have what they view to be a simple question, not necessarily something that is shaking their faith to the core. Making a big deal about a small issue often makes kids feel uncomfortable about approaching you next time. On the other hand, if their question is a serious issue with the potential to erode the foundation of their faith, a parent’s overreaction could cause the child to become suspicious of the reason behind it. “Could it be that my parents haven’t really thought about this for themselves? If there’s a good answer, then why are they so defensive? What are they hiding?” Overreactions have the potential to reinforce otherwise curable doubts.
Parents must not respond in such a way as would cause the young person to think twice before expressing their doubts again. Unexpressed doubt only festers until it is later revealed to be much more deeply rooted and more difficult to exterminate. In their book So the Next Generation Will Know, Sean McDowell and J. Warner Wallace clarify that “Doubt is not necessarily destructive to faith — unexpressed doubt is. We need to encourage students to express their doubts and ask questions but assure them we still love them and will help them find answers.”1
In addition, parents should never shame their children for having doubts. Responses like, “You know better than that!” or even quoting verses like, “Without faith it is impossible to please God”2 (Hebrews 11:6) will not resolve their doubt or lead them to just “snap out of it.” Instead, it communicates to kids that they are in the wrong for even holding these doubts, that they are lesser Christians for simply asking questions. As John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle write in their book A Practical Guide to Culture, “We must never give our kids the impression that questioning is doubting or that doubting is sinning.”3
#2: DON’T Dismiss It
While parents should certainly avoid an exaggerated response or an overreaction to their children’s questions and doubts, so they should also avoid the opposite response — that of mere dismissal. Some adults have taken the approach of sweeping doubts under the rug. “No big deal. If we can’t see them, they’re not really there, right?” Wrong. What problems in life truly disappear when simply ignored? The truth is most problems only grow and worsen when they are not properly addressed. The same is true with kids’ doubts. If the adults in their lives dismiss their legitimate questions, those questions can snowball into larger doubts and disillusionment.
Brad Griffin, the Senior Director of Content and Research for the Fuller Youth Institute, an organization that has studied the faith durability of more than five hundred young people over time, explains their findings: “In our research with young people across the past decade, we have become more and more convinced that it’s not doubt that is squelching young people’s faith. It’s not spiritual struggle that drives them away from the church. It’s not questions that distance them from God. It’s silence. It’s well-meaning adults who shut down hard questions about God. It’s protective parents who shield teenagers from conversations that feel too hard to navigate.”4
If parents are not willing to answer their kids’ questions, there is no shortage of internet websites and personalities that will offer the answers they are seeking. YouTubers and TikTok influencers aplenty would love to tell your kids what to think and believe. To be clear, if you dismiss or ignore your kids’ questions it might seem like they go away, but what is most likely happening is that your kids have just stopped asking you. It’s possible they have found someone else to rely on for honest answers to tough questions.
Kids take their questions seriously. Parents must take them seriously as well. Dismissive responses like “Just believe” are entirely inadequate. Many have grown up hearing phrases like “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.” While this may be a positive way to encourage oneself, it falls short of a meaningful answer to a child’s serious question. To believe the Bible to be the inerrant, authoritative Word of God is certainly important, but kids need to know that there are good reasons to believe that it is true, not just blind faith. Instead of just dismissing or minimizing kids’ doubts and questions, adults must take them seriously and address them head on.
#3: DON’T Oversimplify
Don’t answer questions that your kids are not asking. That is not to say parents shouldn’t go above and beyond to give more answers to more questions. Rather, it is to say that they should offer the right answers — honest answers to the questions they are really asking — not some caricature of those questions. Parents should not oversimplify their kids’ questions into false representations of what they are actually asking. Doing so might make it easier to answer, but only because it is merely knocking down a straw man. Committing a straw man fallacy is to oversimplify or distort another person’s argument, and then to refute that simpler distortion of the argument rather than the actual argument that the person is making.
