Too Old to be Holy

" A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, Do it again; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, Do it again, to the sun; and every evening, Do it again, to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

G. K. Chesterton on the age of God

Visions of an old, stodgy God, complete with white beard, golden halo and James Earl Jones voice are very common among Christians. I am beginning to believe they are almost as heretical as the impressions of heaven as a place of puffy clouds and harps. (Among my basis for this belief is my general distaste for harp music. I wouldn't last five minutes in Hollywood's heaven.)

C. S. Lewis, in his Space Trilogy presents many characters of divine nature. Among them are a couple that is posited as an Adam and Eve and a man who after several encounters with angels, and one with the Devil in the flesh, is transformed into an almost demi-god like status. One of the common elements of these characters is their inability to be labeled as a certain age. Beginning the series as an unsuspecting, middle aged British man of no particular physical advantage, Ransom finds himself enlivened and almost made younger with each encounter with the divine. While it may be easy to dismiss this as allegoric fantasy, I am beginning to question whether there may yet be validity to this position. Perhaps it is possible that rather than always sobering, true encounters with God should be enlivening, rejuvinating experiences.

It is no secret that the life we live in this world is less than ideal. As my friend Kelsey Young recently pointed out to me, we learn to love a love that hurts in this life. We who have loved in this world can hardly conceive of a love that is completely good, completely rewarding, completely lived out. So often I move right past Jesus' teaching about being like little children to enter the Kingdom. How hard it is in our society to believe that innocence is valued by God. Having known sin, we have lost our innocence, and in the bargain come to an unfortunate assumption. Believing that we are wiser to the ways of the world, we believe we are wiser to the ways of God. He tells us that His ways and thoughts are higher than ours. We are the ones who presume that this only means lofty, quiet, stuffy thoughts. Perhaps He was thinking of things that seem to simple for us to believe.

Chesterton, I think, is on to something. Children are not only strong enough to exult in monotony, but also in adventure. We who have grown older now count the cost. We, the knowing, unfortunately find ourselves in the gap between knowing the cost of adventure, or love, and not knowing the reward, in which God is always proven to be worthwhile. We are loathe to risk the adventure of true love because we are too cognizant, and too often reminded, of the pain that comes from the inevitable loss in this life.

We could all stand to be a little younger in our thinking. We think the innocent foolish for their lack of understanding about consequence. Perhaps we have forgotten that while understanding follows the limits of innocence, God is still beyond the limits of understanding.