We live in a world of increasing and often needless complexity. We tie ourselves in knots complicating otherwise simple language. To say that someone is simple is considered an insult, yet we often miss God not because of His complexity, but because of His simplicity.
The greater the complexity the greater the chance of division and of things falling apart. But God does not rely on anything else in order to exist, he is not composed of “parts” that if separated would mean He would cease to be.
A doctrine fundamental to the Abrahamic faiths is that God is One, and we are told in 1 Corinthians 14:33, “For God is not a God of confusion, but of peace”. There is peace in simplicity. Perhaps the lack of peace that we sometimes feel in ourselves and see in our world is a result of obfuscating simple truths, of layering complexity where it doesn’t belong.
In his letters to his children Peter Kreeft writes:
“Life is not complicated, we make it complicated. Cars and computers and codes are complicated. The sun, the sea, the mountains are not complicated. Life is wonderfully simple. There is good and there is evil. There is truth and there is falsehood. There is life and there is death. There is love and there is hate…”
My dad at almost 90 has a very simple faith. At 14 he was pulled out of school to help his dad on the building site. Formal education was a luxury not afforded to him because his family were poor. His own father could not read or write. He later trained to be a carpenter, yet with no formal education he is amongst the wisest people I know; simple-hearted, not simple-minded, with a disarming humility.
“Advent,” Pope Francis reminded us in one his Advent addresses this week, “is a moment of grace to take off our masks – every one of us has them – and line up with those who are humble, to be liberated from the presumption of the belief of being self-sufficient, to go to confess our sins, the hidden ones, and to welcome gods pardon.”
In 2017 dad needed a brain scan. Whilst in the tube he prayed to God that his scan would be clear, but then corrected himself saying “I don’t mean clear, like the doctors have a good view of my brain, but clear as in I don’t have a brain tumour”.
When he recounted this story it amused me that my father though that God might not be sure what he meant and his having to backtrack and make it clearer for God! But then I thought of the healing at the pool in John 5 when Jesus saw a man lying there awaiting a cure, yet his first words to him were – “Do you want to be healed?” Jesus asks us to participate in His life, he does not force us, and we must not be afraid to speak clearly.
Like the man by the pool, my dad, frightened and alone in the tube, spoke to his Father in heaven as to a friend: plainly, clearly, simply and honestly, and was then at peace.
In Luke Chapter 10 Jesus visits the home of Martha and Mary. Martha is distracted by all the preparations that had to be made and got frustrated with Mary who was simply sitting at Jesus’ feet. “Tell her to help me!” Martha said, but Jesus replied, “Martha you are worried and upset by many things, but few things are needed – indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken from her.”
Here Martha is in a whirlwind of complexity, frustrated that Mary cannot see how necessary it is to attend to numerous things but in her frustration, she misses the one thing that she really needs, the one thing that we all need, which is to simply place ourselves in the presence of our Lord. Not “doing”, but “being”. When my mum was given just months to live, her brothers, not knowing what to “do” offered to take her on a holiday of a lifetime. She laughed saying, “I don’t want to do anything, I just want to be here with you.”
We arrive into this world helpless and vulnerable, we depend upon a relationship of love and trust for our very survival. And Jesus asks us to come to him as little children. Perhaps as we get older we are able to grasp that simplicity once again. Peter Kreeft writes that “when John, the youngest of the 12 apostles, was getting very old his disciples complained that he talked only about one thing: love. His reply? ‘There isn’t anything else’. Simple is wise because the meaning of life is simpler than we are. We mess up because we forget simple truths, not because we forget complex ones. All of us deep down know that the meaning of life is just one word…so we are wiser than we think, but we don’t want to admit it because that makes us responsible for doing it. Complexifying is a great cop-out. Excuses are always complex.”
My simple-hearted dad has learned to be this way. He believes he was created. He believes that he will return to his creator. He is ashamed of the sins he commits; he never tries to justify them and he goes to confession to respond to Jesus’ question “Do you want to be healed?” with a simple “yes!”
This simple “yes” is the sharpest arrow of all. “You can be the greatest success in the world,” says Peter Kreeft, “just by knowing and doing this Mary thing…this “yes” to God. It’s the total opposite of vague, sweet, pious idealism. It’s the most hard-hearted practical calculation you can make.” For “what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)
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