Teaching Theology to Children

Alpha and Omega Ministries presents the Dividing Line radio broadcast. The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence.

The Dividing Line is brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries, the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, and Bethany House Publishers. Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

With today's topic, here is Dr. White.

Teaching Children Theology in Everyday Life

And welcome to you on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. My name is James White, and it is good to be with you. I have some special guests in studio today. Sitting across from me is a gentleman that's about a year ago now.

He and I rode a tandem in a bike race, and I think we did pretty well. We came in second out of all the tandems out there in Tour de Farm. And we didn't get a chance to do that this year, but last weekend was that race.

But he's also my weightlifting partner, and also happens to be my son Joshua. Joshua, it's nice to have you in studio today. Good to be here. So I surprised you with that, didn't I? Well, some of you may recall a few weeks ago when we were up in Salt Lake City, I just briefly mentioned that Joshua was up there with me.

And that was number four, I think, wasn't it? Third time or fourth time? Three. Third time up to Salt Lake City, and been going out to Mesa with me as well during the Easter pageant of the LDS Church, and getting to pass out tracks and witness to people out there as well.

But I did mention that we had two special guests. And sitting next to Joshua is someone that for some reason, I'm not quite sure why, Joshua likes to bother a lot, but she likes to bother him back too.

I'm not sure exactly how that works, but my daughter Summer Marie is with me as well today. Hi, Summer. It's nice to have you here. Hi. Josh is 12 and a half, and Summer has been saying since about three days after her birthday that she was 9 and a half, working on 10 very soon here, which is enough to make me more than feeling a little bit older than I used to when I start realizing that I have one child that is only a few years away from driving.

That's enough to cause me to go bald as well, just thinking about the worry that will be involved with that. But my kids are with me today, and you know, we do a lot of driving around. Mom works hard, and so often I get to take care of the munchkins.

In fact, over the summer, you may all recall that we had school in a car, where we had these little whiteboards, and I was desperately trying to help Summer with math, and we were talking about science, and we were talking about all sorts of stuff.

We do a lot of things. Talk about everything under the sun in the car, and quite often we talk about theology. There aren't probably too many parents driving around with their kids in the car discussing theology, unfortunately, at least as I see people driving by.

It's very rare that I see them discussing anything at all. I see a lot of yelling and things like that, but I don't see a whole lot of nice, calm discussion going on. At our church, at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, the young people are taught certain things in the Sunday school classes.

For example, just today I was asking my kids some questions from a catechism that we use with the young people. For example, I was asking them simple questions like, who made you, and who did make you?

God. God made you, and what else did God make? God made everything. God made everything. He made all things, and why did God make you and all things? Summer's being very quiet over there. For his own glory?

For his own glory. That's exactly right. Then, of course, I asked one that Josh understands the great significance of, are there more gods than one? There's only one. There is only one God, and in how many persons does this one God exist, Summer?

Three.

Three, and who are they? The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. That's exactly right.

I'm very, very thankful that the teachers that we have at our church have been faithful in teaching the children these things, and of course, we've taken the time. These kids have the opportunity in going places with me, and I think I mentioned both Josh and Summer.

We're out in Mesa at the Mormon Easter pageant this year. Even Summer was there. We had to do a little cajoling, a little encouraging to get her to come along, but you ended up out there, I think, was it three out of the five nights?

Four out of the five nights? Four out of the five nights. Four out of the five nights you were out there with us, so after that first night, you found out, hmm, this is more interesting than I thought it would be, huh, didn't you?

It was scary. It was scary. Well, especially since everyone's taller than you are. That doesn't make things very easy at all either when you're trying to pass out tracts to folks. You almost have to kick them in the knee to get them to pay attention to you, but it was scary.

In fact, let me ask you about that. I remember, Josh, the first time you experienced rejection in passing out tracts. I happened to just turn around in time to see it. I saw someone basically throw a tract back at you at the south gate of the temple, and you had this look on your face like, what did I do?

Basically along those lines, people would say things to you like, what would some people say to you? Get lost. Get a life. Poor kid. Yeah, poor kid. Something like that. Give me a break. Yeah, give me a break.

Things like that. Well, I remember, I didn't think the little blonde-headed girl would get much in the way of nasty comments, but you got a fair amount of nasty comments even yourself, didn't you, Summer?

