“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
1 Corinthians 13:11
Before I became a Christian, I was an extremely well-informed biblical scholar. I acquired this knowledge through a type of osmosis. I absorbed it from the Christianity floating in the atmosphere. I picked up more from conversations in which other bible scholars, like me, were involved. I read about it in textbooks. However, the surest source of my knowledge came from “reading between the lines”. This method calls for the assumption of a hypothesis, never testing it, and validating the conclusion by how well it agreed with the assumption.
The one source I steadfastly ignored was Christians. I mean everybody knew they were bigoted hypocrites deluded by an unprovable idea. They couldn’t even live it themselves. Mine was a nice, neat world of enjoying whatever I wished to do, thinking what I would, and absolutely content in the fact that I was as good as the next guy.
Then, quite by “accident”, I encountered a group of Christians. They spoke a language deeper than the likes of Samuel Clemens or Captain Stormfield dared explore. I didn’t hear one children’s Sunday School story. I found out why they weren’t the perfect creatures that I demanded them to be. More importantly, I found that they possessed something I did not—an adult encounter with a very real God.
My life has been radically altered since that time. I don’t know nearly what I used to know. Whatever I think I might know, I continually scrutinize, question, and test. In the course of doing so, an entire universe of things I have never considered has opened up. I find it strange that one who knows so little is often asked to teach.
I still do what I want to do, think what I will, and am content being no better than anyone else. It’s true I have exchanged my desires and my thoughts for new ones. It is my hope that over the last forty years, I have become more childlike and less childish. I know I’m not the best judge of that. However, I am willing to submit the final decision to the Best Judge and accept His conclusion.
I look back on my youth, as old folks tend to do. I usually do it with a sense of wonder at how I lost so much knowledge and discovered so much of value on the road to ignorance and an adult kind of faith.
Maranatha
