After 5 weeks of living with young children, I’ve been again reminded that it takes special wisdom and expertise to communicate effectively with toddlers. Once instructions and warnings have been given, young parents repeatedly say, “Do you understand?”
A little person might look her daddy square in the eye and say, “Yes, Daddy.” But later, when behavior proves she didn’t get it after all, both parties get frustrated. Sometimes dumbing it down enough for little ones to understand is a tall order.
I know of one parent who does that with perfection: Father God. The main channel of his instruction and warning is his Word. Through that he communicates from a heart of love and because of that does a flawless job of dumbing it all down for us. But in the Bible he lets us know that we’re quite different than he is, and as a result, even dumbed-down information can be hard for us to absorb.
In 1 Corinthians Paul writes, “We know in part.” Ain’t that the truth!
Our knowing-part is probably only 1% of what he actually tells us. As it is, we misinterpret passages of Scripture, reading it one way one year and flipping it the next. We also ask questions of our Father in prayer and end up trusting answers that turn out to be only what we wish he’d said to us.
The dilemma of not thoroughly understanding what God tells us seems not to have any solution. The problem is that we’re finite, flawed humans unable to understand an infinite, perfect Father, which is a dispiriting truth, in terms of communication. So, what can be done?
Just like a toddler who hears his daddy’s repeated instructions and eventually learns to understand, we, too, can get God’s drift better and better through his repetition. We might have to hear something over and over, but with enough patient listening, we gradually grow less dumb.
But it gets even better than that. Graciously our Father has let us know that one day he won’t have to dumb it down for us at all, because he will have transformed us into know-it-alls. Not that we’ll know everything about him personally, but we’ll be able to understand his Word and will know how to interpret it accurately.
All the scriptural debates and mysterious questions will suddenly have explanations, and even those of us who are theologically uneducated will know as much as highly esteemed biblical scholars.
In the mean time, all of us who are trying to communicate with young children will just have to lovingly and patiently dumb it down for them, patterning ourselves after our loving and patient Father God who does the same for us.
“We are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him.” (1 John 3:2)
Thank you. A reminder I share often is that we are never “Adults in Christ”. We remain children, His children. We can be mature children, obedient children and growing children but always children.
May God bless your ministry to those whose lives you speak into. May He give to you a prosperous and peaceful new year. Thank you for remaining faithful to His call on your life. Claudia
Not only are we always children, we are sheep, prone to wander. So thankful for the Great Shepherd.