brian dembowczyk

How to Handle Tough Questions

Teaching Kids Theology Part 16

TLDR: One barrier to some teachers and parents encouraging questions is not knowing how to respond when a child asks a tough question, especially one we cannot answer. There are a few basic ways we can respond in these times.

As teachers or parents discipling children, one of the best things we can do is establish an environment that welcomes questions because questions are an on-ramp to learning. And learning is the path to coming to trust in Jesus and live like Jesus. That’s why using a catechism in discipleship is so helpful; it establishes that questions aren’t only welcome, they’re critical.

However, many teachers or parents are hesitant to give a green light for kids asking questions for a simple reason: What if the child asks a tough question that I can’t answer? That’s an understandable concern, but it isn’t an insurmountable concern. The key is to be prepared and know how you can respond. Here are five suggested ways to respond when a child asks you a challenging question:

“What do you think?”

No matter if you know the answer to a question or not, it’s almost always good to turn the question back around to the child and let them take a stab at answering it. This not only helps them develop their thinking, but it also gives you a little more insight into where they are, which in turn gives you more opportunities to have deeper a vdiscussion. But there’s a side benefit to doing this: It gives you a little more time to think so you can respond in the best way.

“Here’s the answer.”

There are times when a child asks a question, even a tough one, and you’re confident of the answer. There’s nothing wrong with just giving a straightforward answer in these times. This is especially true when the Bible is absolutely clear on a subject. This could be done right away, or it can be done after you invite the child to try to answer the question themself first.

“Here’s what I think.”

This response is so important, but so often neglected. We need to be very careful to help our kids understand that there are answers we know are right and then there are answers we think are right. This could be because we haven’t researched the answer fully, or it could be because people have different views on the answer. For example, if a child asks a question about eschatology, there are several different interpretations of that subject, and we can’t be sure which is correct. In those times, we want to abstain from saying, “here’s the one true answer,” and instead respond in a posture of “there are a few ways people answer that, and here’s what I think.” If possible, it’s helpful to share the opposing views too in a respectful way.

“I don’t know. Let’s find that out together.”

If a child stumps you with a question—which is highly likely; kids are great at asking questions that we adults are usually too afraid to ask—don’t panic! It’s okay that we don’t know everything, and it’s important to let the child know that. So begin with the clear statement that you simply don’t know the answer. Some teachers and parents are afraid that this will diminish trust in the child, but it’s the opposite. Being quick to admit you don’t know something strengthens the times when you give an answer. But it also teaches the child that they too can’t know everything and helps them begin to be okay with that. However, as often as you can, follow this up by inviting the child to partner with you to look for the answer. This provides you with the wonderful opportunity to dive into God’s Word as you also help the child learn how to study it more deeply to find answers.

“I don’t know. And really, no one knows that.”

At times, a child will ask a question that no one can answer. It might be a question speculating on why God did something or why He didn’t do something. Or, it might be a question that brushes up against some of the great mysteries of the faith, like the nature of the Trinity or how Jesus could be fully God and fully human at the same time. In these times, start again by being clear that you don’t know the answer to the question, but then broaden it to clarify that no one really knows. Feel free to discuss some of your thoughts or what can be known close to the question (e.g., we don’t fully understand the Trinity, but we know for sure that there is one God in three Persons—Father, Son, and Spirit), but stop short of trying to resolve a question that cannot be answered (this is why we shouldn’t use any picture of the Trinity such as an egg or a clover; they all end up teaching error). Just like it’s important that a child understands that you don’t have all the answers, it’s just as important that they learn that they won’t have all the answers either. What we want to help them do is be comfortable in these mysteries of the faith.

If you are looking for a resource to help you grow as a theologian and to help you teach your children theology, Faith Foundations is for you. These ninety-nine devotions use an ancient tool called a catechism to teach the core doctrines of the faith. Each devotion features a Bible reading, a devotion, several engaging questions, a Jesus connection, and a suggested family activity. Faith Foundations is now available for purchase.

