Should children be taught a Christian worldview? with Elizabeth Urbanowicz - Podcast Episode 106

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. On today's episode, we're going to be continuing our series of spotlighting some of the ministries that we have found online or that we've heard about from others who we think are just doing a fantastic work for the Lord.

Elizabeth Urbanowitz, she is the founder of Foundation, a ministry that specializes in talking about worldview and how to communicate that to our kids. So Elizabeth, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me on today, Shay.

It's a joy to be with you.

What Foundation Worldview Is and Why It Started

So Elizabeth, tell me a little bit about what is Foundation? How did God give you the passion or the calling to start that ministry? And just maybe a brief summary of what the ministry is all about.

Yes, so I think my story is similar to probably many people listening in that we have these grand plans for our lives, and then God and His sovereignty has very different plans. And so I now run Foundation Worldview, which is a ministry that designs resources to equip kids to understand the truth of the Christian worldview.

So we create curriculum that just helps kids understand apologetics issues, theology issues, biblical literacy. And the way that I got into this is I spent the first decade of my professional career as an elementary educator in a Christian school.

And I love teaching and just am passionate about God and His word. And several years into my teaching experience, I noticed a problem that the students in my classroom, they came from these great Christian homes.

I was giving them a Bible-based education all day long. Most of them were fairly involved in a local body of Christ. But they were still rapidly absorbing ideas from the culture without any question.

Because just with the prevalence of information today, kids are confronted with so many competing truth claims. And so I just really tried to look for any materials that I could use with the students that God had placed in my care just to get them thinking critically when they're on YouTube or when they're watching a TikTok video or when they're having a conversation in the playground or when they're just reading a book so they can actually stop and ask themselves,.

Is this true?

And how do I know whether or not it's true? And everything that I found that was really seeking to do that was for high school on up, which I'm so grateful those materials exist for high schoolers, for college students, for adults.

They're so important. But I thought, wow, if the eight and nine-year-olds in my class are struggling with this now and we wait until they're 16 or 17 years old to begin equipping them with the skills that they need to filter everything through the lens of scripture, we're gonna have lost so much ground.

So I just set out, started reading lots of books, taking some online classes, attending seminars. And then I just took what I learned and I started writing materials for the students in my classroom. And I was just really shocked.

I just, I really wanted them to think before they turn up, when they turn on YouTube or when they watched a movie, when they had a conversation. And that happened. Like moms were calling me and saying, my son wants to pause family movie night and evaluate the character's worldview.

Like, this is great, but I don't know how to do this. Can you help me? And I was super excited. But the students also just really took hold of their education because all of a sudden they realized like, wait, I can't just sit here and ingest everything that's being given to me.

I actually have a job here. I have a role here to evaluate these ideas that are coming my way. It was so exciting. So, you know, just when word got out of what was going on in this afterschool class I was teaching, people started contacting me from all over and saying, hey, how can we get our hands on these materials?

And I was like, you can't, like I'm a third grade teacher. I'm not a Christian publishing house. You know, sorry, read these books, take these classes, you know, create something. And everyone was like, yeah, just let us know when you have this published.

So after, you know, two, three years of getting those requests, you know, I was praying through it and decided to go back to school to get a master's in Christian apologetics just to make sure that I really knew what I was talking about.

And then left the classroom to start Foundation Worldview just to really be able to devote myself full time to creating these resources that I could then easily get into the hands of others so that they could really just multiply what I had been doing with the kids that God has placed in my care.

So it's really, you know, it was not my life plan but I'm so grateful to be able to do this.

Yeah, no, fantastic. I mean, my wife and I don't have any kids so we've never had the privilege and responsibility of communicating it to their own kids but we've always, both of us have been very involved in children's ministry.

And just seeing how formative their minds are at an early age, how could we not start instilling some of these truths into them early on rather than waiting. Little kids can't understand apologetics in Worldview.

I guess they can, obviously there's a limit to how deep you can go, but it's very important to start instilling some of these things at a very early age. So that's one of the things I really admire about the Foundation Worldview.

Teaching Children Truth, God, and Reality

So what would you say are some of the key aspects of the Christian worldview that we need to do a better job at communicating to young children?

