Faith Like A Child

We began our class with a brief “interview” of two of our favorite JAM Time-rs, reminding us of how we might also have looked at church, Jesus, and the impact of faith on our lives at that age. Besides being thoughtful and cute, they also transitioned us into a discussion of what child-like faith could mean for us (as teens and beyond).

Some trademarks of childhood that we considered include:

• Assurance: if you pray, it’ll happen!
• Trust: All things (and people) work for good
• Lack of social conditioning: for better or worse, very young children aren’t burdened by others’ expectations of right/wrong, what’s proper, the “shoulds’ and the “musts”
• Dependency: You know you can’t do it all yourself and aren’t ashamed to call on others to help out 
• Growth: Knowing you need help sometimes doesn’t mean you want someone to do it for you ALL the time
• Learning for learning’s sake: You ask 400+ questions every day because you just. need. to. know.
• Creativity: Everything is an option and “rules” are made to be broken
• Honesty: You say what you think, without guile
• Excitement: The world is full of possibilities waiting to be explored and you can’t wait to do it!
• Simplicity: Not everything is complicated

Now obviously, not every trait of childhood should be idealized and held up as worth retaining (see: Reasons My Son Is Crying for just one such example of behavior we're glad to outgrow). But the ones listed above are worth keeping, even if we often “grow” out of them.

What are some of the things that make us "grow up" in ways that we don't love so much? Glad you asked! :)

• Focusing on cultivating an “image”- whether online or in- person, it can make us ignore or hide parts of who we are so we fit in that box
• Overscheduling, particularly when we’re doing things because we “should” 
•  Consuming too much media: reinforcing someone else’s ideas of what’s normal and who we should be
• “If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself”- You’ve just narrowed all of the creative solutions to a problem down to one, and I’ve yet to hear that phrase said with excitement…
• Worrying about the future

Now, say we want to get back some of that childlike faith. What can we do?

• Spend time with kids! Reacquaint yourself what with being a kid means.
• Do something that brings you joy. Make sure that it doesn’t have a single other reward than making you happy (no competitions, no pay, no increased social standing).
• Spend time with your Abba- your heavenly father. You’d start to feel a little lost if you went a while without seeing your earthly family, no?
• Take a media break- sign off from social media, put away the remotes, hide your magazines. Live as you’re called, not as you’re told!

Five Minutes of God Time: Faith Like a Child by Jars of Clay