A Grace-Filled Guide to Talking About Marriage and Love with Your Kids – Sam Allberry

Episode Transcript

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A Grace-Filled Guide to Talking About Marriage and Love with Your Kids

Guest:Sam Allberry

From the series:A Grace-Filled Guide to Talking About Marriage and Love with Your Kids (Day 1 of 1)

Air date:March 28, 2025

Sam:I said this to a couple of friends before, as they’ve walked away from the faith into relationships that the Bible prohibits: the most painful thing in life is missing out on love. And the greater the love, the deeper the pain of missing out on it. What if there’s a love greater than the love that you are feeling for this other person? The thing you think you’re getting by going down this particular road, you actually properly get by walking with Jesus.

Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann:And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Okay, I am going to give you a word, and when I give you the word, you have to name another word that goes with that word.

Dave:I don’t like this game.

Ann:Hamburger—

Dave:French fries. That’s two words, sorry, fries.

Ann:What’s another one? Give me one.

Dave:What? Give you one.

Ann:Yeah.

Sam:Ice cream—

Ann:Cone—

Sam:I was going to hear for frosting or chocolate sauce or something.

Ann:Oh.

Dave:Sunset

Sam:Works as well.

Ann:What would you have said?

Dave:I mean, when I see a sunset, I think God. I think Jesus. I think creation. I think—

Ann:That goes together.

Dave:I don’t know.

Sam:Well, you can say that.

Dave:I don’t know why we’re doing this. You got to tell us what’s going on here.

Ann:We have Sam Allberry in the studio with us. Sam, we love having you. And this time we’re going to talk about your newest kids book which is always fun.

Dave:What’s that have to do with the word? I’m trying to connect Sam to a word. Am I supposed to have a word for Sam?

Ann:Yeah.

Sam:Many people do.

Dave:Sam Allberry.

Sam:Constable.

Dave:Magnificent.

Ann:Magnificent.

Dave:That’s a word.

Sam:I’ll take that.

Ann:That’s a good one.

Dave:It is. I feel that way.

Ann:But the kids book is called God’s Go-Togethers, and in the book Sam talks about this. So Sam, we wanted to talk about this. I love a good children’s book because they stick with you. I feel like I’ve learned as much from our children’s books as our kids did and grandkids. And this is one I think that parents and grandparents are going to want to get.

Dave:Yeah, so talk about it. You’ve done other children’s books.

Sam:I have. So this book is my attempt to explain to a young child why marriage is between a man and a woman. So that’s the goal of the book.

Dave:That’s deep.

Sam:Okay. Because that question comes up right, with young kids these days.

Dave:Right, right.

Sam:I mean sadly it comes up. They may hear of somebody who has two moms or two dads or whatever it might be.

Dave:Right.

Ann:I mean, kindergartners and first graders are asking that question, “Why does he have two dads?”

Sam:Yeah. “Oh, could I marry my friend John?” All that kind of stuff. I get asked by parents a lot, “How do I talk to my teenager about God’s design for sexuality?” And part of my answer is really, let’s have started the conversation ten years earlier. We want people to know God’s good purposes, God’s good vision for marriage from the earliest of ages. And then as we grow up and become more aware of issues of sexuality and that kind of thing, we’ve already got a positive framework in place.

So the other kids book I did on marriage is explaining how marriage is about promises. So I thought this one needs to be about why marriages between a man and a woman because those are the two distinctives of a Christian view of marriage. It’s not just how we feel, it’s the promise we’ve made. And it’s not just any combination of persons, it’s a man and a woman. So I had the idea of certain things go together and the stories of kids who were at the beach and there’s mustard on a donut and he puts, is it sugar?

Dave:—sugar on the French fries, yeah.

Sam:Because he’s thinking, “Well, I like sugar, I like French fries, therefore I’ll put them together and sugar looks enough like salt anyway, so what’s the problem?”

Ann:But he didn’t like it.

Sam:He didn’t like it. And so the moral of the story is not everything goes with everything else. Some things are designed to go together and actually God has designed particular things to go together. And I set it at the beach because the beach is where the land and the sea go together. And in the union of land and sea, you get this amazing thing called the beach. You get the rock pools and sandcastles. And because you’ve got the meeting of two different complimentary things. And so trying to show how God has designed the world with various complementarities for us to enjoy and one of the most significant ones is male female. So that’s what I’m trying to do in the book.

Ann:You do a really good job.

Dave:And I knew from the beginning where you wanted to go, but I didn’t know how you were going to start and what a journey. I mean, have you talked to parents or heard kids understanding this connection?

Sam:I’m not a parent, but many of my friends are.

Dave:Yeah.