Yeah, that's a good question because it's so important that we understand what we need to do and where we're going. And I think even though Worldview is in the title of our ministry, I think sometimes that word can be overused.

It can be like a buzzword and buzzwords eventually mean nothing because it's just overused. But when I'm talking about the Christian worldview, what I'm talking about is what is true? What has been revealed in scripture?

And we also see it in reality in the world around us. So what truths do our kids need to know about life and the world around them in order to live in a way that aligns with reality, in a way that honors God?

And so one of the first things that I always encourage people to talk with kids about is the concept of truth. Because this is a concept that for most of human history has just everywhere been assumed, that there are things that are true, there are things that are not true.

But living on this side of postmodernism, we can no longer assume that our kids or even we understand the concept of truth. And so I always encourage adults to really take a step back and to talk through what is truth.

And a lot of times, even when we adults stop and think about what is truth, we might have to pause and think for a minute because many times our understanding of truth doesn't go beyond the moral responsibility that we have to tell the truth.

And it's like, well, what do we mean when we talk about telling the truth? And a lot of times a Christian's answer is, well, Jesus is the truth. Well, we do know from John 14, six, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

He's the only way to the Father. But what do we mean by that? Because when I ask a child, what is three times three? If they said Jesus, that would be the incorrect answer. Like, yes, Jesus has created and sustained the mathematic principles that make three times three equals nine true, but Jesus isn't the answer.

Same when I ask a question about a historical figure. If I'm asking about an ancient Egyptian dynasty and I'm asking who the Pharaoh was, if somebody says Jesus, that's not the correct answer. He wasn't Pharaoh in Egypt, even though he created and sustained that.

So we just really need to dive down into this concept of truth. And the way I explain it to kids is truth is what is real. Truth is what is real. The way that philosophers define it is, truth is that which corresponds to reality.

It's what we find in the world around us. And so always just encourage adults to talk through that with kids. And you mentioned before, Shay, you know how a lot of times we think that kids can't handle theology, they can't handle worldview, they can't handle apologetics, but they can.

All that we need to do is we need to take abstract concepts and attach something physical to them. You know, similar what we do with mathematics. You know, if we're talking about three plus two, we don't just say to a five-year-old, what's three plus two?

We take out three blocks. We let them touch the blocks. We let them feel the blocks. We let them play with the blocks. They count the blocks. Then we take out two blocks. They do the same thing. Then we put them together and we count five.

Then we introduce the symbol. Then we introduce the words. You know, so eventually they can say, you know, three plus two is five. And so it's the same way with truth. What I love to do is send kids on a treasure hunt, you know, where they have directions for finding some prize.

Some of the directions are true. Some of them aren't, you know? And then just debrief with them. You know, why did this person find the prize? Why did this person not find the prize? What does that have to do with truth?

This person had true directions. This person didn't. So truth is a really important concept.

To cover.

Another one is the concept of God. You know, ultimate reality. Who is God? And so just diving into what scripture has revealed about God. And then talking through, another thing that I really love to encourage people to do is when kids are eight on up, they're developmentally at a place where they can consider perspectives outside of their own.

And so I really encourage adults to start bringing in some other perspectives. You know, as you teach about who God is, what he's revealed about himself in scripture, then okay, you know, some worldviews believe that there is no God, that God doesn't exist.

So let's think through that. Okay, what if God didn't exist? And then think through what would be some of the logical outworkings of that. If God didn't exist, well then who created us? Ooh, that's a really good question.

If God doesn't exist, then where do we get right and wrong? Hmm, do right and wrong exist? If there's nothing outside of us, is there really something, some things that are right and really some things that are wrong?

So to be able to ask those questions and then those questions are great ones to cover. You know, how did life begin? How could we tell right from wrong? And actually looking at what does the Christian worldview teach?

And then what do other worldviews teach so that our kids are actually discovering on their own that Christianity lines up with reality, that Christianity is not closing our eyes and wishful thinking. And you know what?

I know this doesn't make any sense, but I'm just gonna choose to believe it. No, Christianity is putting our trust in God who we cannot see because everything that we can see points to him. So I just really encourage, you know, first to go over the concept of truth, really drill down deep into that.

And then after that to cover other big questions, like who is God? How did life begin? What does it mean to be human? How can I tell right from wrong? Those are just really foundational concepts that our kids need to understand if they're to understand the truth of the Christian worldview.

