Faith Like Rubik’s Cubes

Simple as a Child

By Vinnie MacIsaac

“I tell you the truth, unless you turn around and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!” Matthew 18:3

 If you call it the Kiss principle^[1]or Ockham’s Razor^[2] it all amounts to the same core truth, “Simple is better.” Why do we as adults have the need to make things so complicated all the time? In some ways, even looking at my own life and walk with God, I, too, make things more complicated then they need to be, and at times I want for the simple faith of my childhood.

Recently, I took our foster children^[3] to church for the first time. Andrew^[4] who is about 7-ish was so excited to be there. It was unbelievable to watch him follow along in the church bulletin and see which item we were on. Luckily, for me, it was youth day, and so I did not have to preach, and I was able to sit with him. When the preaching started, he asked me to help him find the passage in the pew Bible. He got so excited when he was able to find the words on the page that were being spoken from the pulpit.

 Out of no place, Andrew turns to me in the middle of service and says, “Vince, are you the boss of this whole place?”

Trying to be modest and not give the wrong impression of what a Pastor is I responded by saying, “No, I am not the boss, I am the Pastor, which means I work for them.”

But Andrew responds, “But that means you’re in charge, right?”

“No,” I respond, trying to figure out away deflect his focus from the idea of ministry being about authority, “It means that all these people here are praying for you every day.”

“Oh, I get it now!” Andrew says excitedly, “They are praying for me because you’re their boss and they have too!” and it was at that moment I realized there is just no way to defeat child logic and sometimes you just have to roll with it.

Have you considered fostering or adopting? So many children out there need someone to love them.

When children come to live with you whom you have not raised, you never know the level of understanding they will have in matters of faith. But we teach them to pray, before they eat, before they leave for school, and before bed. We all always have a bedtime Bible story, and our betimes prayers always include their extended family they are away from. But one of the things I have noticed is, regardless of what formal religious teaching they have had or are lacking, Children just have this natural connection to God that just seems to come out of nowhere. Sure, their understanding may be basic, even crude, or flat-out wrong, but their faith is as strong as steel!

So, I am sitting there in Church with Andrew, and after a while, his attention fades because sermons rarely come in child sized bites. Andrew kept listening but, at the same time, picks up his Rubik’s cube and randomly starts turning it. Then suddenly he looks up at me with a great big smile on his face and says, “Look! Look what happened, my Rubik’s cube just made the sign of the cross all on its own at Church! God must have made that happen for me because we are in a church!”

Andrew’s cube made the sign of the cross.

Now you and I are already in our big fat over loaded adult brains saying to ourselves, “Ah that is a sweet kid, but come on, that is just happenstance and random coincidence.” But, why? Why can’t it be true? Why do we as adults have to use the intellect all the time to override the reality of faith and the belief in God’s power and love? Surely God’s love that was significant enough to send his son to earth to die for us forgive us of our sin, and show us His love for us is also high sufficiently to move Rubik’s cubes into crosses to show us His love is real and for us! And it made me wonder if I do not have the Rubik’s Cubes in my life made into crosses, just because my adult logic refuses to see them? Maybe, all day long, every day God is making the sign of the cross, the sign of His love for me, the sign of his attention to me evident to me. But whenever His goodness and love is poured out on me, I rationalize it away.

Is that what really happens when we grow up? Is growing up really the process of deleting all evidence of God’s love and the weeding out of our faith?

Is that what happens when we grow up? Is growing up the process of deleting all evidence of God’s love and the weeding out of our faith? Yes, sadly, and even tragically, for some of us, it is. It is like God gives us all a measure of faith when we are kids; it seems we are just born with it when we come into the world. Then as we grow up, if we are not careful, the things of this world rob it away from us all. Some of us will just stop seeing the magic of crosses in Rubik’s Cube, and other of us just are deprived of all belief in God altogether.

Maybe the problem is that, as adults, we become so focuses on solving the problems of the Rubik’s Cube of life that we can’t see the great insights into God, faith, and love those complication cube solving moments creates for us.