Teaching Kids about the Church and Last Things

Teaching Kids Theology Part 15

TLDR: The doctrine of the church and the doctrine of last things are interwoven; the church exists to continue Jesus’ ministry until he returns. This mission includes children, who share the same calling of living on mission for Christ wherever they go.

Perhaps one of the most startling statements God made in the Bible is what he told Adam in Eden, that it wasn’t good for him to be alone (Genesis 2:18).¹ It’s jarring really. On the heels of the refrain “it was good” that courses throughout Genesis 1, God deems something not good. And that should stop us in our tracks. Adam had God, of course, but God had more in mind for Adam. God knew Adam needed a companion.

In Genesis 2, we see that God hard-wired us for relationship, primarily with him but with each other too. And while that often manifests itself in the form of marriage and family, God has given us another crucial relationship in the church, a relationship that all believers partake in.

When we think of the church, we can think of it in two ways. First, it’s all believers of all time. This is often called the universal or invisible church. Second, the church is the believers in one specific time and place who gather regularly. This is called the local or visible church. The church isn’t perfect, but Jesus died for the church, loves the church, and he is returning for the church one day.

The doctrine of the church is a field called ecclesiology, and the doctrine of Jesus’ return or of last things, is an area of study called eschatology. These two doctrines are tightly intertwined. The church exists to complete the mission that Jesus began two thousand years ago as we wait for his return. What started out as a handful of believing Jews in and around Jerusalem has spread around the world, but as long as the sun rises in the east and there are people who haven’t trusted in Christ, we have work to do.

That work will end one day though. One day—no one knows when it will be—Jesus will return to earth. The first time he came as the suffering servant; when he returns, he will come as the conquering king. And on that day, Jesus will end all that is wrong. Sin, rebellion, suffering, and death will be no more. He will repair and restore everything that sin broke. Every wrong will be made right. This is a great day of hope—but only for those who have trusted in Jesus, his church. For all others, this will be a day of great mourning. Our calling is to follow Christ’s guidance to do whatever we can to make that latter group as small as possible—prayerfully non-existent.

As you talk through these doctrines with your kids, be sure to cast a two-way vision: The return of Jesus fills us with great hope, but it should also compel us to live out the mission he gave us—while there is time. Each follower of Jesus—including a believing child—is part of the church and takes part in its shared mission to reach the world with the gospel. As such, help your children understand that they have a role to play in and through the church. Don’t let them see themselves as Junior Christians, or as a B Team. God wants so much more for them!

This blog post is a slightly adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎

Teaching Kids about Christian Living

Teaching Kids Theology Part 14

TLDR: The gospel is not only the pathway to salvation; it’s the connective thread that runs through our daily life. Everything we do should be informed by our faith in Jesus.

Far too often, people can focus almost exclusively on the gospel leading up to the point of salvation.¹ That’s critical, of course. We want and need to present the gospel to a person so that he or she places faith in Jesus and is saved. But the problem is that there’s far more to the gospel than that. If the act of salvation were our ultimate goal, then wouldn’t it make sense for God to take us to our perfect home to be with him the instant we trust in Jesus? But he doesn’t. He leaves us here on a broken earth. Why? The reason is two-fold.

First, we’re left here so that he can use us to help others come to saving faith through Jesus too.

Second, we’re left here because God made us to do far more than just be saved. He created us to glorify him, to love him, to worship him, to serve him, and to obey him. That’s our design. And when we do that, we experience the abundant living Jesus promised (John 10:10).

God made us to do far more than just be saved.

Applying the gospel to daily life is called practical theology. It’s just what it sounds like: theology that’s practical, or theology that we can “touch.” This area is all about every-day, real-world, hands-on truths that we can live out wherever we are as we do whatever we do. For our kids, this can include school, sports, hobbies, the neighborhood, and more. Wherever your children go and whatever they do falls within the realm of practical theology—living out their faith.

