The Snack, the Brother, and the Big Greek Word: Teaching a Concrete Thinker

When I was a girl, I knew exactly what Proverbs 17:17 meant.

"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity."

Obviously. Your friends love you. Your brothers and sisters are born to cause you trouble. It seemed like one of the most accurate verses in the whole Bible.

It was years before I realized it means the opposite: a brother is born for the hard times, to stand beside you when trouble comes. The second line isn't contrast with the first like I thought. It’s a completion that shows how relationships support us.

I laugh about that now. But it taught me something I've needed again and again as a parent: children hear Scripture literally long before they can hear it any other way. And some of our children keep hearing it literally for a long time.

Faith Is Full of Metaphors

All children start out as concrete thinkers. They understand what they can see, touch, and do. The ability to think abstractly, to understand symbols, comparisons, and ideas that aren't physical, develops gradually, often well into the teen years. Many of our children, especially those on the spectrum, stay literal thinkers much longer, and some always will.

Now listen to the way we talk about faith:

• Ask Jesus into your heart.

• You've been washed in the blood.

• Let your light shine.

• Jesus is the Bread of Life.

• You need to be born again.

Every one of those is a picture. To a child who takes words at face value, they range from confusing to genuinely frightening. Nicodemus, a grown man and a teacher of Israel, heard "born again" and asked how he was supposed to get back inside his mother (John 3:4). Our kids are in good company.

"Why Can't I Have the Snack?"

Two of my children, Rachelle and Nate, were upset at church one Sunday because they couldn't have "the snack."

They meant Communion.

From where they sat, it made perfect sense. Everyone around them got a cracker and a cute, little cup of juice. They didn't. That's not a sacred mystery to a small child; that's being left out of snack time.

They were three and five at the time, and I explained to them that it wasn’t a snack, but it was a reminder of what Jesus did for us. I tried; I really did. But you know what, you can ask either of them today, and they will tell you why they responded the way they did to my explanation. Both said they believed in Jesus and wanted to become Christians. What they really meant was, they both wanted the snack next time. Thankfully, later they did understand and truly chose to follow Christ. But it was as big a lesson for me as it was for them.

But what I love is that even though I was a little surprised by their reaction, God expected their questions. When He gave Israel the Passover, the meal Jesus would later share with His disciples on the night He was betrayed, He told parents:

"And when your children say to you, 'What do you mean by this service?' you shall say, 'It is the sacrifice of the LORD's Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt.'" (Exodus 12:26–27)

God didn't answer the children's question with a symbol. He answered it with a story: something that happened, to real people, in a real place. That's teaching a concrete thinker.

So when a child asks why they can't have the snack, the answer isn't "it represents the body of Christ." It's the story: "On the night before Jesus died, He ate a special supper with His friends. He broke the bread and said, 'Remember me when you eat this.' So when we eat this bread together, we're remembering what Jesus did for us." Then answer whatever questions come next, even the funny ones.

The Big Greek Word

Then there was Ryan.

Ryan was my little linguist, a kid who loved words, and he was thoroughly confused by agape. Why did the Bible need different words for love? What was phileo? Which kind of love was he supposed to have, and how could you tell them apart?

Ryan could handle big ideas. What he couldn't handle was fuzziness. The way we toss around "agape love" in church, as if everyone already knows what it means, frustrated a child who wanted words to mean exactly what they say.

I don’t remember how we talked about it at the time, but I think I would help him see that those words were more clear and special like when he says he loves ice cream or me or Jesus or his orange shirt, it’s all love in English, but in Greek (he loved languages and was bilingual already at this time, so learning words from another language would have resonated and thrilled him), they liked to be specific. So, agape talked about God’s love for us. Phileo was the kind of love we have for our friends. And we would have just talked about what it means to be more specific. In English, we use extra words. In Greek, they didn’t have to.

This is where Tractability comes in. Proverbs 22:6 tells us to train up a child in the way he should go, the way he is bent, the way God made him. My children who wanted the snack needed a story. Ryan needed definitions, and probably the Greek itself. Same truth, different door.

Teaching the Concrete Thinker

Jesus taught with seeds, coins, sheep, and bread: the most concrete things His listeners knew. And still, His disciples didn't always get it. Mark tells us that when Jesus was alone with them, "he explained everything" (Mark 4:34). Jesus didn't leave His own followers guessing at the metaphors. We shouldn't leave our children guessing either.

A few things that help:

Explain the picture, then use it. Say what it means first, in plain words, then add the metaphor: "Jesus takes care of us, watches over us, and goes looking for us when we're lost. That's why the Bible calls Him a shepherd." The picture becomes a hook for the meaning instead of a roadblock in front of it.

Lead with the story. Like the Passover answer, ground truth in something that happened. "God is faithful" is abstract. "Remember when we didn't know how we'd pay for the car repair, and God provided?" is something your child can hold. That's Testimonies at work.

Tie a verse to one situation. "Be kind to one another" (Ephesians 4:32) is a principle. "Be kind to your sister when she knocks over your Lego tower" is something to do. Start specific. The principle can grow out of many specific moments.

Use things they can see and touch. God does this all through Scripture: words on the doorposts (Deuteronomy 6:9), stones piled by the Jordan so that when children asked "What do these stones mean?" their parents would tell the story (Joshua 4:6–7). Objects, routines, and pictures are some of God's own teaching methods.

Check what they understood. "Do you understand?" gets a yes almost every time. "Tell me what that means" tells you whether your child is picturing the Shepherd or a man with a stick.

Don't mistake confusion for rebellion. A child who says something that sounds irreverent ("Why does Jesus live in my heart? Is He squished?") usually isn't being disrespectful. They're telling you exactly what they heard. That's a gift: now you know what to teach.

Their Misunderstandings Are a Window

Every time one of my kids misunderstood something about God, it showed me what they'd actually heard, which wasn't always what I thought I'd said.

And sometimes a literal child understands something we've grown too sophisticated to see. When God says He will never leave us, a concrete thinker believes it means never. When Jesus says to come to Him, they assume He means it. There's a reason Jesus told the adults to receive the kingdom like a child.

So laugh with them over the snacks and the brothers born for trouble. Then explain everything, the way Jesus did for His own. You're not dumbing down the faith. You're opening the door they can walk through.

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