During the appeal, the youth preacher made a call for all the people who had never made the decision to be a follower of Jesus before to check off that decision on their decision card to follow Jesus. Andrew looked up at me and asked, “Can you help me find that on the card? I want to follow Jesus!”

I don’t know that he truly understood all that is involved in becoming a dedicated follower of Jesus, nor the cost of self-sacrifice it would ultimately take to follow Jesus all the way in this world. But does that matter? He had faith that could not be rationalized away by the things of this world. Maybe, he just had the sincere, honest faith to sign up with Jesus without the need to have all the adult check items crossed off his list. Maybe his simplistic childhood Rubik’s Cube faith was more than enough for him to know Jesus was real and worth following. And maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said, “I tell you the truth unless you turn around and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!” Matthew 18:3

POSTSCRIPT:

After the kids had been off to school this morning, I passed by their bedroom. Looking in I noticed Andrew’s bed nicely made, and all his teddy bears, stuff animals, and favorite toys, all neatly arranged on his bed, and along the bed frame and even a few poking out from the bedsprings of his brother’s bunk bed above his. But I could not help but notice and be moved by the fact that his new Bible, which he got last week, was central among all these toys having received the chief and prized spot on this bed. It was firmly and faithfully placed on his pillow as if to suggest it is the crown of all his possessions. That is what I call faith like Rubik’s Cubes.

Related Articles:

It’s A Beautiful Day

Failing Naika

Fathers To The Fatherless

Simply Faith–not Simple Faith

^[1] K.I.S.S is an acronym for Keep It Simple Silly

^[2] The principle states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor)

^[3] In Psalm 68:5 God calls us believers to be Father’s to the Fatherless. Have you considered how you could help change a young person life forever and maybe even for all eternity? In the U.S. 397,122 children are living without permanent families in the foster care system. 101,665 of these children are eligible for adoption, but nearly 32% of these children will wait over three years in foster care before being adopted. More than 23,000 of these children every year will age out of the system with no long term family or support system and will need to suddenly be able to fend for themselves. Google Christian foster care and the name of your local area.

^[4] Andrew is a pseudonym to protect his identity and family. Andrew could be anyone of the 397,122 children in foster care in the United States. Children who arrive in care have many reasons for their placement and not all of them involve anyone’s fault, and so all precautions should be taken to avoid any social stigma upon them.

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Dude! MAN-UP!

“The Meat and Potatoes of “Faith and Manhood.”

By Vinnie MacIsaac

A blog entry for men who are struggling with trusting faith.

Sorry ladies, but this one is for the dudes, feel free to eavesdrop and you will certainly learn our secrets but shhh… don’t let us know you are here or mention that you ever overheard this most private conversation.  It may be stereotypical to say, but there is still truth in it, men like to fix things.  And when we can’t fix things, we like to think about why they are broken and how we might fix them if we had better tools.  Some of us will even be tempted to drift off to thinking about which tools we need to invent to fix the unfixable that is before us. What we don’t like to do is admit we are powerless, unable, or need to have faith that God is in control. We want to control, and we don’t want to walk on any path that we can’t see where it is going. We want the tangible, the knowable, the certainty of being able to touch, hear, measure, study, and prove, and see a truth before we dare walk in it.

 Herein lies the problem with secular manhood and faith:  when one walks in faith he must surrender all control; put away the GPS, and venture out without a map or directions, and trust  God to get him to his destination. We all know how hard it is for most men to stop and ask directions no matter how lost they are; it is no different in matters of faith.

The mind may be in the eye of the body because it is the avenue by which information is received; even as the eye provides sight for walking in. However, the sight alone is not what is required to walk.  Sure, seeing helps us to walk, or at least brings an ease to it. But to walk, we must use our feet and legs. Likewise, the mind, the intellect, is a powerful and needed tool. But if we only use it to think about walking, contemplate walking, consider a number of deeply thoughtful theories on how one walks or learns to walk, then the mind has become a trap that has caged us in a world in which we never really go anyplace.

