How to Respond When Kids Ask: "Why Can’t People Love Whoever They Want?"

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In this episode of the Foundation Worldview Podcast, Elizabeth Urbanowicz addresses a common cultural question: "How can a loving God not allow people to love whoever they want? They’re not hurting anyone, so what’s the problem?" Elizabeth walks parents through how to engage their children in meaningful conversations about God’s good design, love, and truth. Learn practical ways to guide kids through defining love biblically, understanding sin's consequences, and trusting God's loving boundaries. If you're equipping children to evaluate ideas biblically, this episode is full of essential insights.

Transcript

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

Hello friends. Today's podcast question says, "How would you respond to someone who asks, how can a loving God not allow people to love whoever they want? They're not hurting anyone. What is so bad about it?" This is an interesting question for us to think through. And now the questioner did not specify whether this is just someone out in the world asking this question or if it's a child asking this question, but as we go through it, I am going to respond as if it's a conversation the parent is having with a child. Also, model how you could talk your child through this if they receive this question. But this is a question that we're probably going to face a lot in our current cultural moment, and it's important for us to think through ahead of time. So this is the question we're going to dive down deep into today on the Foundation Worldview Podcast, where we seek 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. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for another episode today. Now, if you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a future Foundation Worldview podcast, please head over to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast to submit your question. Because we actually can't do this podcast without you. We need your questions to keep coming in. So thank you to the many people who have submitted questions.

Now as we think through this question, one thing we need to make sure that we're doing is getting to the heart of what the person asking the question is saying, because if we just automatically dive into a response, we might be completely missing the question or the heart of the question that I actually just saw this in my own life several weeks ago that a young woman that I am discipling asked me a question about something and I didn't completely understand her question. So I did ask a follow-up question, and then I thought I understood her question and I went off on an answer to what I thought was her actual question for about five minutes. And then I said, what are your thoughts? And she responded with some thoughts and I realized I had not understood her question at all, and I gave her a five minute long explanation of something that she was not actually asking. So it's really important whether it's we're talking with our kids or our spouse or anyone else that we ask questions to get to the heart of what is going on.

So if your child comes home and asks this question, mom, dad, how can God be a loving God if he doesn't allow others to love people that they want to love? Those people aren't hurting anyone. What's so bad about it? The first question that I would suggest that you ask is what do you mean by a loving God? So get the definition down. What does your child mean? Or the other person who's asking this question mean by a loving God? How are they defining the term loving? Now we're going to want to listen to how they're responding to this and then say back, okay, so what I hear you saying is, and rephrase what you thought you heard them say, and then ask if that's correct, because chances are your child or whoever is asking this question is not defining love according to the biblical worldview. Because according to the biblical worldview, love is giving of ourselves to do what is best for another. That Jesus is the ultimate example that we are told that greater love has no one than this, that he should lay down his life for his friends. And so Jesus is our ultimate example that he laid down his rights, he gave his all on the cross for us to do what was ultimately best for us to reconcile us to God. So according to the biblical worldview, love is giving of ourselves to do what is ultimately best for another. And so if we are defining love biblically, we want to help our child see that if we're talking about God being a loving God, biblically we mean that God is giving of himself to do what is best for us and we want to help see is how our child defining love, is it in the same way or do they have another definition? Because it's very easy for us and our children to just buy into the cultural definition, which is never directly talked about, but is always kind of assumed that love is doing what others, sorry love is doing what makes others feel good. And now ultimately this is not biblical love because there are many times the things that make us feel good are not for our ultimate good. I mean, think about even the weight of sin and shame, the guilt that we all inherently feel because we have inherited Adam's sin and we choose to reject God's law to break God's law every day. What would make us feel good and what our culture often does is just say, oh, you are beautiful. You are perfect just the way you are. You are valuable and worthy. Don't let anyone look down on you because you are worthy. Where the truth is that we are of inherent dignity, value and worth that no one can ever take away, but that we're guilty before a holy God, and we need to repent of our sins and receive the forgiveness of Jesus. And so someone doing what would feel best for us, just telling us that we're wonderful and we're beautiful and we're perfect just the way we are that's going to make us feel good, but it's not ultimately loving because it's not true. Those are lies that lead to hell. So we want to help our children see what biblical love is, that if we are defining love biblically God, being a loving God means that he's going to give of himself to do what is best for us.

