Is it a sin to lie to your little gullible children?

Oh yes. My children are too old for me to deceive them into believing that Santa Claus flies around the world.

I also did not teach my children that a demon from a pre-Christian religion will leave them money if they offer a body part to it (baby tooth) under their pillows.

Toddlers are around 2 to 3 years old. I suppose can fool them into believing in Santa Claus if they have the intellectual capacity to understand the concept. Plenty of children a few years older, up through seven and eight, can be deceived into believing a magic fat man is practically omniscient, judges their behavior, flies on a magic sleigh, delivers toys made by creatures derived from pre-Christian pagan mythology to children who behave themselves.

I taught my children that God knows what they do. I have taught them to believe in Jesus. I taught them that Christ did miracles and that He died for their sins and rose from the dead. There is plenty of wonder in that without having to tell lies.

Belief in Santa Claus is not a 'fundaamental' belief of the faith either.

we will also have some bad news for you when Easter rolls around

I think that children and mushrooms have some similarities...

like?

Is this some kind of drug joke?

have you started this thread to lecture people.

Lol... no.
Like kept in the dark... pertaining to things children need not concern themselves with.

I agree that raising children to be "sober minded" is a good thing. Bring them up in truth is also the right thing to do.
Still, whimsical fantasy is okay too, IMHO, when done in moderation.

I think that the traditional Christmas story is a fine thing... it's a shame though that capitalism and secularists have taken it over.

Interesting Read -----

https://lifehopeandtruth.com/relationships/communication/speak-the-truth-in-love/

Love without truth?
Is it possible to claim we love someone and lie to them? Can falsity be sugar-coated and peddled as if it were truth?

Consider for a moment a famous letter written by an 8-year-old girl to a newspaper back in 1897. The letter has become legendary. Virginia O’Hanlon had become troubled by what some of her young school friends were telling her.So she sat down and wrote a letter to the New York Sun newspaper, which prompted an editorial dated Sept. 21, 1897.

The purpose of the editorial was to reassure a little girl concerning the existence of Santa Claus. Part of the editor’s response read as follows: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. … There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.”

Lovely words, designed, no doubt, to make children happy! But true? Of course not.

No doubt the author of this famous editorial would have claimed he acted in love. Yet is it really love if the claim is false? Not according to the Word of God.

If we don’t tell children the truth about Santa Claus, will they believe what we say about Jesus Christ?

I say ---If as Parents we lie to them about Santa who they see ---why should they believe us when we tell them there is an invisible person called Jesus who is God ---food for through------

Have any of you lecturers even considered that toddlers believe in Santa before you get asked is Santa is real or have any of you self condescending people even though toddlers don't want to believe Santa is not real ?.

Or better still what do you do when your child throws tantrums for not getting what they want to be told, I suppose tho all your toddlers developed empathy at three.

Some of you need to go to perfectionist anonymous I think as I don't think the replies are coming from recovering perfectionists 😂

I would not tell my children that Jesus is invisible. He is seated on the right hand of God. He was visible after the resurrection when He appeared to the disciples.

Otherwise, I agree with the gist of the post.

You need to look up toddler in the dictionary before we go any further. I suppose the older toddlers might have bought into the Santa lie if the end of their third year hit around Christmas time or if they just develop cognitive abilities early. I don't think any infants believe in Santa Claus. Nor do children in the womb. Toddlers are typically just learning how to talk.

Toddlers and small children do not believe the magic fat man stories unless they are taught to. I spent over 10 years in Indonesia and I never encountered any local children expressing a belief in Santa Claus or any parents trying to deceive their children about such things.

Instead, some parents may teach children to leave food offerings to the spirits of dead relatives, at least in one tribe. There are other weird practices that some church people do overseas that do not line up with Biblical teaching. American Christians tend to be more critical of such practices than their own.

There is a case that people who haven't been taught about God may believe God exists. Plenty of peoples have had a concept of the most high God before they encountered Christianity, but this could not be said of Santa Claus.

What are you trying to say? Tantrums for not getting what they want or not wanting to do what they are told? Either way, parents should not reward tantrums. But what does that have to do with Santa Claus?

I'm sorry. I do not get the point you are trying to make. Posters are perfectionists or are not perfectionists?

May I ask where you are from. You are defending a North American practice, but you do not seem to be a native speaker of English. Do they lie to children about Santa Claus where you are from? Is the myth exactly the same, or does he ride a horse and come from a European location up north?

well if you've heard of alcoholic anonymous, perfectionist Anonymous is just like that, but worse since some never recover lol

You'd still have to unpack that a bit, and it's also not going to be funny if you have to explain it.

But need to go from perfectionist anonymous... I get that, but the comments do NOT come from recovering perfectionists. Your comment is almost self-contradictory.

Of course there is also 'Christian perfectionism' which is a Methodist/Wesleyan/Holiness movement theological perspecive. If you are talking about that... the joke still doesn't make much sense.

Anyway, if a sin is a 'small sin' that doesn't mean it needs to be ignored. There is a story about a man who used to work in a shipyard who would steal copper nails and take them home, back in England in the 1800's. Copper nails held up better in water, but were more expensive than regular nails. Still, each theft was really small. The man went to hear Charles Spurgeon preach.