Some that I shouldn't repeat. That's right. I've taught you well. Some you wouldn't want to repeat at all, and yet that gave us the opportunity. I know when Josh first experienced that, I took him aside and said, well, Josh, let me talk to you about what rejection is, and let me talk to you about what it means to be rejected for the gospel's sake, and what it means to have people treat you badly because of the gospel.

That's something that we do talk about a lot. My kids know that there are a lot of people that don't like dad, that write nasty things about dad, and they come from all sorts of different religious backgrounds too.

So it gave me the opportunity both with Josh and Summer to explain what that's all about and what rejection's all about. We talk often. In our family, we're very open about what we talk about. When we see things on the news, for example, recently, I mentioned last week turning to Josh during the NBC morning program and mentioning to him that I believe during his lifetime he will see at least the attempt to pass laws to make it illegal to simply preach the gospel and to identify what God identifies as evil as evil.

That's the type of thing we discuss. We discuss worldviews, and we discuss what it means to think as God would have us to think and all those types of things. I really enjoy having the opportunity of having my kids with me when I go places.

I'm really hoping that this year I can get them out to Long Island. They got to go out last year, but it was after the debate that we did. We did every spring for the past three years, and we've already scheduled next year's debate.

We've been doing a series of debates on Long Island with Roman Catholic apologists. The first year, we debated Gerry Matiticks on the Marian dogmas. In fact, if you're interested in hearing that, that's available on our website right now if you have real audio at www .aomin .org.

You can listen to that debate. In the next year, we debated Sola Scriptura against Mr. Matiticks. Last year, we had a debate against Mitchell Pacwa, a Jesuit priest and scholar on the subject of the papacy.

The kids got to come out to Long Island afterwards. We won't tell them about how we got in trouble for making noise when I was tickling you all at midnight there in that one motel we were out there, but we won't mention that on the air, of course, but you all missed the debate.

I'm really hoping that next year, when we debate James Aiken of Catholic Answers on the subject of the Mass, that you all get to be there. It's a big room with about 700, 800 people in it, and it's a very intense evening, and I would love to have my family there with me and supporting me in that particular work at that particular time.

You know, the Bible says in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4, we have there a passage that, in fact, my son and I have shared the memorization of Deuteronomy 6, 4 in Hebrew. Why don't we say it together?

Would that make you feel better? Yeah. Okay. Deuteronomy 6, 4 in Hebrew, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Very good. And that is the Shema, the prayer of the Jewish people that says, hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

And it goes on from there to say, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. So, obviously, these commands that God was giving, including loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, was not something that was just to be limited to a discussion on Sunday morning.

It wasn't something that was to be limited to Wednesday evening. Obviously, when it talks about talking about these things, teaching them diligently to your sons and to your daughters as well, and talking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up, what else is there to be doing?

That pretty much covers the entirety of life. And one of the things that I've tried to teach my children is the fact that the entirety of life is how one expresses one's Christianity. One is a Christian at all times, not just simply on Sunday and not just simply on Wednesday.

How we do our schoolwork, how we treat our friends, how we do everything is a function of the Lordship of Christ in our life. And you know, when the Bible says that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our might, that's everything we have.

The heart is the seat of all of our emotions, and so it's to be a deep-seated love. With all of our soul, the soul takes up all of man, our mind and our thinking and the way that we do everything we do.

That's a way we can express our love for God. And with all our might, that speaks of doing things with action. Showing our love in a positive way for God in everything that we do. Now, I asked my kids as we came in, and they should have known I was going to do this because I asked them to bring their Bibles with them, but I asked them to look up a favorite passage in the Bible.

And I honestly don't know what, well, I have a guess as to Summers, but I don't know what passages they would necessarily automatically go to. I know that for me, Colossians 3 .3, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God, that's my quote-unquote favorite passage, if I were to name one.

But Summer, which passage did you come up with? Psalm 23. The 23rd Psalm. Now, there's one that I think a lot of folks in the audience, not only do they know it, but they could say it right along with you.

What about the 23rd Psalm is special to you? Is it because maybe we sing it in church, too?

Well, in Sunday school, it was the first passage that I learned, and I just haven't forgotten it.

Well, I remember the first few verses I learned in Sunday school, and they've remained very precious to me ever since then. So the 23rd Psalm, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, as the King James would put it.

I believe you have a new American Standard in front of you, actually. Josh, what did you come up with? Revelation 1 .8.

Revelation 1 .8. What does that say? I am the Alpha and Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Very good. I think that's a red-letter edition you have there. Do they have that in red letters? Yes. Yeah, that's what I thought. I think that's a good identification. I think that is the Lord Jesus speaking.

