Spiritflow

Kids ask a staggering number of questions.

According to one survey, children ask their parents more than 300 questions a day. One question every two minutes and 36 seconds. More than 100,000 questions a year.

Questions like:

Why is water wet?
What are shadows made of?
Why do we have to go to school?
Why are you so old?

And then, mixed in among those, the questions deepen:

How did the world come to be?
What happens when we die?
Why are we here?
How should we live?

These are religious questions in the broadest and best sense. Questions about meaning, truth, suffering, goodness, mystery, mortality, and belonging. Human beings have always asked them. Whole civilizations have been built around them.

Which is exactly why they can make parents nervous.

Because often, the child is asking the very thing the adult is still trying to figure out. Or the adult wants to be honest without becoming controlling. Or wants to leave room for freedom and not fill it with imposed ideas. 

Or maybe the real anxiety is not about the child’s question so much as the competing answers waiting elsewhere—in extended family, in the culture, in louder and more rigid forms of religion.

So today’s sermon is called “Ten Commandments for Talking About Religion With Kids.”

And yes, since we are Unitarian Universalists, perhaps “ten suggestions” might be more our speed.

But whether commandments or suggestions, I think they matter. They matter for parents, grandparents, and religious educators. And they matter beyond childhood too. Because once you learn how to talk about religion with a child honestly, respectfully, and without coercion, you are also learning how to talk about religion with anyone: a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a parent, a neighbor, a stranger. Children may be our focus on this Mother’s Day, but the deeper subject is how to speak of ultimate things in ways that leave people more free, not less.

So let us begin.

First commandment: Thou shalt tell, because “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a disaster.

One of the most common approaches parents take to religion is silence. Say nothing. Avoid the subject. Let the child figure it out later.

The reasons are understandable enough. People are busy. People feel unsure. People do not want to say the wrong thing. Some think religion is too divisive. Some think it is not important enough to bother with.

But silence teaches too.

Silence teaches that religion is too dangerous to discuss. Or too embarrassing. Or too unreal to matter. And yet children live in a world where religion is everywhere. The questions will find them one way or another.

The word “God” floats around in songs, holidays, politics, funerals, history books, and family gatherings, but if at home it is met with a sudden hush, as though someone has opened the wrong closet door, children notice.

If we say nothing, they do not grow up untouched by religion. They grow up confused by it, anxious about it, or vulnerable to whoever answers first and most forcefully. They may take their questions elsewhere and come home full of certainty borrowed from somebody else’s fear.

So the first commandment is simple: do not leave children alone in the dark.

Second commandment: Thou shalt answer honestly.

Many adults think they should only talk about religion if they already possess final answers.

But why would we want to teach our children that religion belongs only to the already-certain?

In a healthy home, it should be possible to say:

“I wonder about that too.”
“I’m still working on that question.”
“I don’t know.”
“Here’s what I think so far.”
“Let’s find out together.”

To question is sometimes the answer. That is not weakness. That is spiritual maturity.

Because what children need most is not the performance of certainty. They need to know that the deepest questions of life can be faced without panic. They need to learn that not knowing is not shameful. They need to see that the search for truth is not a problem to be fixed, but part of what it means to be alive.

Let them meet the seeker in you, and they may learn to honor the seeker in themselves.

And really, that is true at every age. Adults also need spaces where they can say, “I’m still working on that,” without being treated as deficient. Honest religion begins there.

Third commandment: Thou shalt draw out what is already there.

Children do not begin at zero.

They already carry wonder. They already carry curiosity. They already carry the beginnings of reverence, bewilderment, delight, and grief. They are already trying to make sense of things.

A child asks, “But who made God?”
A child finds a dead bird and feels both horror and fascination.
A child looks up at the night sky and falls silent.
A child wants to know why people are cruel.
A child wants to know where Grandma went.

That is not nothing. That is the beginning of theology.

The role of parents and religious teachers is not to stuff religion into an empty container. It is to notice what is already there in seed form and help it grow. A child encountering death, beauty, injustice, or mystery is already standing at the edge of theology.

The sacred does not begin when adults decide to explain it. Often it begins much earlier—with awe, with loss, with the strange knowledge that life is beautiful and fragile at the same time.

One of the great tasks of spiritual care is not to smother that wonder, but draw it out.

Fourth commandment: Thou shalt answer creatively.

One of the best ways to engage religious questions is indirectly, imaginatively, through story.

Take Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who. Horton hears tiny voices no one else can hear. The other animals think he has lost his mind. They mock him. They threaten to destroy the little world he is trying to protect. And the story raises all kinds of questions without announcing itself as a theology lesson.

What do we do with realities others cannot perceive?
What counts as evidence?
Can you know something even if others do not?
Is it right to ridicule people for believing differently?
What obligations do we have toward lives that seem too small to matter?

Those are religious questions. Moral questions. And they need not wait for college classrooms. They can begin on the living room floor.

Stories disarm defensiveness. They make room. They awaken thought without making the child feel cornered.

And honestly, the same is true for adults. Sometimes we can hear difficult truth better through story, image, metaphor, and music than through argument.

