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Dealing with Difficult Questions
“Good Friday shouldn’t be called Good Friday, it should be called Bad Friday” announced my daughter the Easter when she was three years old. Every year since she has vociferously complained that Good Friday is called Good Friday because to her it’s bad that Jesus was killed.
Talking about the cross with small children can be very difficult. Where do I start? How much detail do I go into? What words do I use to explain it? Will the child understand? Will I be able to answer their questions?
Well, I don’t claim to have all the answers but I have an approach that seems to be helpful to the children I’ve worked with over the years, and that I now adopt at home with my own children aged 4 & 7.
Some general principles;
1) Avoid assumptions.
In my experience, when children ask a question, most of the time they have an answer in their mind already. It is really important to find out what they think as this gives you your starting point. So if a child asks me a question like “Why did Jesus have to die” my first response would be something like “That’s a really good question, I wonder why Jesus had to die? Tell me what you think”.
This response shows the child that you’ve heard their question, value them and their thoughts by finding out what they think, and it also gives you some thinking time.
The next part of my response would be something along the lines of, “You know this is a question that many children and grown ups all over the world have been asking for 2 thousand years and still ask today. Some have discovered the answer and some haven’t, so it’s important to keep asking this question as you grow up.”
2) Asking at the wrong moment.
It’s important to engage with these questions but children do have a habit of asking them at quite the wrong moment. So, rather than fob them off with quick or pithy answers that ultimately prove unhelpful, my strategy for this is to write the question down and come back to later – making sure that you do!
Within a group, I’ll say to the child “I’d like to talk with you about that in a minute when we’ve just finishedthis and the other children will dothat’.
At home we say, ‘that’s such an important question we need to explore it later on when we have more time together. Let’s write it down and pin on the notice board (fridge or wherever) so that we remember it later on.
3) Be careful about your language.
Small children take everything literally. They are incapable of interpreting ‘grey areas’, so to help build the foundations of faith we need to be consistent in giving them truths about who God is.
When my daughter was just three she went through a phase of being agitated at bedtime. We have a strict routine and nothing had changed so it was very odd. Eventually, through talking to about her seeming sad and worried about going to bed she was able to say that ‘she didn’t want the man to come and stand by her bed’. Then the penny dropped, we usually prayed that ‘Jesus would watch over and protect her as she slept’. She had interpreted this as a man actually comes into my room and watches me. Immediately we changed the language of the prayer and she was fine again.
When talking with children about why Jesus died things my children have found helpful are;
One reason is because people have done wrong things that make God sad, like the time mummy shouted at you today/ your brother took your toy/ you pushed the girl at school. We felt better after we said sorry and gave each a hug. Jesus dying on the cross is a bit like that – he takes away the bad things and the sad and cross feelings so that we can be close to God again. This is why it so important for us to say sorry to each other and to God when we upset each other. Every week we say a special sorry prayer in church, but we can talk to God and say sorry any time.
I know this way of talking is having an effect because during the first week of term I picked my children up from school and we had to go on errand. Everyone was tired and the children were niggling and annoying each other. After a time as I drive onto a busy roundabout my son (aged 4) said, “Mummy, can we talk to God?”, “Yes, of course, what do we need to talk to God about?”. “We annoy each other, we need to say sorry. You need to say sorry – you shout!”
So we did pray there and then that God would forgive each of us and help us forgive each other.
4) Let the story speak for itself.
Use a good version of the story, share it and talk about. Introduce it with a question like “Let’s have a look at the bible story and see if we can find out the answer to your question”.
I find ‘The Amazing Journey’ by Susie Poole a fantastic version with beautiful illustrations that provide much discussion. This one is so good because it starts at the very beginning with creation, Noah and then Jesus, offering the children an insight into the whole story of God (She also does this with ‘The Christmas Journey’.) Looking at this version, I remember when my daughter was four, looking at the picture of the crucifixion and saying “He’s got blood on him. It must have hurt” “Yes, it did. It hurt a lot” was my only response.
The ‘Jesus Storybook Bible’, The Lion First Bible, and ‘My First Message Bible’ all give good versions of the story in my opinion.
5) Have a plan
If you haven’t asked yourself recently why Jesus died, do so. When talking to child about it, own it.
Statements like; ‘Jesus didn’t deserve it, he did nothing wrong but that’s what makes it so amazing for me’
‘I believe…’
‘Christians believe…’
‘Questions about Jesus have caused lots of people to argue over the years, I thinkthis but some people thinkthat…’
6) It’s ok to not know the answer.
‘That’s a brilliant question and I don’t actually know the answer. I suspect the answer might be … I wonder who else we can ask or where we might find out’. See their questions as an opportunity to explore and learn together, not a trick just to annoy you.
Great resources to help;
‘Top tips on Explaining the Cross to children and young people’. A Scripture Union resource by Helen Franklin, Steve Hutchinson and Robert Willoughby.