blind faith

"Truly I tell you," He said, "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18:3

i know a lot of people who have taken this verse to be a proponent for blind faith.

but children don't have blind faith.

when a baby cries, she is asking for food or comfort. she doesn't know that a parent is coming to meet her needs. 

a child asks.

if the parent answers that need over and over, the child comes to have faith that his needs will be met.

coming to god as a child is having a relationship with god as our caretaker, as the one who meets our needs.

some children are more trusting than others. most of us who are parents know that this is a combination of nurture AND nature. 

we used to joke in my house that i had my first child ten years later in male form... but it's not really true. they are each unique creatures.

dna is important.

it is the same with our relationship with god. we come as the children we are.

the people to whom jesus spoke had very different experiences with nurture and of nature. each person begins where they are and who they are.

my parents had good friends who were missionaries in tanzania and i got to know them well. i spent a lot of time with them researching for a book i never wrote.

betty told me that she never had doubts. that her faith in god had always been unwavering.

in spite of being baptist, she never remembered being saved. she remembered being baptized and the sunday school teacher who encouraged her. but she didn't think of that as a conversion experience but as another step in her faith journey.

my family was very involved with church. we participated in every activity, which meant i never got to see the disney's wonderful world of color or bonanza, the only shows in color when i was a child. (for those young people who don't know, they came on back to back on a sunday night back when baptists had services morning and night)

it was never in question. god came first. and god meant going to church.

i didn't miss much in not seeing those tv shows. for that matter i can see as much bonanza as i want on tnt. 😆

i was instilled with a love and faith in god that has followed me throughout my life.

... even through my doubts.

it was actually the bible that began my first doubts.

how many times did that cock really crow? how did they know what the angel said to jesus while they were sleeping? who was right, peter or paul?... and on and on.

in the sixties, my doubt grew greater. how could i reconcile the jesus of my childhood who loved all the little children to the hatred and violence i saw on tv.

i didn't know.

i didn't think of my family as racist. we were proud of our confederate heritage but it was somehow divorced from slavery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XmecbtaPxw

my eyes were opened in a way i could never shut them again. i questioned segregation from childhood; i was a wonder why kind of child.

i have written before of my mother taking vegetable soup and cornbread to our maid who had just had a baby, and how overwhelmed i was over where she lived. her baby lay on a spotlessly clean white bedspread, but i didn't understand why there was no crib. i didn't understand why the bed took up almost the whole room... the only room besides a very small kitchen.

i still say that experience says worlds about my mama.

mother teresa had doubts.

it bothered some people when her personal thoughts expressed doubt.

but how can you not when you live with people in such dire misery... 

i feel the same.



my faith isn't blind.

my faith is a choice.

i listened to the words of jesus and decided to follow.