How Should Christians Disciple Their Children?

It was 10:32 PM on a Wednesday when Pastor Mike told our small group.

His son Daniel.

Homeschooled through high school.

Memorized entire books of the Bible.

Now a sophomore at a Christian college, telling his dad that “faith is intellectually dishonest.”

Pastor Mike’s voice cracked when he said it.

“He said I taught him what to believe but never taught him why any of it is true.”

I drove home in silence, my hands gripping the steering wheel too tight.

When I got home, my son Caleb was at the kitchen table finishing his AWANA homework – filling in blanks about the twelve disciples.

I sat down across from him.

“Caleb, why do you believe the Bible is true?”

He looked up, confused.

“Because… it’s God’s Word?”

“But how do you know it’s God’s Word?”

Blank stare.

“Because the Bible says so?”

My stomach dropped.

“And how do we know the Bible is right when it says that?”

His face went red.

“I don’t know, Dad. That’s just what we believe.”

Just what we believe.

Circular reasoning.

The exact trap that destroyed Daniel’s faith the moment a professor questioned it.

I sat there watching my son – this kid who could recite Romans 8 from memory – completely unable to defend the most basic claim of Christianity.

The next morning, I tested him again.

“Why did Jesus have to die? Why couldn’t God just forgive us?”

“Because… we needed Jesus to save us?”

“But WHY? What would happen if God just said ‘you’re forgiven’ without the cross?”

Silence.

He had no idea.

He knew the story. He didn’t understand the theology.

That Friday at men’s breakfast, I brought it up.

Four other dads had the same story.

Kids who aced Sunday School.

Kids who got baptized.

Kids who couldn’t explain why they believed a single word of it.

We were building a generation of Bible experts who would crumble the first time someone asked “why?”

I spent that weekend obsessed.

1:47 AM Saturday night, I was reading articles about Gen Z and deconstruction.

The pattern was everywhere.

Christian kids getting to college, meeting their first atheist professor, and having zero answers.

Not because they were rebellious.

Because they’d been taught WHAT to believe but never WHY it’s true.

3:22 AM, I found myself on Daniel’s Instagram.

Scrolling back three years.

Bible verse posts.

Youth group photos.

“Blessed beyond measure ” everywhere.

Then freshman year of college, the posts changed.

Philosophy quotes.

Richard Dawkins references.

Then nothing about faith at all.

I could see the exact moment it happened.

Week 3 of his Intro to Philosophy class.

A post that said: “Turns out I can’t answer basic questions about what I claim to believe. Maybe I never really believed it.”

Sunday morning, I couldn’t focus during the sermon.

I kept watching Caleb in the pew next to me, coloring his bulletin.

He looked so confident.

So sure.

But it was a house built on sand.

One good professor. One smart atheist friend. One hard question.

And it would all collapse.

That afternoon, I did something I’d never done before.

I asked Caleb to explain the Trinity.

He knew it was “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

But when I asked HOW that works, he had nothing.

When I asked WHY it matters that Jesus is God and not just a good teacher, he guessed.

When I asked how we know the Bible wasn’t just written by men and changed over time, he said, “I think someone checked?”

My twelve-year-old had spent eight years in Sunday School and couldn’t defend his faith for sixty seconds.

Two weeks later, I was at Books-A-Million, standing in front of a wall of apologetics books.

William Lane Craig. Lee Strobel. Ravi Zacharias.

All way too advanced for a twelve-year-old.

I needed something that would teach him to THINK theologically, not just memorize better.

That’s when I heard a conversation behind me.

A dad and his teenage son, maybe fourteen.

“So if someone says Jesus was just copying other religions, what would you say?”

The kid didn’t hesitate.

“I’d say the manuscript evidence proves Jesus’s story came first, and I’d explain how the dying-and-rising god myths are actually different in like six important ways. We covered that in week 19.”

I turned around.

“Excuse me, what are you studying?”

The dad showed me this thick workbook.

Systematic theology for kids.

52 weeks of actual arguments, not just stories.

How we know the Bible is reliable.

Why the resurrection proves Jesus is God.

What makes Christianity different from other religions.

His son had been working through it for seven months.

“He destroyed his youth leader’s doubts last month,” the dad said, laughing.

“The leader said something about science disproving Genesis, and my son spent twenty minutes explaining why that’s a category error. I was so proud.”

The kid shrugged.

“I just like knowing WHY things are true. It’s like solving puzzles.”

I bought the workbook immediately.

That Sunday afternoon, I sat with Caleb and opened to lesson 1.

“How Do We Know God Exists?”

But it wasn’t just “the Bible tells us so.”

It was actual arguments.

The cosmological argument explained at a sixth-grade level.

The moral argument with examples from his life.

A logic puzzle where he had to work through cause-and-effect to understand why there must be a First Cause.

Caleb leaned in.

“Wait, so EVERYTHING that begins has to have a cause? Even the universe?”

We spent an hour on that one lesson.

He asked nine questions.

Real questions.

Not “what’s the answer” but “how does that work?” and “what if someone says this instead?”

Two weeks in, something shifted.

Caleb started arguing with me at dinner.

Not disrespectfully – theologically.

“Dad, I don’t think that’s right. Because in lesson 6, it explained that God existing outside time means…”

He was THINKING.

Week 5, he came to me frustrated.

“Dad, I can’t figure out the problem of evil. Like, I get the free will answer, but what about natural disasters?”

He was wrestling.

Not just accepting.

Actually working through the hard stuff.

Week 8, we were at a family dinner and my brother – who’s agnostic – made a comment about the Bible being “written by men.”

Before I could respond, Caleb jumped in.

“Uncle Rob, do you know about the manuscript evidence? We have more copies of the New Testament than any other ancient document, and they’re way closer to the original events. If you don’t trust the Bible, you can’t trust anything we know about Julius Caesar either.”

My brother was stunned.

So was I.

That’s when I knew.

This wasn’t just memory work.

This was genuine understanding.

Three months later, we’re on lesson 31 of 52.

Caleb can explain the Trinity using the right theological terms.

He knows why Jesus had to be fully God and fully man.

He can give you four reasons why the resurrection is historically credible.

Last week, he asked if his friend Marcus could join us for lessons.

“Marcus says he doesn’t believe in God, but I think I can show him why it’s actually the most logical option. Can we do the cosmological argument week again?”

Those Sunday afternoon sessions did what eight years of Sunday School couldn’t.

They turned my son into someone who can defend what he believes.

Not perfectly. He’s twelve.

But when he gets to college and some professor challenges him?

He won’t crumble.

He’ll have answers.

I think about Daniel constantly.

About Pastor Mike’s broken voice.

About all those Instagram posts that went from “blessed” to silent.

Those kids weren’t stupid.

They weren’t rebellious.

They just had no foundation.

No one taught them the WHY behind the WHAT.

Caleb won’t be Daniel.

Not because he memorized more verses.

Because he knows how to think theologically.

That workbook sits on our dining room table now, covered in Caleb’s notes and highlighted sections.

Proof that faith can be intellectually rigorous.

If you’re watching a child you love recite Bible stories but collapse under basic questions, you need to know there’s another way.

Before freshman year of college.

Before the first philosophy class.

Before they become another pastor’s kid who walks away.

The workbook that changed everything for Caleb is still available.

It’s 52 weeks of systematic theology that teaches kids to think, not just memorize.

I don’t know how much longer we can keep building faith on sand and expecting it to survive the storm.

But I know this: every week you wait is another week your child practices circular reasoning instead of building a defensible worldview.

Don’t let them become another Daniel.

Not when there’s still time.