Three-Year-Old Theology and Other Tidbits of Wisdom

My wife and I have a three-year-old little boy. Like most three-year-olds, he loves "Cat in the Hat," "Arthur," and the Wiggles (he can't understand why they can't come to our house or why we can't go to "Australa" [Australia] to see them).

Lately, though, he's also been asking a lot of questions about heaven: Where is heaven? How long do we stay in heaven? Can you talk to people in heaven? Can you leave a message? He is also curious about God: When was God a baby? Why does God live in heaven? How can God be in heaven and here too?

Yesterday, we were telling him about a friend getting baptized. We tried to explain that when someone asks Jesus into their heart, they let other people know that by being baptized (being good Baptists, we gave him the full immersion version). He then said what sounded like a three-year-old version of the "Sinner's Prayer": "Jesus, I've done bad things."

I doubt very seriously, even given his evident genius, that our little boy understands the concepts of sin and grace and salvation, but I do believe that there is not a doubt in his mind that God exists, that heaven is real, and that he loves Jesus (because "Jesus is an important guy"). What he reminds me of on a regular basis is how skeptical and even cynical I can be sometimes, as if by virtue of being a professor, I have to have clear, empirical evidence to believe in anything. Faith is just the opposite: it is the evidence of things unseen, and without it, it is impossible to please God.

My little boy affords me the opportunity to see the world anew with astonished, accepting eyes, and to look beyond the concrete into the unseen with equally astonished and accepting eyes. No wonder Jesus said in Matthew 18:3, "Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven."