Talking About Our Past Sin to Kids

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Today's question is one that we receive multiple times every year from different parents, and this question is, "How can we teach our children to understand and follow God's good design for sexuality when we as parents have not done so? Is it wrong to admit this to our children?"

Transcript

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

Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of 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 Vanos, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for another episode today. Today's question is one that we actually receive multiple times every year from different parents, and so I've kind of summarized it, but this question is, how can we teach our children to understand and follow God's good design for sexuality when we as parents have not done so? Is it wrong to admit this to our children? So this is a question, as I've said that we get multiple times a year at Foundation Worldview, and I think it's one that's really important for us to think through biblically. I know it's one that many Christians' parents wrestle with. And just in all honesty, I genuinely believe that this is a fear-based lie from Satan, that it's a lie that if I haven't followed God's ways perfectly, I cannot teach the truth to others, and it is just flat out a lie. And that's what we're going to talk through today.

But before we dive down deep into looking at the answer to this question, if you've never reviewed this podcast before, ask that you would invest the few seconds that it takes to do that. And also, if you have a question that you would like to submit for a future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can do so by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast.

Now, as I already mentioned in the intro that this is just a lie that if we haven't followed God's ways perfectly, we cannot teach them to others. My question to any parent wrestling with this thinking, I wasn't perfect. I didn't perfectly follow God's good design for sexuality, whether it's you had sex with multiple people before you got married, whether it's you and your spouse were sexually active before you got married, whether it was involvement with pornography or masturbation, any form of sexual sin, my question for you would be, have you repented of that sin? Okay, have you confessed it to God told him that you have sinned against him, that you're sorry? Have you asked for forgiveness? And then are you now walking in faithfulness in this area? Are you being faithful to your spouse sexually? And if so, if you have repented of that sin and you are now walking in faithfulness, you are qualified to teach the truths of God's word to your children.

Now, if you have not repented of that sin, if you never confessed it to the Lord, if you never just admitted that it was wrong and asked for his forgiveness, if you've never done so with your spouse, confess to him or to her the ways that you sinned against him or her before you met him or her, or even if it was just the two of you that were sexually active before you got married. If you have not yet repented of that, that's the first thing that you need to do. You need to repent before the Lord and then repent before your spouse. Now, I don't think, and I hope and pray that this is not most people who are watching or listening, but I'm sure that there might be some people who are watching or listening who might be walking in sexual sin right now. Maybe the sexual sin that you've never repented of is something that you're still walking in right now, whether that's an extra marital affair, whether it's bringing things into your marriage that should not be there, like pornography or other things. So if you're walking in sexual sin right now, you do need to repent and you need to seek out the elders at your church to confess of that sin and to ask for help because we are told to confess our sins to one another. And the elders at your church, it is their job to shepherd your soul. And so if you are walking in sexual sin right now, you need to confess and repent of that before the Lord and go to the elders at your church. That's what church discipline is for. We tend to think of church discipline is, oh, it's a shunning, it's a casting out, and it could eventually become that. But the whole goal of church discipline is restoration. That the person walking in sin would be restored to Christ and restored to the body of Christ.

Now, I'm going to walk forward in the rest of this podcast assuming that the people who are asking this question have repented of that sin, the previous sexual sin, and are currently walking in faithfulness. So assuming that you have repented and you are walking in faithfulness now, do not fall into Satan's lie that you cannot teach your children the truth because that is just a flat out lie. So what I would encourage you to do, and those of you who are faithful listeners here at Foundation Worldview can probably already guess what I'm going to recommend is that you start teaching your children about the Goodness of God's design for gender and sexuality at the age of three or four that is the best age to start. Now, for those of you who have never thought about explaining sex to your children at that young of an age, I highly recommend that you check out the Birds and the Bees course. It's a course, an online course that you can take. It's just 10 lessons that kind of walks you through step-by-step, how to have different conversations with your children, how to use developmentally appropriate language, just kind of guides you through and holds your hand just on explaining the basics of sex to your children.

Then what I'd recommend for you after that is you check out our God's Good Design curriculum here at Foundation Worldview because in that curriculum, we don't explain the mechanics of sex to kids like is going to help you in the Birds and the Bees course. But what we've done is we have done all the work for you of laying out a positive biblical theology of God's good design for our bodies, for our gender, for sexuality, for marriage, and for family. And then we've also helped lay out for little ones in very developmentally appropriate ways, corruptions to God's good design. Whether that's confusing different types, love, whether it's homosexuality, whether it's transgenderism, whether it's pornography, whether it's sexual abuse. We've done all the work to lay these things out in very developmentally appropriate ways to prepare kids for the days that they encounter these things. And then the final thing we do in that curriculum is we actually give them tools to engage with others in both grace and truth when they encounter corruptions of God's good design in the world around them. So highly recommend check out the Birds and the Bees course. Check out our God's Good Design course here at Foundation Worldview.

