I Peaked in Underoos, Spiritually Speaking

Somewhere along the way, many of us confused growing older with growing up.

We learned how to pay bills, answer emails, and pretend to understand health insurance. Somewhere in the process, many of us became more cynical, less curious, and harder to impress.

Kids can spend twenty minutes watching an ant carry a potato chip like it’s the Super Bowl.

Adults can visit the Grand Canyon and complain about the Wi-Fi.

Two famous lines in the Good Book appear to give opposite advice.

The first is from JC and the second is from Paul.

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

—Matthew 18:3

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”

—1 Corinthians 13:11

So... which is it?

Should we grow up or stay like kids?

I think the answer is yes.

These verses aren’t really contradicting each other. JC is praising childlike humility and trust. Paul is calling us away from childish thinking. One calls us back to wonder. The other calls us toward maturity.

Childlike people are curious. They enjoy simple pleasures. They forgive quickly. They laugh easily. They wake up expecting wonder and trust more easily, too.

Childish people, on the other hand, bully others because they’re insecure. They demand attention at everyone else’s expense. They throw tantrums when they don’t get their way. They think the world revolves around them, can’t accept losing, and refuse to admit when they’re wrong.

Watch the news for five minutes, and you’ll see plenty of adults who never stopped being childish.

JC wasn’t asking us to become immature. He was inviting us to recover something adulthood often steals: awe.

Kids don’t need a sunset explained. They just point and say, “Whoa.”

Adults immediately start debating atmospheric conditions and whether someone edited the photo.

Not everything needs to be analyzed. Some things are meant to be experienced. We spend so much time telling kids to be kind, be patient, listen, get off their screens, and go outside.

Imagine if adults actually took their own advice.

Go outside.

Talk to someone who disagrees with you.

Look up at the stars instead of down at your phone.

Ask more questions than you answer.

Assume you don’t know everything.

One of my favorite things about the Good Book is that it refuses to flatten life into easy answers. It often holds two ideas together that seem to compete.

Be humble, but be bold.

Fear God, but don’t be afraid.

Become like a child, but put childish ways behind you.

Maybe wisdom isn't resolving every tension.

Maybe some of life's deepest truths only make sense when they're held together.

The older I get, the less interested I am in winning arguments and the more interested I am in understanding people.

Everyone has a story. Everyone has scars. Everyone has reasons for becoming who they are.

We're tiny people riding a blue pearl through an unimaginably vast universe.

That ought to make us a little gentler with one another. Even the person who annoys us. Even the one who votes differently. Even the one whose life makes no sense to us.

Most people aren’t beyond redemption. They’re carrying burdens you can’t see.

That’s why Jesus looked beyond people’s worst moments and saw the image of God they had forgotten was still there.

Maybe that’s what growing up actually looks like.

Grow up enough to stop acting childish.

Stay childlike enough to never lose your wonder.

Amen, a mess, and God bless. 🙏