When Children Ask Tough Questions

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When Children Ask Tough Questions

reflections by Troy Cady

A friend posed a question some days ago about helping children process the problem of suffering. Two questions related to this include:

1. “If God is good, loving and all-powerful, why is there still so much suffering and pain in the world?”, and

2. “Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?”

I offered my friend a preliminary response, but then realized I didn’t speak to her specific question—which was whether anyone knew of any books that could help children process these questions. So, I am circling back now and adding these thoughts. I decided to share them here in case they may be of benefit to anyone else.  

Grace and peace,

Troy

………………………

            Dear friend,

            I am so grateful to you for starting this dialogue. I realized later that I didn’t actually address the question you were asking, which has to do with books that engage this concern. Sorry about that!

            In my opinion, the Godly Play story-method does the best job at providing space for this conversation with children. As you already mentioned, however: the big drawback to that approach is that many people do not have access to Godly Play.

            With that in mind, a few books come to mind that could perhaps equip families in this. Forgive me ahead of time if you are looking for children’s books. I haven’t been able to think of any, but maybe this list will be a help. That said, there are books adults could read that would be a help in nurturing a variety of relational skills that I find crucial in having conversations like these with children.

A book on practicing the Examen

The first resource I recommend is a short book called Sleeping With Bread: Holding What Gives You Life by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn and Matthew Linn. This book does not directly address the kinds of questions you are talking about but it commends to us a lifestyle of paying attention to both consolation and desolation in the human experience. When this kind of “paying attention” to both the dark and light becomes a habit, it can help us see the grace that is there even in suffering, pain and unanswered prayer (which are forms of “desolation”).

            Of course, you already know about this under the name of the Examen; I recommend this book, however, because of its accessibility and simple depth. Even children can practice it and this book describes the Examen in such a way that parents could easily find a way to practice it with their children.

            Practicing the Examen in community can help children process the problem of suffering in that the Examen process itself simply opens up space for conversations to be had without forcing any artificial responses. It also provides a language for talking about the mystery of life as a continuous mixture of light and darkness. It is a function of faith to search for language to describe what we are thinking and feeling, so this practice does that really well.

Two more books on childhood spiritual development

The second book I have enjoyed is The Mystery of the Child by Martin E. Marty, but it is somewhat academic and not all the chapters are helpful. The reason I like this book is that Marty does a good job of articulating the “problem-centered” approach to formation vis-á-vis the “mystery-centered” approach.

            I suggest that most discipleship materials we have been exposed to over the years take a “problem-centered” approach to formation. This approach has oriented us to an “assurance” model, where the primary concern is to be sure that there are certain (“right”) answers to specific questions. Of course, it is good to lay foundations, to reinforce truths which are unchanging and rock solid. Children need such a foundation, if trust is to be established. However…

            The problem with the assurance model is that it can only take us so far in our spiritual development. On this front, I encourage others to become familiar with James Fowler’s work Stages of Faith, as he describes that ultimately what we are aiming for in spiritual growth is a more reflective approach that views paradox as a pathway to becoming a more compassionate and empathetic person in adulthood.

            According to Fowler, one does not reach such a “reflective” approach to faith until adulthood but, in my own work with children, I have seen first-hand that they are able to enter into the realm of “mystery” even more fully than adults.

The mystery-centered approach to formation

Indeed, the word “mystery” is what Marty proposes as the basic building block when it comes to childhood spiritual development. He notes that with a problem-centered approach, we tend to employ strategies of “control.” With a mystery-centered approach, however, the primary mode is to explore, wonder, and practice curiosity. The process of formation can meander and the goal is not so much to train someone to produce a certain, specific answer but to form in us a practice of wondering that will better help us live into any number of mysteries as we age, the issue-at-hand included.

            Marty advocates a mystery-centered approach because he notices that when we treat spiritual formation in a problem-centered way it is not long before we start treating the child herself as a problem that needs to be solved. In a problem-centered approach, not only do we feel the need to control the answers, we also become inclined to control the one who is seeking answers. I have unfortunately seen first-hand how both children and adults can be marginalized by the problem-centered approach when their thinking does not conform to the “correct” way a leader thinks everyone should think. In the problem-centered paradigm, belonging is predicated on thinking the right way and producing the right answers. Those who think and say the right things are included and those who do not…end up feeling excluded, unaccepted.

            But people are not problems to be controlled; we are—all of us, at any age—mysteries to be loved. This will sound like heresy to many but I advocate an approach to childhood formation that is less concerned with providing right answers and more concerned with practicing healthy process.

