Do You Have the Faith to Grow into a More Complex Faith?

It takes faith to grow. There's comfort in the Beginning Simplicity of Christianity, and most people stay there.

For many aspects of life there is a simplicity on the other side of complexity.

But in order to get to that second, more deep and profound simplicity, one must first grow beyond the initial simplicity to discover and comprehend complexity.

There will come a point where you must level up from the fundamentals. You have to start with the basics, but you oughtn’t stay there.

There is the original simplicity of a thing, but it is there to serve as merely the onramp to lead you into something deeper, more complicated, more nuanced and skilled.

The other day I wrote about this process and describe it as:

(Beginning) Simplicity —> (Deeper) Complexity —> (Profound) Simplicity

By way of unpacking the Beginning Simplicity of Christianity I shared a handful of theological ideas that serve as a kind of Christianity 101. Things such as God being Creator; Israel being called to reveal Yahweh to the world; Jesus being seen as the long-awaited Messiah, and so on.

Peaking (and Remaining) at Beginning Simplicity

The risk, though, is that for many Christians they view these 101 ideas as the end-all-be-all of spiritual thought. Rather than seeing them as foundations upon which we can build more complex ideas, they are seen as the end goal. Like I wrote the other day, many (most?) evangelical churches thrive at teaching these basics, but that’s about as far as they get.

Why is that? A number of factors, I imagine.