Big Bang

Lee-Kelli 10 (2)

“Hey Mom,” he said as we walked along a path enjoying a beautiful spring day.  “Did you know that the moon was created when a big meteor slammed into the Earth and bounced off of it?”

I snorted and gaped at my boy-man, sure I must have heard him wrong.  “What?!”

“Yeah.  The whole world was created that way.  Giant meteors slamming together.  BOOM!”  He clapped his hands together and made the bomb sound that only a little boy can make.  While he reenacted the world forming out of meteor’s slamming together, I gathered my thoughts.  The absurdity of that theory is not lost on me, but to his seven year old mind it’s a really cool image so I gave him a minute to envision it.

“That’s really interesting, buddy,” I said, after a moment.  “Where did you learn that?”

“Oh, I saw a video at school.”

“Huh.  Well, do you really believe that’s how the world and the moon were created?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged.

“Do you remember learning about God creating the world, forming the sky and the land and the water and all the animals out of nothing?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, picking up a rock and tossing it into a nearby stream.

“Look at the trees,” I said and we stopped.  “Look at how each one is a little bit different.  Now look at the clovers in the grass.”  He and I knelt down next to a patch of clovers and I ran my hand over it.  “See how they have three leaves on them?  But if you look long and hard enough, you might find a clover with four leaves.”

I stood him up and pointed at the moon that was already faintly showing as the evening began to fade to night.  “Look at the moon.  Look at the details in the moon.  And look at your own hand, at the lines and the marks that are unique and can only be found on your hand.  It seems kind of strange that all of these amazing details could have happened by accident, do you think?  It seems to me that there had to have been a Creator to place all the finer details together.”

“Well, yeah,” he said.  “But the video at school said that’s what happened!”

“Yes, I know and I’m so glad to know that you’re paying so close attention in school.  I also want you to know that you don’t have to believe everything you learn.”

“But I’m supposed to trust my teachers,” he protested.

“No,” I responded.  “You’re supposed to respect your teachers.  You can respect them and you can respect the different ideas they are teaching you.  I will tell you where Mommy and Daddy place our trust and that’s in God and in His Word.  We trust that it’s true and when Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon and all the creatures upon the earth, we trust that to be Truth.”

We walked in silence for a moment as he thought.

“Do I have to believe what you’re telling me?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.  “You have to decide on your own what you believe to be true.  I can’t tell you what to believe – I can only tell you what I believe and I believe God’s Word to be True.”

“Well how do I know what to believe?”

“Prayer.  And knowing what the Bible says about Science.  God is the creator of Science and there is a lot we can learn from His Creation.  But it’s always important to weigh what you learn about Science against God’s Word.”

He sighed and kicked a rock with his toe.  “Okay,” he mumbled, clearly feeling conflicted until…

“Wow!  Look at this awesome rock!”  He picked up a shiny rock and held it in his hands like a treasure.  He looked at me and grinned, the evening sun dancing across his smattering of freckles.  And just like that, he was a kid again.

This was a conversation I had with Sloan last week.  It’s not meant to start a bashing session against the public school and OMG what are they teaching our kids?!  Admittedly I was a little upset when I first heard what he learned, but after thinking about it I realized I shouldn’t be surprised.  I knew they wouldn’t be teaching my child Creationism.  That’s my job.  And I’m glad that, at a young age, he has been exposed to the idea that there are different schools of thought on how the Earth was created.

Vigilance is key when raising kids, whether they go to public school, private school or you teach them in your living room.  We must vigilantly teach our children how to weigh academia against Truth.  While it wouldn’t have been my first choice for him to learn a modified version of the Big Bang Theory at such a young age, I am glad that we had the conversation that we had.  (Seriously, a meteor bounced off the Earth and that’s how the moon was formed?  I’ve never even heard of that before! 🙂 ) 

How are you teaching your children to defend Truth in a world that is fighting against it?

Comments

  1. Kelli, I love that you shared this conversation with all of us. As parents this is a huge part of our responsibility…and I know we don’t image having these conversations with our 1st graders but better now than too far down the road when we aren’t don’t have as much influence on our kids, right?

    I just read “Give Your Kids the Keys” by Adam Stadtmiller. It’s a great book about this type of thing.

