Quarter of Knowledge...

November 8, 7:40 PMTallahassee Evangelical ExaminerDanielle Joyner Kelley

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“To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God.” Ecclesiastes 2:26.

Part of the human fascination with Christianity is an attempt to understand how God does His job. For many reading the Bible, the stories seem complex, hard to comprehend, and hard to apply to daily life. No doubt those stories were written long ago.

In our quest to figure it all out, many of us tend to gloss over the beginning of it to get to the meat and bones so to speak. As humans, our mind tends to believe explanation is somewhere in the middle of it all.

Still God gives us strong language that things are not as complex as we would like them to be. “And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3.

Put simply, we are to have the pureness and faith that children have. However, in a universe where being an adult comes with learning to do battle in the world that is hard to do. The reality is that God is not complicated, but we are. We want to know too much, win too much, look and be the very best, and we will often stop short of nothing to accomplish our goal.

The inescapable question is how we became so different from our Creator. Somewhere deep inside, the human mind wants to believe that God did it purposely. That deep thought comes from our own nature where we put others down to build ourselves up. For some reason, we attribute that thinking to God and think that He did it just to be better than us.

The truth is that God did no such thing. The stories of old we see in the Bible are not so difficult to apply to us today. Long ago in a Garden, someone wanted to know more than she already knew. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” Genesis 3:6.

In reading the story of Adam and Eve, one of the primary questions is how it applies to us today. Personally, I have asked God that question on many occasions. How can I have the faith of a child when as adults we know too much? Then in His own amazing way He let me know, and of course He did so through a child.

While my family was eating dinner at a restaurant, my daughter asked to go to the arcade by the table where we were sitting. She ran in there and sat at one of the games pretending she was racing a car. The screen showed a car moving and she was steering the wheel, but I knew that she had not put any quarters in the game in order to play it. I looked at my husband and said, “Have you noticed that she does not even know she is not really playing? And she has been in there for over ten minutes. I wish I had that faith.” But to her, she knew no different, that is of course, until she learned different.

Her brothers came out and asked their daddy for quarters, and she saw them insert quarters into the games and play. All of a sudden the screen she believed she had been playing on looked different to her. She asked for a quarter and then ran back and inserted it into the game. After that, she only wanted to play after she put a quarter in. Before she thought she was playing, but now she could see the before and after.

Now somehow it did not seem as much fun to her. Instead of laughing and playing as she had done before, she was spending her time wanting more and more quarters. It all became a game of begging. At this point, she knew too much and that knowledge was affecting her own behavior.

In life we are no different. We have eaten the apple in that garden and we know what it really takes to get the game to play. Knowing that, we fall into horrible ways of making sure that the game works for us.

The truth is that God invented the game, but He lets us play it how we wish. And beyond the truth lies the reality that following His instructions allows for fewer struggles and more fun.

Knowing that, I’ll race my car without a quarter any day of the week.