A good book on healthy process

To those of us who are inclined towards a problem-centered approach, letting go of our need for right answers and letting go of our desire for everyone else to share those right answers is perhaps the hardest thing we will ever have to do in this life. That is also why I advocate that, to make space for children to wonder about these mysteries, we primarily need to help the adults in the child’s life prioritize process over content.

            I recommend Edwin Friedman’s insights on “family process” in this regard. His book Generation to Generation addresses this issue well. He observes that if we are to do only one thing to navigate such anxiety-laden issues, we would do well to simply cultivate a non-anxious environment through leaders who embody a non-anxious presence.

Ministry in the home as non-anxious presence

This is the secret, by the way, to the Godly Play process. Godly Play’s value lies not so much in the specific content of the stories that are told. It has more to do with cultivating a peaceful, non-anxious space where children (and adults!) can fully wonder about the mystery of faith. To cultivate this, there are all kinds of non-verbal, environmental factors at play which we could incorporate into the home. Here are a few:

            1. “Make a circle in which we are surrounded by the story of God and God’s people.” The circle structure itself levels the relational playing field (putting everyone at ease) and the surrounding stories encourage a feeling of security, as if we are being held safe within a story that is so much bigger than we are.

            In this regard, I suggest turning to stories in the Bible itself. There is ample opportunity to wonder about the problem of suffering that way. Parents could either use a Bible with pictures in it or they could look up art online that they could use to accompany their reading. In any case, getting beyond just a propositional understanding of the matter and encountering it via a story is crucial.   

            I say this because the story mode itself helps us get beyond a problem-centered approach and automatically places us in the realm of mystery. We do find answers to our questions, to be sure, but the answers come to us in context and they are of a different order than problem-centered answers. We discover propositions that are rooted in life—propositions that offer incarnational interpretations (suited to one’s specific sitz im leben).

            Keeping in mind that most people do not have access to the specific Godly Play experience, I suggest families can still access the “circle-principle” at home. “I wonder how each family would do that?” one could ask. Just that wondering question alone could help families cultivate this ethos in ways that are suited to their unique situation. That said, here is another practice to encourage healthy process:  

            2. Practice plenty of silence. When I am working with children, we always have a moment of silence before engaging the story-at-hand. And, as we tell the story, we pause so there is time to enter into the story by having space to reflect.

            I wonder what difference it would make to help children practice a bit of silence when questions like these come up? I wonder how we would do that?

            Silence is able to help us listen more deeply, so it can not only help us listen to the child better but it can also help the child listen for what God might say (or ask!) in response to their question. I wonder what would happen if we replied to a child’s question about suffering this way: “Good question! I wonder what God might say or ask about that?” or “I wonder if God has a story about that?” Then, just leave a little bit of silence for the child to think about it.

            The child might not be able to come up with an answer, but that is okay, too. The question itself would plant the idea in their head that God might have something to say about their question. Children who have no idea how to answer such a question may simply put the question aside for a while and then circle back to it later when it comes up again. Silence, listening and patience go hand-in-hand. With that, here’s another value to practice:  

            3. Respond by wondering. When I work with children, I always encourage them to wonder. Wondering questions are open-ended questions where children do not have to feel anxious or compelled to provide the right answer. It is evident to me how some children have been so trained in the problem-centered approach that, when it comes to wondering, I can see them looking at me as if they want to make sure they can really say what they think or feel. This is why non-anxious leadership is so crucial. The leader’s primary goal is to be a non-anxious presence in order to cultivate a non-anxious environment. The main concern is process over content, milieu over “learning objective.”

            To cultivate an environment of wondering, we need to trust that the child will learn what the child needs to learn when the child needs to learn it. True learning cannot be forced. Anyone who has ever crammed for a test can confirm this. It is one thing to learn the right answers to meet the demands of a specific moment in time; it is quite another to learn out of sheer desire. In the former, our learning is only temporary and causes no long-lasting effect. In the latter, learning is truly life-changing.

            This is why, when a child asks a question during a time of wondering, the leader is encouraged to wonder right with them, to put the question back to the child. The goal is to whet the appetite for more learning. By replying “I wonder what you think about that” or “Yes, I wonder how that could really be” the teacher will find out how ready the child is to really find an answer. If the child is really ready, they will be driven from within to keep seeking. If they are not really open to an answer (if the question is somehow only superficial for them at the present time) they will most likely drop the inquiry and move on to something that more truly interests them.