Yeah.

You brought up some really good points. Back when you said like the, just the other day I saw a bumper sticker that said, Jesus is the answer to your question. And I was like, okay, I lead a ministry where we answer people's questions.

And I can tell you, there are a lot of questions out there that Jesus is definitely not the answer to the question, but just the challenging people in the way they think. And starting that at an early age, I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of people who were raised in like some Christian home or a church background.

But at some point they went and asked a pastor or some cases a priest a question and the priest just responded, well, you just need to trust God. And the lack of an answer led them away from God. And only thankfully many of these cases, you see them eventually coming back to faith in Christ when they later get their questions answered.

But just to treat a child like that, to say, well, you can't understand it anyways, therefore I'm not gonna bother explaining to you, that is so completely the wrong direction to go and results in a lot of damage.

Has that been your experience as well?

Why Children Need Evidence, Not Blind Faith

Yes, and I mean, that's one of the reasons that I love your ministry. When people write into our ministry, we're constantly pointing them to yours because you have such wonderful, succinct answers, these real questions that people have.

But yes, even in my own experience as a teacher, I just saw how kids are just used to, from a young age, you say God, Jesus, or the Bible, and you get a pat on the back and a Tootsie Roll. And everyone's like, oh, phew, they understand, which usually they don't.

Where. One time I was teaching Sunday school at the church where I was attending when I lived just outside of Chicago and it was between services. And I was sitting in the coffee area of the church working on something and one of the boys who was in my class, he came by and he saw me and he goes,.

Oh no, it's you.

And I said, oh, well, it's really great to see you too today, Samuel. Like, why are you so excited to see me? And he said, well, seeing you here means that you're probably our teacher and I hate it when you're our teacher.

And I was slightly taken aback and I was like,.

Really, tell me more about this. Why don't you like it when I'm your teacher?

And he goes, because every time I'm in Sunday school, I just say Jesus as the answer and everybody's fine with it except for you. He said, every time I say Jesus as the answer, you make me explain myself.

Why is Jesus the answer? He's like, you make me think and you're not supposed to think in church. That's what school is for. You know, and I laughed out loud and I said, you know, I know you didn't mean that as a compliment, Samuel, but that's actually probably the best compliment a child has ever given me.

But I thought, you know, how sad that, you know, he's a very articulate eight-year-old. How sad that at eight years old, he could articulate, I go to school and I turn my mind on. I go to church and I turn my mind off because that is not what we see in any portion of scripture.

You know, when we look at what biblical faith is, you know, are there times in scripture where God asked people to trust him, even though they couldn't see all of the pieces? Yes, there are those times, but God never asked for blind faith, for faith without any evidence.

When we look at the narrative of scripture from Genesis through Revelation, we see that God consistently provides his people with evidence for who he is, and then he asks them to trust him, even when they can't understand.

I mean, just a simple example of this, you know, you think of Exodus 20, when God is giving, you know, the 10 commandments to the nation of Israel. If you ask most people, you know, how does Exodus 20 start?

You know, most people would say, oh, you know, like you shall have no other gods before me. Well, actually, that's Exodus 20, verse three. Exodus 20 starts off with, God says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

And then he jumps into these commands. Well, think back to what had the Israelites just experienced in Egypt. They had just seen 10 visible signs that God was the master and sustainer of the universe.

And if that was not enough, they then saw the sea of reeds parted. They were led by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And so God, you know, while he's creating this typical, you know, ancient Near Eastern treaty with them, he's reminding them of who he is and saying, this is who I am.

Therefore, this is how you are to live. And, you know, we see this throughout scripture. We see it again in the New Testament. You know, think about when John the Baptist, you know, John the Baptist, who was the first one to recognize Jesus, you know, he leapt in utero, you know, when Elizabeth heard Mary's voice.

And then he was the one, you know, to see Jesus at the Jordan and say, behold, the name of God who washes away the sins of the world. Well, then he calls out Herod for taking his brother's wife. He gets put in prison and he starts to wonder, did I get this right?

And when he sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him, are you the one who is to come or should we look for someone else? How does Jesus respond? Does he say, you just have to have faith? You know, does he respond with that pat answer that so many in the church have given to genuine questions?

