Your Children and Evolution

In the story of the king’s new clothes, it was a little child who saw that the king had no clothes on at all. Even if parents are not bold enough to say it, children soon recognise that evolution does contradict the Bible and does undermine Christian faith.

What can Christian parents do to counteract these effects? How do parents encourage their children to share the faith and retain confidence in the Bible? If you are a parent, here are some of the things which you can do:

• Firstly, you can teach your children about God’s creation. Begin when they are very young. Read to them over and over again the story of God’s creation until they have it firmly fixed in their memory. Read to them about God’s wonderful creatures from colourful story books, but make sure you have read the stories carefully to ensure they contain no hint of theistic evolution, progressive creation, day-age or gap theory. Avoid so-called Christian books which begin with the world as a molten blob or start with ‘millions of years ago’. Use children’s colouring-in books about Genesis and in as many ways as possible teach your children to respect the Bible as the infallible Word of God, a book which contains no myths or errors of fact.

• Instil into your children a sense of wonder at the greatness and magnificence of what God has done [while keeping in mind that the world we see today is affected by the Curse]. Whenever you go out into the country or even into the garden, point out the wonderful things that can be seen. Show them the things that Genesis talks about: the birds, the bats, the flying insects and remind them constantly that God made the birds on the fifth day. Take them outside at night and show them the moon that God made on the fourth day to rule over the night. Show them the intricate patterns in leaves and remind them over and over again how absurd it is to suggest that such pretty and intricate patterns happened by accident.

• Teach your children about the fallacies of evolution before they learn about its supposed truth at school. Make sure that you as a parent know the many flaws in evolutionary theory. To do this, you will need to work and study good books on the subject. And then you will have to work at pointing out these facts to your children as they grow old enough to understand.

• Since dinosaurs are often used, even from kindergarten level onwards to introduce children to evolution, remind them that dinosaurs are big animals which were made on sixth day of creation (and other dinosaur-like creatures, e.g. Plesiosaurs, etc., were made on the fifth day). Inform them about the evidence that dinosaurs lived with people, the rock carvings of dinosaurs and the dragon legends. Buy them Dr Duane Gish’s book, Dinosaurs By Design, or Dr Gary Parker’s book, Dry Bones and other Fossils. Always be ready to point out when a commentator is talking about evolution. Encourage them to be saddened by the fact that so many people can believe that which simply is not true and substitute chance and accident for the wonderful gifts of God.

• Encourage your children to study the actual evidence for themselves. Take them to a place to dig up fossils and explain how fossils are generally formed (by rapid burial in sediment). Explain to them how the great world-wide flood in Genesis would have provided perfect conditions for the formation of millions of fossils found on the earth. Point out that the fossils in the sedimentary rocks do not show that the rocks formed slowly and the earth is very old. To the contrary, they indicate rapid processes and therefore a recent and great watery catastrophe as taught in the Bible. Mention to them that animals which die today are very unlikely to become fossils, therefore formation of fossils is not a normal every day occurrence.

• Finally, explain in detail why there is suffering and cruelty in the world. Tell them where death came from and its significance. Tell them that God created a perfect world but Adam’s sin spoilt that perfection and brought death and decay to the earth. Tell your children that Adam was punished with the curse of death, because the God of creation knew that He himself would come in the form of Jesus Christ, the last Adam, to suffer the same curse of death himself. Then those who would accept His sacrifice for sin would have forgiveness and look forward to eternal life. Explain that by His death and resurrection, Jesus restored our broken relationship with God, and that at the end of time, God will create a new heaven and a new earth—a completely restored creation in which all who truly love Him will share.