Simplicity

I am a staunch supporter of the idea that life is simpler then we make it out to be. I believe that if common sense were a bit more common we'd have a far superior race of people today. There is this tendency for humanity to take the easiest road to get places. Now sometimes this is good because it has made people invent many useful and convenient tools to satisfy their innate laziness. However its negative side is far more harmful. Our desire to do things the easy way, keeps us from doing the right thing because the right thing is often harder. Leonard Ravenhill rightly says, "you don't have to do anything to displease God, there is only one way to heaven there are a million ways to Hell" If we just continue living our lives, coasting along then we'll never come to a proper relationship with God. We are unwilling to do the simple thing because it seems harder and we make things much more complicated then they have to be in order to justify not acting properly.



Lets take the example of Jesus. He never wrote a book and he had no higher education but at the age of twelve he was debating with the most intellectual men of his day. I do not believe that Jesus had any sort of supernatural wisdom booster pack we humans do not also have access to. That means that whatever Jesus was at twelve we also could and probably should be. We must ask then, how did this boy of twelve with minimal education become so intelligent? The answer, is...simple ;). The important things in life are generally the simplest. It is our pride, our arrogance and all the other garbage that we pick up as we grow up which makes discoursing about the serious things of life so difficult and so complicated. Throughout history it was rarely a problem for people to believe that god created the world. The simplest explanation to something existing is that something created it but in today schools we are willing to except unnecessarily complicated formulas that make no sense. Why? because to acknowledge the sensible, simple, explanation for the universe existing would mean that we are created beings, responsible to a higher power. This is something which no freedom loving individual will admit.

This question of creation is the crux of one's worldview and from it springs the answers to all other questions. For someone who is unwilling to accept the idea that we are indeed created their worldview only gets increasingly complex as they try to explain away good and evil, the problem of destiny, people's guilt, the deterioration of the earth and of course spiritual phenomenons or miracles. Exactly the opposite for someone who submits to the simple explanation that fits into reality. Answer to all those problems rather then becoming increasingly complex become simpler and the answers fit neatly into a well ordered worldview.



So Jesus was able to talk and discuss eloquently about the intellectual topics of his day, not because he had some divinely enhanced mind and not because he had studied for years in the best schools of his era rather he had spent his life in love to those around him. In observing the world and inviting God to interact in everything He did. Because He was willing to accept the simplest solutions that did not contradict reality. This to ought to be our goal, not that we should dispense with all formal education but we must not allow ourselves to think that our most important learning takes place in the classroom. Learning about the nature of God, the nature of ourselves, the nature of people, the nature of the universe and all other important questions will rarely be answered in a lecture hall but the answers come from humble observation of God, people, ourselves and the universe in which we live.