The Beauty of Simplicity

One of the things that surprised people most about Jesus when He started teaching on earth was the simplicity of His message. The intellectuals of the day were not only surprised, but annoyed that His simple message attracted simple people – like uneducated fishermen from Galilee. The Old Testament is full of complicated prophecies and mysteries that the religious leaders had spent their lives debating; they thought that the truth was something that only clever people could access. One of the many reasons why Jesus offended them was that his message was unerringly simple.

It was not only simple, however, it was difficult. Starting from John the Baptist through to the end of Jesus’ ministry, God’s message was “repent, believe, love”. For the self-righteous Jews who thought they already knew who God was and had no desire to love the simple, sinful people around them, this was an extremely difficult message. What irked them even more was that this message could actually be found in the Old Testament – the very scriptures they took so much pride in knowing!

While the Jews spent hours creating new laws that made keeping God’s law ever more complicated, Jesus declared that the whole law could be reduced to two simple commandments – ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind’ and ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matt. 22:37-40). These were not new laws – He quoted the Old Testament when stating them – but they cut right to the heart. The scribes and Pharisees enjoyed intellectual arguments that covered up their lack of real devotion to the God they claimed to serve. The simplicity of the message cut right through their cleverly crafted ‘righteousness’ and revealed the depravity of their hearts.

The simple people who had not spent years studying the scriptures or crafting clever arguments responded differently. John the Baptist’s simple message: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” attracted tax collectors and soldiers who received the message and asked what they ought to do to show true repentance (Luke 3:10-14). John’s answers were simple – in essence he told them to “go and sin no more”, just as Jesus told those who came to Him for help (John 5:14; 8:11).

Besides the Jews who contended with Jesus, there was another group of clever people around at that time in history – the Greek philosophers. Paul encountered this group in his time at Athens; they loved a good debate so much that they invited him to give a public lecture about what he believed (Acts 17:16-34). Yet it seems that very few of them came away from that lecture with anything more than a few interesting ideas to debate further.

In first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says that many Greeks could not receive the gospel because they thought it was ‘foolishness’ – i.e. far too simple to be worthy of their attention (1 Cor. 1:18-25). Unfortunately, it seems that many of the Corinthian believers reverted to their Greek mindset and tried to make their faith more complicated than the simple message that Paul first preached to them. He therefore warns them in his second letter: But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Cor. 11:3).

The simplicity of God’s message is thus contrasted sharply with the intellectual cleverness of man and Satan. Two thousand years later, nothing has changed. The message of the gospel remains the same and mankind is still trying to get away from this simple, difficult message by making things complicated. As it was then, the problem manifests itself both in unbelievers and believers today.

Unbelieving philosophers and scientists heap up intellectual arguments that are ever more complicated and difficult to follow to try and prove that there is no God. Even unbelievers that attend churches, and therefore admit that God exists, use complicated religious rites and ceremonies to make themselves feel righteous. These intellectual arguments and religious rules are ultimately an attempt to dodge the first part of the gospel: repent and believe.

Although Christians entered into the simplicity of the gospel when we first believed, the threat of our human intellects smothering the simple message remains. The command to love one another, from which flows joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23) is simple, but difficult. It is much easier to debate each other about obscure passages of scripture, or discuss politics and other earthly matters, than it is to love as Jesus did. Paul especially warned Titus, whose job was to establish and strengthen churches, to avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and useless (Titus 3:9-11).

Where does our insatiable desire to make everything complicated come from? If the way of true righteousness and joy is so simple, why don’t we just follow it? I think the answers to these questions are closely linked. Complicated ideas or ‘secret knowledge’ that only a select few understand appeal directly to our pride. By contrast, obeying a simple but difficult message humbles us, as we so frequently fall short of full obedience.

The pride of the unbeliever is boosted by intellectual arguments against God – they are too intelligent to be duped into believing the ‘foolishness’ of the gospel message. Yet even among believers, the issue of pride continues to stalk us. The Lord might have humbled us when we first repented and believed, but now our pet doctrine, special knowledge of the Bible, or clever interpretations of prophecy make us proud. We know things that other people don’t – just look at all those foolish people over there who haven’t figured it out yet!

