We recently received this question from one of our readers:

My question is about the curriculum in History for my son who is in 6th grade. Of course this is all new for us. That is why I am thankful you are willing to try and answer our question. My son will be studying the subject of "hominids" ape men. Of course at school, it will be taught that we evolve from apes. My son is very bothered by just listening to this and not speaking up for the Truth of God's Word. How would you tastefully and respectfully address this with his Social Studies teacher? Or would you say anything? I told him tonight that if he wanted to share our family beliefs with his teacher privately, not in front of the class, that would be appropriate. Would you agree? Anything that you can tell us to help in this would be so appreciated.

What a great question and we have so much respect for you and your family for praying and thinking about a proper response to what your son is facing. In many ways we believe the process you are going through is more important than where you actually land. Your son is watching and listening to you and your husband and is being taught and discipled (Deuteronomy 6:7). For instance, if you said to your son, “Your teacher is stupid and you need to go back and stand up for truth,” You’d have taught your son that you believe in the absolute truth of scripture – but you would have also taught him his authority figure is stupid (which may be true, but in this case he’s just ignorant) and therefore can’t be followed. You would have also taught him that voicing what he believes is more important than the people God has put in his life. Conversely, what you are doing teaches your son that God’s word is unerring. But you’ve also taught him that Romans 12 is true – his teacher in this case is misinformed, but should still be respected as his authority. And you have taught him a lesson on the sovereignty of God. How? By making sure your son knows the truth about creation while recognizing his teacher has been divinely placed in his life. He learns that your family has an opportunity to impact this man’s life in ways so much bigger than the study of “hominids”.

God loves your son’s teacher. That teacher is not the enemy. The enemy may be trying to use him, but there is only one enemy. At the end of the day, I don’t care as much about what that teacher believes as I care what your son believes. Make it perfectly clear to your child what you believe. Maybe tell him something like this, “Honey, you know what our family believes. We are fearfully and wonderfully made by God’s hands in His image. Did you know when you were growing in mommy’s tummy, that your eye began to form? And from your eye the optic nerve started to grow towards your brain. At the same time the optic nerve began growing from the brain toward your eye. Somewhere in the middle over a million nerve endings miraculously lined up so that you could see. Does that sound like something that could just “happen”? No, that is the hand of a creator.” Then, confident in what he believes, your son can go back and handle the “wrong” teaching. If the right opportunity comes up then maybe he might share his opinion with the teacher. Too often we get concerned with changing the teacher’s mind. Have you ever stopped and wondered, why? Does changing the teacher’s position on creation have any effect on the truth? Unless of course, we aren’t sure what we think about creation. Hmmmm? I would rather help that teacher meet Jesus and let the creator teach him about creation. Who knows, maybe the way your son handles himself brings the teacher to a place of saying, “something good is happening in that family – I wonder what it is?”