One afternoon, I heard my two-year-old’s voice crackling through the monitor after putting her down for a nap. At first, it sounded like the familiar chatter. But as I listened, I realized she wasn’t babbling.
She was repeating the questions and answers from a catechism playlist I’d been playing in the car. Somewhere between a morning trip to the park and nap time, my not-yet-three-year-old had begun memorizing theology.
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For more than two years, I’d pored over my discipleship strategies. How do I make teaching fun for my child? How do I make sure she’s entertained and engaged so that, perhaps, faith would stick around?
But really, the question that lay beneath the surface was: How do I strong-arm my child into a solid faith? How do I engineer a faith that will last into adulthood?
These questions feel haunting as a parent, because the state of adult belief in our society leaves much to be desired. On the surface, the results of the 2025 State of Theology study seem encouraging. Most Americans say they believe in God. Many affirm the Trinity. A majority describe God as loving and good.
Closer look
But when you look closer, the beliefs don’t always hold together. Many adults affirm God is three persons, while claiming the Holy Spirit is more of a force than a person. Others say Jesus was a great teacher but not fully God. In other words, the language of Christian belief is solid, but the framework that holds it together may be crumbling.
While the church must clarify and affirm orthodox Christian belief, what if the most important answer doesn’t begin with correcting grown-ups, but theologically training children? You may even say we need to un-childproof theology.
Solid theology doesn’t happen by accident
Clear, durable theology doesn’t happen by accident. Of course, it’s the work of the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit often uses faithful, ordinary means to form a lifelong faith. Early in biblical history, God calls His people to pass down the truths of the faith to the next generation.
“Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.”
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (CSB)
Children learn who God is by hearing about Him repeatedly.
While parents don’t save children, we’re called to repeat gospel truths. We get the joy of repeating foundational knowledge of who God is, and prayerfully, watching love for God that grows out of knowing Him.
Through conversations, Scripture reading, prayer and even car-ride catechisms, we get to join in the Spirit’s work in our children, being used in the story of their faith.
Over time, discipleship moments add up. Words about God grow familiar. Categories start to form. Children recognize who God is, what He has done, and why knowing Him matters.
Solid theology rarely arrives all at once. More often, it grows slowly through repeated exposure to truth and roots itself when a child’s natural curiosity takes hold.
Kids ask theological questions
In early toddler years, a child’s hippocampus is wildly active. Children’s minds are, by design, memory sponges — taking in knowledge that helps them make sense of the world around them for the rest of their lives.
That includes asking big questions. Who made everything? If God always sees me, why can’t I see Him? Why does Jesus let storms happen?
They may not use language we deem theological, but their questions are just that, helping them form an understanding of God. In fact, Jesus told us there’s something about the posture of children that’s worth paying attention to.
“People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me. Don’t stop them, because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ After taking them in his arms, he laid his hands on them and blessed them.”
Mark 10:13-16, CSB
Jesus celebrates the kind of openness and trust children exhibit. It’s a trust adults often struggle to practice because they’re too jaded from years of cultural wearing down.
Children approach big questions with curiosity instead of suspicion. They’re eager to learn, quick to memorize, and unlike us, willing to accept truths that adults feel the need to overcomplicate. They are ripe for theological learning. Willing to hear. The soil is soft and tilled.
So what are we to do?
‘Rehearsing truth early and often’
We can free ourselves of the crushing pressure to use our own methods to make tiny Christians. Rather, we give them the truths from the Bible. We memorize Scripture, repeat catechism questions, sing worship music, open real Bibles together, and tell them we trust them with theology.
We must stop subconsciously communicating kids aren’t capable of real faith.
How then are we any better than the disciples with whom Jesus was indignant? When we don’t teach theology to our children, it’s more about our own lack of faith than theirs.
At some point, every child will reach a developmental stage where they have harder questions about God. And at that moment, more than ever before, the church and the parent need to be a place where kids feel safe bringing their questions — where, for a lifetime, they’ve been safe to ask and answer big questions.
Rehearsing truth early and often prepares children to preach those truths to themselves later when doubt creeps in.
My once two-year-old is now seven, and her questions are growing with her age. After she fell in love with catechism questions, we dug our heels into that method. (I even wrote a series of catechism board books called Toddler Theology.)
She has knowledge about God that, we pray, gives her faith a framework even many adults don’t have. And while we love catechisms, there are many good and intentional ways to disciple your children.
By giving our children clear language about who God is and what He’s done, we partner with the Holy Spirit to lay a foundation strong enough to carry them through the questions, doubts, and challenges that will inevitably come.
May the words we repeat to our children today become the truths they hold fast to tomorrow.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Lauren Groves and originally published by Lifeway Research.
