Faith like a Child

Faith like a Child, this phrase has always troubled me in the core of my being, I never wanted to think that Jesus was asking me or desiring me to have a naïve faith that doesn’t ask questions, a faith that doesn’t challenge, a faith that is not my own but merely a contraception that keeps me from skepticism. However, recently I have come to the realization that faith like a child must be interpreted not as faith like a child but rather as faith that a child both possesses and at the same time does not possess. More specifically the epistemological eschatological possibility of a Childs faith, of what it is to be a child. To be a child is to be in a state of what could be, always asking questions about the nature of the world and the nature of our relationship to that world. To be a child is to be defined by what will come to pass. To be a child is to let oneself be defined by means of the future. A child sees itself in the power of the future, what is going to happen rather than what has happened. Thus a child can only live in the present. As followers of Christ we must see ourselves as being defined by the eschatological transformation into the righteousness of Christ, rather than the sin that binds our lives and keeps us in hiding from God and others. We are to ask questions, we are to live life like people who are becoming, we are to live life in the knowledge that one day we will be completely free and thus we can live in the present in the knowledge of our liberation and life like free humanity. We must come to see that we already possess what could be, and we as free humanity are not defined by what we have done, but rather we are defined by what we will be.