Children in Understanding

In times of disappointment and disturbance, there are always those who would question the Creator, and there are also those who would rule Him out of existence. There are those who, in their resentment against the evils and disappointments and seemingly injustices ask: If there be a God, why would He permit men to bring about such unthinkable conditions. And not finding the answer, or not having sufficient faith, they sometimes deny His power and personality. A once prominent philosopher pronounced that man could neither prove nor disprove the existence of God.¹ But there are endless evidences of His existence, and there are timeless testimonies and undeniable facts before us—and even a philosopher can be wrong. But at least the last part of this pronouncement is true—it is true that man cannot disprove the existence of God. The universe is too illimitably large, and there are too many things unseen and unknown, even in our own world, to say nothing of outside our world, for the puny presumption of man to say that there isn’t something he hasn’t seen. We have enough difficulty finding out what there is in a drop of water, what composes a particle of dust, what makes a kernel of grain grow, without presuming to encompass the entire universe and eliminate therefrom the power and personality of God—and they who would do so, somehow remind us of the child who says that there is no ocean because he has never been to the seashore. It was such “children” (although they were men in years) who were once so sure that the world was flat, and who abused and even burned those who had other evidence. It was such “children” who once disbelieved in the existence of all manner of things, once unseen, that have since become commonplace. And to all such perhaps these words of Paul could apply: “…Be not children in understanding.”² And to those who would eliminate the Lord God from their lives—because things have gone wrong, or because we have seen a sick world—let it be said again: “Be not children in understanding”—no matter what we have seen—or have failed to see.