It's not just because it's in red letters. I think when we look through the rest of the book of Revelation, we discover that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

Ever since you guys were born, and both of you decided to arrive fairly early, I might note in passing as well. Mom just didn't like that last month of pregnancy, so let's get this over with. And you both arrived a little bit early.

Josh, a little bit more early than Summer did. You scared us to death, young man. I'll keep reminding you of that. Not that there was anything you could do about it. But be that as it may, ever since you all were old enough to know what was going on, you've been in church.

You've been at Phoenix Reformed, actually. Josh, you might remember a church we were at before then a little bit. But I know Summer had just been born when we started attending Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, where I'm now an elder.

And so you've heard Pastor Don Fry preach a lot of sermons. And I know that we frequently discuss the things that Pastor Fry has said on the way home in the car. We had an incident recently. Was it the grumpies?

Was that what it was? The grumpies, wasn't it? The grumpies. I think it was, pour yourself a bowl of grumpies. Gripies. Gripies. That's right. That's right. Pastor Fry came up with an illustration and talked about people who would pour themselves a bowl of gripies in the morning.

And then the one that stuck also real well recently was the discussion of St. Brick. Remember St. Brick? St. Brick. That's right. Pastor Fry mentioned a very good friend of ours, a very good friend of mine, precious brother in the Lord, Brick Darrell.

And Brick's really the brick of the church. He makes that place stand up. And Pastor Fry was pointing out that we're all saints if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and have been sanctified by him. We are all saints.

And so he went around the room and he was naming people, St. This, St. That, and then they came up with St. Brick, which just sort of struck us all as being a little bit different. But it was illustrating a truth.

And I know that it is very precious to me. Summer likes to take notes. In fact, a couple of times she's handed Pastor Fry her notes. A couple of times you've handed me notes from things that I was teaching and preaching.

And it's always interesting to see what communicates and what got lost in the translation as well. So that's something that's very precious to me. But getting the opportunity, you guys have heard the word of God from the time you were old enough to understand what it was.

You've had Bibles. In fact, you guys have lots and lots of Bibles. And there's a reason for that. It's because I have lots and lots of Bibles. I like Bibles. In fact, as you all know, I like the way a new Bible smells, too.

That's something that's really, really neat. But you've had the Bible. You've read from the Bible. You've heard the Bible preached. And yet I've always tried to communicate to my children that we cannot take the word for granted.

You know that recently here on this station, anyways, there's been a push to purchase Bibles for people in China. And I've listened to some of the stories of the people there who just this week I heard a story of a lady who all she had when she talked to these two Christians.

She's a Christian lady in China. But all she had, she came out and she showed them what her Bible was. It was big pieces of paper, typewritten pieces of paper, where I'm not sure if she typed or if she had written out the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Philippians.

That's all she had. And you and I, of course, we have Bibles galore. We have them available to us in multiple translations. We have them in different languages, so on and so forth. And we have such a tremendous blessing to be able to have the word of God.

It's not something that we should ever, ever take for granted, because there are many of our brothers and sisters in the world who do not have access to the word of God the way we do, and therefore taking time to read it, time to understand it, time to enjoy it.

You know, I was thinking a couple of months ago when I had the wonderful duty of teaching you all's class on Wednesday night. Over the past number of months, what I've done is I've tried to explain one of the central doctrines of the Christian faith.

So as you guys may recall, we've talked about justification. We've talked about the doctrine of the Trinity. And you may recall, you all are signaling to me. What are you trying to communicate to me? The church.

Oh, we talked about the church and who elders are and things like that. That's right. And specifically, remember, up on the whiteboard, I drew a triangle. And that's what you were thinking about, wasn't it, Summer?

And we drew a triangle, and I gave you the three biblical foundations of the doctrine of the Trinity. And the one right down there at the bottom, the line that keeps the whole triangle up, to either one of you, I'm putting you on a big spot here.

I can't expect you to remember this one. But the very bottom one, the fundamental truth upon which it is based. Do you remember what that was? Monotheism. Monotheism. And that means there's only one true God.

And then the other two were the existence of three persons. And the other one is the equality of those persons, which would be the deity of Christ and the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit. And it was really, to me, very encouraging because everybody in there was listening.

Everybody in there was interested. And we're talking, what's the age range there? About 9 to 13, around 9 to 12, around in that particular area in that class. And it was very, very encouraging to me to see the young people interested in this.