Now, for those of you who are thinking about how do I explain my sexual sin to my children, when is appropriate? First of all, the questioner or the way that the question was worded is, is it wrong to admit this to my children? And I would say, no. I think that's actually the right thing to do, to be honest with them, this isn't something you're going to be honest with them about at the age of three or four, I would recommend probably around the age of nine or 10 years old that that's when you can be honest with them about the fact that you did not follow God's good design in this area. Now, I would recommend do not go into graphic detail. They don't need to know if you were sexually active with multiple people before you got married. They don't need to know the names of the people or how many people you were sexually active with before. That's just not appropriate for them to know. And if they ask you the details, you can say, well, you know what? That was my sin that was in the past. So that's not something that God wants me to dwell on. It's something God has forgiven me of and then can move on from there. So don't go into graphic detail, but be honest about the fact that you sinned and then be honest about your regret. Being honest with them is going to be a much more powerful testimony of the goodness of God's design than if you had lied and had made it seem like you had followed God's good design.

Now, if you did follow God's good design and you're listening to this podcast and it has really blessed you and your spouse, the fact that you don't have that sin as a regret, the fact that you don't have that baggage, share that with your kids, how you can see the goodness of God's design and how very grateful you are. Also, talk about it being God's grace. We cannot follow his commands without his grace. So don't lift yourself up as, oh, I did this perfectly and I did this wonderfully and now I have great marriage, but just this is God's good design and God gave me the grace to follow his commands and it has been such a gift. So be honest with them about that. If that is you and praise God, if that's you, and if that's not you and God has forgiven you of your past sin, praise God for that forgiveness and your testimony of your regret and how God has graciously forgiven you, that's going to be a powerful testimony to your kids.

I think about my own parents and my mom was very honest with us when we were growing up about things that happened in her life, things that she did when she was growing up that were sin, that she regretted, not sexual things, but other things. And so I remember this one story, and actually I did not ask my mom's permission to tell this story. And so I know my mom is probably listening to this podcast. So mom, I'm sorry for not asking your permission first, but I think you're far enough removed from this situation to be okay with me sharing it. But my mom shared this story with us when we were growing up about how her mom got a new shower curtain for their family bathroom. And for some reason when she saw that new shower curtain, she just had the desire, it was a plastic one. She had the desire to bite it, and she bit a hole in the shower curtain. And her mom saw the hole and was so mad, and she asked my mom and her sister and her brother who bit a hole in the shower curtain, and she pulled them all into this, I think in their living room, and nobody would admit it, and my mom didn't admit it. And so I think they all got punished because nobody admitted what had happened. So if my aunt and uncle are listening and didn't know this, oops, sorry. But my mom would share with us how she felt so guilty about that because that was a sin. And I do believe that my mom went and confessed and repented to her mom.

But that was just a powerful story for me when I was growing up to realize, oh wow, my mom, when she was growing up, she faced temptation just like I did. And when she gave into that temptation, she felt really guilty about it because it was a sin against God. And so this is something when you're honest in an developmentally appropriate way, in an appropriate way for the parent child relationship, that that can be a powerful testimony to your children about the goodness of God's design and how sinning is not worth it because it's sinning against the God of the universe and sinning sexually. The apostle Paul tells us that when we sin sexually, we sin against our own bodies.

So just want to encourage you again for anybody who - this is you, that you sinned sexually before you entered into the marriage covenant with your spouse - that if you have confessed and repented of that sin and you are walking forward in obedience to God, do not buy into lie that you are not equipped to talk with your kids about this, and don't buy into the lie that just because you haven't experienced something, you cannot speak truth into it.

Now, our world just tends to think unless you have lived experience in a certain area, you can't speak into that area at all where that's just not true. Now, if we don't have experience in a certain area, we need to be careful with how we speak into that area, but we can still speak biblical truth. There's not a man alive who has experienced pregnancy and labor and delivery, okay? There's not a man alive who has experienced that. However, just because a man hasn't ever experienced that doesn't mean that he can't speak into the truth of the objective inherent value of every human life from the moment of conception, because God's word is very clear that humans are designed in his image and that all human life has inherent dignity, value, and worth. So just because a man has not conceived, born, carried, and born a child does not mean that he can't speak into that realm of truth.

It's similar with me at Foundation Worldview. Every time I record these podcasts, I am speaking into the realm of parenting. Those of you who are faithful listeners know that currently I am not married and I do not have any biological children. My experience with children is in the classroom. And so now I have to be careful about the type of advice that I'm giving, that I'm not just giving advice off the top of my head, that sounds good, but wouldn't work in real life. But I can still speak truth, biblical truth into the areas of marriage and parenting because those truths come from God's word.

And so the same from you, just because you did not experience saving sexual activity until you entered into the marriage covenant. That does not mean that you can't speak. The truth about that is God's good design. That is what God has commanded. That is what is best. So don't buy into Satan's lie here. If you have repented and you are walking in faithfulness, now you are equipped to talk to your children about this.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode, but as always, my prayer for you as we leave this time together 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 the.