Explaining Homosexuality to Kids: A Biblical Approach

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In this episode, we address how to talk to kids about homosexuality, especially when someone close to them is living this lifestyle. We discuss explaining God's design for gender and marriage, recognizing deviations, and teaching kids to respond with truth and love. Join us for practical insights on guiding your children through these important conversations.

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello, friends. Today's podcast question says, "do you have any recommendations on how to cover homosexuality with kids, especially when you have someone directly in your life who is living this lifestyle?" This is a question that is so important for us to think through in the time and culture in which we are living because we know that just the definitions of marriage and gender and family have been redefined. And we need to prepare our children to understand what the truth is, prepare them to understand deviations from that truth, and then we need to prepare them to live out the truth in love because we know that there are going to be those in our life who we love, who God has called us to love, who are living according to a lifestyle that goes against God's good design. So that's what we're going to dive down deep into today.

I'm Elizabeth Urbanowicz, the host of the Foundation Worldview Podcast, and our goal on this podcast is to answer your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. Now, as we think on how to cover the topic of homosexuality with our children, we need to ask ourselves a question that is a question I ask us frequently on the Foundation Worldview podcast. And that is what is the goal? When we think about talking with our kids about homosexuality, what is the goal? Now I'm going to say I think there are a few different goals that we have here. And the first goal is we want our children to understand the goodness of God's design. We want them to understand the goodness of God's design. The second goal is we want them to recognize deviations from that good design and understand why those deviations are deviations. And then third, we want to equip them to love God and love others. So as we think about talking with our kids about homosexuality, we need to have this threefold goal that they would understand the goodness of God's design, that they would recognize deviations from that good design and that they would love God and love others.

Now we're going to walk through in this podcast exactly how we can do this. And if you are interested in this, highly, highly, highly recommend you check out our most recently released curriculum, which is called God's Good Design. It is for children ages four on up, and it goes through these three exact steps: equipping our kids to understand the goodness of God's design, equipping them to recognize deviations from it, and then equipping them to love God and love others. So everything I'm going to be walking us through over the next 15 to 20 minutes is going to be exactly what we cover in our God's Good Design curriculum.

So first, the first thing that we need to do is we need to lay a biblical foundation for gender and marriage. And now part of this is actually explaining the concept of sex to our children. And at Foundation Worldview, we do not have resources that step-by-step walk you through how to talk about sex with your kids. And the reason we don't have those is because there are already other organizations out there that are doing it really well. So highly recommend that you check out the Birds and the Bees course. It's an online course 10 lesson course that just walks you through systematically how to have different conversations with your children about sex. And so that's a really important step just opening up that conversation with your kids. And now most of you listening probably already know that at Foundation Worldview, we recommend starting to talk to children about sex by the age of three or four. So if your child is three or four or older and you have not yet had that conversation, highly recommend, check out that course, start having that conversation tomorrow. But then once our kids understand what sex is, we want to make sure we're laying the biblical foundation for them understanding God, creating us as sexed beings and God giving the gift of marriage. We always want to make sure that we're anchoring this in Scripture. The first passage of Scripture we can take our kids to is Genesis chapter one, verses 26 through 28. This passage reads, "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him; male and female he created them. And God bless them. And said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.""

So we can read this passage of Scripture with our children and then ask them a few key questions. One question that we ask after we read this passage in God's good design curriculum is How did God create humans? And so in verse 27, there are two clear truths about how God created humans, that God designed us in his image and that God designed us as male or female. Okay? So two really big truths. God designed us in his image. God designed us as male or female. Then we can ask, what job did God give humans? And verse 28 makes clear that God gave humans the job of being fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth and subduing it and having dominion over everything else in creation. So being fruitful and multiplying and having dominion over everything. And so we can explain that that in simple terms that that means that Adam and Eve were supposed to have babies, they were supposed to make more humans, and then they were supposed to rule and reign over the rest of creation. And then the third question we can ask is why were both Adam and Eve needed for this job? Why did God need both a man and a woman to fulfill this command? Well, the command is to be fruitful and multiply and a man can't have babies on his own. A woman can't have babies on her own. A man and a woman were needed to fulfill this job.

Another passage of Scripture we can take our kids to lay this biblical foundation for gender and marriage is Genesis chapter two verses 18 through 24. And this passage reads "Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."

