Christianity can seem pretty complicated, especially if you try to pay attention. There are way too many voices out there clamoring for your attention, each with their own intricately nuanced theology (even if they avoid using the word). Raise your hands if you’ve ever tried to figure out the four or five points of Calvinism, the modes of baptism, the differences between the “tribs” and “mills,” predestination vs free-will, or what the heck “emerging” means. It seems like it’s much easier to grasp the principles of quantum mechanics than justification or the trinity.
Sometimes it can be quite confusing just trying to figure out if you’re really saved. Were you baptized the right way? Did you pray the right prayer? Do you really have “saving” faith? And, are you saved forever, or just until you mess up again?
Is Christianity really that complex? Do we need a degree to be able to grasp the Gospel? Is intellectualism next to Godliness? Thankfully, Jesus did not say, “Unless you become a Ph.D., you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Not once.
What Jesus did say was, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 18:3)” Earlier in Matthew, we read Jesus pray, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. (Matt. 11:25)”
I first remember these verses from listening to sermons as a young child, and they stuck with me. “Let the little children come to me. (Luke 18:16)” In a world where information was given to children on a “need to know” basis, here was Jesus putting children first, and telling the adults that children understand the Kingdom of God better than adults.
In the movie Hook, Robin Williams plays an older, wiser, Peter Pan, who has become so grown-up that he has forgotten who he is, and that the stories of his childhood he takes for fairy tales are really true. To save his children, and himself, he must “become as a little child,” remembering who he was, believing what he once believed.
In the adult world, skepticism is the key to knowledge; never accept anything at face value, question authority, look before you leap. Children haven’t yet learned to doubt; they simply understand that Jesus loves me, this I know. I think that it’s not so much that children know something about God’s love that adults don’t. Rather, I think for children, God’s love is simply enough. When has God’s love simply been enough for us?
Certainly, it’s important to know a few things, like that Jesus is God’s son, and that he died and rose again to defeat sin and death forever. But, I’m not sure that the thief on the cross understood this — he definitely didn’t know about the resurrection — yet we know he made it to paradise. What did the woman at the well know about Jesus? Or what about all the people that Jesus healed?
The Bible is full of theology; that’s where theology comes from. Jesus taught theology, as did Paul and the other disciples. I’m all in favor of learning the Bible and theology. But if we lose what we had as children, we lose sight of the Kingdom.
Learn all you can. But let “Jesus loves me” be enough.
Questions:
- If you can, try to recall what you were like as a child of five or six. Thinking of the Gospel, what would have been enough for you?
- In growing and maturing, what have you lost?
You see it’s like your computer. Everything works fine at first. Then a virus hits you and nothing works right. It’s slow. You get error messages. So you kill it with an anti-virus and it is fixed but it is not like it was. It won’t be perfect until you reformat the hard drive. God made everything and it worked. Then the Satan virus infected us. It was our fault because we clicked “yes” when the pop-up appeared. But we could not fix it. Jesus is the anti-virus who God sent to clean it up. But we won’t be perfect until we are reformated in the resurrection…