"Dad, how do you know God exists?"

Kids. Some times I think they are the greatest theologians among us. Many parents can attest to the inquisitive questions children ask them about faith and life. Where do they get these ideas? What happened to many of us that stopped the flow of questions from coming?

A little while ago I was doing my nightly ritual of reading some devotional materials with my ten-year old. We were talking about creation and about how sin came through one man, Adam. Kathy asked me, "Dad, how do we know that God exists?" "You know, how do you know that's the way it was." Oh, boy. That's when you pray and ask the Lord to help you come up with a quick and easy explanation to your child's questions.

Well, let's think about it like this. Let's just say we're about to have dinner, and you come up to me and your breath smells like chocolate. In fact you have crumbs of what seems to be a cookie on your mouth and marks of chocolate smeared on your lips. The cookie jar had ten cookies and now there's only nine. Now it could be that someone else ate the missing cookie, or that a mouse got into the jar and ate the cookie. But, guess what? All the evidence points to you! I didn't see you eat the cookie, and yes, someone else may have eaten it. But, your chocolate filled mouth, your breath, and the missing cookie seems like enough evidence to say that you're guilty: you ate the cookie before dinner. Well, that's kind of the way many people try to argue for God's existence. In the same way I used the evidence to show that you ate the cookie is how I show that God exists: the evidence in our universe seems to point to God's existence. I went on to share some of the evidence from design apparent in our universe to argue for the existence of God.

Well, it may not have been the best explanation, and it was getting late for more discussion, but I think my illustration satisfied her curiosity, at least for tonight. My fifth grader is growing up and her questions well get tougher. I just hope that I can help her think critically about faith and life issues. May the Lord help all of us lead our kids into a growing knowledge and confidence in God and his word.
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