Now, if you really just want to walk your child through this definition of love and other words in our culture that have kind of been twisted similar to the way the word love has been twisted, if you have a child who is 10 or older, I highly recommend you check out our Careful Thinking curriculum. In the second unit, we actually have a whole lesson where we look at words and how they're defined biblically and classically, and how those definitions have changed today so that they're looking at sometimes the same word is being used to describe two completely different concepts. So highly recommend you check out our Careful Thinking curriculum. Okay, so that was the first question. What do you mean by a loving God?

Next, I would want to ask for clarification by asking what do you mean by love whoever they want? Okay, so we want to find out what does our child mean by God not allowing others to love whoever they want? Because if we're looking at the biblical definition, love is giving of ourselves for the ultimate good of another. We are biblically giving, not only licensed to, but we are commanded to love others. So the highest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest is to love others. So biblically speaking, we are called to love everyone. We are called to give of ourselves to do what is ultimately best for others, but we want to know how is our child or how is the person making this claim defining love, whoever they want. Now, culturally what this means is love whoever they want. For those of you listening, you couldn't see, I just put up air quotes "for love whoever" they want means expressing ourselves sexually with whoever we so desire. Where biblically sexual expression does not necessarily fall under the category of love. Now, if sexual expression is taking place within the covenant of marriage and the husband and the wife are giving themselves to one another for the good of one another, then that act of sexual expression is falling within the biblical definition of love. However, if that sexual expression is taking place outside of the one man, one woman covenant of marriage, it cannot be biblically defined as love because it is not actually doing what is best for the other person. Or even within the marriage covenant if the sexual expression is selfish, if it's focused solely on self pleasure and not actually giving to the other person, then that act of sexual expression even within the covenant of marriage would not fall under the biblical definition of love. So we want to help our children see that when they're saying or when someone in the culture is saying love, whoever they want, they're not defining it biblically, that biblically we are called not only to love whoever we want, we are called to love everyone, but culturally the definition is giving of ourselves sexually, expressing ourselves sexually, with whomever we want. So we want to help our children see the difference between these two different definitions.

And then I think a good question we can ask our children as a follow-up to this definition question is if God is our creator, would he have the right to put limits around the gifts he has given us? Now, an easy example you can give your child is remind them of when you gave them their first bike and say, as your parent and the giver of this good gift, your bike, did I have the right to put limits around how you could use this bike? Did I have rights to put limits and say, you can't ride this bike in the middle of the road, or you can't ride this bike in the highway, or you can't pedal this bike with your hands and drive with your feet. You actually have to have your bottom on the seat pedal with your feet and steer with your hands. Did I, as your mom or as your dad the giver of this good gift, did I have the right to put limits around how you could use it? And the answer is yes. And how much more so God, not only as the creator of the good gift, but as our creator, how much more does he have the right to put limits around the good gifts he has given us?

