Christmas and the Kingdom of Heaven are for kids. It’s interesting that the Bible teaches us that we must have a childlike faith to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet, it also teaches us that we must grow up in the way we think. Ephesians 4:14-15 says, “that you may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine…rather…we are to grow up…” We also read in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.”
It is well known that many teenagers and young adults lose their childlike faith when they enter into the secular world. We often think that it’s because of higher education, but more non-college-going kids drop church attendance (70%) than college-attending kids (64%). An earlier study determined that the loss of faith is “the result not of education, but …of processes set in motion long before young people ever set foot on a college campus: Those students who “lose their faith” in college or drop out of organized religion after high school are primarily those already at considerable risk of doing so for other reasons that predate these actions. To suggest the die is cast before the dorm room is occupied may be too strong a claim, but not by much…parents tend to “get what they are” when it comes to their teenagers’ religious sense. If parents do not actively affirm and transmit the oral and written traditions of religion, their failure to “teach the language” results in youth who cannot speak the language and are at elevated risk of shedding the religious value system altogether. For the full article, check out http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Regnerus_Uecker.pdf
We must have a child’s faith and an adult’s reasoning! These two aspects are necessary in our spiritual lives. When Jesus taught in parables, he expected the information or the stories to be processed intellectually and the implications of the stories to be understood. Still, at the same time, he knew that they would only be fruitful in an innocent, humble, and receptive child-like heart. In the paradoxes of the faith, it takes adult-like understanding, followed by childlike faith, to “get it.” Nicodemus asked, “Must I return to my mother’s womb to be born again?” Of course not! Jesus is not talking about physical birth. He’s using it as an illustration of a more important truth. Nicodemus was reasoning as an adult based only on the “what” and the “how” but has lost sight of the “why” or the purpose behind Jesus’ Words. Adults easily grasp the “what” and “how” in the world, but it takes the humble heart of a child to recognize and embrace the why. In Matthew 13:8-9 we read, the “seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”