Taking student questions seriously: We always gave lip-service to the understanding that sstudents' questions must be taken seriously. But we didn’t often do it very well.
A few years ago I completed a survey of 2500 12- to 14-year-olds who attend Christian schools in different parts of North America. One of the most important questions I asked was, “If you dared to ask your parents, or your teachers, or your pastor any four questions, what might they be?” Some of the questions they gave me were thrilling in their maturity and sophistication.
“How do Bible scholars come up with their answers?”
“Does it actually say in the Bible in more than one place that women shouldn’t minister to other people?”
“In the New Testament, people had convicted a woman of adultery or prostitution. Jesus squatted down and starting writing on the ground. I want to know what he was writing. After that, he stood and said, ‘If you have not sinned at all, you will be the first to through the stone.’ Something like that.”
What is the real reason other books aren’t in the NT?”
“Why was Elijah so special, but Noah and Moses died?”
“How do I witness for Jesus Christ without shoving the gospel down people’s throats and being annoying?”
“Do you think that God will listen more, if 50 people pray for a person or 1 person prays for a person? If they are the same, why do we have prayer groups and chains?”
“Why am I drifting apart so far from God? What has happened to me? I feel like a chameleon because I have to change in front of every new person I meet or have met.”
“If Eve never had any girls, where or how did Cain and Seth have descendents?”
“What’s the point? Besides asking God for things and saying thank you for other things, what’s the point? Why do we need God? Why do some people yearn for God or want more of him? I’ve never felt that way. What’s the point of God? Does our life matter at all? I mean, I’d rather be alive, but, again, what’s the point?”
“Does anyone else wonder if God is really real? Because Buddhist thinks Buddha is God. I feel bad for asking that but I wonder sometimes.”
“How can God be the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end? Why can’t I understand that? It sounds impossible. I know it’s true. But I can’t figure out how.”
“This is a question I ask to myself so many times, but I don’t really get the answer: If God knows everything, even the future, why did he created Adam and Eve, If he knew that they were not going to obey Him?”
And some questions made me think, “Oh, God, they are just children and they are asking these things?”
“Will people have sex in heaven? Because what if I die without ever having sex, if there isn’t any sex in heaven I’ll be missing out.”
“Is oral [sex] before marriage ok? I mean it’s not sex.”
“The Bible says its wrong to have sex before you’re married but how far are allowed to go? Can you do oral sex?”
“Can you name all the sins?”
“Could I be possessed?”
“Could you kill and still go to heaven?”
“Do you believe if you’re a Christian and if you commit suicide you go to heaven?”
“Does God forgive me if I keep doing the same sin?”
“Does it really say in the Bible that being gay is wrong?”
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