Sam:Most of my friends are. I’ve actually had just a couple of weeks ago sat and read this to a friend of mine’s little kid as he sat in my lap, which is great fun. That’s the first time I’ve actually read one of my own books to a child.

Ann:Oh, that’s so fun.

Dave:How old was the child?

Sam:He’s six months old so he was trying to eat the book rather than read it, but I don’t mind.

Ann:But I like how you have Genesis 2:24 which says, “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.”

Sam:So there’s a page at the back for parents or whoever’s reading it to try to explain, “Here’s the theology behind this. Here’s a Bible verse, here’s what it means.”

Ann:Which I love. If you have kids in elementary school, preschoolers, you should read this book. It’s a great way to even get into the conversation and then you have questions to talk through and think through with the kids. So go through that, Sam, in terms of our culture, and you’re saying kids should be super young as we talk about it. And let me ask you, when we see if you have an elementary aged child student and they see two men together, two women together, should we point it out? Should we hide it? Should we talk about it?

Sam:Well, I think if you do point it out, be ready to talk about it. So certain conversations you want to think through in advance, how am I going to explain this? So maybe wait until you are ready to articulate it; you’ve got an unhurried bit of time to chat it through.

Ann:Can you help us as parents understand how we should have that conversation? Because we might have a lot of time to think it through and we really can’t come up with how to talk about it.

Sam:Well, I hope the book will help. I mean that’s why I wrote it is to try to kickstart some of those conversations and to get the concepts in place. So again, having the concept of, these things go together, and those things go together, but you can’t just put everything with everything else. A kid can understand that again, because of what we put on our donuts and what we don’t put on our donuts. And to kind of extrapolate from that and say that’s why we need men and women in the world. That’s why we want to have friends who are boys and friends who are girls. That’s why we want moms and dads and husbands and wives.

So it’s not just about marriage, it goes beyond marriage, but to try and show the creational goodness of that pairing. Because Genesis 1:27 was the other verse I could have honed in on. At the end there is “In his image he created him; male and female he created them.” Because being male and female helps all of us to image God better. There’s something of the interplay between male and female that helps all of us be better at being people. There’s something that in that intermingling of perspectives and insights of the different ways we see the world that enriches all of us.

And the thing that makes me actually enjoy having this conversation with my friends who aren’t believers is because they do see that in other areas of life. When you find out some multinational corporation, when it’s revealed that their board is entirely made up of men, there’s an outcry because the sentiment is you need a woman in the room because the woman will add something that simply adding more men won’t accomplish. And I get that and say, “Yeah, exactly.” And if that’s true of a boardroom, why would it not also be true of a marriage? There’s something a woman can bring to a marriage that a second man can’t. That’s what I believe theologically.

So I’m trying to see where else in society people already believe that and say, “Well, what you believe of that over there, we believe to be foundational for our understanding of marriage,” because our culture is very inconsistent. There are areas of life where our culture says you need gender diversity and areas where our culture is kind of pretending that isn’t needed. So we are simply saying marriage requires gender diversity.

Ann:Can we shoot some theological questions at you? Because when I talk to parents, they’re not sure how to talk to their kids about it. And even theologically, what is the truth behind it? Biblically I should say too. So if your son says, maybe he’s eight years old and he says, “Okay, so I get that it’s good for a man and a woman to marry, but why can’t two men marry? What’s wrong with that?”

Sam:There’re two steps to having these conversations. Step one is, am I clear on what I believe? Because if I’m not clear on what I believe, I’m not going to bring clarity to the conversation. The second step is, okay, given what I know to be true, how do I explain that to someone of this age? So you need both of those steps. So the parent may need to do some reading, thinking for themselves to actually, I need to be sharper on what I believe about marriage and what the Bible says and why the Bible says it. And read something aimed at their age group before they then start to translate that into, okay, how do I talk to my eight-year-old about this?

But I think what I want to say to the eight-year-old is I always want to put the positive in front of the negative. I say God wants us to relate closely to each other, but the right way for two men to relate closely is friendship, not marriage. There’s more than one kind of love. I’m not married, but I could say I love my wife. I could say I love hot dogs; I love my golden retriever; I love my friend. And we instinctively know that I’m meaning a slightly different form of love in each of those. And if you were to take one of those loves and apply it to the other object, it would be wrong. If you get those loves confused, that’s not going to go well for you.

So we do recognize that different forms of love are appropriate for different objects, for different contexts. And because God is love, He is the expert on helping us to know what love should look like in any given context.

Ann:Oh, that’s good.

Sam:So He knows the best way for two men to love each other is through brotherhood in Christ actually rather than romantically.

Ann:And that brotherhood’s important.

