that they are mentally ill as well as those that promote and defend it... and that they should immediately tell me and/or their mother if ANYBODY tried to tell them different!!! especially if they are told same in school and who told them same
Posted on 06/29/2013 10:40:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
With the recent Supreme Court decisions all over the news, some Christian parents wonder how they ought to explain all of this to their small children. I've faced the same question as my children have asked, "What is the Supreme Court doing that's keeping you so busy?" So how does one teach the controversy, without exposing one's children to more than they can handle?
First of all, you should, I think, talk to your children about this. No matter how you shelter your family, keeping your children from knowing about the contested questions about marriage would take a "Truman Show"-level choreography of their lives. That's not realistic, nor is it particularly Christian.
The Bible isn't nearly as antiseptic as Christians sometimes pretend to be, and it certainly doesn't shirk back from addressing all the complexities of human life. If we are discipling our children, let's apply the Scriptures to all of life. If we refuse to talk to our children about some issue that is clearly before them, our children will assume we are unequipped to speak to it, and they'll eventually search out a worldview that will.
This doesn't mean that we rattle our children with information they aren't developmentally ready to process. But we know how to navigate that already. We talk, for instance, about marriage itself, and we give age-appropriate answers to the "Where do babies come from?" query. The same is true here. There is no need to inform small children about all the sexual possibilities in graphic detail in order to get across that Jesus calls us to live as husbands and wives with fidelity and permanence and complementarity.
Some parents believe that teaching their children the controversies about same-sex marriage will promote homosexuality. Christians and non-Christians can agree that sexual orientation doesn't work that way. Moreover, the exact opposite is true. If you don't teach your children about a Christian way of viewing the challenges to a Christian sexual ethic, the ambient culture will fill in your silence with answers of its own.
You can tell your children that people in American culture disagree about what marriage is. You can explain to them what the Bible teaches, from Genesis to Jesus to the apostles, about a man and a woman becoming one-flesh. You can explain that as Christians we believe this marital relationship is different than other relationships we have. You can then tell them that some people have relationships they want to be seen as marriages, and that the Supreme Court is addressing that.
You can then explain that you love your neighbors who disagree with you on this. You agree that they ought to be free from mistreatment or harassment. But the church believes government can't define or redefine marriage, but can only recognize what God created and placed in creation. Explain why you think mothers and fathers are different, and why those differences are good. Find examples in your own family of how those differences work together for the common good of the household, and point to examples in Scripture of the same.
Don't ridicule or express hostility toward those who disagree. You might have gay or lesbian family members; be sure to express your love for them to your children, even as you say that you disagree about God's design for marriage. You probably have already had to do that with family members or friends who are divorced or cohabiting or some other situation that falls short of a Christian sexual ethic. If your children see outrage in you, rather than a measured and Christlike biblical conviction, they eventually will classify your convictions here in the same category as your clueless opinions about "kids these days and their loud music."
The issues at stake are more important than that. Marriage isn't ultimately about living arrangements or political structures, but about the gospel. When your children ask about the Supreme Court, be loving and winsome and honest and convictional and kind.
-- Dr. Russell D. Moore is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
Children who are well-grounded in God’s Word know about good and evil, about the Godly and the ungodly. Their faith will be challenged all their lives by the devil, the world and their own sinful flesh, but the Holy Spirit will help them keep the faith.
“Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life,” God promises in Revelation 2:10, and He always keeps His promises.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve raised four children this way. We never skirted these kinds of issues. I do, however, remember the day one of my kids who was old enough to know the “facts of life” wanted to know exactly how homosexuals had sex. I didn’t enjoy having to pass that information along.
“How Should You Explain the Same-Sex Marriage Debate to Your Children?”
God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.
Uhhh . . . They wouldn’t even be around if their mother and I were on the other side of the debate?
That’s easy:
“There is good, and evil. There are people who claim to love others of the same gender, and they are evil. They will lie to you and try to tell you that there is nothing wrong with this. You will know some of them, and they will seem like good people, at least on the outside. God, though, does not approve- He called it an abomination, and these people define themselves by that abomination, and defy God. They may or may not claim to believe in Him- either way, they are lying to you and themselves. Have as little to do with them as you can, and you will be closer to God than they, and less likely to sucked into their evil. If you must have anything to do with them, be polite, and be civil. If they try to touch you, stick your knife in them and run, and call me.”
Marriage is the legal protection given to a biologically driven pairing between man and woman for the purpose of having children. The government trying to redefine marriage cannot change the biological reality.
It's also a chance to admonish learning God's Words and getting to know Jesus intimately since the sodomite agenda which the world is adopting (biblically prophesied) includes doing away with the Bible and eventually Christians.
If you call a donkeys tail a leg, how many legs does it have?
That works for me.
depends upon the age of the child.....age appropriate is always the first line of attack
Genesis 18&19 as a start.
I say we have some nasty people in government that we must remove or dilute (pack the court) by legal means.
I will inform them that most of America does not agree with what these nasty people in government have done. And we are going to change it by amending our Constitution.
Disgusting, Sickening and perverse
An excellent visual is Spiderman 3, when Spiderman becomes engulfed with a sticky black tar substance and becomes Venom. It’s nearly impossible for Spiderman to free himself, and it’s a great illustration of how sin ruins lives.
that they are mentally ill as well as those that promote and defend it... and that they should immediately tell me and/or their mother if ANYBODY tried to tell them different!!! especially if they are told same in school and who told them same
There is no debate to explain.
Our grand children understand that human beings have a choice to follow God’s Word and live a moral/decent life or they can chose to be perverts.
So, there you have it: marriages come in two varieties -- normal marriages which are sanctioned by the US court system, and "mixed" marriages in which a man and a woman agree to form a union for purposes of breeding.
21st century. I'm not a fan.
“How Should You Explain the Same-Sex Marriage Debate to Your Children?” Sin is the transgression of the law 1 John 3:4
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