Just as Satan used craftiness to deceive Eve into believing that she could be ‘wise’, false prophets and teachers exploit our weakness in this area to draw us away from the simplicity that is in Christ. Those spreading secular and political messages use the same tactics, because they work! In our modern world, we don’t even have to leave home to find people who will make us feel clever by revealing their secret knowledge to us and thus letting us into their exclusive club of enlightened people – they are just a click away on the Internet.

Since we engage with these people outside the traditional boundaries of the church, it is easier than ever for the false prophet or teacher to cover up any sins or lack of love towards people. They just have to deliver a message to a camera and perhaps a select live audience of their followers; no one joining online will know whether their lives reflect the character of Jesus Christ. Similarly, secular misinformation peddlers easily obscure their motives and character. We therefore face the same age-old temptations that Eve and the Corinthians encountered, but with a modern twist that plays into the hands of the ultimate tempter.

The danger that we face today is almost enough to make one want to switch off the WiFi altogether and go live in a nice little offline cave. Going offline for a bit might help in the short-term (like trying an Internet fast), but the Internet is part of the world that we live in today and is thus hard to avoid. Many of us use the Internet every day for work and cannot easily extract ourselves from social media and WhatsApp groups. The Internet also contains good things and opportunities to reach out to people we would otherwise not be able to contact. So if we keep using the Internet, how can we protect ourselves from getting sucked into these ‘enlightened’ clubs of online followers?

When it comes to Christian online content, I find that a useful first step is to put hard limits on the number of teachers you listen to. First prize is only to listen to people you know personally – like the pastor of a church you have attended, whose life you have had some time to observe. This is not fool proof, unfortunately, because people may change over time and if you are not in real fellowship with them then you may not be able to tell which way they are headed. Discernment must be applied to every teaching, even those delivered by people you trust – no one is infallible but God.

There are nonetheless opportunities on the Internet to find new ministries that might be difficult to find locally (e.g. apologetics ministries) and vast amounts of good information on secular topics of interest. If you venture out to look for these, be extra careful. If possible, get a second opinion on that teaching or ministry from another trusted source. If the information involves facts and figures, look them up using online fact-checking services. For Christian content, their use of scriptures must be checked carefully. Social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) rewards content producers that garner many followers, so exaggerating to make something seem shocking, even if it is not the main thrust of the message, is one way to increase your follower count. The first hint of exaggeration or misinformation should be a red flag – that person is gathering followers by exploiting our weakness to tell or to hear some new thing (Acts 17:21).

All of these practical tips may protect us from some of the more obvious online tricksters, but they can still fail. Our greatest defence is to return to the beauty of God’s simplicity that we knew when we first believed. One of the reasons why we are susceptible to these attacks is that we have a thirst for knowledge, yet God calls us to hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt 5:6). Often we have enough knowledge in a situation to know what is the right thing to do – to forgive rather than hold a grudge, for example. More knowledge does not necessarily help us to do the right thing in God’s eyes.

This is not to say that following the Lord is to live without thinking. The intellectual atheist may think that believers operate without applying rational thought to their faith, but that is incorrect. God created our brains and minds and expects us to use them, especially by discerning between good and bad information. Logic and reason ultimately belong to God, after all. What the unbelieving Jews and Greeks did not understand, however, is that God’s simplicity (His ‘foolishness’) is wiser than men (1 Cor. 1:25).

The simple concepts of love, grace, joy and faith (to name a few) are like unfathomably deep wells. The person observing a well from the outside sees only the surface of the water. It is easy to measure the diameter of the surface and even take some water out to drink or wash. It takes no special skills to do so – even a child can do it. Yet if you dived into the well, you would realise that there is much more water down there than you could possibly have known if you had stayed at the top.

This is why children understand the message of the gospel – the idea of doing something wrong (sin), repenting and being forgiven for it, and then loving the one who forgave you is easy to grasp and simple to apply to your life. Yet after that first step is taken, God invites us to dive into the well and go deeper with Him, so that we can be immersed in love, grace, joy and faith, among others. Pursuing these simple, beautiful things is difficult, because we are still sinful people who want to occupy our lives and minds with easy, entertaining things. Yet if we set our minds on diving deeper into God, then the clever little theories and complicated intellectual ideas start to seem like unimportant trivia. When someone lets you in on some secret knowledge or shocking revelation, it won’t hold your interest because it is so clearly shallow and man-made when compared with the depth and beauty of God’s simple things.

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor. 1:20-25).