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Health & Fitness

Faith Like A Child

How can I rediscover the comforting, childlike faith in God that I used to have before I became a cynical and critical adult?

I often miss the innocence of a childlike faith in God that is untainted by adult awareness and post-modern cynicism. Like when you're a small child lying in bed completely enveloped by layers of blankets and surrounded by piles of pillows and your stuffed animals.  Safe and comforted, tucked in and snuggled up against the big, bad, scary world.  In my uneven, long journey to adulthood, I've distanced myself from that feeling too much and in doing so, I've also distanced myself from a stronger sense of purity and dependence on God to meet my needs. I don't think there's any one right way (what works for me may not work for others), but I'm desperately seeking the return to that innocence.

I should point out for context’s sake that in addition to being a Christian – or Christ-follower, as I often prefer to call it – and believer in God, I am also queer and a liberal.  That having been stated, I’m sure there will be some people who feel that one cannot be an amalgamation of such relatively left-of-center, progressive characteristics and still yearn for a more back-to-basics, childlike relationship with God.  I do think it’s possible, however, because I know myself well enough to realize that even though I’m a man-child of fairly broad and deep complexities, I also know when my yearning for a feeling of hearth and home includes a desire to return to the comforting, “grandfatherly” image of God that was portrayed to us as children.

I was discussing this topic with a longtime friend on Facebook recently, and she vouched for my opinion that when we become adults, we lose touch with God.  She is a young single mother who relishes life with her young daughter and all the delightful, serendipitous epiphanies that entails. She said, “Having a child around helps you believe in what you can’t see!  For example, God and Santa, for those are things we are told to believe in as a child but are busted as we get older.  It’s the thought of something bigger and better than what we can see, and what they stand for…innocence, faith, purity.”

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I turned my friend’s statement over and over in my mind.  It spoke to me in a profound way because although I’ve never really discussed faith or religion with her at length before, I believe now she has some measure of belief system although I don't know exactly what it is.  What really struck me the most about her statement, though, is that I know she was coming from a place of pure, simple love and joy that could only be a result of seeing life through the eyes of her child.  It reminded me of the song “Heaven,” composed by Ed Kowalczyk and performed by the now-defunct secular rock band Live on their 2003 album “Birds of Pray”: “I don’t need no one to tell me about Heaven / I look at my daughter, and I believe. / I don’t need no proof when it comes to God and truth / I can see the sunset and I perceive.”

That’s the way I want to view – nay, feel – God and faith and hope again.  However, for someone like me who is so resolutely and almost annoyingly analytical, reason-addicted, and intellectual, it can be difficult to lower the shields that block me from untainted belief.  It’s a shame that as we grow older we’re taught by a cynical world that we must leave behind the things and interests and sources of hope – in this case, God – that bring us joy.  In my opinion, it becomes ingrained in our psyches via social conditioning that we can’t be worldly, progressive survivalists in modern society if we hold on to “ancient myths” like God and Jesus.  I thought that for many years, but despite my humanistic rebellion, in all that time some still, small voice in my mind kept imploring me to take another look, to rethink my defiance. 

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Even now, I’m of an agnostic bent, because I really don’t believe we can know in all our limited human frailties whether God really exists or, if it does, who it actually is.  Genderless, most likely, but what is that thing out there in the ether that I’ve chosen to put my faith in?  How can it (or He, if that pleases you) help and comfort me in times of grief and trouble when I can’t even see or touch it?   Where is God, in the context of a place, a location?  If Heaven is a real place, where or what is it?  Is it some kind of weird alternate dimension beyond the Great Barrier that I’d need to hijack a starship to get to?  Nobody really knows.

But maybe I should just stop over-analyzing it and just let go of the questions, just snuggle up under the layers of blankets and pillows of faith, close my eyes, drift away to wherever it all is, and dream of a new day brightened by a more joyful, spontaneous, childlike faith.  After all, as Ed Kowalczyk sang, “I don’t need no proof when it comes to God and truth / I can see the sunset and I perceive.”

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