Practical theology can’t stand alone though. It only makes sense if it stands upon the foundation of other doctrine of salvation. We can’t live the way God made us to live if we don’t have our sin problem dealt with, and that can only happen through Jesus. This is critical for us to stress as we teach our kids about how to live out their faith. If we try to do this in our own power, we’re going to fail and get frustrated. But, when we trust in Jesus, he makes us new in him, and when we’re relying on the Holy Spirit who’s been given to us, we can live exactly how we were made to live. We won’t be able to do this perfectly on this side of eternity, but we will find ourselves growing gradually to live more like Christ day by day.

As you talk with your kids about living out the faith, raise a high bar! Don’t let your family settle for less than God’s best. But at the same time, be sure that grace and patience saturates your family as well. God calls us to live for him and expects us to do that. But he also lovingly comes alongside us to help us do what he expects of us, and he pours his limitless grace and mercy over us as we move, sometimes ploddingly, in that direction.

This blog post is a slightly adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎

Teaching Kids about the Bible

Teaching Kids Theology Part 13

TLDR: The Bible is an amazing gift from God that helps us learn about Him and come to know Him through Jesus. The starting point for this journey is learning the basics of this wonderful book.

The study of the Bible, an area of theology called bibliology, is somewhat unique from the other areas of theology in that it looks toward the Bible to understand what it says about itself.¹ Some people would see this as circular reasoning and thus conclude it’s problematic. After all, how reliable can what the Bible says about itself be? But this would only be a problem if the Bible were a normal book. That, it most surely is not.

The word bible means book, but the Bible isn’t like any other book; it’s in a class by itself. And the primary reason for that is because of who wrote the Bible: God. The Bible was given to us by God, who used human authors to record exactly what he wanted written down and preserved. And because God is faithful and true, and because he cannot lie or make a mistake, that requires that the Bible be faithful and true and without any lies or mistakes. A perfect God cannot make something imperfect. This is why we can trust what the Bible says about itself. Ultimately, it isn’t the Bible saying what is true about the Bible; it’s God saying what is true about the Bible.

As you teach about the Bible, start broad and basic. Help your child understand the basics of the Bible that you might take for granted that they know and understand. The Bible is one book made up of sixty-six individual books, which were written by about forty human authors over a span of about 1,500 years—from about 1,400 BC to about AD 100.

The books are organized into two Testaments—the Old Testament describing everything before Jesus and the New Testament describing the life of Jesus and start of the early church. The books within those two Testaments—39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament—are organized by genre, or type. The Old Testament begins with the Pentateuch, or five books of the Law. Those are followed by the books of history, the writings, and then the prophets—the major and minor. The terms major and minor don’t speak to these books’ importance, but rather their length.

The New Testament begins with four Gospels, each looking at the life of Jesus from a slightly different perspective. Those are followed by a book of history and then the epistles. The epistles are often divided into the Pauline Epistles—those written by Paul—and the General Epistles—those written by others. The New Testament concludes with a book of apocalypse, the New Testament’s version of the Old Testament prophets.

Beyond this, help your child learn how chapters and verses work, and then other common features in a printed Bible, such as cross-references, translator notes, a table of contents, and concordances. While using a digital Bible is increasingly common, it is always helpful to understand how to navigate a printed Bible. This also might mean helping your child learn the order of the Bible books, a task greatly aided by using some memorization songs.

Even as you cover these basics, don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal of teaching our children about the Bible—it’s not so they learn about this special book as much as it’s so they learn about the special Author of the book. To know the Bible is to know God. And to know God is to know Jesus. And to know Jesus is to know how we can be saved and be in a relationship with Him.

The first two paragraphs of this blog post is a slightly adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎

Teaching Kids about Salvation

Teaching Kids Theology Part 12

TLDR: Salvation is, of course, one of the most important theological truths we can share with our children. However, there’s much more to it than a simple Gospel tract. Several key theological terms and questions should be explored.

