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Not for the kids? Looking for a simple Christianity..
Luke 18:15-17
15 And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them.
16 But
Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.
17 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.
Defining
the word “Christianity” can be quite complicated, and exploring
everything that constitutes “Christianity” can be a harrowing ordeal
for those not appropriately educated. Indeed, Christianity has over the
centuries evolved from a community of people who followed Jesus into a
major religion that has tens of thousands of denominations and
sub-denominations. All these denominations were formed from an
individual’s subjective experience of God and interpretation of the
Bible, and the differences among them are often very obscure
theological/philosophical questions that don’t affect my life much
whichever way.
Whatever happened to Christ’s idea of
approaching the kingdom of God “as a little child”? The conclusion that
I drew from the above verses is that Christianity is fundamentally
simple. The biggest question an inquiry into the meaning of
Christianity can answer is whether Christianity is simple by nature or
complicated by design. I doubt there would be many who’d argue that
Christianity is supposed to be complicated, but why doesn’t modern
Christianity realize this simplicity?
When I say simple, I do
not mean what is going on in Sunday schools. Most commonly what Sunday
school involves is teaching the children the important (and not so
important) doctrines that the church’s denomination subscribes to. That
is not a simple Christianity, but rather Christianity simplified.
Intellectual doctrines that were created with adult minds being
simplified to the point that a little child could somewhat grasp it.
Being able to lower Christianity to a child’s level does not make
Christianity simple at all, and the question of what “simple
Christianity” means remains a mystery.
The nature of a simple
Christianity can be discovered with the next conclusion (one that is
more rash and controversial than the last) I will draw:
Since Christianity is simple, it is existential.
This
statement claims that Christianity is simple due to it being
existential by nature. Christianity is not found in reason, the
intellectual, the doctrinal, or the systematic. Christianity is
essentially existential (for previous sketches of what an existential
Christianity means, see my article archive), and one virtue of an
existential Christianity is that it is simple (simple in the sense that
its essence is entirely independent of intellectual complication).
This
does not mean a Christianity that is anti-intellectual or definitively
irrational, however, since it does not necessarily follow that being
independent of reason means being in conflict with reason. What I am
trying to get at here is that the essence of a simple Christianity lies
in our existence within the world, not our intellectual contemplation
within the mind.
Existential Christianity is not just about
privileging the practical over the theoretical though. Existentialism
is not about ignoring the ultimate intellectual questions (such as
“what is truth?”, “what is real?”, “what is the meaning of life?”), but
rather finding the answers to these questions within our lived
experience and not reason. Philosophers (such as the existentialists)
come to this conclusion through their philosophy, poets through their
artistic musings, workers through their work, and lovers through their
love.
In conclusion, Christianity is simple and Existential.
Those two terms are interconnected, but not entirely synonymous. Modern
Christianity is not essentially existential, and thereby it is not a
simple Christianity. It is caught up in the rigours of the doctrinal,
to the point where it is now claimed that Christianity is these
doctrines, and are constituted by them. Jesus wants followers to come
to the kingdom of God as a little child, and by that he is pointing out
the virtue of existential innocence that little children possess.
-- By Timothy Neal
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