No, he doesn't. What he does is he says, go, he does many miracles. And then he says, go back and tell John what you hear and see. You know, the blind are receiving their sight, the lame are walking, the deaf are hearing, the dead are being raised up, and the poor are having good news preached to them.

And so, you know, Jesus is showing who he is, that it lines up with everything that was prophesied about and saying, now, go tell that to John. Jesus was offering evidence. So I would say, you know, I do see this a lot in the church, as you have seen, Shay, and this is just a mistake, you know, that we need to make sure that the kids that God has placed in our care understand that, yes, there are gonna be times where we don't understand why God allows a specific circumstance in our lives.

There are gonna be those times, but we're not blindly just taking a leap into the dark and saying, well, everything doesn't point towards this, but I'm gonna leap this way, anything, anyway. No, everything that we find in scripture lines up with what we find in reality.

And therefore, that is why we place our trust in the God of the Bible.

Yeah, exactly. So we talked briefly about the essentials of why it's so important to present a Christian worldview. But one thing I know your ministry talks a lot about is the false worldview that children are presented with from a very early age.

Maybe just to familiarize our listeners a little bit with it, what are some things that you've found that children at a very early age are being exposed to that goes directly against a Christian worldview?

So maybe that can help some of our listeners to know why this is so important.

False Worldviews Children Absorb From Culture

Yes, there's so many things. And I think that for everybody watching and listening, I don't think many of these things are going to be a surprise to you. I think you're already familiar with a lot of these things, but there's so many lies in our culture that just stem from other worldviews, but sometimes they sound really sweet.

And so our kids could think like, oh, maybe this goes along with Christianity. So one of the huge lies today is just the follow your heart, or just this belief that our emotions always point to the truth of reality.

I mean, as we're recording this, it's June, it's pride month. And so think about just this narrative in our culture that whatever inner desires we feel, whatever we experience on the inside, that needs to be known to the outside world.

And those desires are what is most true about us. Carl Truman, if you're not, if those listening are not familiar with his work, he just, his book, his latest book, Strange New World, does a great job of just outlining the history of how we got to this point where as a culture, we believe that our desires are the most real thing about us and that everybody else must affirm those desires.

So that's something, you know, every three-year-old has always believed that, you know, anytime you're with a two or a three-year-old and you just know they want what they want and good parents, you know, have gotten good at making sure that they're not catering to those tantrums and those, you know, those ill-placed desires.

So every two and three-year-old already believes that, but that's just a lie that's, you know, continued to permeate now through childhood and even adulthood. So that's just one that's really important for us to help our kids understand.

And again, it kind of then goes back to this concept of truth. And what's the difference between something that's true and my emotions, my inner world has zero control over that. You know, just an easy thing, like the shape of the earth.

You know, when I say earth is round, my belief about that doesn't poof, change earth into being round. And when a flat earther says earth is flat,.

It doesn't poof, you know,.

Change the earth into being flat. That's objective. It's outside of us. It's a truth or a falsehood. And then where our desires, they're subjective. They're going to be changing from person to person.

So we really have to just equip even little kids to understand the difference between something that's an objective truth and something that's a subjective feeling. Because everything in culture is going to say, you know, your subjective feelings are objectively true and everybody has to know them.

So that's a really huge one that I say. Another one is actually what it means to be human. Like where is that worth and value grounded? Because I think most people in our society would agree that human life has value.

Now they disagree about different stages. You know, does a fetus, a human person in utero, you know, have objective value? What about somebody who's an elderly person, you know, and can no longer take care of themselves?

But I think most people, you know, genuinely believe that they have value. But to actually help our kids see where is that value grounded? Because if you take God out of the picture, as our creator, there is no objective grounding for human value.

It's just whatever value other people want to give to it. And so where does our kids' value lie? Does it lie in the amount of likes that they get on social media? Does it lie in the amount of views their TikTok video happens to get?

Does it, you know, does it lie in the opinion of their friends and the grades that they get at school and how physically attractive people find them and how athletic they are? Is that where their value lies?

Because that's a really shaky grounding for value. Or does their value lie in the fact that they're an image bearer of the holy God? So I really think that's another really important, you know, one to talk through with our children that why are you valuable?