Most people don’t realize it, but the area of systematic theology they likely know the most about is one called soteriology, the study of salvation.¹ That’s because the most famous Bible verse—one that even many non-Christians know of—has got to be John 3:16, and that’s a verse all about salvation.

For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16 (NET)

Sin has broken our relationship with God and there’s nothing we can do about that. Notice there’s nothing we can do. But that’s not to say nothing can be done. God can certainly do something about our sin problem, and that’s exactly what he did. Our loving, gracious, merciful, majestic, wonderful, holy, powerful God made a way—the only way—through Jesus. Salvation is thus a breathtaking mixture of initial despair and lasting hope.

Part of teaching about salvation is introducing a child to several key theological terms. In general, we want to “bring down” the language for our kids to make it accessible and understandable. However, there are critical theological terms that we want our kids to learn and grow into.

Grace | This is God giving us something good that we don’t deserve. This can be anything good in life that we experience, but in the context of salvation, it focuses more on forgiveness.
Mercy | This is God not giving us something bad that we do deserve. In this way, it is the inverse of grace. Again, just like grace, mercy can mean God withholding anything bad in our lives, but in the context of salvation, it refers to God withholding His divine judgment and condemnation due to us because of our sin.
Atonement | The definition of this term is hidden within the word itself—”at one ment.” To be atoned is to be restored into relationship and fellowship. It is when two are separated for some reason and then brought back together. In the context of salvation, this, of course, points to how people are brought back into relationship with God through Christ. This atonement was pointed to in the Old Testament through the sacrifice system and especially the Day of Atonement detailed in Leviticus 16.
Regeneration | This means to be given new life. In the context of salvation, it concerns how we were dead in our sins but then once we trust in Christ, we are given new, eternal life.
Justification | Like atonement, the meaning of justification is embedded in the word itself—”just if I’d” never sinned. To be justified is to be made right. It’s to be declared fully forgiven by God. Because of our justification, we are spared from sin’s punishment.
Adoption | This concerns God taking us in to be part of his family. Thus, we go from being strangers and enemies of God to becoming his sons and daughters. In adoption, our prior debt of sin is taken from us and we become full, permanent heirs of his abundance of riches—namely himself and his kingdom.
Sanctification | This means to be made holy or to be set apart. Just like a sanctuary is a room set apart for worship, a Christian is set apart from the things of the world for a life of worship and service to God. Unlike most of the other terms in this list that happen instantaneously at conversion, sanctification is a gradual process by which we become more like Jesus.
Glorification | This has our future hope in mind when Jesus returns and makes all things right again. While we are sanctified day by day to look more like Jesus, we’ll never cease from sinning or obeying perfectly. However, when Jesus returns, we will be changed forevermore, and all our sin, weaknesses, and shortcomings will come to an end. We will be the full image bearers of God He meant us to be.

As we talk with our children about salvation, it’s also critical to address two key questions. The first concerns what has been called “the great exchange,” how Jesus has taken our sin from us and given us his righteousness in its place (2 Corinthians 5:21). While many of us understand the first part, that second part is often overlooked, but it’s just as important and glorious.

Finally, the idea of assurance needs to be explored from the perspective that no one who has truly trusted in Jesus and who has become a new creation can lose his or her salvation. Many believers live in fear that they can mess up somehow and lose their salvation but that’s not how God wants us to live. And that’s not how we want our kids to live. Instead, God wants our children to live with peace, joy, and confidence. And so do we. That’s the abundant living Jesus promised.

This blog post is an adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎

Teaching Kids about People and Sin

Teaching Kids Theology Part 11

TLDR: People aren’t wholly good just as we aren’t wholly bad. We are a mixture of the two—made in God’s image but living in open rebellion against our Maker. There is a tension in teaching about humanity, but both aspects must be taught to give a proper perspective on who we are.