            In any case, if an answer is really needed, we can trust they will get an answer in a timely way and in such a form that suits the child’s place in their spiritual journey. Trust in the process is key.

Why adults get nervous by tough questions kids ask

My suspicion is that adults grow nervous when hard questions like these come up because many of us are operating ourselves under an “assurance” or “problem-centered” model. When we cannot produce neat, clean answers, it is very unsettling. We worry not only for the child, but we worry for ourselves.

            I also suspect that those who have spent lots of time and energy coming up with certain answers know deep down that our answers are not so air-tight as we pretend they are. There is an internal frustration that builds when the questions just keep coming, when the questions keep poking holes in our so-called answers.

            There are, of course, many different ways we try to cope with such a frustration, but the most tragic outcome is when our own frustration hurts the child’s own learning. If we are to minister to families well (children included), an argument could be made that the first order of business is to help the adults in the household make peace with uncertainty and to model a non-anxious (trusting) response to hard questions.

The deeper question behind the question of suffering

This leads me to a final observation. There is a question behind the question, underneath the problem of suffering. The question hits right to the core of our being because ultimately what we are asking is whether the world is a safe place to live. Are we safe and secure? Is there someone who will be able to take care of us when all human efforts have reached a limit?

            It is really the pre-verbal question we all have from the moment of birth. In gestation, we experience the world as a place of complete safety, where we are both secure and nourished. While it is true we may be aware of chaos without, we all experience the womb as a place of shalom within—where all that we need is provided and there is no thought spared for worry.

            But when we are born, it is only a matter of time when we will experience the world as shocking and dangerous. We are vulnerable, so our bodies automatically muster whatever is available to survive. From our very first day of life we intuitively know that we are in need of protection. We are not able to survive on our own.

            When we become aware of how dangerous life can be as we age, we are essentially drawing on these primordial fears from infancy. “Is the world a safe place?” And we begin to develop the capacity to extrapolate from our own experience, becoming aware that—even when we feel personally safe—there are countless others who, at any moment in time in any number of other places, are experiencing the world as an unsafe place.

            “Where is God in the midst of all this?” we wonder. If God is supposed to be a parent to us, why has s/he left us abandoned, exposed like this? Does s/he care more about some people than others? If so, none of us are safe. We are all vulnerable.

Why the parent-child interaction matters

In keeping with the reality noted above, we can see that the parent-child relationship shapes our concept of God more than any other relationship. This dynamic is so fundamental to human experience we can observe it embedded even in the ancient code by which the Hebrew people lived thousands of years ago (and still live by today). It is no mistake that the fifth “Word” of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) speaks to one’s relationship to one’s parents.

            We know from Scripture that the ten Words were written on two tablets and many scholars see the two tablets in terms of one’s relationship with God (the first tablet) and one’s relationship to other humans (the second tablet). At first glance, it appears the fifth Commandment (about the parent-child relationship) would be included with the second tablet, but many scholars assert it is a first-tablet command because when we are children our parent is a godlike figure to us. I find it interesting that modern psychology confirms this, as well: our concept of God is directly related to our parental relationship.

            I mention this by way of underscoring that I believe the biggest way we can help children grapple with the problem of suffering is by helping parents be a “good god” to them by the way we carry out our mandate to love them and nurture them with care. This is why it was wise of you to include the matter of “unanswered prayer” along with the problem of suffering in your original inquiry. Both issues have to do with one’s sense of safety and security. “Is there a God who listens and answers?” To the child: if a parent doesn’t know how to listen and respond, then why would God?  Listening and responding in a spirit of wonder for these sacred mysteries will do more to “answer” the child’s question than anything else.

Why we need God and why good parenting isn’t enough

This, of course, does not mean bad things won’t happen. There is no way that we as limited human beings can keep bad things from happening. But this is why we need God. Because, even when bad things happen, we believe there is One who is able to hold us as we are born into another world…One who will receive us in love to a world where there will be no more danger, or suffering or pain or death. Somehow, we learn through all this that, though this world is a dangerous place, we can still trust—and trust gives us enough hope to carry on. Trust is not predicated on the absence of danger; in some strange way, it is defined by it.

            How the God of the world to come indwells, surrounds and gives us hope for living in the present dangerous world is the very mystery we are living one day at a time. It is a mystery so big, we can never run out of wonder for it.

            I realize that much of this does not directly answer your question, but I share it nonetheless because, quite frankly, I don’t know how to directly answer your question. But I can wonder about it and encourage others to wonder about it, too. Thanks again for raising the question.

Peace and grace to you,

Troy