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Use critical thinking when teaching your children.
Teaching our kids to think critically often means we have to learn to think critically. The saying ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ could also be rewritten to ‘What Would Jesus Think?’ Now ask it about any number of topics, for example ‘What Would Jesus Think?’ of stem cell research, or cloning?
Teaching Our Kids
In Chuck Colson’s book How Now Shall We Live, he tells the story of a father named Dave who takes Katy, his 15-year-old daughter to Disney World to ‘reconnect’ with her. On the last day of their visit Dave discovers that Katy doesn’t believe in God and thinks her parents faith is fine for them, but doesn’t want any part of it.
When Dave presses her, Katy explains how her science teacher and others have shown her the facts about how the earth was formed. She told Dave about how evolution is a fact and how she thinks Dad’s faith is fiction. Well, poor Dave is overwhelmed with the knowledge that his daughter’s beliefs don’t match his. And he tells her that he will find facts that prove his faith or denounce it.
Katy’s worldview, the value system that she uses to guide her thoughts, decisions and beliefs has some how been more influenced by the world around her than by her parents. Why?
It’s an overused line, but it’s true – “the world kids are growing up in today, is a lot different than the one you and I grew up in.” In addition to living in a ‘sex gone wild’ culture, where promiscuity is depicted as fun, glamorous and cool, today’s teenagers also deal with other issues like:
Society that lacks morals, portrays everything as relative, and promotes tolerance of every ‘right,’ where 66% of the population believes that absolute truth cannot be known. History and Science has become politically correct instead of factual.
Organizations like the International Planned Parenthood Federation publishes a ‘Youth Manifesto’ document that encourages kids to question authority, especially parents and denounces basic institutions like marriage.
This morning on Nickelodeon, there was a Lego commercial that kept repeating, “YOUR WORLD, YOUR RULES” as it showed how the kids could manipulate the soccer field to suit them. Think about that message and multiply by 100 or so, that’s how many moral less messages kids get in a couple hours of television a day.
Your worldview effects every decision you make, every thought you have, it is what motivates you. Does your worldview have God and Scripture as the primary lens through which you view life or is it something else? As people who call ourselves Christians, our worldview should model Christ’s, does it? Do you apply the principles and truths found in our basic Judeo-Christian heritage to your decisions, thoughts and opinions?
Teaching our kids to think critically often means we have to learn to think critically. Do you take what you see, read and hear and critically consider it in relation to what scripture teaches? The saying ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ could also be rewritten to ‘What Would Jesus Think?’ Now ask it about any number of topics, for example ‘What Would Jesus Think?’ of stem cell research, or cloning, or freak dancing or gender identity or “YOUR WORLD, YOUR RULES”?
Now I must admit to being overly critical of every thing I see, hear and read. Rebekah, (my 12-year-old daughter) often tells me to lighten up and just enjoy the song, or movie and I am trying to, but she is also learning to question the message. It is our responsibility to teach our kids to become responsible thinking adults, not simply consumers and users.
I encourage you to engage the culture that teenagers live in, although I admit movies like ‘Legally Blond’ and songs that use words like body-licious make it difficult. But, it’s important to help them develop critical thinking skills using examples from their world.
Today’s teenagers – made up of 19 year-olds born in 1982 to 13 year-olds born in 1988, are missing approximately 11,038,600 of their peers who were aborted. They don’t know a time when abortion wasn’t legal, when it wasn’t all right to kill another human being. Their world is a lot different than ours. I have great hope for young people today, I believe because they have lived in such a moral less time as now, they hunger for the truth, the Gospel. And they will respond to it.
Parents, families and the Church have the opportunity to provide them with that Truth. We can’t teach them abstinence as a program anymore, we must begin to teach and model a worldview that is based on a deep and personal relationship with the Living Lord Jesus and provides them with an inner desire to walk in His ways. Ironically though, because of the world they have grown up in, we have to be prepared, and use creative methods of engaging them. It can be simple, like reading books such as "How Now Shall We Live", by Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey or Lee Strobel’s, "A Case for Faith" and being armed with the facts and arguments about creation versus evolution to holding a ceremony for your son or daughter when they turn thirteen, giving them a promise ring and praying for the day they give themselves and the ring to someone in marriage, to listening to the audio tape of Dana Henry and her Mom, Joan, discussing what they did and didn’t talk about when Dana was a teenager (see below), or getting a bible study from Summit Ministries www.summit.org and taking a step by step look at the world’s view of issues like economics, ethics, biology and psychology and God’s view.
The bottom line is that the world is very different today, and we all need help maneuvering through life. Please pray for teenagers, yours and others, adopt a teenager in your church, mentor him or her, or simply pray daily for them. Whether you are a parent, a grandparent, an aunt, uncle, pastor or youth leader – our mission should be to present every kid, every life perfect in Christ.
