“We know how to have fun with our children, but do we know how to weep with them? If we only expose them to life’s joys, but not its trials, are we truly preparing them for a world that groans under the burden of sin (Rom. 8:20)?”

Should you take your child to a funeral? Conventional wisdom would say no. Parents are supposed to provide positive experiences for their children and protect them from dark realities, right? And a funeral (if we even call them that anymore; “memorial service” sounds less ominous) are certainly a dark reality.

But while the impulse to protect or shield our children can seem normal or wise, the wisdom of Scripture suggests an alternative to our conventional assumptions.

Here are three positive reasons you should take your children to funerals.

1. To Help Children Understand That Death Is Part of Life

Our children experience death all around them. Unfortunately, it’s often either glamorized through a round-winning “head shot” in Call of Duty or desensitized by the sheer volume of death in the latest Marvel film. Ironically, the more our kids encounter death in pop culture, the more abstract, surreal, and distant it can seem to them.

Meanwhile, the rest of society seems bent on sanitizing or erasing the specter of death. Note the subtle changes, for example, in our vocabulary. “Graveyards” became “cemeteries,” and now we have “memorial parks.” “Funerals” became “memorial services,” and now we have “celebrations of life.” Cemeteries used to be common fixtures in churchyards, reminders for Sunday parishioners that death will come to us all. But most newer cemeteries are hidden away from view, unseen in the day-to-day rhythms of most people’s lives. And consider our cultural obsession with youth, fitness, vitality and anything eaten, oiled, or applied to keep death and decay at bay. Our children aren’t being helped to understand that death is a real evil in this world—an evil that forces everyone to consider how to steward their lives (Ecc. 9:1–12). Funerals help our children recognize the full weight and gravity of mortality.

2. To Model Grief for Our Children

We know how to have fun with our children, but do we know how to weep with them? If we only expose them to life’s joys, but not its trials, are we truly preparing them for a world that groans under the burden of sin (Rom. 8:20)? In the face of death, the cultural extremes of avoidance and stoicism on one hand or emotional collapse and unrestrained grief on the other won’t give our children the full range of God-given emotions that will help them process life and its difficult events.

Read More