A modified version of this piece was originally published by The Nehemiah Collective as a part of a series of essays exploring the concept of a child-like faith.
I spent the majority of my childhood wishing I was an adult. Upon waking on my 8th birthday I ran downstairs and proudly announced to my parents that I was half way to my driver’s license. As a homeschooler I hustled to finish high school in three years instead of four, putting me at the ripe old age of 16 when I graduated (incidentally, the same year I got my driver’s license. It was a big year). I sat at the grown up table when they let me, listening in on the deep discussions, and skipped the petty kid table squabbles. I regularly thought other kid’s silliness was, simply put, too silly. I loved having fun but I didn’t have time for a lot of nonsense. I had plans, I knew what I wanted to do, and I was perpetually sick of being forced to obey someone else’s set of (as I saw it) arbitrary rules.
Once I eventually became an adult, part of me lapsed backward into the sort of childlike playfulness I’d often avoided as an actual child. Now, anything that can be turned into a game will be. Any chance to crack a joke at an inappropriate time, throw a spontaneous party, start a prank war, I’m there. My birthday celebrations nearly always involve some ridiculous activity. My 30th was naturally spent at Chuck E. Cheese, and I’ve since hosted both a silent disco featuring a professional DJ’s personally curated playlist, and full fledged bingo night complete with caller and PA system, all from my living room. At age 36, having missed my college graduation due to a work scheduling conflict, I threw myself a solo graduation ceremony in my front yard, complete with commencement speech, live music, all my friends, and a BBQ afterparty. The whole thing was absolutely giggle inducing. I realize this could make me sound like a total narcissist. But the truth is, I’m making up for lost fun now that I’m the one in charge.
This may seem counterintuitive, but becoming more childlike actually allowed me to think for myself in ways I never could when I was desperate to emulate the adults. Let me put it to you like this: what is a kid’s favorite question?
“But, why?”
Turns out, in my attempt to jump straight into maturity I ended up blindly accepting a lot of things as they were handed down to me, gobbling up as much “grown up” knowledge as possible. Knowing what the grownups knew made me feel like an insider, like I was on their level. I thought it made me smarter and more mature.
Once it became time to relax into my own actual adulthood, I began to ask the childlike questions again. Questions like “why?”
Why do we believe homosexuality is a sin, and what am I supposed to do about the friend who just came out to me and not to anyone else?
Why does the so-called pro life party I’ve always been a part of support the death penalty and obsess about guns?
How can we imitate the heart of Jesus and hold an openly hostile grudge against certain immigrants and refugees when we go to the ballot box?
These questions and a myriad of others have haunted me for the better part of a decade.
I suppose in a way I did a lot of these life stages backwards. But the cool thing about being a grownup is that when you earnestly ask a question like “why?” you don’t have to accept the most readily available answer as the final one if it doesn’t sit right in your spirit. If you’re really searching for the truth and not just looking to confirm your preconceived bias, you have the resources to look beyond the surface. You are able to dig deeper, journey further, and find nuance where before there was just inflexible dogma.
Of course, in the information overload age of fake news, mainstream conspiracy theories, and the polarizing strain of politics and culture wars, it can be difficult to suss out truth from fiction. Determining what side you’re meant to be on can really mess with your mind. Going against the grain might alienate you from the people you’ve always considered your tribe, or put you at odds with how you were raised to think. It’s a lonely road, to say the least, and being willing to travel it takes an irksome amount of courage.
But I still believe that those genuinely in search of the truth will be able to find it if they’re willing to face the growing pains that come with it. I don’t know if that was the original intention of the Bible verse that talks about having faith like a child. But I’d like to think it means a lot more than just eagerly accepting what we’ve been told. Perhaps it can also include the child-like persistence in questioning until we uncover God’s honest truth.
When I consider kids and how their little minds work, I don’t think about how their innocence makes them gullible. I think about how it piques their curiosity, their unwavering commitment to asking what and how and why to the point of exhaustion. Kids are devoted to discovery and every day is a wide-eyed journey of learning new things and testing boundaries. I think we lose that innocence as adults when we set aside the power of the question “why?” and trade it for an ideology we are comfortable inhabiting.
I’ve never been totally clear on what Jesus meant when he said that unless we become like children we will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3). But if I had to guess, the kingdom of heaven has to be where all knowledge and wisdom, acceptance and grace, and unconditional love reside. And in order to have access to all of that and more, we are required to be eager and unadulterated, curious and earnest in our quest for truth — even if that truth shakes the foundations of our grownup constructs encompassing faith and the culture that surrounds it.
WESTPHALL 