How Do I Talk to My Kids About Other Religions?
I was trying to brush my five-year-old son’s teeth when he asked his question. (It may have been a tactic to delay the tooth-brushing.) Not all his friends were Christians, he told me. Some of them believed in different gods. Some of them said Jesus wasn’t God. Who was right, and how could we know?
Sooner or later—and likely sooner, given we’re living in a pluralistic society—our kids are going to realize that not everyone believes in Jesus, and they’re going to think about and (hopefully) ask us about other religions.
After the conversation, I reflected on how I’d felt as he asked his question, and how I could’ve given a better answer. (Which I then did—the great thing about kids is that you can circle back to a previous conversation and try again!)
So here are four ways that my feelings had tempted me to talk about other religions in unhelpful ways—or, to put it more positively, here are four ways that by recognizing and resisting those temptations we can answer our kids’ questions in this area wisely and well.
1. Be Confident
My first response to my son’s question was panic. What if he thinks his friends are right? Isn’t he too young to be confronted by these things? Maybe we should’ve home-schooled.
But, hang on. The gospel is true. And the gospel is beautiful. And we’d been telling our kids this gospel as well as we could since the pregnancy tests showed up positive. Since Eve gave birth, there’s never been a time when there wasn’t a world of idolatrous options being offered to a child. But equally, there’s never been a time when the story of the One who crushed the serpent’s head and who will dry every tear and who will make all things right wasn’t the central thread of human history. So, whatever our kids hear—in the classroom, on the playground, in gym class, wherever—we need to remember that “the gospel is the power for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). In our homes, ours are the beautiful feet that bring good news.[1] No false god offers what our God does. So there’s no need to panic. Our God is not scared of idols, and neither need we be.
2. Be Clear
My second feeling was one of fear of my own reputation: I’m friends with these kids’ parents. I want them to like me. He’ll tell his friends what I say, and they’ll tell their dads, and I don’t want them to think I’m a bigot.
Fear of what others think will lead us to avoid telling our kids what other religions actually are: false stories about false gods who make false promises.
The truth is that Jesus saves, and “there is salvation in no one else” (Acts 4:12). He is the way, the truth, and the life, and we’re not at liberty to replace “the” with “a.” So we tell our kids that God tells us who he is, and he has told us by coming as a man and proved it by rising to new life. We tell our kids that this is good news, because no other religion can offer forgiveness and justice. We might need to learn some more about a particular religion our kids come across, so that we can be clear on the differences, and how it undermines truth. But most of all we need to be positively clear: Jesus is King, and Jesus is Savior, therefore no one and nothing else can be.
3. Be Kind
My third temptation was the opposite to the second: pride. All those other religions are wrong. All the people who think there are lots of gods, or no gods, or a god other than our God are, well, a bit dumb. And sinful. And blind.
Kids don’t need any encouragement to look down on other kids. Their hearts are just as prone to pride as ours are. So in talking about other religions, it’s worth remembering that we’re actually talking about other people—people who are no more sinful than we are, and no less deserving of grace than we are.
Even without pride, in our right urgency to help our kids see that Jesus alone saves, there’s a danger that we sound unloving and therefore teach our kids to be unloving.
So we can tell our kids that Jesus loves their friends, and that they should, too; that Jesus died for all kinds of people from all backgrounds, including them; that God has placed them in their school, or gym class, or soccer team so that others there will hear the truth about Jesus.
4. Be Compelling
My fourth temptation is to over-intellectualize. To paraphrase a line from Becky Pippert’s Stay Salt, Jesus came telling stories but we come preaching sermons. I’m tempted to give my kids a doctrine lesson in the exclusive claims of Christ, get them to memorize John 14:6, and consider it “job done.” And that approach may convince my children’s minds but it will not grip their hearts.
So in the end, a few days after our initial conversation, I told my son a story. I told him a story of another time when people were unsure which god to worship. A time when the royal family were pulling for one religion, and a guy called Elijah was calling people to follow a different one. A time when a contest was held on a mountain, to see which God proved himself. A time when only one of those gods sent fire on the mountain, because only one God can prove himself in real time and space. And I told him about another time when people were still confused, and the real God proved himself again, this time not in heavenly fire but in resurrection life.
And then I asked him to think about how those real events in history helped him work out who the real God is, and what he could say to his friends next time they were talking about what they each believed about God.
After all, we have not just the truest but the best stories. Our great prayer must be not that our kids know the truth, but that they love the Lord Jesus; and that they love him not because their parents do but because they’ve met him in his Word. That, I think, is the way to raise kids who by God’s grace will know who they believe in, and why, and can communicate his gospel in a confident and compelling way. Which is, truth be told, even more important than brushing their teeth.
[1] Isaiah 52:7
Editor’s Note: Carl’s new book for children, The God Contest: The True Story of Elijah, Jesus, and the Greatest Victory, grew out of the story he shared with his son and is a helpful resource for having conversations about other religions with your kids.
