Perhaps the most compelling defense of childlikeness that I have encountered comes from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. In this spiritual autobiography, Chesterton recounts his path to discovering the truth of the Christian creed, and a major theme throughout is his resultant return to an outlook of childlike wonder. Chesterton says much about returning to the “garden of childhood”¹ after becoming a Christian, and we can scarcely plumb the depths of this idea here, but let’s briefly consider one particularly intriguing insight:
A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales—because they find them romantic.²
We have all observed the astounding ease with which young children are entertained. In fact, age and ability for entertainment demonstrate a strong inverse relationship. The reason for this is simple: to an infant, everything is new. A baby lacks the experience to understand its surroundings, it is still learning the myriad cause and effect relationships of its environment, it is unable to predict resulting outcomes of various actions. To a baby, even the mundane—such as a door opening—is magical. Only when we grow old and disenchanted does our world come to appear thoroughly ordered and predictable. We begin to describe its workings in such dull terms as “natural laws.” Ironically, it is when we become supposedly wiser that we lose our childish intuition.
But isn’t it appropriate that we should grow out of our childish imaginings and adopt a more “realistic” view of the world? Of course, increasing our knowledge of the world we inhabit has many positive benefits that properly contribute to growing up. However, our notion of the origin of this incredible world has major implications on our experience of it. In a world created by an intentional act of a personal God, our sense of wonder is enhanced, not diminished, as we gain more knowledge of it—the childish intuition is appropriate, and becomes more clearly so with each new morsel of truth acquired. In the alternative world set before us by modern scientific materialism, the childish intuition is quaint and silly. Here, knowledge consists entirely of the ability to describe an observable natural process, call it a law, and be satisfied that the matter is settled. In this world the childish intuition has no value for properly adjusted grown-ups, thus education necessarily involves its suppression.
Scripture is quite clear about which of these worldviews is accurate—make no mistake, the materialistic assumptions that underly mainstream media and academia are absolutely incompatible with a Biblical worldview. But how much more wonderful does creation appear in light of revealed scripture! The heavens declare God’s glory, it is true, but only because they are His declaration, quite literally (Psalm 19:1). They along with the earth and the very life within our bodies were spoken into existence at the beginning of time; we are not wrong to say that creation is the language of God (Genesis 1). Under the materialistic outlook, conversely, all the wonders of creation are simply the results of time and chance acting on preexistent matter. The heavens become dull and sterile, life itself becomes merely physical.
J.R.R Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, was well acquainted with Chesterton’s work and explored similar themes in his own.³ A stirring example is found in The Fellowhip of the Ring when the protagonist, Frodo, arrives in the Elvish land of Lothlórien. Frodo’s experience in this fictional world provides a practical example of how we might properly view God’s real one.
The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful…he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree’s skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.⁴
The objects in Lothlórien seem to Frodo to be “conceived”, “drawn”, and full of life. The contents of our world, too, possess these qualities. We may delight in them as Frodo delights in the trees of Lothlórien.
Chesterton famously said that man has forgotten who he is.⁵ One symptom of this amnesia is a type of blindness from which we all suffer. Jesus, during His earthly ministry, restored the sight of several blind men, but these miracles were of far greater significance than simple acts of kindness (Mark 8:22-25; John 9:1-7). What He did bodily for those happy few individuals He will do spiritually for us, in restoring the part of our vision that was lost after the fall. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). On that day, I am confident, the intuition of our inner child will not seem foolish in the least. It may be, in fact, that the wildest imaginings of the most fanciful child will appear positively sober next to the wonders of the new heavens and the new earth. The veil will be peeled back, the residual scales will fall from our eyes, and we will behold the glorious perfection of God’s true reality.
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter 9, “Authority and the Adventurer”
- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter 4, “The Ethics of Elfland”
- Holly Ordway, “Tolkien’s Reading of Chesterton,” Gilbert Magazine, March/April 2021
- J.R.R Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 6, “Lothlórien”
- Chesterton (see footnote 1)
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