What to Do When Your Child Asks a Hard Question About God

At some point, your child is going to ask you a question about God that catches you completely off guard. Maybe it comes from the backseat of the car: “How do we know God is real if we can’t see Him?” Maybe it comes after they hear about something terrible happening in the world: “Why does God let bad things happen?” Or maybe it comes at bedtime, right when you thought you were wrapping up the day: “If God made everything, who made God?” These questions can make us nervous as parents. We might wonder if our child is doubting their faith, feel pressure to come up with the perfect theological answer immediately, or realize with a little panic that we aren’t entirely sure how to answer the question ourselves.

But when our children ask hard questions about God, we don’t have to be afraid of them. In fact, those questions can become some of our best opportunities for discipleship. Our goal isn’t to raise children who never ask difficult questions. We want to raise children who know where to take their questions—to God, to His Word, and to trusted believers who can help them think carefully about what is true. We want them to discover that the Christian faith is not fragile, and that asking thoughtful questions can actually be part of growing in their knowledge of God.

The first thing we can do is simply welcome the question. Before worrying about whether you have the right answer, let your child know that you are glad they asked. A simple, “That’s a really good question. I’m glad you asked me,” communicates something important: questions about God are not dangerous. We don’t want our children to learn that Christianity is something they need to protect from scrutiny or that asking a difficult question is somehow a sign of unfaithfulness. Christianity makes real claims about God, humanity, history, sin, salvation, and the world we live in. Those claims are worth examining carefully, and our homes can be safe places for our children to do that.

Next, figure out what they are actually asking. Children sometimes use very big questions to express something much more personal. “Why does God let bad things happen?” might really mean, “Why did Grandma get sick?” “How do we know God is real?” might come after a friend at school told them that God doesn’t exist. Before launching into an explanation of the problem of evil or listing evidence for God’s existence, try asking, “What made you think about that?” Their answer may completely change the conversation. It also helps us remember that we aren’t simply answering theological questions; we are shepherding the particular child sitting in front of us.

Once you understand the question, give them a true answer at the level they can understand. You don’t need to give a seven-year-old every philosophical argument for the existence of God, and you don’t need to explain every theological dimension of suffering in one conversation. Instead, give them something true that they can carry. If your child asks, “How do we know God is real?” you might talk about how creation points us to a Creator (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20), how God has revealed Himself through His Word, and ultimately how He has made Himself known in Jesus (Hebrews 1:1–3). You can answer simply without giving a simplistic answer.

The same is true when our children ask about suffering. If they ask, “Why does God let bad things happen?” we can explain that God made the world good, but sin brought brokenness and death into it. God is never evil, and He is not distant from our suffering. Jesus Himself entered our broken world, suffered, died, and rose again. And the story is not over: God promises that one day He will make all things new. That may not answer every question a child could ask about suffering, but it gives them a biblical framework for understanding the world they live in. As they grow, you can keep adding to that framework.

And sometimes the most faithful answer you can give is, “I don’t know.” Your children do not need to believe that Mom or Dad knows everything about God. In fact, pretending that we have an answer when we don’t can teach them the wrong lesson entirely. Instead, they need to see what Christians do when we encounter something we don’t understand. We open the Bible. We ask wise believers. We talk to our pastor. We read trusted books. We keep thinking, praying, and learning. There is something powerful about coming back a few days later and saying, “I’ve been thinking about the question you asked me, and I found something I want to show you.” It tells your child that their question mattered enough for you to keep thinking about it.

Most importantly, remember that you are building a lifelong habit, not trying to resolve every question in a single conversation. The questions your children ask at six will become more sophisticated at ten, fifteen, and twenty. What you are establishing now is a pattern: in our family, we can ask hard questions. We believe there are good reasons for what we believe. We look to Scripture for truth. When we don’t understand something, we keep seeking. And through all of our questions, we are ultimately trying to know God more.

This is one of the reasons we created Tiny Apologetics. Apologetics simply means learning to give reasons for what we believe, and children are capable of beginning that work much earlier than we sometimes think. Tiny Apologetics was designed to introduce kids to some of the big questions surrounding the Christian faith and give them clear, age-appropriate answers rooted in biblical truth. It gives families language for conversations about questions like how we know God exists, whether we can trust the Bible, what makes Christianity different from other religions, and why we believe Jesus really rose from the dead.

Eventually, our children will encounter questions about Christianity somewhere other than our kitchen table. They will hear them from friends, teachers, books, shows, the internet, or simply from their own growing minds. We cannot anticipate every question they will ever ask, and we don’t need to. What we can do is teach them not to be afraid of questions. We can give them categories for thinking carefully about what they believe and why they believe it. We can show them how to search the Scriptures and seek wise answers. And most importantly, we can keep pointing them beyond simply having the right answers to the God who has graciously made Himself known.

So the next time a big theological question comes floating up from the backseat, you don’t have to panic. Turn down the radio, ask, “What made you think about that?” and see where the conversation takes you. It just might become one of the most meaningful discipleship conversations you have that week.