Childlike Faith
“But I don’t expect it’s really empty at all,” said Digory.
“What do you expect?”
“I expect someone lives there in secret, only coming in and out at night, with a dark lantern. We shall probably discover a gang of desperate criminals and get a reward. It’s all rot to say a house would be empty all those years unless there was some mystery.”
“Daddy thought it must be the drains,” said Polly.
“Pooh! Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations,” said Digory.
C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
Exactly right. I can’t help but think of Lewis’s book Pilgrim’s Regress as well as Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. This is one of the problems I have with so much of what passes for Old Testament theological work in our circles, especially “apologetics.” Where is the childlike faith Jesus calls for? I know this will seem reactionary and overstated, but it seems to me that often the way we try “to explain” the odd happenings in the OT can only be helpful to those who are looking to maintain both their faith and their respectability in academia. Our “explanations” cater to the faith of many who would love to find a reason not to have to believe that Methuselah actually lived 969 years, that the flood really covered the highest mountain with water 15 cubits deep, that the sun really stood still for a day, that the waters of the Red Sea stood like walls while the Israelites walked on the dry river bed, that the OT does provide us with a coherent biblical theology, that some people actually came out of the tombs alive on the day Jesus died, etc. Such people will find great comfort in a faith that does not require of them too much intellectual self-denial. After all, adults know that it’s really all about pipes and plumbing.
Pooh!
Friday, January 27, 2006