Who are you and why are you valuable? Where is that value grounded? And then, you know, just also to talk about God and who is God and two qualities of God characteristics that I think are really important, especially now because one of the alternate worldviews that's just seeping in all over the place is progressive Christianity.

And so it's really important for our kids to know, you know, that God is their creator. God is near us. Theologians call this his eminence. You know, he's near us, but that he is outside of us. He is transcendent because the progressive views that are sneaking into, you know, even some conservative evangelical circles are that, you know, like all is God.

This idea of the universal Christ or of our Christ consciousness that, you know, like God is within everyone and everything. And it's so important for our kids to understand the difference between the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and this like panentheistic view that God is in all because God is not in all, you know, God is not in a rock.

He is not in a tree, you know, like God is imminent. He's close, but he is not his creation. So a lot of times what I encourage adults to do is just read through the first chapter of Genesis with kids and talk about, okay, how did God create?

And then read through, oh, God created out of his words. Did God create out of himself? No, he didn't. God didn't take himself and then make the world. He spoke and he created out of nothing. And then looking at, oh, how did he create humans?

He created man out of the dust of the ground and then breathed the breath of life into him because it's so important. I was even just reading a very popular kids series by a pretty well-known Christian author that just had this panentheistic view that the God character was saying, you know, like I created you out of myself.

You are me, I am you. And I was like, oh my goodness, you know, this is not true. So just, you know, there's so many different lies that creep in, but those are just three big ones, you know, just about, you know, that our feelings do not dictate reality.

The understanding of our grounding as a human and the understanding that God loves us, he's near to us, but he is not us. He is transcended, he's outside of us. So those are three that I think are really important for parents and for church leaders to help kids understand.

No, it's to me the most interesting thing about the three that you mentioned. We're a ministry that primarily answers questions for adults, and those are three huge issues for adults. So you look at the progress of this.

If you don't communicate these worldview ideas to children, they will result in growing up through teenage, young adult, middle-aged, elderly years, people still having wrong beliefs because they were never given that foundation to

Yes.

Shameless plug for your ministry right there. But let me just ask you this. So you've done an excellent job at explaining why a ministry like Foundation Worldview is so important. So what are some of the specific things that Foundation Worldview does to help alleviate some of these difficulties, to help provide training or resources for parents, for teachers, for pastors, so that we can communicate worldview truth to children?

Curriculum, Webinars, and Book Clubs for Families and Churches

Yes, so the main arm of our ministry, what we devote the most time and resources towards is to curriculum that we create. And I know curriculum can seem like a very sterile or intimidating word, but we're not talking about long textbooks, but what we do is we actually create video-based curriculum.

So we do all the teaching for the adults. The adults can do the teaching on their own if they want to, but we make all the teaching available for you. And we just systematically break down these complex concepts just like I talked about.

We attach something physical to them, and then we walk the kids through a series of lessons so that they will understand the truth of the Christian worldview. So right now we have out a number of different curriculums.

We have a basic worldview curriculum out for four to eight-year-olds that just covers the basics of what are the truths of the Christian worldview. And just even what I was explaining before about how God is near, but he is not us, his eminence and his transcendence.

We have them do a simple little activity where they create an animal out of Play-Doh. And then we say, okay, we want you to hold your animal close to you. Okay, hold them close. Okay, now put him far away.

Close, far away, close, far away. And then we just have them play a little game. Then we talk about, okay, what is God? Is God close or is he far away? And then we talk about God is close. And then we have them look at their animal and say, is that animal you?

No, that's such a silly question.

Are you that animal?

No, that's such a silly question. You're different than your creation.

How about God?

Is God the same as his creation? No, God is different. So we just attach really almost somewhat simple physical things on just to give kids the basics of a Christian worldview. Then for eight to 12-year-olds, we have out a comparative worldview curriculum where we take those basic truths of the Christian worldview and we expose kids intentionally to the teachings of four other worldviews that are present in our culture.

And we have them compare and contrast the beliefs and then explain what they believe is true. It's not just a free-for-all where it's like, well, you know, whatever you believe is true is right, but where they're actually seeing for themselves, oh, Christianity lines up with reality.

