Raising Grace-Filled Truth Tellers: A Parenting Guide

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How do you keep kids from publicly pointing out others’ sin while still helping them understand God’s truth? In this episode, Elizabeth Urbanowicz offers a biblical and practical framework for teaching children to recognize sin, remind themselves of God’s design, and respond with kindness. Learn how to equip your children to balance truth and grace in a way that honors God and builds loving relationships.

Transcript

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

Hello friends. Today's question says, "once my children understand God's good design for sexuality, how do I keep them from publicly pointing out others' sin?" Now, this is a really important question and it's one that kind of made me chuckle a little bit, not because it's funny, but I just thought back to a story where several years ago I was having dinner with a friend at Chick-fil-A and we were there with her two sons and they were, I think at the time, four and five, and they were playing off in the PlayPlace, and she and I were just sitting down chatting and all of a sudden one of her sons, her four-year-old opens up the play play store and shouts out for the entire restaurant to hear Mom, "someone in here does not know Jesus. They do not know Jesus." And then he thinks for a second and he goes, "is that a sin against God?" And so, I mean, this is shouted out for the entire restaurant to hear. And so my friend handled it really well and she just called him over and she said, come here, bud. We'll talk about this. But we know that young children, whatever pops into their mind, usually pops out of their mouths. So we want to think through, once our children do understand the goodness of God's design for sexuality, how do we keep them from publicly pointing out other people's sin?

And that's 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. Now, those of you who are Faithful Foundation, Worldview podcast listeners, you know that we try to keep these podcasts to about 20 minutes or under so that it's quick and easy for you to listen to at any time. Now, if you are interested in more in depth teaching, usually once a month we host a webinar where it is 40 minutes of teaching on a topic. And so if you would like some of that more in depth teaching, just head over to our website FoundationWorldview.com and click the tab that says Webinars. And you can check out our past webinars and we have webinars on so many different topics. So when times when you want more in depth teaching, just highly recommend you hop over to our site and check out some of those webinars.

Now, as we think through, how do we keep our kids from actually pointing out other sin, the first thing that I think we need to do is we need to start out with helping them understand the truth that we are all sinful. It's not just that some people out there are sinful and do these bad things, it's that each of us is fallen. And so to help our children have this understanding, we want to take them right to Scripture. And we're just going to walk through several passages of Scripture that I think can really help ground our children in this truth. First passage is Romans chapter three, verses 23 and 24, which reads "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ." And we can just talk with our kids and say, okay, what does this, sorry, let me say that again. What does this verse reveal about all humans? This verse reveals that all humans have sinned. So does that mean that I have sinned? Yep, I have sinned many times. Does that mean that you have sinned? Yes, you have sinned many times. Does that mean that every single person that we meet has sinned? Yes, we are all sinful and we fall short of God's glory. But then the second part of this verse, it says, we can be justified. That means made right. We can be made right before God through Jesus.

Another passage we can take our kids to is Romans chapter five, verses 12 and 15. And these two verses say, "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned - But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many." Now this passage is long. It has a lot of words. We're probably going to have to read through it with our children two or three times, but then talk with them and say, okay, it said death came into the world through one man, and what happened? What did sin and death then do? That's right. They spread to all people because all sinned. But then the free gift, which is forgiveness in Jesus. What happened? The free gift just like that, just like sin spread to all men, the free gift is available to all people.

And then a final passage we can take our children to is one Corinthians chapter 15, verses 21 and 22, which reads, "For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." And we can then ask our kids, okay, what happens to all who are in Adam? All of Adam and Eve's children all die because of sin and death, but what can happen to all because of what Jesus has done, right? All people can be made alive. We can be rescued from sin and death through Jesus. And so we want to talk with our kids about how each of us is sinful and we each need to repent of our sin and trust in Jesus. So we want to give them this basic understanding that sin doesn't just reside out there in the world, it resides right here in our hearts.

Then we want to talk with them about what should we do when we find sin in our hearts, when we find these sinful desires, what is the right response? And this again, is where we want to take them to Scripture. And a great passage that we can take them to is First John chapter one verses eight and nine. And this passage reads, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." So then we can say, okay, what does this first reveal is true? If we say we have no sin, what is happening? That's right. We deceive ourselves. That's a fancy word for tricking ourselves. We trick ourselves because we are all sinful. But what can happen if we confess our sin? That's right. He's faithful and he's just to forgive us of our sin. So we want to help our children see that the proper response when we find sin in our own hearts, when these sinful desires are revealed, the proper response is to confess of that sin, repent of it, and turn to Jesus.