What the Bible teaches about people, a field of study called anthropology, is a little complicated.¹ On one hand, people are recognized as the pinnacle of creation (Psalm 8:4–6), bearers of God’s image (Genesis 1:26), and of exceeding worth (Psalm 139:13–16). But on the other hand, people are sinners in rebellion against a good and holy God (Romans 5:6–10), deserving of eternal condemnation. Some places in Scripture even liken us to a lowly maggot or worm (Job 25:6; Psalm 22:6). So, what are we to pass along to our children about who they are? Are they wonderful or terrible? Well, both. Humans are simply wonderfully terrible and terribly wonderful! The key is understanding that this might seems like a contradiction, but it’s not. These two critical concepts complement each other.

The best place to start in teaching our kids about humanity would be our value before God and the reason we exist—start with the positive. One of the more important things we can do for our children is to help secure a proper positive self-worth within them, a self-image that is based on their unchanging identity given by God and the never-changing fact that God’s love is fixed on them. This will be the strong, sure foundation they can build their lives upon, a foundation that can weather any storm in life, even the most intense one. Thinking poorly of ourselves isn’t humility; it’s failing to appreciate and agree with God’s perspective of who we are. May our kids never doubt their infinite worth as humans loved by God and made in his image for a special purpose!

But at the same time, as we see what the Bible teaches about sin (an area of theology called hamartiology), we can’t help but appreciate how far we fall short of our design and purpose. We can’t dismiss how sin has completely and totally corrupted us in every way, severing our relationship with God. This is essential to understanding the gospel. Just as the brightest fireworks require the darkest of nights behind them to display their brilliance, so too does the dark back drop of sin reveal the beauty of the gospel. But we need to be careful not to hold either of these truths out of balance. Focusing too much on our design while minimizing sin results in a watered-down gospel. It leads to thinking and living as if we are good with God when that isn’t true apart from Jesus. Focusing too much on our sin while minimizing our design results in a neglected gospel. It leads to legalistic, graceless, joyless thinking and living as if we are never good with God, even when we have Jesus. Indeed, the gospel needs both. The work of Jesus to overcome sin and restore marvelous people back to their right and fitting place in God’s creation.

If we take a step back and look at the Bible as a whole, we see these two truths over and over again.

Adam and Eve were created perfectly. Then they fell into sin.
Noah was spared the flood by God’s grace. Soon after leaving the ark, he got drunk and passed out.
Abraham was the chosen father of a new nation. He deceived others about Sarah his wife not once, but twice.
David was a man after God’s own heart and Israel’s best king. He sinned grievously against Bathsheba and had her husband murdered.
Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. He married many women and became an idolater.
Jonah wanted God to wipe out an entire nation.
Thomas was a doubter.
Peter denied Jesus.
Paul was a persecutor of the church.

Every single person you come across in Scripture was flawed, some severely. Every one except Jesus. He alone was perfectly good. Everyone else, even the great heroes of the faith, was not. They show us the tension of humanity and remind us that we’re not alone. And like each of them, we too must rely on God’s mercy and grace to be the people God made us to be.

The first three paragraphs of this blog post are a slightly adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎

Teaching Kids about the Holy Spirit

Teaching Kids Theology Part 10

TLDR: The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force; He is the third Person of the Trinity, given to us as believers for our benefit and for the benefit of others.

Can we be honest?¹ Life is hard at times. Following Jesus can be too. Sometimes it can even feel like following Jesus makes life hard. We know it, and our kids know it too. Jesus never promised that following him would be the path to comfort and ease. He promised that it would be challenging. He promised that it would be difficult. He even promised that it would be painful at times. But we can’t miss something else Jesus promised: he promised that we won’t make this journey alone. The Holy Spirit will always be with us.