Thinking about moving, reading about the physics of movement, and understanding the complexity of human motion and all the different muscles, joints, and demands for energy the body requires for movement can only be helpful to me if I use it in actually moving my feet. To move one’s feet, to be in actual motion, will, in turn, bring with it all kinds of new dangers. There are things we may bang into, there are obstacles, once only read about, that now require navigation. And there is, above all, a real world of experience to interact with not just “navel gaze” about.

Why can’t we just ask for directions? Are we that afraid to look weak or in need of help?

The Bible has a lot to say about walking.  For example, it says to “walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh.”  It tells us God has no judgments against those who walk in the Spirit.  It says there are “no laws against the fruit of walking in the Spirit.”  It even tells us that the very Word of God is a “lamp unto our feet” that we may plainly see where we step. It is no happenstance that the longest chapter in the Bible is a Hebrew acrostic poem begging us to remember its lessons. It declares, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” (Psalm 119:105)

The very same Holy Scriptures also present a paradoxical construction “for we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7). So which is it? Is God directing us how to walk through the intellect, where we see and understand, study, and gain all proof?  Or is He telling us it is not about the intellect, it is about walking in faith because you know His deep, deep love for you? That as you walk, He will never forsake you? The latter involves the feet, the heart, and the danger. And a real journey with God for the “Man of God” is a “man’s man” journey. It will be filled not only with epic life changing enterprises, but also real perilous dangers and real wounds, that leave real scars that you can’t predict, avoid, or strategize around.

Jesus said it this way, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) To surrender to such an uncertain and unpredictable power is, frankly, horrifying and fearful to anyone who is being truthful with themselves and not just faking their own existence. It is to truly die to self, to offer up your will as a sacrifice and all of self’s power to preserve and manipulate life. It means to, wholeheartedly, throw yourself into the loving, faithful, eternal hands of your God come what may! Such an action is not a job for young boys who are still mere children, who want to self- protect for future days.   It is, in fact, the job of real men, who are emotionally “man enough” to look death in the eye, and embrace it, full on, in one big old fat tremendous bear hug; for this is the only way a man can truly be alive.

Jesus boldly, cried out to us, “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it”. (Luke 17:33) He said His way of life, brings not a mundane daily existence and safety but a real life that is more than simple preserving the safe life, it is living in the abundance of the Father’s love and adventures He has for us (John 10:10).

The quintessential meat and potatoes of “Faith and Manhood” is this:  if your eye has metaphorically seen God, and your intellect is being revolutionized by the love found in His promise (Word) to us, then we must take the “leap to faith.” ^[1] This is a full-fledged, no looking back, leap off the proverbial cliff into the emotional world of a fuller experience of God, where love casts out age-old fears, and we are swallowed whole, not just in part (like Jonah), to faith in His control – not ours; to His love and stability that it may be the producer of our own stability and love in the bold, new life of abundance,  that His loves thrust us into. We walk as men, in faith, because the lamp is not only in the eye, but when we look closer, according to the Psalm; it is also in the feet.

Stop over thinking.

Manhood means to stop examining and over analyzing everything for absolute certainty and proof. But, rather, start walking in the great and perils of dangers that God is calling us to. It is about more then seeing, and measuring, and testing, and fixing, it is about walking, and walking into absolute unyielding adventure and risky business filled with personal and genuinely dynamic vulnerabilities. It is about not cowering in fear of the unknown like a mere child, but rather throwing yourself into the deep end of the unknown as a combatant solider who willfully chooses the possibility of death over the certainty of limited reason. It is about the maturity of manhood, that teaches us that we can never really understand how the broken pieces of this world and this thing called life and existence are fixed until we start embracing its brokenness, not in fear, but in the certainty that can only exist in the faith of a Warrior’s heart!

There is really nothing that cute about a man-child. Grow up already!

To my fellow brothers of manhood, I say to you, are you still a child, still living in fear of the unknown desperately thinking you must solve all mysteries of this world before living, or have you accepted the call of God on your life to Man-Up and put away childish fears.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Corinthians 13:11 ESV)

Realted Article:

Kierkegaard: A Single Life [Reflective Review]

^[1]“Thinking can turn toward itself to think about itself and skepticism can emerge. But this thinking about itself never accomplishes anything.” Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

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