Fifth commandment: Thou shalt answer respectfully.

Now let us be clear. There are harmful religious ideas in the world. There are beliefs that wound people, shame people, dehumanize people, and justify cruelty. Those ideas should be challenged.

But contempt is not the same thing as moral clarity.

If children hear us mock, sneer, belittle, or dehumanize people who believe differently, they learn more than our opinion. They learn that disagreement licenses disrespect. They learn that humiliation is fair play. They learn that belonging is conditional.

And then, if they ever question our beliefs, they know what is waiting for them too.

Respect does not mean pretending all beliefs are equally healthy. It means criticizing without cruelty. It means rejecting harm without teaching hatred. It means telling the truth in a way that leaves everyone’s humanity intact.

That is a lesson children need. It is also one many adults still need badly.

Sixth commandment: Thou shalt teach a “no one left out” vision.

Religion at its best enlarges the circle.

We begin life self-centered, as we must. But maturity means widening the boundary of our concern—beyond self, beyond family, beyond our own tribe, beyond people who look like us or worship like us, vote like us, or agree with us.

If our religion does not stretch the boundaries of our empathy, something has gone wrong.

Children can learn this not only by being told, but by watching. By seeing adults notice who gets excluded. By seeing compassion practiced across lines of race, class, nationality, creed, gender, sexuality, and difference. By learning not just to “tolerate” others, but to recognize themselves in others.

It is hard to hate people once their humanity becomes real to you.

That widening of the circle is not sentimental. It is sacred work.

Seventh commandment: Thou shalt teach boundaries too.

But “no one left out” does not mean “anything goes.”

Compassion is not passivity. Respect is not surrender. Openness is not permission to be mistreated.

And for many families, this is where the pressure really arrives. It may not be the child asking the hardest questions. It may be the relative who says, “Why do you hate God?” or “You’ve broken your mother’s heart,” or “If you loved your child, you would teach them the truth.”

Even in milder forms, it can still be difficult. Grandpa explains heaven. Cousin Suzie explains sin. Neighbor Bob explains who is saved and who is not. And suddenly you are not only parenting your child; you are doing theological damage control before dessert.

So yes, give context where you can. “Grandpa believes that because his faith teaches him that.”
Yes, lower the temperature where possible.
Yes, avoid debates that are going nowhere, especially on social media.
And yes, when necessary, set stronger boundaries.

Because love does not require allowing yourself or your child to be spiritually pummeled.

Children need to learn both hospitality and self-respect. They need to know that one can be kind without being passive in the face of harm. 

Eighth commandment: Thou shalt show as well as tell.

Religion is caught more than taught.

You can explain values all day long, but what lodges in the soul are practices. A candle lit before bed. A moment of shared silence. A gratitude ritual at dinner. A walk outside where someone stops and says, “Do you see that sky? Do you see those trees? Isn’t that beautiful?”

These small acts shape the soul.

They teach attention. They teach reverence. They teach that life is not just to be managed, but noticed. They teach that love, gratitude, sorrow, and wonder deserve expression.

This is true whether or not you ever use the word “prayer.”

Small rituals can teach large truths. 

Ninth commandment: Thou shalt always bring it back to “Does that make sense to you?”

One of the greatest gifts we can give children is not a prepackaged answer, but the courage to think.

So imagine your child comes home frightened because someone told her she will burn in hell for not believing the right thing. First, of course, you comfort her. You hold her. You steady her.

And then, when she is ready, you ask:

Does that make sense to you?
Would a loving God act like that?

If someone is loving and generous and does good, does it make sense that they would be sent to some horrible place forever?
What do you think?

That question—does that make sense to you?—is not an invitation to arrogance. It is an invitation to conscience. To moral reasoning. To intellectual freedom.

And again, this is not just for children. Many adults have spent years captive to inherited religious ideas they were never allowed to examine. Sometimes the path toward freedom begins with that simple question: Does this actually make sense?

And the tenth commandment: Thou shalt always bring it back to Beloved Community.

Parents do not have to do this alone.

Thank God.

Because the questions keep coming. The questions deepen. The culture is loud. Families are complicated. Certainties clash. Children grow. Adults carry their own wounds. 

It is a lot. 

So the final commandment is this: remember the larger we.

That is what religious community is for. It is a place where no one has to carry the burden of meaning-making alone. A place where children can ask hard questions. A place where adults can keep growing. A place where searching is not punished. A place where wisdom is shared, practices are modeled, and courage is renewed.

The religious community matters because by ourselves our vision narrows. Together, it widens.

And perhaps that is the deepest truth beneath all ten commandments.

Yes, today’s sermon is about talking with kids about religion. It is about what parents owe children, and what children need from parents.

But it is also about something larger.

It is about how to speak of ultimate things without coercion.
How to honor freedom without lapsing into silence.
How to tell the truth without closing the door.
How to make room for wonder, thought, conscience, and love.

Children need that from us.

So do adults.

So do all of us.

And together, by grace and by practice, we can become the kind of people who know how to offer it.