As you think of how to teach about the Holy Spirit, a field of theology called pneumatology, the first issue concerns who the Holy Spirit is. The word who is emphasized because that’s crucial to understanding the Holy Spirit. He is a “he,” not an “it.” He is a person, just like God the Father and God the Son. And just like God the Father and God the Son, the Holy Spirit is fully God.

Beyond that, it’s important to help our kids know what the Holy Spirit does—how he comes alongside us to help us. This makes all the difference as we navigate the challenges of life. Jesus didn’t tell us life would be hard and then leave us with a “good luck” and a thumbs up. He left us with one of the three Persons of the Trinity coming to live within us when we trust in Christ. The Holy Spirit is ever-present, providing comfort, care, guidance, assurance, and so much more. The Holy Spirit will carry us through any difficulty we face. But just like the beauty and power of the cross are only true for us if we trust in Jesus, we must recognize that the ministry of the Holy Spirit means little if we fail to live in humility. He is always with us, but we need to always be giving him control of our lives so he will do what he wants to do and is capable of doing for us. We need to yield to the Holy Spirit, or put another way, live by the Spirit and give him room to work in us, through us, and for us.

This is seen most clearly in the fruit of the Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22–23 (NET)

What’s important to remember here is that this is called “the fruit of the Spirit,” not “the fruit of the Christian.” All these wonderful characteristics are produced by the Holy Spirit in and through us; they are not up to us to produce in our own power.

After that, it’s important to see how good these characteristics are and how much they help us in life. Living in love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control doesn’t just improve our daily living; they improve the lives of those around us. These are internal and external gifts given to us by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit himself is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. He is there ready to lead us, guide us, and help us. He’s also ready to produce his fruit in us—fruit that is good for us and good for others. But it all hinges on us, in humility, trusting in Jesus and being changed by him, and then continuing in humility day by day, as we turn control of our lives over to God the Holy Spirit.

The first three and last paragraph of this blog post are slightly adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎

Teaching Kids about Jesus

Teaching Kids Theology Part 9

TLDR: Jesus is fully God and fully human, both being true without any mixture or compromise of either nature. This is a driving truth in teaching about Jesus, setting up the critical teaching of Jesus being the perfect substitute for our sin.

The name Jesus doesn’t appear in the Bible until the New Testament (although Joshua, basically the Hebrew version of that name, does).¹ Because of this, some people think that Jesus didn’t exist until he was born in Bethlehem around 6–5 BC. But that’s not correct. Jesus is the Son of God, which means he’s fully God, and that means he’s eternal. This is the important point the apostle John wanted to make as he opened his Gospel account: “In the beginning was the Word [Jesus], and the Word [Jesus] was with God, and the Word [Jesus] was fully God” (John 1:1, NET). The manger in Bethlehem wasn’t where Jesus came into being; it was where the eternal Son of God, wrapped in human flesh, came into the world.

As we teach children about Jesus, a field of theology called Christology, we need to be sure to keep Jesus being both fully God and fully human at the front of our minds. There’s a mystery to it, for sure. The idea of God becoming human and being limited as a person is a head-scratcher. But it’s critical that we help our kids understand that Jesus is, always has been, and always will be fully God, and then two thousand years ago, he became fully human. If we remove or reduce either, we don’t teach who Jesus really is. He isn’t God who is kind of a human; neither is he a human who is kind of God. He’s the God-man. One hundred percent God; one hundred percent human. We might not be able to understand how both these truths fit together (a doctrine called the hypostatic union), but our job is to teach that they both are true.

But there’s another critical truth about Jesus to proclaim to our kids: why he became human in the first place. We find the answer in 2 Corinthians:

God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (NET)

Human sin has earned human death. This is why the sacrifice of bulls and goats went on and on without end. An infinite amount of bull and goat blood could not provide the eternal covering for even a single sinful person. And this is why the Son of God took on flesh, becoming fully human, so that He could take our sin debt upon Himself on the cross to cover it for good.

