Book Review: Big Truths for Young Hearts
Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 1:04PM 
Teaching and Learning the Greatness of God by Bruce A. Ware.
Can I start this review with the story of how Big Truths for Young Hearts came to be? It’s origin is in the bedside discussions Bruce Ware had with his two daughters when they were children.
“I began,” Ware writes, “in those early years spending ten to fifteen minutes with each of our daughters at their bedside, going through the doctrines of the Christian faith.” What he was doing was teaching them the same systematic theology he taught at seminary, but gearing it toward his children. His daughters are now adults, and they encouraged their father to write a book based on his bedtime talks with them, so he did.
The result a good gift to the church, especially to parents who wish to teach the faith to their children. As far as I know, there is nothing else like it—a systematic theology for children. There are, of course, children’s catechisms, but catechisms focus more on what is so and less on why it is so. A systematic theology gives us the reasons and tells us how everything fits together. If your kids are like mine were, they want to know the reasoning behind the doctrines, and that’s what you’ll provide when you read this book to them.
Big Truths for Young Hearts contains six sections—Bibliology through Eschatology—but with child-friendly titles instead of the technical theological terms. The section that contains Bibiology and Theology Proper, for instance, is called God’s Word and God’s Own Life as God. (You’ll find a quote from that section here.) Each section has six short chapters, two or three pages each, explaining and defending a doctrinal truth, finishing up with two questions for discussion and a memory verse or two.
