How did you learn about God?
For many of us, it started in Sunday school. Small chairs, Bible stories, and something else sitting quietly alongside them: fear.
We grew up imagining God as someone ready to strike at the slightest mistake. We learned to fear the very One who loves us beyond imagination.
It wasn’t until later, when many of us became parents, that we started learning about God for ourselves. What we found was different from what we’d been taught: a God of mercy and grace. Â
The God I Was Taught to Fear
Growing up, the picture was simple: make a mistake, get punished. Obedience wasn’t rooted in love. It was rooted in dread.
In my Sunday school, we memorized God’s commandments without really understanding them. We learned about God with fear, a cane in hand, ready to be flogged at the slightest mistake.
It took becoming a parent to unlearn that. Somewhere in raising my own child, I started discovering a God who was merciful, gracious, and kind, not the God my Sunday school teachers had handed me.
Mercy Doesn’t Mean No Consequences
This isn’t about erasing consequences. God is merciful, but actions still carry weight.
The shift isn’t in what’s true. It’s in how it’s taught, and why obedience is asked for in the first place.
There’s a real difference between:
- A parent who disciplines out of love and concern
- A parent who instills dread just to control behavior
Children can tell the difference. One builds trust. The other builds distance.
A Question My Niece Asked
My niece once asked her religious studies teacher a simple question: who made God?
Instead of answering, or even admitting he didn’t know, he shut her down. He told her not to think about it, that she’d “lose her mind” if she did.
She came to me afterward, still turning the question over in her head. I told her it was a good question, and that she was right to ask it.
Looking back, I wish I’d sat with that a little longer before jumping to my own answer. What I told her was true to what I believe: that God has always existed, self-sufficient, without a beginning. But I handed it to her almost as settled as the teacher had handed her his silence, just with a kinder tone.
A better response would have stayed in the question a bit longer first. Something like: that’s one of the biggest questions humans have ever asked; even grown-ups don’t fully understand it. Here’s what many people believe, and why, but it’s alright to keep wondering.
Then we opened the Bible together, not to close the question, but to sit with it for a while.
Why This Matters More Than It Seems
It’s not just about the answer a child receives. It’s about whether that answer leaves room for them to keep thinking, or quietly tells them to stop.
A child asked a real question and, in one version of this story, was handed fear instead of an answer. It made me ask myself a harder question: are we, the adults teaching them, infallible? Do we actually have an answer to everything?
I don’t think we do. The honest response to a hard question was never “stop asking.” It was “I don’t know, let’s find out together,” or even just “that’s a good question.”
Many of us are replicating fear-based teaching in smaller, quieter ways than a shouted: “don’t ask that.” But it isn’t working.
Our children are questioning everything. They won’t simply absorb what they’re told the way many of us did. That’s not defiance; it’s a different relationship with authority than the one we grew up with. If what we’re teaching them can’t survive their questions, fear (or false certainty) was never a strong enough foundation to begin with.
A faith that can only survive by refusing to be examined isn’t being protected. It’s being weakened, one shut-down question at a time.
What Teaching With Love Actually Looks Like
A few shifts that make the biggest difference:
Explain the why, not just the rule. Instead of “don’t do that or God will punish you,” try “here’s why this matters, and here’s what it costs you.” Kids who understand the reason hold onto it longer than kids who only fear the punishment.
Let consequences teach, not threaten. A consequence delivered calmly (“this happened because of that choice”) lands differently than a threat (“you’d better not, or else”). Same lesson, different residue.
Answer questions instead of shutting them down. “Why would a loving God do that?” isn’t defiance, it’s curiosity. Even a confident answer, offered too fast, can shut a child down if it leaves no room to keep wondering.
Model it, don’t just preach it. Children absorb more from how you handle your own uncertainty with God than from what you tell them to believe. I went deeper into this in How to Teach Children Empathy.
Let the Children Come, Not Let the Children Fear
Scripture is clear: “Let the children come to me, for to them belongs the kingdom of God.”
Not “let the children fear me.” Not “keep them in line until they understand.”
Sunday school teachers, religious leaders, and parents alike carry a responsibility: teach through love, not fear. Children who learn that God is love learn to reciprocate that. Love reproduces love. Fear reproduces distance, and eventually, rejection.
Closing Thought
Children learn about love by how we teach them, not just what we tell them.
If we want the next generation to know a merciful, loving God, we have to teach mercy ourselves, sit with them in uncertainty when we don’t have the answers, and let go of the fear tactics some of us inherited without ever choosing them.
What was your own journey like, from a God of fear to a God of grace? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.
You might also enjoy What Parenting Taught Me About Grace and How to Raise Grateful Children.
With love,Â
Cheta Otiji