Then the next question that I would ask as a defining, again, defining our terms question is what do you mean by they are not hurting anyone? Now, most likely what your child or whoever is making this claim means is that they believe that anything that doesn't involve other people isn't hurting other people. If I'm just doing this off by myself, I am not hurting anyone. And so that's where I think we can ask some good follow-up questions and we can ask, do we always immediately know what is hurting us? So ask your child, do we always immediately know what is hurting us? And then talk through examples of times throughout history when people have not known what was hurting them. For example, back in the 18 and 19 hundreds, when sugar became cheaper and more readily accessible and it became ingredients in more foods, did people automatically know that eating high quantities of sugar was going to lead to diabetes and all sorts of other health issues? No, they didn't know that right away. And so what seemed like was good cheaper sugar or more sweets ultimately was bad. Or think about when it was when the most popular form of fuel was burning coal. Did the people in the 17 and 18 hundreds know that burning high volumes of coal was going to cause respiratory disease? No. Initially they didn't know that, and so they kept burning it and burning it and burning it, and more people kept getting sick. Think about in the mid 19 hundreds, did people immediately know that smoking cigarettes was bad for them? No. But eventually it led to lung cancer and many other health problems. When people first started driving cars, did they know that the gasoline that was required for the cars was going to affect the environment, that it was going to affect the air we were breathing in? When we first started genetically modifying foods, did we know that our bodies were going to have difficulties processing them? No. So there are many times in our world where we as humans have not immediately known what was hurting us, and even in our personal lives, this happens as well that we do things that we don't immediately know are hurting us. And so we want to have that thought in our child's mind as they're claiming like they're not hurting anyone.

And then we also want to ask them, when people are off by themselves doing something, does that mean that what they're doing is not affecting anyone? No. There are many times where we are off doing things and it ultimately affects others. For example, if we are off by ourselves and we're just stewing in our anger, and rather than working through that anger, turning it over to the Lord, thinking about things that are true and right, we're just focusing on our anger, even if we're focusing on it off by ourselves, that anger is going to spill over onto our family because we're going to be frustrated when we get home, when we are around other people or even think about your child with the clothes that they wear when they're off by themselves skateboarding or riding their bike and they get their clothes in a mess and they tear their clothes, they might say, well, it wasn't really hurting anyone. Well, it's affecting your family financially. You have to buy them a new pair of jeans or a new jacket or a new shirt that even when we're by ourselves or with just one other person doing something, our actions do always affect others. So we want them to help to see these two things that we as humans don't always know what is hurting us immediately, and even when we're off by ourselves doing things, it does affect others. And so then we want to help our children see that if God created us, he has much more knowledge than we do about what ultimately hurts us. He has given us an instruction manual in Scripture that talks with us about what is true and right and good. And because God is love, because he gives of himself for our ultimate good, the commands that He's given us are for our good, and when we break these commands, we are hurting others. We are hurting ourselves because our sin separates us from God, and our sin has natural consequences. We are hurting others because our sin always affects others.

Now, if you have children who are over the age of 10, you can actually talk with them about what are some of the consequences of sex outside of marriage? What are some of those consequences on our own bodies? What are some of the consequences on others? What are the consequences of people not being faithful in their marriage? What are some of the consequences of engaging in homosexual relationships? All of these things we can talk with our children about so that they see that it is not true, that when there are sexual relationships outside of God's Good design, that no one is hurt. Most people are hurt by sexual relationships that fall outside of God's Good design. And speaking of God's good design, if you have children between the ages of four and eight, I highly, highly recommend you check out our God's Good Design curriculum because the first unit in that curriculum, the first eight lessons that you will take your child through are just a systematic apologetic going through the concept of design. It's building a systematic argument for why we as humans should listen to what God has revealed in his word and why we should seek to follow his design. So if you take your children through those resources, they are going to be prepared before they reach the age of nine or 10 to understand the poor logic of this statement - "How can a loving God not allow people to love whoever they want? They're not hurting anyone. What is so bad about it?" That when your children understand this concept of design, that design is a purposeful plan. That design always comes from a designer, that designers know and understand their design best, and that it is always best to know and follow the designer's design, and then they connect that to God's design for us. They're going to get from the earliest of ages, the fallacy in this way of thinking and why it is always for our good and for God's glory that we know and follow his design.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode, would ask that if you found this content beneficial to make sure you like and subscribed so you don't miss any future episodes. Also, if you have already liked and subscribed, if you could just make sure that you are still subscribed because YouTube and Apple podcasts get in a habit of just unsubscribing people automatically. So make sure you're subscribed so you miss any future episodes. As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is the same as always, that 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.