Sam:And it will be better. When Jesus talks about no greater love, he talks about friendship. And if we try and bring the wrong form of love to a particular category of relationship, we won’t be loving that person well. Whereas if we love in the way God has told us to love, we will. So we will never love someone better by being disobedient to God’s ways. He teaches us how to order our loves, how to love one another the right way. So I’d want the eight-year-old to know God isn’t against two men loving each other. God is actually so for it, He wants them to have more, not less. And the way for them to have more is to love each other with the right kind of love.

Dave:Wow!

Ann:I don’t know, but I’m like want to write all of this down because what a beautiful way to say it. And Sam, what about attitude, the way we convey judgment or attitude about a certain topic? It seems like that’s pretty important too.

Sam:Oh, it’s crucial, yeah. Because we see from the gospels and Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees, it’s not enough to have orthodox theology if it’s devoid of love. The Pharisees believed all the right things. In one sense they were good theologically, but they weren’t loving. They were arrogant. They looked down on others. And the fact that they were arrogant and looked down on others shows actually their theology wasn’t right.

When Jesus introduces the parable of the Pharisee, the tax collector, when Luke introduces it, he says Jesus spoke this about those who trusted in their own righteousness. This is Luke 18 verse 9. He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.

Dave:Wow.

Sam:Now here’s the thing. Anytime you treat someone else with contempt, you are showing that on some axis you think you are righteous in yourself. Because how else do you look down on someone else without thinking it’s because I’ve got this right. And that’s what the Pharisees were doing. They were treating others with contempt because ultimately, they believed in self-justification. So contemptuousness, haughtiness, that kind of judgmentalism is a sign we haven’t truly believed the gospel about ourselves.

So what we don’t want with our kids is we don’t want our kids believing all the right moral things and thinking we are better than everybody else. And I’ve seen some Christian families get this wrong and they’re basically teaching their kids. They wouldn’t say it this way, but “We’ve got this right and everyone else has got it wrong.” And that’s not Christian either. All of us are sinners saved by grace. And so I’d want parents to be trying to say to their kids, “This is God’s best for us. This is how God has designed us to live and all of us have fallen short. All of us need His help. Even your mom and dad, we’ve got this wrong at times and we’ve needed to come back to God and help us to be a good husband and wife to other.”

So you’re trying to teach them both the goodness of God’s design and the ongoing need every single one of us has for His grace to live in the light of how He’s designed us to live.

Dave:Now, if you were trying to articulate that as a parent to not an eight-year-old son or daughter, but let’s say a fourteen-year-old who is saying or fifteen saying to you as Dad, “This is who I am and I plan when I grow in a few years, I’m going to marry”—I say I’m going to marry a man if I’m a boy. Have that conversation. How does a parent navigate that one?

Sam:Yeah. Well again, it’s hard to be prescriptive because I don’t know the thousand conversations that have gone on prior to that one, but I would want that child to know that the heart of everything is, do we know how good Jesus is? If we know Jesus is good, we can trust Him. If we’re not sure He’s good, we’re not sure we can trust Him.

Ann:What if that child said, “I don’t think He’s good at all. I have these desires, and it seems like if He was good, He would allow me to act on those desires. But it sounds like you guys are saying, He’s saying no.”

Sam:Then that is the key issue. And that is actually really good because then it moves you to the topic of, “Let’s taste and see that the Lord is good together. Where do we see the goodness of Jesus? Let’s look at the heart of Jesus.” That’s going to be a healthier way forwards then “Don’t you dare. Don’t even think about it. You mustn’t. Stop it.”

Ann:Which is what a lot of teens will hear from them because parents we’re afraid.

Sam:And there are some things you do need to say to your child, “Don’t do that.” But it’s got to come out of, do we believe in the goodness of Jesus? That is the issue. And every time we sin, it’s actually because at some level we don’t. Every time I sin, there is dark corners of my heart that still don’t fully believe God’s really looking to my interest.

Ann:Can we just say what a deep thought that was right there? Every time we’re sinning, we’re saying that God somehow isn’t good.

Sam:Yeah, I mean that was the devil’s lie in Genesis 3, “You will not surely die. God’s trying to hold something good back from you here. If you do this, your eyes will be opened, you’ll get to have all this other stuff.” So that’s what the teenager most needs. There may be some practical kind of dos and don’ts that are appropriate to that age group, but laying down the law is not going to change their heart.

So even if there are some practical guardrails you might need to put down in place, the real issue is helping them to see the goodness of Jesus. And there are different ways of doing that. One might be to say, “Hey, no one gets left off the hook here. Having a healthy marriage can only happen if both husband and wife say no to a lot of their own desires.” Because the impression some people have is if you’re married, it’s easy for you guys. You get to have what you want. Whereas here I am in this situation, and I don’t. So you want to say, “Well actually marriage is about not getting the things you want. It’s about laying down self for the sake of someone else.”

