How to Answer Your Child's Hard Questions About God, Suffering, and Science

A parent who says “I don’t know, let’s find out” builds more faith than one who always has an answer — because your child will eventually meet a question you didn’t cover, and what they’ll reach for is the posture you modeled, not the fact you supplied.

The rule that governs all of it

Never pretend to know more than you do.

This is the whole page. Overstate a case once — claim certainty you don’t have, use an argument that sounds strong and isn’t — and when your child later discovers it was thin, they won’t just discard that argument. They’ll discount you, and everything else you told them.

We can afford to be honest, because the ground we actually have is solid. It’s the overreach that costs.

So three habits:

1. Say what’s certain, confidently.
2. Say what’s disputed, honestly.
3. Say “I don’t know” when you don’t — then actually go look.

“Why does God let bad things happen?”

The oldest one, and the one your child will ask first — usually when something has actually happened.

Do this first: don’t answer. Not immediately. A child asking this in grief is not asking for theology. They’re asking whether the world is safe and whether you’re frightened. Answer that first — by being with them and not being frightened.

Then, when it’s a question again:

Don’t defend God. He hasn’t asked you to, and the impulse to rush in and explain communicates that the question is dangerous. It isn’t. It’s in Scripture, repeatedly, asked by people God commends.

Say what’s true and short: the world is broken, and it isn’t how He made it. God is not the author of it. He entered it — He didn’t stay outside it and explain.

Don’t say the things that aren’t true, and this matters more than the things you do say:

• ✗ “Everything happens for a reason” — not what Scripture says, and it’s cruel at a funeral.
• ✗ “God needed another angel.” People don’t become angels, and it makes God a thief.
• ✗ “If you had more faith…” — this one wounds children for decades.
• ✗ “You’ll understand when you’re older.” They probably won’t, and you’ve closed the subject.

“I don’t know why this happened. I know He’s good. I know He’s here. And I know it hurts.” That’s an honest answer, and children can hold it.

Then let them be angry. The Psalms are full of it. A child who learns they can bring God their anger has learned something enormous about Him.

“How do I know God is real?”

Not a crisis. It’s a good question, and it deserves better than “just have faith.”

Give them the frame rather than a proof. Ten minutes on why is there anything at all? is worth more than an hour of arguments. The question that stands under everything: the universe had a beginning, you didn’t cause yourself, and something has to be underneath.

Then be honest about what faith is. It isn’t certainty. It’s trust with reasons — the evidence of things not seen. Your child will have doubts. Tell them now, before they arrive, that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith. Unbelief is. Doubt is what faith does while it’s thinking.

“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.”

1 Peter 3:15

A reason. Scripture expects your child to have one. And with meekness — the manner is part of the command, not decoration on it.

Science — and here is where we’ll be most careful

This is where parents most often overstate, and where overstating costs the most.

What is not negotiable

Three things, and they’re explicit in the text:

1. God created all things. Origins are not ultimately naturalistic. The universe is authored, sustained — “in Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:17) — and purposeful.
2. Man is a special, direct creation in the image of God (Genesis 1:27; 2:7). Bearing a moral, God-breathed status — not merely the endpoint of undirected processes. This is the firmest boundary of all.
3. Creation reveals God (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20) — so the study of nature and the testimony of Scripture are not ultimately at war.

Hold those without apology. Teach them plainly.

What is genuinely disputed — among believers who fully affirm Scripture

Your child will find this out. It’s much better coming from you.

The age of the earth. The length of the “days.” The reach of common descent.

Here’s why there’s room. The Hebrew word for day — יוֹם / yom — has a real semantic range: a 24-hour day, the daylight period, or an indefinite period (as in “the day of the LORD,” or Genesis 2:4, “in the day that the LORD God made the earth,” covering the whole week). That range is lexically undisputed, and it’s precisely what leaves the question open.

Young-earth creationism is commonly taught, and its strongest internal argument is real: Exodus 20:11, where the creation week grounds the literal Sabbath week. Old-earth and framework readings also exist among believers who affirm full inspiration, leaning on the range of yom and the revelatory role of nature.

And the wider landscape, stated as fact rather than verdict: mainstream science holds an ancient earth — on the order of 4.5 billion years — and common descent. Christians who hold Scripture as fully authoritative range across young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, and evolutionary creation. They differ not on whether God created, but on how Genesis 1 relates to the physical evidence.

Our line is drawn at rejecting purely naturalistic origins that exclude God, and rejecting any account that denies the special creation and moral status of humanity. The age and mechanism questions carry more latitude, even where a congregation teaches young-earth as its standard.

Tell your child which is which. “This part is what Scripture says. This part is how faithful people read it, and they don’t all agree.”

Three arguments to retire

Because they sound strong and they aren’t, and your child will eventually find out:

• ✗ “Bara proves creation from nothing.” The doctrine is sound — but it rests on the canonical whole (Hebrews 11:3), not on the force of the verb, which is also used of forming and shaping.
• ✗ “Kind means species.” מִין / min is not the modern taxonomic category. Its scope is undefined in the text and debated. It marks that God created distinct kinds — it doesn’t deliver a biology.
• ✗ “Matthew 28:19 was altered.” (It comes up.) Every extant Greek manuscript contains the triadic form. There is no manuscript lacking it. The Eusebius material is a patristic-quotation question, not manuscript evidence.

Each of those is a shortcut. Each one, when your child finds out, costs more than it bought.

The method, for any hard question

1. Take it seriously. Your face in the first two seconds teaches more than your answer.

2. Ask what’s behind it. “What made you think about that?” Often the real question is underneath.

3. Answer at their age, honestly. Age-appropriate doesn’t mean untrue — it means shorter.

4. Say what’s certain confidently and what’s disputed honestly.

5. “I don’t know — let’s find out.” Then actually do it. This is the highest-value sentence here.

6. Don’t win. You can win every argument and lose the person. Your child isn’t an opponent.

7. Leave it open. “Ask me again.” Most hard questions are conversations, not transactions.

What not to do

Don’t panic. Every time a question visibly rattles you, your child learns the faith is fragile.

Don’t forbid the question. It doesn’t go away — it just relocates.

Don’t answer a question they didn’t ask. A four-year-old asking where the dog went does not need eschatology.

Don’t outsource it. “Ask your pastor” is good when the question genuinely needs a pastor. It’s avoidance when you’re just uncomfortable, and your child can tell which one it was.

Don’t be embarrassed by mystery. “There are things God hasn’t told us” is a biblical answer (Deuteronomy 29:29; Isaiah 55:8-9). It’s honest, and it’s a relief.

The aim

You will not answer everything. That was never the assignment.

The assignment is that at nineteen, when the question comes that nobody prepared them for, your child knows the questions are allowed, knows their faith can carry weight, and knows where to bring it.

That’s built by a parent who didn’t flinch, didn’t overstate, and said “I don’t know” out loud.

Start this week

1. Take one hard question seriously. Don’t fix it — take it.
2. Say “I don’t know — let’s find out.” Then go find out.
3. Tell them one thing that’s disputed among believers, and that it’s fine.
4. Retire one argument you’ve been using that’s thinner than you’d said.
5. Tell them doubt isn’t the opposite of faith — before they need to hear it.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.