So after reading this passage with our kids, we can ask, okay, based on what we just read here and based on what we know from those verses we read in Genesis chapter one, why was it not good for man to be alone? Well, in Genesis one, humans had been given the command to be fruitful and multiply. So why was it not good for Adam to be alone? Because without Eve, without a woman, he could not fulfill the purpose for which God had created him to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth and subdue it. So that's why both Adam and Eve were necessary because on his own, Adam could not fulfill the purpose for which God created him. We can also talk with our kids about how sometimes people misunderstand this passage and they think that when God says in verse 18, it is not good that the man should be alone, that they read it as it is not good. That man should be lonely. But that's not what this verse says. This verse isn't talking about some emotional feeling that Adam had, Adam had God, he had his relationship with God. What more perfect relationship could there be? Adam also had a relationship with the animals. However, Adam didn't have someone who was like him, who was needed to fulfill the command that God had already given him to be fruitful and multiply. I also think I misspoke there. I said, God had already given this command. We do not know yet if God had already given the command to be fruitful and multiply at this portion of Genesis two. So just wanted to backtrack on what I said there. That was a little flub right there.

Okay, so that first step is that we need to lay the biblical foundation for gender and marriage, that God has designed us as distinctly male and female in his image, and God gave us marriage. He gave the first man and woman in marriage that they could fulfill the command to be fruitful and multiply. Then the second thing we want to do is we want to introduce homosexuality as a form of sexuality that is a deviation from God's good design.

So the first truth that we need to help our kids understand and the way we present it in God's good design curriculum is we teach the kids that sin corrupts God's good design and we teach them that the word corrupts means to ruin, that sin corrupts God's good design. And we don't just place it out there like, oh, there's sin out there in the world, but we present it as Scripture does, that there is sin within the human heart that all of us are equal on this field, that we are born in Adam's sin and we choose to sin every day. So therefore, we are going to see sin corrupt God's good design. Now, it's important to follow up with another truth that Jesus has defeated sin. So sin corrupting God's good design. That is not the end of the story that Jesus defeated sin. So then when we present the concept of homosexuality to our kids, we want them to ask them then, okay, does this line up with God's good design or is it a corruption of God's good design? And so even with little ones, they can understand well, marriage is one man and one woman becoming one flesh for life. And that is how we get children. That's how we fill the earth and subdue it, how we are fruitful and multiply. So when we have two men or two women together, can that actually be a marriage as God designed it? No, it's not. Two men cannot become one flesh in the way that God intended. Two women cannot become one flesh in the way that God intended so that they understand this.

Now in our God's good design curriculum, we take it a step further and we actually teach kids the truth that marriage is a picture of Jesus and the church and how in marriage the husband represents Jesus and he's called to lay down his life for his wife and the wife represents the church, and she's called to submit to the loving leadership of her husband just as the church submits to Christ. And we talk with them about how if we have two men, that's a picture of Jesus and Jesus, not Jesus and the church. If we have two women, that's a picture of the church and the church, not Jesus and the church. So we want to help them understand this deviation and why it's a deviation from God's good design.

Now, if you have older kids, if you have kids like 10 on up, you can actually talk about how many people in our society, even many Christians have misunderstood marriage to be nothing more than an emotional attachment, that you have strong feelings for someone. So then you decide to spend the rest of your lives together where that's not the biblical picture of marriage. Now in marriage, should there be a strong emotional attachment? Yes. That's part of how God designed the process of sexual intercourse, that with the different chemicals that are released in the human brain during intercourse, that those chemicals actually bond you to that other person, that there should be a deep emotional attachment. However, that's not the foundation of marriage, that the foundation of marriage is. It takes one man and it takes one woman to become one flesh and only through a one man, one woman flesh union can children be created. That's also a picture of Jesus and the church.

Now, we also need to discuss with our kids that because we're sinners and because everybody else in the world is a sinner as well, we are going to see these deviations such as homosexuality all around us, that there are going to be people in our neighborhood who are not living according to God's design. There might be people in our extended family who are not living according to God's good design. You know what? There's going to be many times where we are tempted to not live according to God's good design, and there's going to be times where we even don't live according to God's good design, times when we sin, times when we lie, times when we have a bad attitude, times when we do anything that go against the commands of God. And so then the third thing that we need to do is we need to train our kids in what to do when they encounter those within your circle of influence or just those out in the community who are living in a homosexual relationship who are not living according to God's good design.

