Questions from Kids

Every night my family does a short family devotional before bed. Undoubtably, one of my kids decides that this is a great time to ask questions – right before bed. We often try to find time to answer them to some degree or another. These questions run a wide range of areas but usually, but not always, have something to do with the devotional we are reading.

I was thinking about one that was asked just the other day – Why do we have sin in our lives since Adam and Eve were the ones that sinned? Why don’t the kids start off sinless? Why is it fair that we have sin right away? Ok, so it was three questions, but they all stemmed from the first one. Talk about a question right before bed. Well, we tried to tackle it to the best of our ability as parents.

I don’t remember exactly how we answered it that night, but thinking on it now I thought I would write on it, because it is a really good question(s).

God has a reason for it. Yes, that is a bit of a cop-out answer, but I am not sure why God decided to do it they way He decided to do it. I have ideas, but I am not sure if any of them are correct. So, let’s address them.

God had to kick Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden when this happened because they couldn’t have the ability to live forever with the sin in their lives. That separation from God that was created when they sinned would have been awful to live with forever. Think about all the “bad” things you have done in your life and having to live with that forever; it would have been terrible. Adam lived a long time as it was, and I am sure that there were many days when he thought, “If only I hadn’t taken that fruit?” Or, “I should have stopped Eve from taking that fruit.” Once they were out of the Garden life was hard and painful and as a result their kids would experience that from the beginning. They wouldn’t have the ability to get back into the Garden and live a perfect life. So, sin was there. There was no way around it at that point.

The kids being sinless thing is a tricky one as well. There are places in the Bible that talk about being conceived in sin (Ps. 51:5) and therefore once conceived a person has sin. So, I would have to say that all have sin from conception. There is no way around it. This leads to other questions that didn’t come up that night, thankfully, about hell and heaven and faith, but I am sure they will come sometime.

So, sin is something we inherit from our parents. Like hair and eye color. Like being right-handed or left-handed. Sin just happens to be one of those things that always sucks that you get from your parents. The hope is that one will realize that they are sinful and will then turn to God for redemption. That redemption that can only come from faith in Jesus’s life, death and resurrection.

To the question of, “Is it fair?” well, in my limited human brain I say, “No” it isn’t fair, but I am not God. He knew what was best once things happened in the garden. He wasn’t happy about it, but He had rules and had things set in motion and so He followed through on what He said He would do. That brings comfort, because it means that everything else in the Bible is true and I can have faith that things will occur they way He said they would because He has always been true in the past and so will always be true in the future.

I love my kids. They make me think.