“Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” (Mark 10:15, Luke 18:17)
Oftentimes, these verses are presented in an effort to back up the assertion that God wants us to have a “childlike faith” and to view Scripture in light of its apparent “simplicity.” What they usually mean by this is that Christians should not be intellectual in their walk with Christ, but “simple” in their thought life about God because the Gospel is simple or the word of God is simple.
However, I find a great number of problems with such a “simple” outlook on faith. For one thing, the verses above actually mention nothing about “faith” per se, or even anything about intellectual pursuits directly. Those who interpret the text in such a way are reading their anti-intellectual biases into the Bible, rather than drawing the meaning out of it. What all these texts actually teach are to be “childlike” in terms of HUMILITY. Whether that means being that way in my intellectual pursuits is presupposed, not by a thorough reading of the Bible, but by the impressions the biased reader has about intellectual pursuits, which he got from his culture or traditions. The irony is that being “childlike” actually means to put away such faulty persuasions, so that the student may sit at the knee of the Father and learn from Him.
Another problem I have with such an outlook are the number of verses which inevitably pop into my head to contradict it. For example, in his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul exhorts that church in the following way:
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Corinthians 13:11)
Notice how the topic here is not about humility, but about how one speaks, thinks, and REASONS. He is telling the Corinthians, through his own example, that they are to stop speaking, thinking, and reasoning like children, but to grow up and mature to wisdom.
The writer of Hebrews addresses the same thing, but with much harsher words:
“About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God…” (Hebrews 5:11–6:1).
According to this, the trouble with Christians who just want to keep things “simple,” is that they have become “dull,” “unskilled,” as well as ‘immature,’ and ‘childish.’ They are not progressing much in their understanding of divine things because they won’t wean off the milk to sink their teeth into the meat of spiritual matters. I don’t see a Christian here who is being faithful, but one who is afraid. It isn't the ones who think deeply about the complexities of their faith who are being unfaithful, but the ones who keep clinging to the breast, like babies, perhaps because they are impressed and feel threatened by the learning of nonbelievers?
The apostle Peter actually refers to parts of Scripture as not simple, but difficult to understand:
“Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” (2 Peter 3:14–18)
I will let those verses speak for themselves, but I also did a word search on the term “simple” in the ESV. The term appeared twenty times in nineteen verses and not a single one of them said anything good about being “simple,” but condemned it in a wide variety of ways:
Being “simple” means to lack in knowledge. It is not good to lack in knowledge, particularly when the simplicity is voluntary and self imposed. Part of our walk with Christ is to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, to take every thought captive for Him, and to love God with our minds. We do not stand on the alleged “simplicity” of the Gospel. Instead, we stand on the Gospel. There simply is nothing in the Bible to warrant attitudes which foster anti-intellectualism. Rather, the problem with such thinking is that it causes all manners of miseries and troubles, even apostasies and heresies. It causes endless quarreling because irrationality denies reality, falsely divides over doctrines which belong together, and attempts to unify things that God has divided.
The simple cannot be as wise as a serpent, nor can he destroy the lofty arguments raised against the glory of God because he does not understand them. He commends those who contradict him and attacks those who agree with him. He does not act out of knowledge, faith, or wisdom, but out of impulse, fear, and ignorance. He usually loathes instruction but is quick to chastise others. He should learn to listen to wisdom as child, so that he might mature in the faith.
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