Foundations, Principles, and Methods of Answering to Children's Questions About God

Abstract

The purpose of presnt study was to investigate how to answer to children’ questions about God. The main research question therefore was how we answer to children’s questions about God in a way that the answers be easily and fully comprehended and simultaneously do not cause any misunderstanding. For doing so, descriptive and inferential research methods were used. The findings of the study revealed two foundations as follows: children conceptions of God are totally influenced by their surrounding culture and the conception of God is abstract formed based on abstraction of the features of every day conceptions. This research also found that main principles in responding to children's questions about God are: providing active and dynamic social environment, attention and perception, scaffolding, and creating basic concepts. The result showed the main ways of responding to children’s questions are as: parable, simple intellectual reasoning, and step by step question-answer, storytelling, and group discussion methods.

Keywords

• god
• children's' questions
• answering process
• elementary school children