Spurgeon would at times look at people and tell them specific details of their lives while he preached. He rebuked this young man for stealing copper nails. The young man repented.

You might think that stealing a copper nail is no big deal, since it is small. But stealing is still a sin, whether it is stealing an automobile or a copper nail.

If lying is no big deal, the punishment for the folks in this verse is pretty severe, whether or not you consider their sin to be no big deal.

Revelation 21:8
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers,and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

I'm not listening to you no more 🙂.

I've decided for good this time I read your first sentence and decided it's best to avoid reading the rest of your post.

Because I feal aggrieved.


I thought you wanted to have a discussion about parenting, but you've decided to lecture parents and with no proof before hand I have done what you are lecturing about.

Your question in the title say,

is it like based on a question and I thought you need help with conviction for telling your children about Santa.

But no all you've done is lecture people.

I find this attitude not nice

No proof? I quoted a verse from the book of Revelation about liars being cast into the lake of fire. What further proof do you need that parents shouldn't lie to their children.

See also:

Leviticus 19:11: “‘You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another.” (NKJV)

Matthew 18:6: “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (NKJV)

The title is not out of line with the culture of this forum. You have a problem with having wrong opinions, as demonstrated in this thread. Your light treatment of the topic of sin is an example.

You can tell them all you want that Jesus who they can't see sits on the right hand of God -------but they can't see the person of Jesus who you are telling them sits on the right hand of God ---

They have to trust you to believe what your saying and wHEN they find out you lied to them about there being a mystical man named Santa Clause who climbs down your Chimney to leave presents and drives a flying sleigh with reindeer once a year all around the world in one night -----when it is really Mommy and Daddy who buy and give all the presents for them to open on Christ----Mas Day ----

What makes you think THEY SHOULD TRUST You FULLY and Believe what your saying about A JESUS that they Don't See ----who you say out of your mouth He sits on the right hand of God -----------you have already lied to them once out of your mouth about Santa Clause ----and then you expect them to Trust you fully and believe what you say out of your mouth about a God they can't see who you say sits on the right hand of God ---

Hebrew word for trust

Strong's Concordance
batach: to trust

secure , have confidence , rely , to set one’s trust on

I say -------Why would you expect your child to have confidence or to feel secure in or have them rely on what you are telling them about Jesus when they already have experienced you telling them an untruth about Santa -----and by the time the child is 6-7-8 years old when they find out that Santa Clause is Mommy and Daddy --they are of the age of understanding that they were told an untruth ---

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/lying-about-santa/New survey looks at how former children feel about being lied to by parents about Santa.

NEUROPSYCH — DECEMBER 21, 2018
30% of children received trust issues from ‘Santa’
Are parents being naughty or nice?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• New survey looks at how former children feel about being lied to by parents about Santa.
• 72 percent of former believers keep the Santa myth alive for their own kids.
• At press time, about 1,200 people have taken the survey.

Robby Berman
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“During the last two years I have been overwhelmed by people getting in touch to say they were affected by the lack of trust involved when they discovered Santa wasn’t [SPOILER ALERT] real.” These are the words of psychologist Chris Boyle of the University of Exeter in the U.K. Boyle’s in the midst of conducting an online survey that documents adults’ feelings about their parents having lied to them about Jolly Old St. Nick when they were little

His concern is whether the Yuletide conspiracy had an impact on its believers’ trust once it was exposed. While the survey’s still ongoing, he’s gathered about 1,200 responses so far and is sharing his preliminary findings. Some of the kids were quite crushed.According to the results, one in three respondents wishes that he or she still believed in Santa. Some of this is no doubt due to a longing to return to childhood, and missing that little bit of extra motivation to be a good boy or girl, at least according to the 32 percent of respondents who said so



WHAT FORMER BELIEVERS NOW SAY
What the survey is showing thus far about that long-ago (hopefully) moment of truth:

• A third of respondents recall being upset
• 15 percent of these people felt betrayed
• 10 percent of them felt angry
• About a third say the revelation has resulted in continuing trust issues

Boyle says, “As much as this research has a light-hearted element, the responses do show a sense of disappointment and also amusement about having been lied to.”

Whether Christ made himself 'invisible' or not after the resurrection, I do not know, but it is written that every eye shall see Him. Children do not see Him because He is not here. He is at the right hand of God.

Just so clarify, I started the thread and I do not support lying to children about Santa Claus. Thank you for sharing the interesting news article.

Your Welcome-----

Food for thought
Parents telling their Children not to lie to them ----and then the Parents lie to their Children about a Santa Clause or something else ----makes the parents Hypocrites -----
Plain and Simple ------

in my view -----You can't be a Hypocrite and be a True Christian at the same time -----Pride and following the world's way of doing things is not being a True Christ--ian ------

Jesus said this -----your either with me or against me ----there is no inbetween -----Folks ----one has to make a stand to have the Christ like Character when they profess to be a True Christ--ian ------which is truth ---uprightness and integrity ----

integrity ----the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change

Haters gonna hate...........