Teaching Your Children About The Glory Of God’s Creation

Psalm 136:3-6  Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever. To him who alone does great wonders: His love endures forever. Who by his understanding made the heavens: His love endures forever.  Who spread out the earth upon the waters: His love endures forever.

In a two minute YouTube video Bill Nye (“The Science Guy”) recorded for online knowledge forum “Big Think” in August of 2012, he begged parents not to teach their children that evolution is not true.   “We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.”  In his view, if you teach your children that God created the universe, your children will be scientifically illiterate and, well, kind of useless.

I won’t attempt to list all the great creationist Christian scientists, engineers, and inventors, past and present, that prove Bill Nye wrong.  But I do want to encourage all you parents to:

A)     Be familiar with what the Bible actually teaches about creation, as it doesn’t not allow for evolution or even what is called “theistic evolution”- the idea that God created the building blocks of life and allowed evolutionary processes to produce what exists today.  Please contact me or Pastor Tullberg if you would like some study materials that can help you with that.

B)     Be familiar with what your children are being taught about evolution at every step of their education and be prepared to talk about it.  Again, if your child has particular questions that you have a hard time addressing, please contact one of your pastors.

C)     Teach them from early on about the wisdom, power, and love behind all of God’s creation.

I would like to focus on point C in this post.  Here are some suggestions.  The next time you walk into a grocery store with your children, point out how loving God is as you marvel at the variety of fruits and vegetables that God created for us in the produce aisle.  When your kids eat some fresh strawberries or warm dinner rolls hot out of the oven, remind them who gives us fruit and grain for our enjoyment.  Pray before meals and don’t take the food from God you eat for granted.   When nature programs with your children.  When they learn that hummingbirds beat their wings 70 times per second or that tomato plants send off chemical signals that summon predator insects to attack the insects attacking  the plant they can credit that to the God who is amazingly wise and creative.  When our kids are fascinated with the bees buzzing around blossoms we can tell them about God’s wise plan for pollinating plants.  When the sunset is particularly beautiful, or the cloud formations or a snowdrift design are really cool, we can give the credit to God’s artistry.  When the family pet gives makes us laugh or gives us pleasure, we can remind our kids what a great gift from a gracious God our pets are.

This Creator who has demonstrated his wisdom, power and love in nature is also the Savior who has demonstrated his wisdom, power, and love in his Son Jesus Christ.  They are one and the same God who amazes, delights, and satisfies us with an abundance of blessings in this created world, and who amazes, delights, and satisfies us with an abundance of eternal blessings through the salvation he has produced and given us in his Son.