Ever get stumped by a question from your kids? Questions from our kids can be annoying at times especially when our kids are in the toddler stage. But sometimes the questions our kids ask are an eye into their soul. Asking questions and how we react to their questions is an important part of our child’s faith development.

Our youngest daughter Norah (5) blurted out a question one Sunday after church that just surprised us. We were talking with the girls about communion and what they learned in Children’s Church.

Norah blurted out, “Why is the Jesus story so important?”

Immediately tons of different thoughts ran through my mind. How do I explain this for a five year old? What if it doesn’t make sense? What is her motivation in asking this question? Is my daughter becoming a statistic of pastor’s kids who don’t like church?

I looked at Hillary and dove into answering Norah’s question attempting to answer it in a way that a five year old could understand. Then we threw the question back at our oldest daughter Anna to see how she would answer it.

As Hillary and I tried to answer Norah’s question we emphasized the value of asking good questions especially about our faith. We want our girls to be able to question anything with us. This is how we train our girls to think through their faith and some day own it for themselves. Our hope is that they can think biblically and theologically for themselves. We don’t want them just repeating back what we have told them.

It’s important that we create an environment in our homes where children are free to ask any question. And even more important, we need to help them answer their own questions instead of always just giving them the answer ourselves. This is how we train them to think.

After emphasizing the importance of asking good questions with our kids, Anna came back again with her stumper of a question that she is still waiting for a good answer on, “Why are basketball players black?”