TRUSTING IN GOD

Truth so often comes from the mouths of the young. They are not yet so fully drawn into the world's way of thinking that they have lost their simple belief in God. God is very concrete to them-a person, not an idea. Although they hear the world's complicated explanations of things, they operate from a trust level that leads them to defer to God's explanation. What the adult world sees, they see beneath and beyond.

As adults we often scoff at their naivete. "Experience will teach them life lessons that make them more discerning," we say. Yet who says simple truth is undermined by complex information? Maybe simple truth is a way to sift through the complexities and cut to the heart of the matter?

Rudolph Bultmann, a liberal theologian who often confused people with his byzantine doctrinal explanations, was once asked the most important lesson of his life. Even this complex thinker had to say, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

It is for no small reason that Jesus said the the adults who scoffed at a child's understanding and religious value, "Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."

Does this mean that faith is really for children and that mature people should go elsewhere? No, it just means the door to genuine faith begins with the simple trust of God and His explanations that a child readily embraces. We read our world through eyes of faith. We do not read our faith through the eyes of the world.

(C) 2010 by Stephen L Dunn