  2. diane S. says

    OK—I cried when I read this. I love Sloan and I am so glad he can express himself. What wonderful words God gave you, his Mom whom he does trust, to share God’s Truth. Thank you for sharing this tender moment.

  3. What a wise response! Sloan will be so much more prepared to discern truth as he’s exposed to ideas we disagree with. You are teaching him critical thinking that will help him grow into a godly man.

  4. Thanks guys. I can only say it’s by God’s grace I was able to come up with anything to say at all. I really wished Lee would have been here to handle that conversation because he probably would have done a better job of it. 🙂

    Kelli, thanks for the book suggestion!

  5. Oh Kel, I seriously cried when I read this. The part where Sloan asked if he had to believe what you were telling him put a knot in my throat. Did you’re heart just cringe? I saw a flash of an adult Sloan not loving Jesus and my heart screamed “NO!”. You handled that so beautifully. Way to let him wrestle with what you were telling him. Not only did you tell him how you trust Jesus, but you let him see that you trust Jesus even with Sloan’s soul. I think as parents it is hard to let go like that. I’m so blessed by this story friend.Love you!

  6. It did scare me when he asked that question, moreso because I don’t ever want my children to be one of those adults who felt their parents pushed faith on them and forced it on them. When he asked I could tell he seemed frustrated and annoyed and I wanted to make it abundantly clear that I was not forcing anything upon him. I also wanted to stress Truth. I hope I communicated both of those well. But yeah, my initial reaction when he asked that was “Heck Yeah! You need to believe it.” But that’s not my job as his mom. I don’t get to make him believe.

    Parenting is hard…and scary.

  7. While not an easy conversation it was such an important one. Sloan’s faith will be “his own” and one with deep roots that he has worked out with God….not a faith that he has “borrowed” from you and really does not understand. I was raised in a home where I believed because it was what my parents taught. It was only as an adult that I began to search out the answers for myself and REALLY began to KNOW what I believed.

  8. I always think about what I’ll tell Madeline about these things. Of course, I do believe God created all, but I also believe that, since all of history is written prior to it happening, that things like what his “video” described is possible. However, something I feel public schools quietly attempt to instill in kids is that God had nothing to do with the “secondary” things that happened post-Creation. He wrote those events, prior to them ever happening. Once that concept is absorbed, many things make sense. The beauty if that is that it means that kids don’t have to measure what they learn in school vs what the Bible teaches (possible educator agendas aside.) Everything they learn about science is, in fact, God’s doing.

    Science is the study of God’s work. Scientists often separate the two, as if that’s possible.

  9. I agree with you, Dave. As Sloan gets older and has more cognitive reasoning, I think it’s possible for him to see and understand that more. It’s really too bad that Sceintists so often dismiss God from the equation because if they allowed faith and science to coincide I think the discoveries would be far more awe inspiring!

  10. Wow. That’s a tough conversation, but you handled it wonderfully!

  11. carol prosser says

    Kelli, You handled this so well! Your children are blessed indeed! When our girls were in public school and taking tests about things we didn’t believe to be true we took a clue from their text books. They answered with “According to the theory of evolution…” etc.

  12. Hi friend. Am catching up with you/your blog– first time since January… Saw this post. There are some great videos that Sloan would love. (If he saw it on a video at school maybe another video would help him see it in the same medium and compare apples to apples.) http://www.answersingenesis.org/PublicStore/product/From-Evolution-to-Creation,4740,231.aspx

    Teach up. He’ll get this.

    We have these as well… the Creation Adventure (not the other three). They are super corny, but my kids haven’t figured that out yet. I’d be happy to loan you anything we have. http://www.answersingenesis.org/PublicStore/product/Childrens-DVD-Pack,5197,187.aspx

    I’m not sure if schools still teach that we come from fish (I swear that’s what I was taught!)… or monkeys… but my kids LOVE these videos too: http://www.answersingenesis.org/PublicStore/product/Incredible-Creatures-That-Defy-Evolution-Vol-1,4735,231.aspx
    (These are all on Netflix Instant Watch if you have that. Cheep way to preview them.)

    I love to hear my kids engage in adult-ish conversation about evolution. I think they understand it more than I do. Talk with you soon. –S

  13. Thanks Suzanne! Yes. We’ll talk soon. 🙂

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