Help Your Teen Respond to Liberal Science

Written by Gary Oliver

Your student may have opportunities to respond to a liberal science teacher, but do you know how to respond when it’s your teen who announces that he no longer believes that God created the world? Here is how to handle this opportunity to reveal the truth.

Live Out Truth
Many parents in such a situation give in to panic and bombard their children with intellectual arguments in support of creation, but their good intentions only create more division, distance, and distrust between them and their kids.

Instead, start by focusing on your love relationship with Chris. Consider the ways you demonstrate Christ to your family. According to John 13:34-35, 1 Corinthians 13, and Ephesians 5:1-2, the ultimate apologetic for the claims of Christ is not primarily intellectual but relational.

As people see Jesus in our lives, they are brought face-to-face with the reality of an infinite and personal God. How your student sees God’s love lived out in your home will always be more powerful than any book, apologetic, or attempts to make him believe something.

Don’t ignore the problem, but seize this unique opportunity to engage him, listen to him, and understand him. Let him know that you value who he is in the process of becoming.

Seek Outside Help
I encourage you and your student to watch the DVD Expelled by Ben Stein. This documentary, by a Jewish social commentator who became alarmed at the scientific community’s blatant attack on intelligent design, exposes the astonishing and pervasive anti-supernatural bias and closed-mindedness of the bulk of scientific community. This movie will give your student some new questions to consider about the pseudo-science that masquerades as legitimate science.

How Great Is Our God by Louie Giglio is another DVD that will challenge your student to reconsider God’s creation of the world as opposed to it being a random result of unknown factors. This amazing documentation looks at recent discoveries in the field of astronomy, both asking and answering questions that you and your student may never have considered.

Teach Your Children Well
One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is to teach them how to think, ask questions, to deal with doubt, and to grapple with uncertainty. Great parents give the gift of both what to think and how to think.

What looks like a problem may be used of God to help your student make the “faith of our fathers” become his own faith. By God’s grace and with your prayers and patience, he may emerge from this with a clearer conviction and confidence than ever. When your student goes to college, he will be prepared to face and pseudo-scientific attack based on his personal faith and what he has resolved for himself through the help and prayers of parents who allowed him to doubt and ask the hard questions and, in the process, modeled the reality of the presence of the living Lord.

Gary Oliver has more than 30 years experience as an educator, counselor, and father. Learn more about Gary’s ministry at www.liferelationships.com. 
 
 

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