“So, how do we know our religion is true?”

It’s funny how so small a voice can sometimes phrase questions with such big and weighty implications.

Melody posed that one to Tamara this week. Some of her friends at school are from different faiths, and, I guess, they’ve been talking.

“They think what they believe is true, too. So how do we know?”

My first reaction when Tamara told me about it later was, I think, a groan.

Frankly, I was hoping the girls would just continue to take our word on these matters for a while longer. I never had questions like that at her age. But then I wasn’t exposed to many differing viewpoints in my small town Arkansas school.

Since my initial reaction, I’ve come to view Melody’s questioning differently, though.

I was reading an article later that quoted a study about kids losing their faith when they leave home for college. What the study found out was that for the children who kept their faith in college — when the rate of those who discard theirs is growing alarmingly — there was one main reason:

They were able to ask questions at home.

As high-schoolers or younger, they had felt comfortable in being able to raise questions and even express doubts at home with their families. They talked about sticky issues openly.

It’s the ones who didn’t have this in their backgrounds, the article noted, that were more likely to be bowled over when they encountered different beliefs later on.

So now, I’ve decided that Melody’s query is more of an opportunity, a chance for us, if we haven’t already, to establish the kind of home environment that encourages the expression of hard questions when they arise. One that doesn’t simply try to wave them off with a “Because I said so” or even “Because the Bible says so.”

I think we already have this, thanks in large part to Tamara’s efforts. But we can always do better. Tamara ordered some books based on Lee Strobel’s superb “Case for” apologetics series that are geared specifically toward helping parents and children talk through the big questions of faith and belief. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, though, something to think about:

How would you answer Melody’s question? I mean, in a way that a fourth-grader can grasp.

I immediately began to formulate something along the lines of “well, we have good testimony and convincing historical evidence.”

Which is true enough. But it sounds, I realized, a little professorial.

So anyway, some food for thought. I hope we can take this up again in a future post.