We also have a basic, we call it the studying the Bible curriculum. It's basic hermeneutics or Bible study skills. We wanna equip eight to 12-year-olds to soundly read, interpret and apply scripture on their own so that they're gonna be prepared with biblical literacy, you know, in a culture that's very biblically illiterate.

And then for 10 to 14-year-olds, we have what's called a careful thinking curriculum. It's just looking at the basics of how you evaluate an idea. How do you look at an idea and tell, is that an objective claim or a subjective claim?

Does it follow the laws of logic? We call it the rules of careful thinking. You know, does it have good support for it? And then once I've evaluated that idea, how do I communicate my belief about that idea, whether it's true or false, in a way that's gonna honor God and honor the person I'm talking with?

So we have those curriculums out where we just do all the teaching, you know, so that I just know that when I was in the classroom, whenever I was asked to teach something I wasn't familiar with, I was hugely intimidated by it.

And I would always save it for the end of the day and hope that we would run out of time because it's very intimidating teaching something, you know, that you're not familiar with. So that's why we do it all through video.

We give you a heads up for typical questions the kids are gonna ask. Then we have other arms of our ministry. We have webinars that we do usually twice a month, just covering a topic. We just did one on, you know, tips for raising kids who stay faithful in the faith, you know, who don't walk away from Jesus.

We did another one on, you know, raising kids in a home with biblical hospitality, helping kids understand the historical reliability of the resurrection, talking to them about gender identity from a biblical worldview.

And so we just provide these free trainings for parents and for pastors and for educators. We also have a monthly book club where we send out three titles, one for adults, one for older kids, one for younger kids.

And we give worldview questions that you can go through and talk through with the kids. And some of the books are Christian books, some of them aren't, you know, just to get kids in the habit of carefully evaluating every idea they encounter.

So we're just really passionate about providing resources for adults to get the kids in their life, thinking critically about the truth of the Christian worldview.

That's fantastic. So this is the Got Questions podcast with Elizabeth Rabinowitz of Foundation Worldview. So Elizabeth, maybe for my final question, what's something new that's going on at Foundation Worldview that our listeners might find exciting or useful?

New Resources for Family Movie Nights and Bible Literacy

Yes, so there's a whole bunch of new things. One of the free resources that we have coming out that's gonna start in the fall, just like we have a book club, we're gonna start a monthly family movie night club where we recommend a movie to watch together as a family and then provide a worldview question.

So it's not just like a review of the movie, which is very helpful. You know, Christian-based movie reviews are great, but we're actually trying to take the conversation even deeper to get kids thinking, just to create these habits.

Because our goal is we always want kids to be working towards independence, right? We, you know, we don't want them, you know, living in our basement when they're 30. We don't want to still be cooking them breakfast every morning when they're 25, you know, so we're working towards independence and thinking so that we're training them to ask certain questions anytime they're watching a movie or a TikTok video or reading a book or having a conversation with friends.

So really excited about that movie club, you know, that's coming out. And then we also do have the, one of the curriculums that I just mentioned is just gonna be released this summer. It's our studying the Bible curriculum.

And I am so excited about this because when I was teaching, you know, one of the realizations that I had in my classroom, one of my last years of teaching, I was teaching in, you know, this really interactive and engaging Bible lesson and my students were excited about it and I gave them an assignment to do.

And I was looking around the classroom and I was like, what are these kids gonna do over the summer? You know, like what are they gonna do when I'm not here to plan these great lessons, you know, or I even think about parents, you know, like what if mom gets sick one day and she, you know, she or dad aren't there to lead family devotions, like what's gonna happen?

And I was thinking, wow, you know, we are always striving for independence with kids, but for some reason, when it comes to Bible reading, we don't seem to strive for independence. We seem to strive for dependence, you know, that you need the next Bible study, you know, or you need the next, you know, Sunday school curriculum, or you need the next devotional series where I was like, these students in my classroom, they need to know how to read scripture.

So I just, you know, I came to school the next day and I completely changed my game plan. You know, I took out, you know, I put away my engaging Bible lessons and I just took out the Bible and started teaching them skills for how to read it.

I started teaching them the whole story, started teaching them things like, is this text descriptive or is it prescriptive? Okay, we just read this verse. Did we correctly understand it? Let's read it in context.