Now, you may be thinking, okay, Elizabeth, this is great, but this doesn't answer the question, how do we keep our kids from pointing out other people's sin? Well, I do think what I've just walked us through helping our children understand that they're sinful and that the proper response is confession and repentance is the first step because our children are much less likely to go around pointing out other people's sin when they understand that they themselves are sinful. And this is the attitude that we want to have as well. We don't want to have this self righteous holier-than-thou kind of attitude thinking like, oh, the world is just, it's just full of sexual sin. Well, but for God's grace, we too might be ensnared in very deviant forms of sexual sin, and it is by God's grace that we have been reconciled to him. So once our children have this understanding, that's when we can then help prepare them for what are they going to do when they see other people sin.

And so this is something that we actually cover in our God's Good design curriculum. And what we do is we talk about with kids how as a child it is not their job to go around pointing out other people's sin. And we talk about how sometimes as adults it might be our job to talk with other people about their sin. Because sometimes as adults, if it's a family member, a friend, a loved one, it will be our job to go to that person and to plead with them to repent of that sin and to turn toward Jesus and be reconciled to him. But as a child, that is not their job. And so we just need to take that job off of their shoulders. It's not your job. Similar to when we're talking with our kids, when they're running around tattling on their siblings, it's not your job to be their parent. It's not your job to point out their sin. You need to make sure that you are doing what is right. And so we want to help them understand in this situation too, when we see someone who's not following God's good design, we're not supposed to go around and just shout that out or point it out to other people.

And so in our God's good Design curriculum, we give children three steps. And these three steps are remind, recognize, and be kind. I'll say that again. Remind, I'm sorry I said that wrong. Scratch that. Those three steps are recognize, remind, and be kind, recognize, remind, and be kind. And the first step recognize is recognize this is not God's good design. And so if our children come up to us and say, mommy, I saw somebody who's not following God's good design, okay, we can say, I'm so proud of you for recognizing that's not God's good design. So that's the first step. Recognize this is not God's good design. Second step is remind yourself of the truth. And this is something we need to practice with our children because we want them to remind themselves of the truth. We just don't want them to do it loudly and publicly. And so this is when we're introducing them to the concept of homosexuality. We want them to remind themselves of the truth that God designed marriage to be one man and one woman becoming one flesh for life. And so what we can do when we're at home is say, okay, when we see someone who is married to someone who is not the opposite sex, and it's not just one man and one woman, what are we going to say in our minds and practice saying out loud, God designed marriage to be one man and one woman becoming one flesh for life. And then say, okay, I want you to say that in your minds. Should I be able to hear it when you say it in your mind? No. And then practice that 2, 3, 4 times so that they're used to saying it mentally just in their mind. And then the third step is to be kind and then talk through them what it looks like to be kind to someone. You smile to that person, you're friendly towards that person. You treat them just as you would any other person. And in our God's Good Design curriculum, we actually give kids examples of how to be kind to others and something that's a caveat that we're going to eventually have to teach our kids and we do cover in our God's Good Design curriculum is that being kind means speaking the truth to others. So we're not going to lie to someone. If a friend tells you that they don't have a mom and a dad, they have two mommies, we're not going to say that's great because it's not great that their parents are not following God's good design. So we don't want to lie to them, but instead we're going to say something else that's kind something like, it sounds like you love your family a lot. So again, this is not all going to happen at once, but we eventually want our children to understand what it looks like to be kind to others. Okay, so this is something we're going to practice at home. Recognize this is not God's good design. Remind yourself of the truth and be kind.

And then also we just as adults need to remember that if our children do point something out, we do want to train them not to just publicly go around pointing out different things about different people. But if our children do point something out, if they do put us in an uncomfortable situation, it is not their fault that they didn't ask for this situation. They didn't ask for this form of sexual sin to be paraded around in front of them. And we have to recognize that following Jesus does come with a cost. I think sometimes we have this faulty idea that if we are kind and we're gentle and we're loving towards others, that others, they're just going to melt into a puddle of kindness and love and they're going to be like, oh, thank you so much. Where Jesus was always kind towards others. He was always loving. He was always caring. And in his kindness and his love and his care, he spoke the truth. People got angry with him. People walked away from him. People became upset with him. Eventually, people became so angry and upset and even jealous of him when we're talking about the Pharisees and the Sadducees that they put him to death. And so we're not looking to go out and make fights. We're not looking for people to want to crucify us, but we have to remember that just because we are kind and loving and caring, that does not mean everything is going to go smoothly. So there might be times where our children speak the truth and it puts us in an uncomfortable situation. There might be times even when our children don't speak the truth and we're kind and we're loving to our friends and our family and our neighbors who are living in sexual sin, and the relationship is broken, not on any fault of our own, but because we are not choosing to engage with and celebrate that form of sin that is keeping this person separated from God. So we have to keep that at the forefront of our minds as we are training our children.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode, but if you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a Future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can submit that question by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast. As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is 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.