Oz. Narnia. Wonderland. Never-Never Land. Consider our myths and fairytales, and you’ll see immediately that we humans crave magic. A deep, long-lost part of us must believe in it: decade after decade we teach these stories to our children. At a young age, we learn that if you shove aside the coats in your armoire, you will walk straight into a snowy kingdom where all your courage will be needed to fight the White Queen. Or that if a tornado strikes your house, you will land on a yellow brick road that takes you to the Wizard. Or that if you fall through a hole after being hurried there by a rabbit, you will find yourself in the midst of an epic battle between kindness and jealousy. Courage and magic intertwine at the core of our favorite childhood stories. My own favorite story, Charlotte’s Web, relies on the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief in farm animals’ ability to converse.
How does it happen that gradually such belief fades? Last month my three-year-old niece told me about a pink-and-blue tent she received for her birthday. When I asked her favorite thing about it, she replied, “Probably the lift-up door because I can lift it up and see what’s going on in there so I know if I want to play in it or go somewhere else with Mommy.” While I’m sure my niece knows that whatever might be “going on in there” is strictly her imagination, I’m betting she’d be an easy sell on all things magical. After all, to the young brain, both Santa Claus and rainbows are magical. How did exactly the toys you wanted appear under the tree sometime during the night on Christmas Eve? Somehow Santa must’ve done it. How does light shooting through suspended water droplets cause a bursting forth of colors in the same order every single time? Somehow God must’ve done it.
When it comes to faith, instead of harboring a childlike willingness to believe in magic, we enter into these ridiculous adult arguments about old earth versus new earth, or literal versus figurative. Those conversations might be enjoyable or even faith-building to some, but when they split friendships and churches—as they often do—something is wrong. Consider the words of Jesus in the Book of Mark: Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it (Mark 10:14b-15, NLT). Can you imagine children arguing whether Jesus turned water into wine or grape juice? Whether the Flood actually killed everything except that which was literally on the ark? Kids eat up Bible stories: they’re pure magic. You hear a lot more cries of “Cool!” than snorts of “This is obviously not meant to be taken literally” when you teach children’s Sunday school. And clearly, this is what Jesus is after—unbridled enthusiasm and belief in all things magically God. Luckily for most of us, Jesus doesn’t say, “Anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a theologian will never enter it.”
Am I taking issue with the discipline of theology? Certainly not. Am I suggesting that all sophisticated and/or inquiry-driven considerations of God should be quashed? Not at all. But I do wonder why we can’t go back to our child selves and be willing to accept a little more magic at face value. A fourteen-year-old Middle Eastern girl who’d never had sex in gave birth to God’s child? Let’s just go with it. As we’ve learned from the oft-quoted passage, Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see (Hebrews 11:1, NLT). What is that if not a definition of believing in magic? So what if we can’t see God? Let’s just believe he’s there. We’ve never seen the wind or Neptune either, and we believe they’re out there. Maybe it’s time to peek back in that armoire with the children and see what they teach us about God.