Atheists sometimes commit this fallacy in responding to arguments for Christianity, such as the Kalam cosmological argument. The true version of this argument states that everything that begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore, the universe had a cause. A common but intellectually dishonest response to this argument is the rejoinder, “Who created God?” Of course, neither the atheist nor the Christian believes that God was created. Critics who propose this challenge are merely misrepresenting the argument. They are oversimplifying the argument into a straw man version that is easier to refute, one that falsely declares that everything that exists has a creator, rather than everything that begins to exist has a cause. Again, Christians who properly state the Kalam cosmological argument do not believe that God began to exist, but that he is eternal, the Great I Am, who has always existed and, therefore, had no cause.
Christians do not appreciate it when atheists refute a straw man version of their arguments, but neither should Christian parents commit the same fallacy regarding their own kids’ questions and doubts. On the contrary, parents should learn and refute the steel-man versions of the arguments (that is, the strongest, most charitable formulations of the opposing viewpoint). Otherwise, when kids learn that there is more to the argument than what the adults in their lives let on, they will feel that they have been deceived or that their parents were simply ignorant of the real argument.
A common example of this in Christian circles is an oversimplification of the theory of evolution. When kids come home from public school and share what they are learning in science class, many parents laugh at and even ridicule the idea that humans descended from monkeys. “If humans came from monkeys,” they mockingly challenge, “then why are there still monkeys?!” However, just as no Christian believes that God was created or began to exist, neither do Darwinists really believe that humans came from monkeys or apes. A more honest and accurate representation of their stance is that humans and apes share a common ancestor, one that was neither truly human nor truly ape as they are known today. There are certainly some solid refutations of Darwinian evolution, including concepts like irreducible complexity, but the argument must be accurately stated before it can be properly refuted. Ultimately, this may require parents to put in some time and effort to educate themselves on the actual claims behind their kids’ questions. But this extra due diligence will pay dividends with regard to their children’s faith.
#4: DON’T Be Afraid to Say, “I Don’t Know”
For some parents, the very thought of their children expressing doubts or questions about Christianity strikes fear in their hearts. These parents may not necessarily worry that their child is currently walking through a challenging faith crisis, since such questions may arise simply out of curiosity rather than deep faith struggles. Instead, the anxiety that many parents face stems from the duty they are now charged with to provide answers to these questions — answers that they may not actually know.
What if parents don’t know what to say or how to explain it? What if they say the wrong thing? What if their answer is not enough to satisfy their child’s curiosity? What if their response — or lack thereof — is the catalyst that sends their child spiraling into unbelief or even apostasy? The pressure to offer an immediate response can be frightfully crippling.
In such daunting moments, great comfort can be found in recognizing that the safest answer is always the honest answer. In many cases, that honest answer might be just a simple, “I don’t know.” Parents are not going to have all the answers, and that is okay. Yet, amidst their inevitable lack of knowledge, parents must not succumb to the dangerous temptation to spontaneously concoct an answer that may not be grounded in truth and reality. Eventually, such careless disregard for truth will surely become evident, and children will feel misled and insulted.
However, to walk away from the conversation after the albeit honest admission, “I don’t know,” would be to forfeit an incredible opportunity. Far from being the end of the conversation, this candid admission should be followed by a willingness — or even a promise — to investigate the issue and revisit the discussion after obtaining further understanding. Better still would be for parents to embark on that journey of discovery with their children. What an invaluable opportunity it would be for parents to not only grow in their knowledge and relationship with the Lord, but to do so alongside their children, simultaneously strengthening that familial bond.
Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know,” but be sure to follow it up with, “Let’s figure it out together.”
