May 2013 – A mother claiming to be an atheist and blogging on CNN iReports (ireport.cnn.com) incited an Internet firestorm when she posted an article titled “Why I raise my kids without God.” Over 750,000 users viewed the post, but many objected to her grievous misrepresentation of Christianity. The author, identified as TXBlue08, told CNN she shared the essay because “people misunderstand or are fearful of people who don’t believe in God.” However, her own misunderstanding and fear of the Christian God is strikingly apparent.

TXBlue08’s story begins with the questions of a preschooler – essential questions that have belonged to every person in every age, questions that every parent must answer. With the precocious question of a preschooler, the battle for her heart and mind begins, and Christian parents must choose a side and take part in the contest.

TXBlue08 takes the offensive against the “the illogical legend of God,” arming her children with the argument that, while Christianity hinders natural human freedom and goodness, if there were a God, He could not be good because He allows suffering.

Fortunately, there are plenty of Christian mothers who were more than ready to talk with AFA Journal about TXBlue08’s objections, revealing the truth about God and the truth about Christian parenting.

BARBARA CHALLIES: Answering the big question
In a conversation with AFAJ, Barbara Challies of Chattanooga, Tennessee, guest blogger on the True Woman website and mother of Christian writer Tim Challies, quickly identified the fundamental error in TXBlue08’s designation of goodness.

“She mentions legends,” Challies noted. “Well, if you want to talk about legends, the biggest legend in existence is the legend of human goodness. The truth is we only want to do evil all the time, as in the time of Noah; that is human nature. Portraying God as evil and ourselves as good totally reverses the true categories.”

At the same time, the blogger in the CNN article says a good God should not allow people to harm others, indicating that she wants God to override human freedom to do evil. In reality, Challies pointed out, God does protect the Christian from rampant sin, “by giving us a new nature, not by overriding our freedom at all.”

Another contradiction arises when TXBlue08 adds, “We are no more special than the next creature. We are just a very, very small part of a big, big machine.” 

A statement like that leaves TXBlue08 ill equipped to answer the question Challies asked: “If people are so insignificant, doesn’t it justify God for ignoring their suffering? Furthermore, as ‘part of a machine,’ her child has no context to address the issues of social justice and suffering she is so concerned about.”

And there the pitfall for the atheist parent opens up, for every answer to every question exposes a new and greater fallacy. On the other hand, the Christian faith only grows deeper and more intrinsic with every question asked and answered, for Christianity is meant to challenge – to challenge the world, to challenge self and to challenge sin. And so, the Christian parent tackles the difficult questions as soon as children are ready to ask them.

“It’s up to parents to interpret the world for their children.” Challies said. “As a parent, that’s your calling, and you do it to the best of your ability. So, answer the big questions from the time they’re tiny. If you don’t start answering them until they’re adolescent, it’s way too late. My kids asked the big questions when they were little and just grew with the answers.”

NANCY PEARCEY: Testifying to human experience
Nancy Pearcey – director of the Francis Schaeffer Center at Houston Baptist University, author of Saving Leonardo and editor at large of the Pearcey Report – weighed in on the conversation as a mother who daily works in the field of Christian apologetics.

“The idea that humans are cogs in a very big machine, without moral freedom or significance, runs counter to all of human experience,” she explained. “A worldview is offered to explain the world, as we actually experience it. Any worldview that contradicts basic human experience is a failed worldview.”

In fact, studies indicate that even without any prior experience with religious ideas, children have an instinctive awareness of God, as TXBlue08 discovered when her small children began probing her for information about a God she ignored.

“Studies show that children in every culture have a concept of God, no matter how they are raised,” Pearcey said. “Most people have to be educated out of the knowledge of God by secular parents and schools and media.”

And so atheist parents must fight against the testimony of reason, conscience and experience – clearly a losing battle as Challies and Pearcey have demonstrated in the case of TXBlue08. On the other hand, Christian parents seek to express the fullness of truth that underlies all the universe and all of human existence. In doing so, Christian parents answer their children’s questions by presenting them with the depths of Christian truth – both its cohesive beauty and its very real challenges.

When young people are not encouraged to delve into the challenges of Christianity, they are left frustrated and unsatisfied, as Pearcey has witnessed.