This is why the Son of God came to earth as a baby. Jesus lived about thirty years without sinning even once so that he would be the perfect substitute for us. In doing so, Jesus also provides a picture of what it looks like to be the perfect human—to live as the perfect image of God. Our children have been made in God’s image, and Jesus shows them what it looks like to live that out. The same is true of us, of course. In the end, as we teach our kids about Jesus, we don’t just target how they can experience new life in him, but we also target how they can live new life through him.

The first two paragraphs of this blog post is a slightly adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎

Teaching Kids about God

Teaching Kids Theology Part 8

TLDR: Helping a child to understand who God is can be more challenging that you might think. We can make the mistake of oversimplifying a theology of God and we can make the opposite mistake of overcomplicating it. The best approach is right in the middle.

At first glance, defining God can seem like we’re trying to define blue.¹ God is just God, right? That’s true to a point. Even God has defined himself this way. In the Old Testament, one of the most common Hebrew names for God is Yahweh, which is often translated as “LORD” (with small capital letters O, R, and D to make it stand out from “Lord,” which translates something else). Yahweh basically means “I am” or “I exist” (see Exodus 3:14). So, when Moses asked God this very question—who are you?—God’s response was simply “I am God.” But God didn’t define himself only in this way in the Bible. He also gave us many other names (e.g., Elohim, Adonai, El Shaddai) and characteristics (e.g., loving, faithful, just) to know him by.

How, then, do we begin to define God for a child? Do we take the way that seems overly simple, or the way that seems overly complex? Perhaps the best approach is in the middle: focusing on an overarching description that is unique to God—a description that provides glimpses of his other important characteristics but that is simple enough for our kids to get their arms around. A description like this: God is the creator and ruler of all things. This is basically how God chose to introduce himself to us in Genesis 1. It’s simple enough, but it hints at several important undergirding truths. God is immensely powerful; he must be to make everything by speaking. He is unique; he alone isn’t created. He has all authority; that means he makes the rules for how everything works, including us. And he loves us and wants to know us; that’s the very reason we exist.

The Example of the Ten Commandments

A great way to see how we can communicate about God is to see how he did it himself through the Ten Commandments. The law that God gave to his people through Moses wasn’t just to guide them for how they were to live (that was indeed a large part of it), but it was also to introduce them to who he is. The ancient Hebrews weren’t just forging a new nation; they were forging a new relationship with a God they had not known in Egypt.

Don’t miss what God does in the preface of the Ten Commandments:

God spoke all these words:“I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.”
Exodus 20:1–2 (NET)

Before getting to what he expected of his people, God first reminds them of what he has done. He has delivered them from bondage and he had done that in a powerful way.

Then, as we consider each of the Ten Commandments, we are drawn to learn something about God:

You shall have no other gods (Exodus 20:3). God is unique.
You shall not make any idols (Exodus 20:4–6). God cannot be contained.
You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7). God is weighty.
You are to remember the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8–11). God is our rest.
You are to honor your parents (Exodus 20:12). God is our heavenly Father deserving of honor.
You are not to murder (Exodus 20:13). God is the source of life.
You are not to commit adultery (Exodus 20:14). God is our sole love.
You are not to steal (Exodus 20:15). God provides all we need.
You are not to give false testimony (Exodus 20:16). God is true.
You are not to covet (Exodus 20:17). God is our greatest desire.

Each of these commandments expresses a way to live that aligns with God’s character. We obey the Ten Commandments not just because they were commanded, but also because they reflect God’s identity. We can’t miss how deeply intertwined this is. We teach our kids to know God so that they love Him but also so that they understand better how to live like Him—the very way they were made to live as His image bearers.

The first two paragraphs of this blog post are a slightly adapted excerpt from Faith Foundations. (Brian Dembowczyk, Faith Foundations: 99 Devotions to Help Your Family Know, Love, & Act Like Jesus. Downers Grove: IVP, 2025.) ↩︎