#5: DON’T Be Passive
In the beloved novella The Little Prince, the pilot and narrator of the story warns of the “catastrophe of the baobabs.” Found in parts of Africa and Australia, baobabs are “trees as big as castles,” as the pilot points out, but “before they grow so big,” retorts the little prince, “the baobabs start out by being little.”5 Like the baobabs, children’s doubts start out as small seeds planted in the soil of their hearts and minds. “But seeds are invisible. They sleep deep in the heart of the earth’s darkness, until some one among them is seized with the desire to awaken.”6 If parents proactively initiate conversations to address these doubts as soon as they push through the surface — or even before, if possible — it can be as simple as pulling up the sapling of a baobab. However, if parents naively allow the baobabs of doubt to grow in their children’s hearts, if they do not regularly uproot them in their infancy, as the little prince must do on his tiny planet, then disaster could ensue. As the story goes, “A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces.”7
Parents must not sit passively by as these doubts grow to unmanageable proportions. “It is a question of discipline,” the little prince explains, “You must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rose-bushes.”8 Likewise, actively seeking out and pulling up those sapling doubts at their earliest stages is, as the little prince admits, “very tedious work…but very easy.”9
Regularly addressing doubts takes deliberate effort, a certain amount of courage, and a trust in the Holy Spirit. It might require parents to preemptively challenge their own kids with tough questions as a way to inoculate them, offering small doses in a controlled environment and working together to find answers and build their immunity. Responsible Christian parenting involves intentional effort to build trusting relationships, hold meaningful conversations, and incorporate routines into everyday life for tackling tough issues as a family. This might take place at dinnertime or at bedtime, while driving in the car or while sitting on the couch. At first, it might be awkward or uncomfortable, but in the end, looking for and creating opportunities to talk about doubts and questions could be a matter of eternal significance. Diligently carving out time to discuss questions and to research answers can indeed be “very tedious work,” but laziness and neglect in this regard carry too great a risk.
The little prince offers his concluding admonition from a heart of somber reflection, “Sometimes…there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day. But when it is a matter of baobabs, that always means a catastrophe. I knew a planet that was inhabited by a lazy man. He neglected three little bushes…”10
Herbicide for Baobabs
The streets of Christian parenting can feel like they’re full of potholes, speed bumps, U-turns, and detours. Remembering the five don’ts above is helpful for the voyage, but much like street signs, they don’t tell you where to go; they only assist you in avoiding mistakes. Parents must shoulder the responsibility of identifying the destination, mapping out the route, and committing to the long and trying road ahead. They also must take it upon themselves to find and provide the answers their children seek along the way. There is, therefore, no substitute for knowing the Word of God, which also demands that you “revere Christ as Lord” and “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). This includes giving an answer to your children. While there is no need to become an expert, studying apologetics can equip you with the answers your kids need. It can help you to not freak out at, dismiss, or oversimplify their questions because even when you are unsure of the answers, apologetics can show you where to look for them.
As Nancy Pearcey writes in her foreword to the helpful book Mama Bear Apologetics, “The best motivator for apologetics is love: We need to love our children enough to listen to them and do the hard work of finding answers to their questions.”11 There is no greater herbicide for the treacherous baobabs of doubt than loving parents armed with a knowledge of apologetics and committed to offering their children a reason for their hope with both gentleness and respect.
Bill Westers teaches French and Spanish at a public high school in Michigan. He also hosts the Encountering Truth podcast, graduated from the Cross-Examined Instructors Academy, and participated in the Colson Fellows program.
NOTES
- Sean McDowell and J. Warner Wallace, So the Next Generation Will Know: Preparing Young Christians for a Challenging World (David C Cook, 2019), 92.
- All Bible quotations are from the New International Version.
- John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle, A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World (David C Cook, 2020), 84.
- Brad M. Griffin, “Why Doubt Needs to Have a Place in Your Youth Ministry This Year,” Fuller Youth Institute, August 18, 2016, https://fulleryouthinstitute.org/blog/why-doubt.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1943), 20.
- Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 20–21.
- Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 21.
- Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 21.
- Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 21.
- Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 21.
- Nancy Pearcey, “Foreword,” in Mama Bear Apologetics, ed. Hillary Morgan Ferrer (Harvest House Publishers, 2019), 13.