Ann:Continually

Sam:Being faithful to your spouse means saying no to a whole load of other sexual desires. Those don’t just evaporate the moment you say a vow. Someone came to mind last night. I don’t know why this person came to mind other than prompted me to pray for him. Someone I knew probably ten years ago, had met a couple of times in the States and I now realize he’s no longer walking with the Lord and is in a same sex relationship.

And I was looking at his Facebook page going, “I wonder what he’s up to now.” And I saw him post, “If you won’t let me get married in your sanctuary, why would you expect me to sit in your pew?” And I was thinking, “What would I say to him if I sat in the room with him?” And I remember thinking I’d say to him something like, “I wouldn’t expect you to sit in the pew if you think marrying who you want to marry is the highest good in life.” If you think that’s the highest good in life, then someone who doesn’t let you have it is being cruel. But what if there’s a good that’s even better than that?

I said this to a couple of friends before, as they’ve walked away from the faith into relationships that the Bible prohibits. The most painful thing in life is missing out on love and the greater the love, the deeper the pain of missing out on it. What if there’s a love greater than the love that you are feeling for this other person? And it’s not that I want less love, I want you to have the highest love. I don’t want you to miss out on the love of Jesus. What if that’s the highest good? What if that is in fact so good it totally eclipses the feelings you’re having right now; that I’m not going to belittle those feelings. But what if there’s something so much greater than that that it eclipses those things so that you actually say, “Actually I don’t need that. I’ve got this.” Because when any of us gets to look Jesus in the eye, when He appears and we see Him as He truly is 1 John 3, none of us is going to go, “Huh, I wished I’d sinned a bit more.”

So I want the 14-year-old. I want this chap I was thinking of last night. I just want people to know there’s the thing you think you’re getting by going down this particular road, you actually properly get by walking with Jesus. Again, He will give you more and better love than you will find behind His back.

Ann:And when I think about how to talk to our kids, that’s it. It’s the beauty of the gospel of Jesus, of his love for us that nothing in this world can compare to that. I think if you have young kids, man, talk about that all the time. And I remember saying to our kids when they’re little, “I can’t wait for you to understand the great gift that God has for you.” And they would say, “Is it a present wrapped up?” And I used to say, “It’s better than that. It’s better than that.” And it is His death and resurrection for us and His love for us. We can’t even compare to it. So Sam—wasn’t that so good, Dave?

Dave:Yeah. I was honestly like, “Are we, do we have CS Lewis in the studio today?” Some of those thoughts were so deep and so well said.

Ann:And beautiful and humble.

Dave:I was just, I couldn’t even interrupt. I was just like, “I’m not going to say a word.”

Ann:Me too.

Dave:It was so well stated. And I wonder if even the last part about of knowing Jesus that intimately, if you don’t know until you know. It’s like to hear you say that and then a listener’s like, “I don’t know if I’ve ever known Jesus like that.” Well, you can. That’s available. That’s possible. He would love to let you into all of Him.

Sam:He wants to give Himself to each of us. And the wonderful thing is Jesus doesn’t just make me His. He makes Himself mine.

Ann:All that from your kid’s book. It’s so good. It’s deep. And this is where we can start. And if a parent hasn’t gone there, Sam, in those conversations, is it too late?

Sam:Oh, it’s never too late. No. And by the way, an excellent resource is Cru’s own Rachel Gilson. She’s got a book Parenting Without Panic, which is about how to talk to kids of various ages about issues of sexuality and that kind of thing. That’s an amazing book.

Dave:Well, I’m going to tell our listeners, they can get your book God’s Go-Togethers. We’ll send it to you. Just send a financial gift to FamilyLife Today and we will send you this book. You’ll love it. I mean, thinking of parents all around the world, sitting down with their little kids, little kids. I mean, you can read this with a two, three, four, five-year-old, right? Start that conversation then. So here’s how you do it. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com, send us a gift there. Or you can call us at 1-800-358-6329. That’s—what are you laughing about?

Ann:Oh, you did it. Good job.

Dave:Yeah, that’s “F” as in Family, “L” as in Life, and the word “TODAY.”

Ann:I think if I had kids under my roof that I was raising, I would probably listen to this episode over and over to remind myself, this is the beauty of the gospel. This is how to have the attitude of Christ as I’m having these discussions with my kids and my teens. And also even like, what am I saying again? That’s what I think. How am I saying that again? That was really helpful.

Dave:And let me just say this. If you need parenting help, we would love to help you. We have a site just for you, FamilyLife.com/ParentingHelp. We put some of our best parenting resources there for you, to help you. Please go there, get the help we offer. It’s FamilyLife.com/ParentingHelp.

Ann:FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife®, a Cru® Ministry. Helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.

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