Childlike Faith: Why Education Can Weaken Our Trust in God

Editor’s note – Klaus Meyer noticed something many of us sense but rarely admit: believers with little material security often worship with abandon, while those of us with more education and control over our lives tend to hold God at arm’s length. He traces this to Jesus’ ministry, when the simple heard Him gladly and the sophisticated did not. We’re running this piece because it calls for honest self-examination, not a glance at someone else’s church.

The Worship of Simple Faith

Jesus said that we must worship God in spirit and in truth. (John 4:23-24)

Recently, one of my friends mentioned that he had seen believers on a mission trip in Central America worship with their whole being. He sensed that there was none who seemed disengaged like we often see it our own churches, and may even have been guilty ourselves. He said that these simple people really WORSHIPPED.

Why is that?

Actually, this is not new at all. In Jesus’ time, the simple people heard Jesus gladly while the sophisticated people did not. (Mark 12:37) And even the prophets of old railed against the Israelites that they worshipped God with their lips, but that their hearts were far from Him. (Isaiah 29:13)

The prophet was not talking about the simple people, he talked about the rulers and the educated, privileged people. That is the same pattern we see today. Before going any further, I would like to repeat something important: When I am talking about faith, I am not talking about the saving faith that we need to be saved, for salvation is a gift from God. (Ephesians 2:8) I am talking about the faith we need in this life, when the walls are closing in and everything looks hopeless.

Editor’s note – The gap Klaus draws between the simple and the sophisticated isn’t a case against education – Scripture is full of learned servants of God. The danger is letting competence quietly replace dependence.

The Two-Class Pattern of Faith

People in Third World countries are generally divided into two-class societies, there is no middle class. In general, the privileged class is well educated while the lower class is not. Just like in Jesus’ time, the people in the lower class know that they need the Lord in all circumstances and they are close to Him, while the educated class seems self-sufficient and they see God as someone who is not involved in every-day activities. The poor people know that they have very little control over their circumstances and their lives, and they are always aware that they need God; they have the faith in Him that little children put in their parents.

On the other hand, well educated people build everything about having control over their own lives, which causes our faith in God to take a back seat. We tend to be OK with the belief that we will go to Heaven when we die, but don’t see God working in our daily lives. Then, when we get into a serious situation where all our confidence crumbles, we don’t have the faith we need to keep us from panicking. If we don’t see God’s work in our daily lives, we may never know what we have been missing and may even fault God for not hearing our desperate prayers when we are distressed. Poor believers do not have that problem, for they are always aware that they need God every minute of their lives.

Editor’s note – Poverty forces a daily reliance that comfort quietly erodes. The real question isn’t how much we have, but whether we’ve let it answer prayers only God was meant to answer.

How Education Can Erode Faith

It seems that the loss of faith is not a static process, but rather a gradual one, where we start out with the faith we have at the beginning of our walk with God, and then gradually lose that child-like faith as we mature in life. As we get more education and life experiences, we incorrectly learn that God does not work in every situation. We may believe that God is able, but that He is not interested in the minute details of our daily lives, and that He may leave us to our own devices when the going gets tough. Sadly, most formal education belittles or even negates God’s constant presence in our lives, and that sense of His absence grows stronger as time passes, making us lukewarm Christians. (Revelation 3:16) That is when the apostle Paul’s statement has run its full course, where he says that our natural mind is enmity with God, (Romans 8:7) because our mind will discredit anything that science cannot explain, thus killing our faith.

Editor’s note – Paul’s warning in Romans 8:7 isn’t about intelligence, it’s about allegiance. A trained mind can still bow to God, or an untrained one still resist Him. The drift Klaus describes is spiritual, not academic.

Recovering a Child-Like Faith

How then can we prevent this downward spiral? By counteracting how our faith deteriorates. A believer with no formal education generally has no problem accepting God’s supernatural ability and His doings; believing this and not doubting comes naturally to him. During the maturing process, we learn that some things we attributed to God’s doing, could be explained in natural ways, causing doubts to form in our minds. Doubts in times of trials will cause our faith to fail when we need it most. We need to continuously educate our minds with the attributes of God. We need to know what He says about Himself, and that He is simultaneously in the past, present and future, as well as in every place of His creation: He just IS; He is the great I AM. This process needs to go on throughout our lives, and the more we learn about natural things of this life, the deeper we need to dig into understanding God, who inhabits eternity. (Isaiah 57:15) If our spiritual understanding is growing in tandem with our natural education, we will never lack the faith we need to trust God in all situations.

Are mature believers then, doomed, who lack the faith they need to trust God in all situations? Not at all, except that we need a crash course in what it takes to get that childlike faith, which Jesus meant when He said: Unless you are converted and become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. (Matthew 18:3)

A Word from the Editor
Jesus didn’t ask His disciples to master a theology of childlike faith; He told them to become like children (Matthew 18:3). That’s not anti-intellectual, it’s anti-self-sufficiency. Whatever we know about God, we still need Him daily.

Editor Comment: Klaus, this is a clear-eyed reminder that childlike dependence on God isn't something we outgrow as we mature – thank you for writing it so plainly.