Now, in our God's good design curriculum, what we explain to kids is we say that as a child, it is not your job to go around telling people that they are not following God's good design. Now, sometimes as adults, it is our job, it lovingly confront people when they are not living according to God's good design. Why? Do we want them to just clean up their act? No, we don't want people to clean up their act. We want them to repent of their sin and to turn to Jesus. That is the ultimate goal. But we tell kids it's not your job as a child to go around and tell people that they're not living according to God's good design. So in that curriculum, we actually have several lessons where we just practice these steps over and over and over and over again. We give them three steps that they practice over again, and we give them a host of situations where then we say, okay, how would you practice those steps? And the three steps that we give them is our sorry, one you need to recognize this is not God's good design. Two, you need to remind yourself of the truth. And three, you need to be kind. So what we do is we give kids situations. Like we say, you go bring cookies to your new next door neighbors and you discover that that family next door has two dads and two kids. So what do you do? Well, first you recognize that this is not God's good design. You don't say it out loud, but you recognize it in your mind. Then two, you remind yourself of the truth in your mind. You say, God designed as one man and one woman becoming one flesh for life. God's design is so good. And then three, you be kind and you treat that family like you would any other family. Okay? You're going to be kind to them. You're going to talk to them. Maybe you're going to have the family over for dinner. Okay? So just those three steps. Recognize this is not God's good design. Remind yourself of the truth and be kind. And for that second step, the remind yourself of the truth. We highly recommend if you have not taken your kids through our God's Good design curriculum, teach your kids the same catechizing phrase that we take them through over and over and over and over again in that curriculum that God designed marriage as one man and one woman becoming one flesh for life. God's design is so good.

Okay, so the three steps we've gone through so far is one, lay the biblical foundation for gender and marriage. Two, introduce homosexuality as a form of a deviation from God's good design. Three, practice what to do when you encounter people who are living a homosexual lifestyle. And then the fourth thing that we need to do is we need to prepare our children to face suffering because the fact of the matter is in 2024, which is when I'm recording this podcast, it is considered a form of discrimination. It is considered a form of hatred. It is considered a form of prejudice to not celebrate homosexuality. Now, as Christians, we know we're called to love those who are living in homosexual relationships. We are called to love, but we cannot celebrate these things. And so our culture views this as a form of hatred. And so we are at times going to be persecuted. We are going to suffer for following Jesus. So this is where we need to really ground our kids in a biblical understanding of suffering. So just a few verses that I think we can really ground our kids in here in Matthew chapter five, verses 10 through 12, Jesus says, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you and others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely in my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." So we want to take our kids through this verse and talk about there's going to be times where following Jesus is going to cost us something and we can rejoice and be grateful that we get to suffer in this way for following Jesus.

Another passage of Scripture is first Peter, chapter four, verses 12 through 16. This passage says, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evil doer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name." So again, point out to our children that there's going to be times where we are going to have to suffer for Jesus, but we can know that God is blessing us, that our reward is great for that.

Another verse is John chapter 16, verse 33, which says, "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." So in this world, we're going to have hardships and difficulties and persecutions, but Jesus has overcome this world. And one day if we have turned from our sin and trusted in him, we are going to live with him in the new heaven and new earth forever.

And the final passage we can take our kids through is a passage that if you listen to the Foundation Worldview podcast, you should be very familiar with, because I usually close with part of this passage, Romans chapter eight, verses 28 through 30 says, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom be predestined he also called, and those whom be called he also justified, and those whom be justified he also glorified." So we can help our children see that we can trust that no matter what situation we walk through, God is using that situation for our good by using it to make us more like Jesus, to conform us more into the image of His Son.

For those of you with kids who are ages eight and younger, a great place that you can go for just for all of these verses combined into one is the Slugs and Bugs song "In all Things". It's actually a combination of these four different passages put to music. So just check out Slugs and Bugs the song "In All Things". Well, I hope that this has just been a helpful paradigm for thinking through how to help prepare our kids to encounter homosexuality in the world around us and how to navigate it biblically.

Again, highly recommend you check out our God's Good Design curriculum. We have created these resources to be a step-by-step video-based series that you can take your kids through to catechize them in the truth, to help them understand God's good design, to help them recognize deviations from that good design, and then to equip them to live out the truth in love and in grace.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode. But as always, my prayer for you as we leave this time together, it's no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care, find yourselves that you would trust that God is working all things together for your good. By using all things to conform you more into the image of His Son. I'll see you next time.