And I got the distinct feeling you all sort of felt good that an adult would be talking to you all about a fairly complex subject. It's not an easy subject. There are a lot of adults that could not give you an accurate definition of what the doctrine of the Trinity actually is.

Now, some folks may be wondering, why in the world, when we have but 28 minutes to share with each other here on the Dividing Line, and we have issues to discuss like Roman Catholicism and Sola Scriptura and the doctrines of Mary and Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and all those issues, why would you bring your kids in and have a little conversation like you have in the car?

Well, this is really where apologetics starts. This is really what we're all about. You know, thinking today as I was out on my ride, I'm halfway through my journey here on earth, depending on obviously many things.

I could be half an hour from the end of my journey here on earth. But if I get my three scores and ten, my 70 years here on earth, I'm about halfway there. And I've come to recognize as I've gotten older that none of us are central to everything God's doing on this planet.

I've met some people who thought they were, but I'm certainly not. I'm not going to be here forever. And I'm looking at the next generation. And I had to start asking myself the question, what kinds of things are we teaching the next generation?

The challenges that my children are going to face, I cannot even begin to believe. As I look at just what has happened in our nation in my lifetime and recognize how much more bold people are today than they were only 30 years ago to express not only their hatred for God, but entire systems of thought that are utterly opposed to God and His truth.

My kids need to understand what it means to think as a Christian. They need to understand what the fundamental and foundational doctrines of the faith are all about. And I need to show enough faith in them to go ahead and discuss those things and not say, well, you know, maybe when you get a little older, we'll try to figure out some way of discussing a justification with you or explaining to you why the Bible is the word of God and why it's so important to us and things like that.

That's not the way we need to do it. Instead, we need to start at the very foundation. We need to start at the very bottom. And we need to lay out what the word of God teaches about who God is, why we should love Him.

In fact, I was most encouraged this afternoon before we left the house. I went, Josh, what is man's primary purpose?

To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

That's the first of the questions from the shorter catechism. And I was very happy to find out that that's obviously something you all have been working on again in Sunday School at Phoenix Reformed. But it's one thing to know that.

It's another thing then to apply that and to realize that as Josh and Summer enter into those years where they're making decisions that will affect the entirety of their life, educational decisions, decisions regarding a mate, regarding everything, that fundamentally and foundationally, our primary purpose in life is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

What does it mean to glorify God? How can we glorify Him? What gives us direction to know how to glorify God? That's the scriptures. That's the Bible. The Bible alone. That's why Sola Scriptura is important.

My children understand that the reason that I go away very often and go out and do debates up in Omaha, Nebraska or Long Island or San Diego, each places I've debated the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, there's a reason why that doctrine is so important.

There's a reason why we need to defend it. Because if we don't believe Sola Scriptura, we end up with all these other beliefs rushing in upon us and taking over the Christian faith. And so we discuss these things.

And I want to encourage everyone within the sound of my voice this day, whatever you do, do not forget to deal with your children and show them respect in going ahead and talking with them about the very things that define the faith.

You would not believe how many of these young folks are really thinking deep thoughts. They're thinking about their future. They're thinking about what is ahead. They want to know how to make decisions.

And we need to provide them with the foundation. I hope and trust that I have done my best anyways to give my two children that foundation. I am not a perfect father by any stretch of the imagination, but I have certainly tried to direct them to the Word of God as their sole foundation, as that which would give them the basis upon which to stand to face the challenges that our society is presenting to them.

And obviously, I recognize that only God can bring spiritual life into a young child's soul. And so I pray that God is merciful upon all of our young people at our church. And I undoubtedly pray that for your church.

If you're a member of a local body here, you pray for those children, that God would be merciful to them and draw them to himself. That certainly is an oft-repeated prayer in our church as well. And in fact, since I've mentioned it a number of times, I should mention that if you'd like to join us at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church for worship this Sunday, we meet for Sunday school at 9 .30 a .m. sharp.

And I will be teaching the Sunday school lesson for the adults this Sunday morning. And then we have worship at 10 .45, and the evening is 6 .30 worship. And then Wednesday nights, we gather for prayer at 7 o 'clock.

You can call 26 Grace for more information. We're located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix. That's south of Indian School. There are two churches there. We're the southernmost of the two. Thanks for being with us, and God bless.

You can also find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks on our website. We hope you will join us again next Saturday afternoon at 1 .30 p .m. for The Dividing Line.