In secondary SRE, the questions students bring are at least as important as the content you planned to teach. When a Year 9 student asks 'How can you believe in God when so many bad things happen?' — that is not an interruption to the lesson. That is the lesson. What follows is a guide to seven of the most common hard questions, with frameworks for responding that are honest, intellectually serious, and pastoral.
The Questions Are the Curriculum
1. 'How Do You Know God Exists?'
Don't reach for a proof — reach for a conversation. 'What would convince you?' is often a better first move than launching into the cosmological argument. That said, there are good reasons to think God exists that are accessible to secondary students: the fine-tuning of the universe (the physical constants are calibrated to extraordinary precision for life to exist), the existence of objective morality (if nothing is really wrong, what is the basis for calling anything unjust?), and the historical evidence for the resurrection. None of these are knockdown arguments — but none are meant to be. They are reasons to take the question seriously rather than dismissing it. Desiring God has dozens of free articles on apologetics that give you richer language for this conversation.
2. 'If God Is Good, Why Is There So Much Suffering?'
The problem of evil is the hardest objection to theism, and it deserves a real answer rather than a deflection. The honest answer has several parts: the existence of evil is evidence that we have a real moral standard — which itself suggests a moral lawgiver; the Christian faith does not promise a pain-free life but a God who enters suffering (the cross); and the resurrection offers the only framework in which suffering is not the final word. C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain and Tim Keller's Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering are both worth reading in preparation. Keller's chapter summaries are available freely referenced in TGC articles.
3. 'Can You Actually Trust the Bible?'
The manuscript evidence for the New Testament is extraordinary: over 5,800 Greek manuscripts, many from within decades of the original events — far more and far earlier than any other ancient text. Most classical historians work with one or two manuscripts from centuries after the events. The New Testament's textual reliability is not a matter of faith — it's a matter of manuscript evidence. For the reliability of the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed that the text we have today matches what was in circulation over 2,000 years ago with remarkable accuracy. Ligonier's free booklet Can I Trust the Bible? covers this accessibly.
4. 'Aren't All Religions Basically the Same?'
A brief comparison shows they're not. Buddhism has no creator God. Islam affirms Jesus as a prophet but denies his divinity and resurrection. Hinduism operates on a fundamentally different view of human identity and the cosmos. The claim that all religions teach the same thing is usually made by people who haven't studied any of them carefully. The more interesting question is: which one, if any, is true? Christianity's unique claim — that God became human, died, and rose — is either the most important thing that ever happened or a fabrication. Those are the stakes; secondary students are old enough to sit with them.
5. 'Christians Are All Hypocrites'
The honest response: 'You're right that Christians often fail to live what they believe. So do I. But that's actually what Christianity predicts — it says all people are broken and in need of grace, including Christians. The test of Christianity isn't the behaviour of its followers; it's whether Jesus is who he said he was.' The hypocrisy objection assumes that Christianity claims to produce perfect people. It doesn't. It claims to offer forgiveness to imperfect ones.
6. 'Science Has Disproved Religion'
Science and religion ask different kinds of questions. Science asks: how does the physical world work? Christianity asks: why is there something rather than nothing? What is the meaning of human existence? Is there a moral order to the universe? These questions are not in competition. Many of the founders of modern science — Newton, Faraday, Mendel, Collins — were Christians who saw science as exploring God's creation. The BibleProject series Creation (5 free videos) addresses the relationship between Genesis and science with care and clarity — recommended viewing for Year 9–10 SRE groups.
7. 'Isn't It Arrogant to Think Christianity Is the Only True Religion?'
Every worldview makes exclusive truth claims — including the view that all religions are equally true (which is itself an exclusive claim). The question is not whether Christianity makes exclusive claims, but whether those claims are true. The response to the arrogance charge is to distinguish between confidence and arrogance: I can hold firm convictions about what I believe is true while remaining genuinely curious, respectful, and kind toward those who disagree. That is not arrogance — it's intellectual integrity.
