How Christian Parents Can Teach Our Children About Evolution

By The original uploader was TimVickers at English Wikipedia. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2785168

Christian parents often mistakenly act as if they don’t talk about evolution with their children, that it will go away.  Evolution permeates all secular children’s books, videos, and education.  Even if your child goes to a Christian school that teaches creation, the books in the library or the videos that they watch from the earliest ages will all have a secular evolutionary worldview, unless they come from explicitly Christian sources.  It is good that some youth ministries are beginning to deal with apologetics issues related to evolution however, even this is not sufficient by itself.  It may be  a case of too little, too late.  Churches only have the opportunity to teach children and youth for only a fraction of the time of schools, peers, and media.  The church cannot be expected to counter-act the entire onslaught of the evolution theory let alone the entire secular worldview. 

I focus on the theory of evolution because unless our children develop a robust Biblical worldview related to creation, they cannot be expected to maintain a Christian perspective on other issues (abortion or LGBTQ+ issues etc.) in the face of even greater social, political, and even economic pressure in the future.  The book of Genesis is foundational to the Christian worldview in these and many other areas.  If Genesis is just a fictional story, then it has no authority to shape our worldview.  Evolution is often the spearhead or the camel’s nose in the tent that will undermine our children’s entire Christian worldview, if they are left unvaccinated against it.
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Here are some practical steps that can help us vaccinate our children against the theory of evolution and establish a foundation for dealing with other controversial topics from a Biblical worldview. 

1. Make sure that our children can distinguish between the parables of the Bible which are realistic stories that contain a deeper meaning and historical accounts.  Genesis is not a parable.  
2. Make sure that our children can distinguish between micro-evolution and macro-evolution.  Micro evolution is change within a kind (Genesis 1:24).  Micro-evolution actually occurs in real life and does not contradict the Bible.  For example, the dog-kind been modified into everything from poodles to wolves.  However, members of the dog-kind have never and will never become cats or birds.  Macro-evolution is the false belief that one kind of animal can become a different kind. For example, evolutionists hypothesize that the lizard-kind became the bird-kind all without evidence either in the present or in the fossil record.   The evolutionists often trick children into believing in macro-evolution by presenting evidence for micro-evolution. 
3. Take our children’s questions about creation/Genesis (“Where did Cain get his wife?”  “What about dinosaurs?”) seriously.  Encourage them to ask questions and help them find the answers to their questions.  I recommend Answers in Genesis, Genesis Apologetics, and other similar ministries to explore those questions.
4. Analyze evolution-based books, magazines, websites, and videos with our children and point out that scientists, authors, journalists, and illustrators all have presuppositions and prejudices that shape how they interpret the evidence.  For example, in the case of supposed “ape-human missing links” sometimes an entire creature and habitat and behavior patterns are shown in illustrations when the only hard-evidence is not even a complete skeleton.  Some “missing-links” such as Nebraska man, have been based on the discovery of a single tooth and a ton of imagination.  Sometimes the skeletal evidence turns out to be completely wrong.  In the case of Nebraska man, the tooth was later discovered to have come from an extinct pig.  Yet for decades Nebraska man was touted by evolutionary textbooks as undeniable evidence of evolution.  
5. Be prepared to answer questions about God’s goodness and character. For example, “Why does God allow suffering?” or “Why was God so cruel in the Old Testament?” or “What about those who never heard about Jesus?” etc.  

These are just a few hints to get us started.  It is never too early to talk about these issues, in an age appropriate way.  Before coming under conviction and believing in Christ at the age of five, my mother had been teaching me to memorize Bible verses since three. If you have any questions or need recommendations of additional resources feel free to email evidencecambodia@gmail.com .