Sep 14, 2020 | Security
As children get older, their disappointments grow larger. Hurt and angry feelings get directed at God too, often due to:
- Prayers not answered.
- Hurt by religious people.
- Overwhelmed by evil and suffering in the world.
Many children say that unanswered prayers disappoint them the most.
They see the needs within their extended family. They hear the adult conversations. Some of them pray about it. When the situation doesn’t change according to their wishes, they may conclude that God hardly listens and feel personal rejection by God.
This topic is obviously a vast and complex one. My only goal here is to try to find a few ways we can help children when they feel disappointed with God. We can help them when we:
- Offer empathy by listening without trying to change them or their feelings.
- Accept all the child’s feelings and thoughts about God.
- Express care and support.
- Be mindful of our own feelings about God and not try to project them onto the child.
- Sort out expectations or conditions the child places on God.
Every relationship involves expectations.
1. Ask the child, “What do you expect God to do when you pray for something?” Allow the child to respond by writing it or by speaking it or by returning to it later after they think about it. Now here’s the part we almost always overlook: Help the child find a way to express expectations directly to God (and how they feel about it), using an approach they decide on.
2. Help change expectations to be more realistic.
- In what ways do they expect God to respond?
- What are God’s limitations? (For example, some would say that one of God’s self-imposed limits is refusal to force people to do anything against their will.)
- Observe others and search out some different expectations for God.
3. Decide what to do.
- Exit: Some children choose to terminate the relationship with God, but that is rare before adolescence. (And from many sources we glean that God never stops trying to connect with them.)
- Stay and withdraw: These children continue to believe in God but withdraw from trying to have any kind of relationship with God at this time. If the family is religious, they may pretend to go along with it.
- Stay and revise: By changing expectations of God, the child is more conscious of the possibility that God’s perspective is different, and that God’s gift of presence is only beginning to be discovered.
Dr. Bill McRae’s organizing principles for expectations were adapted here for use with children.
Aug 3, 2020 | Security
Talk to any 3- or 4-year-old and you will find a capacity to think about God. Researcher Justin Barrett says, “They already have something like an impulse to think about supernatural beings, to account for why things are the way they are and how things work in the world around them. They’re really inclined to make sense of it in terms of something like God.”
Cultivate that natural capacity as they get older.
So how does that work? How can parents, or any adult who’s caring for a child’s spiritual well-being, encourage engaging with the mind of God? Dr. Barrett continues:
Ask your child to consider: How does God think?
How might that be different from how they think? What is God’s perspective on their life, on the lives of those around them? This kind of engagement might be good for their personal development but it’s also great for their social, cognitive development.
Children’s social intelligence increases as they consider these kinds of questions.
There is evidence that thinking about others who have different perspectives is good for developing children’s social intelligence:
- others who look at things a different way
- others who feel something differently
- others who know different things
- myself who is not the center of the world
- myself who does not think the way everyone else thinks
- myself who isn’t always is right nor is what everybody else thinks wrong
God is a really interesting test case
Thinking about God, engaging with God, and considering the difference between God and them can help stretch a child. It can bring the understanding that I could be wrong about certain things because God captures the truth better than I do.
It is healthy for children from a very young age to begin engaging with how God thinks.
This post is composed of excerpts taken from a magazine interview given by Dr. Justin Barrett.
Mar 30, 2020 | trust
“It would be easy for kids to draw the wrong conclusion about their complaints by thinking that God is like other authority figures they have in their lives. Sometimes It is not safe to speak honestly to a human authority figure—especially if you want to accuse that authority figure of neglecting their promises. But God invites it,” says Leadership Development Professor Scott Cormode.”
Conversation starter
Ask children: God wants to hear your complaints and concerns over what doesn’t seem right in the world. How would you finish these sentences: God, please fix___. God, I want to learn how to praise you even when___.
Meditation: My God…why are you so far away when I groan for help? Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer. Every night you hear my voice, but I find no relief….O Lord, do not stay far away from me. You are my strength, come quickly to my aid. Psalm 22
Main point: A middle school student said, “It’s hard to see how my love and anger for God can go together. I thought that if I didn’t talk about my anger when I prayed, then God won’t know that I was angry. I guess I believed that I could hide my thoughts from God. I now see that God invites me to be honest because God already knows what’s in my heart, and trusting someone even in anger makes a deeper relationship.” (*Scott Cormode)
Feb 18, 2020 | Security
Trouble is here to stay, and with it, people’s right to think their own kind or cruel thoughts, feel their own hate or love, do good or bad. In our troubles, we have God who shares them with us.
Conversation starter:
Main idea: God stays with you in ugly situations. You can’t see God with your eyes, but God is there with you in times of trouble, and you’re not alone.
Meditation: “Do not be afraid and do not panic. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.” Deuteronomy 31:6
Let’s talk: Describe a time when you were in a situation where only God could help you. What do you think God did in that moment?
Jan 6, 2020 | Attachment
When children connect with God, they are forging their bond with a primary caregiver. They are establishing a stable relationship to God and a secure attachment pattern with God.
Conversation starter
Some children express their faith through a combination of sensory perception, rituals and images. Lacy Borgo, a Spiritual Director for children, says: “Communicate that you’re here to listen. When kids are silent, hold that silence open for them without filling it with your words.”
Main point: Some kids experience God when they see beauty in stained glass windows or when candles are lit or other ways that don’t use words. These images reflect your own inner beliefs of who God is.
Meditation: ”Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10
Let’s talk: How is God at work in what you’re looking at? What meaning does it hold for you?
They see the needs within their extended family. They hear the adult conversations. Some of them pray about it. When the situation doesn’t change according to their wishes, they may conclude that God hardly listens and feel personal rejection by God.
