GREAT Questions from Kids
Recently Pastor Duane Brooks began working his way through a growing list of great questions children are asking about God. It’s part of the “Great Defenders” program, in which young people are learning ways to discuss their faith with friends. Naturally, they will have questions.
Is there any difference between Christianity and the catholic religion?
Christianity, as the name suggests, has to do with followers of Christ. Often we have pointed out that religions are ways to get to God, but that Christianity tells how God came to us. After Jesus ascended into heaven, his followers continued to meet together as the church. They spread the good news about Jesus all over the world. Eventually, this church divided up in different places according to different beliefs.
The name catholic really just means universal. The Roman Catholic Church is a branch of Christianity centered in Rome. At some time or another, almost all Christian groups have come down from a split off of the Roman Catholic church. So the Eastern Orthodox Churches centered in ancient Byzantium or Constantinople represent an early division off of the church. More recently, but still hundreds of years ago, the Protestant Reformation came when a group of Christians believed differently from the Roman Catholic church. Baptists came from a group of Separatists who split off the Church of England after the Church of England split off of the Roman Catholic Church.
Now to the question: there are faithful followers of Jesus in many different branches of Christianity including Catholicism and the Baptist Church. No one group has all of the Christians. On many important issues the Roman Catholic Church and Baptists are partners, especially in issues of morality and caring for people in need.
Baptists today believe that the Apostle Paul taught that we are saved or become Christians by grace through faith. God saves us by his grace, his favor or kindness even though we do not deserve it. We enter into relationship with Christ by faith, or by trusting Jesus Christ to save us. Baptists have stood strongly against any attempt on our part to earn our salvation or to work our way into relationship. We can not become Christians by trying to do good things, even church things like taking the Lord’s Supper or being baptized.
Roman Catholicism teaches that there are sacraments or means of grace which God gives to us in order to make us Christians. Catholics would include baptism and holy Communion as things we must do in order to become Christians. If a person thought these things were ways to earn God’s love or to make God like us, they would be wrong. Simple trust in Jesus brings us into relationship with God and his people, the Church.
On the other hand, Baptists believe that the Lord’s Supper and being baptized are important steps of obedience to Christ, after we become followers of Christ, even though these actions don’t save us. Also, Baptists believe that every Christian is a priest to God so that we can all pray to God for ourselves. We do not pray to Mary or to the Saints, because we believe that every Christian is a saint because God has made us holy. We believe that the Holy Spirit helps us to pray and that Jesus is our Great High Priest, so that no one person should receive the confession of our sins. Baptists also focus on preaching the Bible as the central act of worship, instead of the Lord’s Supper.
How was God created? I know He was always there but, how?
Our little girl asked me recently, “How old is God?” I told her that the book of Daniel calls him the Ancient of Days. In other words, God has been around a long time. We calculated that he was older than one million, one billion, one trillion years, older even than a decillion years.
So how was God created? Well he was not created. Before God created the world and all that is in it, he always lived. There was never a time before God. When the Bible talks about, “In the beginning,” it speaks about the beginning of creation and the beginning of the world, but not the beginning of God.
God just always was.
So what was God doing before he created? We really don’t know. Genesis tells us the Spirit hovered over the face of the deep.
John explains the community and love which God felt before creation. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Then he explains, “The Word became flesh . . .” As we read the Gospel of John we realize that John is talking about Jesus. Jesus was with God and Jesus was God.
Later Jesus explained, “I and the Father are one.” He also promised that after he returned to the Father, he would send the Spirit, another comforter to be with us. God had so much love that he just had to share it with us. So he said, “Let us make man in our image . . .”
In other words, we were created in the spiritual image of God to have relationship with God and with others. As my good friend Karl Elkins said recently, “We need God, but we also need each other.”
Finally, our little girl and I agreed that there are some things that are very hard to explain, but we just believe because the scripture tells us so.
How old was Jesus when he died?
Dr. Brooks responds: We believe that Jesus started his public ministry at about the age of thirty. This thought is based upon the historical evidence of the dates of the rule of prominent leaders mentioned in the Bible story of Jesus’ life.
Augustus Caesar was emperor and Herod the Great was ruling over Israel when Jesus was born. We also know who was in charge of the country when Jesus was crucified: so one of Herod’s sons was in charge of Israel and Pontius Pilate reigned as a Roman governor.
Based on the dates of their reigns, Jesus would have been between 30 and 35 when he started his ministry. The custom was that a Rabbi began his work at the age of spiritual maturity, 30 years of age. John writes in his gospel about three different Passovers during Jesus’ ministry, extending over three years.
So if we add those numbers we come to the conclusion that Jesus lived to be about 33 years of age, very young by today’s standards. This is the historical interpretation of the length of Jesus’ life, though some say he lived to be as old as 37 or 38.
In the Bible it says that Jonah was swallowed by a big fish, but my teacher says a whale. What was it?
Great question! What was the creature which swallowed Jonah? Was it a whale or was it a fish? When I was growing up everybody said it was a whale. Then newer translations became more literal and said “big fish.” I would guess your teacher grew up hearing it was a whale and continues to use that word.
The book of Jonah was written in the Hebrew language as part of the Hebrew Scriptures in the Old Testament. The actual Hebrew words in Jonah 3:1 are Dag Gadol or big fish. Technically whales are not fish but mammals. So if we take the words as biologically specific, the giant sea creature was not a whale but a fish.
Some people believe that the Jonah story is really a parable instead of an historical document. I believe that a prophet named Jonah was actually swallowed by a fish. As one preacher put it, “I would believe it if it said that Jonah swallowed the fish.”
The most important part of this story is not the species of the creature which swallowed Jonah.
Jonah is really a story about God’s great love even for people who despise him.
He sent Jonah to proclaim the message of repentance to Israel’s enemies, the Ninevites. Jonah decided to go the opposite direction but God sent him a clear message through a storm and the big fish. When Jonah decided to obey and preached in Nineveh, the whole city repented and turned to God. So God decided to spare them. This angered Jonah. He wanted them to suffer for their sin. So God taught him a lesson through a plant and a worm and the sun. When the plant grew and protected Jonah from the sun, a worm killed the plant and Jonah had a tremendously painful sunburn. God said, “If you care about a plant, should not I care about so many people?” God loves people so much that he sent not just a preacher or a fish to swallow a preacher. God sent his only son Jesus so that if we believe in him, we will not die but have God’s eternal life.
Thanks for asking!