“One young person told me, ‘What I hear at my church are mostly feel good messages. But I don’t want to feel good! I want to wrestle with the difficult questions,’” she recalled. “To deny there is any conflict is to deny that Christianity makes any real truth claims. There would be a much different conception of Christianity if it were known for being tough-minded and tackling the difficult questions.”

ELYSE FITZPATRICK, JESSICA THOMPSON: Parenting in the Gospel
For the Christian parent, the answers to all questions center around the gospel of Jesus Christ, as Elyse Fitzpatrick and her daughter Jessica Thompson of Escondido, California, describe in their book Give Them Grace. And that is what makes the Christian parent completely different from any other.

“The difference is Jesus Christ,” Fitzgerald told AFAJ. “I’m not going to talk to my kids about some generic God who I’ve made up. I’m going to talk to my children about a particular person who lived 200 hundred years ago. He was God, the second person of the Trinity – Jesus, who died the death that I should have died and lived the life that I could never live.”

And so Christian parenting involves more than merely teaching children to be moral, which is no more than the atheist’s parenting objective. 

“The message of Christianity is not ‘be moral,’” Fitzgerald said. “There is so much more to Christianity than just the does and don’ts. The message of Christianity is not ‘be good so you can feel good and then God will give you goodies;’ it is that there is one person who was truly good: Jesus Christ. And so we want to give Jesus Christ to our children in everything.”

“Our premise is that the gospel is for parents to give to their children every day,” Fitzgerald added. “For example, one day my daughter Jessica found her four-year-old son Wesley sitting on top of his younger brother Hayden, beating him. She pulled Wesley off Hayden and said, ‘Wesley, you must love your brother!’ But Wesley’s response, through anger and tears and hopelessness, was, ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ Most parents would have replied, ‘Oh yes you can and you will.’ But Jessica replied, ‘You’re right, Wesley. You can’t love your brother! That’s why you need a rescuer.’ And right there – that’s the difference from just telling your children that they can obey, that they must do right. Before all else, comes the message of the gospel, which is you can’t love your brother. You must have somebody rescue you who loved their brother in your place.”

Thompson and Fitzgerald encourage parents to present the gospel to their children at every opportunity, never shying away from the hard questions, but always trusting that the Holy Spirit will guide even young children to grasp the exquisite truth of the Christian gospel. 

“The Holy Spirit doesn’t look at a two-year-old and say, ‘I’m not going to work in that life because he’s too young,’” Thompson said. “While we tell our children about the gospel to the best of our ability and answer their questions based on what the Bible says, ultimately the Holy Spirit is doing the training. And that is such good news because there is only one good parent, and it’s not me; it’s God. He is the one who changes lives: my life and my kids’ lives.”

These mothers embrace the challenges of Christian parenting, assured that He will change lives, not only for their own families, but for the world that searches for Him, full of questions that demand to be answered.

CRICKET ALBERTSON: Giving hope to the next generation
Cricket Albertson, executive assistant at the Francis Asbury Society in Wilmore, Kentucky, and author of Passing on the Passion (See AFAJ 5/12.), pointed out that Christianity is never a compartmentalized religion, and the Christian worldview provides cohesive answers to all questions.

“We have all been created with a desire to understand the world and our relationship to our Creator,” Albertson said. “God is not afraid of our questions. He has answers and He wants to open our hearts to them. Christianity is not a set of abstract beliefs; Jesus Christ is truth, and all of life makes sense if He is the center.”

Christian parents convey to their children the truth that makes sense out of all life’s questions, nurturing them in a faith that will challenge the world. And in doing so, they vie with TXBlue08 and her self-proclaimed “wave of agnostics, atheists, free thinkers and humanists in creating the next generation.” 

Who will prevail? The answer is clear. “Our world is so broken, that nothing will fix it except for a love that aggressively seeks to heal and save and redeem,” Albertson said. 

“That love is not found in any religion except one. Only in Jesus do we see the love of God poured out on the human race. The hope for the next generation will come through a story of redemption and love.”  

More from those interviewed in this article:

• Barbara Challies blogs
• Saving Leonardo by Nancy Pearcey
• Give Them Grace by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson
• Passing on the Passion by Cricket Albertson