Simplicity and spiritual childhood

IF we are interested in keeping our humanity, or at least our sanity, it may be good to be reminded about the need for us to develop, keep and strengthen our simplicity and spiritual childhood. This integral part of Christian asceticism should not be forgotten as we progress.

With our neck-breaking pace of development, with its unavoidable dust cloud of complications, we need to realize more deeply that the way to go is not by being quixotic, tilting at windmills and grappling with phantoms, but by being simple.

The temptation to be quixotic can be strong, since we always feel we can handle things by ourselves. Our sense of freedom and responsibility often blind us to the basic truth that we need to be grounded on God always to be able to live properly, let alone, do things rightly.

This quixotic attitude can lead us to that situation of self-righteousness, denounced by Christ himself when he told some of the people’s leaders that “they have eyes, but don’t see, they have ears, but don’t hear…” It’s the wide, easy, seemingly practical road to perdition, mentioned in the gospel.

Simplicity is the way to objectivity, and to all the other values connected with objectivity. It keeps us in touch with reality, the one meant for us. We have to say this, because as human beings, we are capable of creating parallel realities. That’s our abiding problem.

Of course, our subjective world will always vary from person to person. But at least this variety can still be linked to an objective reality. Our predicament is that we can have a subjective perception of things that has nothing to do with the objective reality anymore. It can be propped up merely by a system of rationalizations.

In fact, even at this juncture, some of us can already question what this objective reality really is. This is the likely question of those who believe more in themselves than in God, of those who rely on reason while neglecting the faith.

For those who have faith, they can manage to escape the grip of their rational and sentimental subjectivity to go into an objective world outside of themselves. Without faith, one opens himself to the possibility of being invincibly imprisoned in his own world.

Simplicity helps us accept and live the faith. It’s what makes us children who accept things first, who allow ourselves to be guided and taught, before asking questions, not out of unbelief but rather for greater understanding.

Remember what our Lord said about the kingdom of heaven. He went as far as to say that it is for little children precisely because of their simplicity: “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me. For the kingdom of heaven is for such.” (Mt 19,14)

We need to devise an interior mechanism, more spiritual than material, to keep ourselves like children even as we grow in worldly knowledge and skills, and prone to thinking that we can already live by ourselves, independently of God.

This mechanism can include anything that fosters our presence of God all throughout the day, the practice of rectifying our intention and relating everything that we do to God. We have to break the barrier of awkwardness and incompetence in this regard. We actually have the means. What’s missing is our will to use this mechanism.

And lest we think simplicity is naivete, and gullibility, let’s remind ourselves of what our Lord said: “Be wise as serpents and simple as doves.” (Mt 10,16) Simplicity would not be true simplicity if it does not come with cleverness and shrewdness.

Our Lord himself, the epitome of simplicity, is also the epitome of shrewdness. Remember how he read men’s minds, and formed his statements according to what he knew!

That may be a difficult act to follow, but we can always try. We have life itself, with all its cultures, civilizations and our ever-expanding personal experiences, to teach us how to be both clever and simple as our Lord wants us to be.

But we should always be aware of our need to develop this virtue of simplicity. We cannot take this duty for granted, because the logic of our flesh and the logic of the world tend to complicate us.

The false glitter of the celebrity world, the escape mechanisms of sex and drugs, the anomalies of abortion, contraception, same-sex unions, etc., indicate the extent to which our complications have worsened. We are actually ripe for a disaster unless we change.