A Child’s faith is purer than ours, and his believing is faster than the grown ups.

Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it (Mk 10:15). This is a grossly misunderstood word of God. For most of the people the most important quality of a child is his innocence. Children are not as innocent as we think. A two year old child is as clever as his age demands. That child can cry to get his demand fulfilled. That child can hide his toys so that his brother or sister won’t take it. That child can think of so many things as her needs demand. So, we cannot say that a child is completely innocent. A child is only more innocent than a grown up in this aspect.

There is another aspect of innocence, i.e. not doing anything wrong. Here too, though children are not responsible for their acts, they act in harmful ways to others. They pinch others. They hit others. They shout at other children. They do all these things whenever the situation requires them to do so. So, the most important quality of a child is not innocence. Rather the most important quality of a child is his belief in others.

Believing without an iota of doubt:-

A child believes without an iota of doubt whatever somebody says. Tell him that inside the TV there are people who do all those things and he will believe. Tell him that the little dog you see there is going to school and he will believe. Once, I told my son that one of his brothers was inside the mobile phone and that’s why he could hear his voice, and my son believed it. Once, I told my daughter that sleep could be seen in the mouth. Then, whenever she felt sleepy, she would open her mouth and ask me to see if sleep was there. Children never doubt whatever somebody says.

Believing completely:-

A child does not remove anything from what is told to him. His belief in what is told is complete. But grown ups know how to believe with a pinch of salt what others say.

Believing quickly:-

A child does not take time to believe what somebody says. The moment he hears, he believes it. A grown up does not believe immediately. He takes time to believe what somebody says.

Believing without analyzing:-

A child does not analyze and does not come to a conclusion whether the thing told him is credible or not. Without considering any aspect of it, he believes what is told him.

Willing to bear any hardship to get what he wants:-

A child is least bothered about the hardships he has to face in order to get what he desires. A child will forego food. A child will forego any toy in order to get the toy he wants. A child will get beaten by his parents, but he will not leave the thing he desires. A child will not calculate the energy and time he has to spend in order to get what he wants. A child, in order to get the thing he desires, sacrifices everything else completely. A grown up, even though he desires a thing, calculates everything and if he has to make a little sacrifice in order to get what he desires, he forgets his desire rather than his other pleasures.

This is the nature which Jesus wants us to learn from children. He wants us to believe whatever he says without doubting, without removing anything from it, without taking time, without analyzing and without holding on to those things which can stop us from following Jesus.

The disciples were people who believed Jesus in this way. As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea-for they were fishermen. And he said to them,” Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” IMMEDIATELY they left their nets and followed him (Mt.4:18-20). As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Mathew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him,” Follow me.” And he GOT UP and followed him (Mt.9:9).

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth and he said to him,” Follow me.” And he got up, left everything, and followed him (Lk.5:27, 28). When Jesus called, they did not doubt what good they would get out of it. They believed completely in Jesus and they left their livelihood. They did not take a second to believe what Jesus said. They did not analyze what Jesus said.

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “you lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions (Mk.10:21, 22). This incident is narrated in the Bible immediately after the incident where Jesus asks us to be like children. This young man could not accept Jesus like a child. He analyzed the impact of his call on his life. He was ready to partly follow God, for he always kept the commandments.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him,” I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Lk.9:57-62). Here too, Jesus is explaining how we should be like children if we want to be his followers. The answer to his call must be doubtless, immediate, complete, thoughtless and sacrificing.

Let us pray: Jesus, thank you for enlightening my mind. Thank you for inspiring me to do a lot for you and for my brothers and sisters. Remove all my doubts. Make me quick to respond to you. Take away my nature of analyzing what the Lord of all intelligence speaks. Teach me the triviality of the things which stop me from following you.

- – - written by Adv. Shibu Varghese

God who is all perfect and happy in Himself created man keeping in mind only his happiness and good and well being. For that very reason God is always close to man. He hastens to help and console man in his pains and sorrows. He always wants and takes delight in His relationship with man. God also wishes that man should always maintain his bond with Him.

Throughout the Bible we can find God’s constant intervention lest this bond should break. In order to re-establish the broken relationship between the people of Israel and God, He used to send them prophets from time to time. However, the Bible itself often shows us how man frequently cuts off this relationship.The Israel nation is an example of it. From the history of the people of Israel we can understand what actually happens when man breaks away from God. Then enslavement and capture, and looting and pillage become the order of the day.

In other words human values and justice lose their importance. Man himself becomes worthless. The condition of the Israel nation is described as a civilization where the innocent are sold for a pair of shoes and where the faces of the poor are crushed underfoot in dust. Many of their laws and practices ignored all values of human life. In short, when the bond between God and man is shattered, a culture of evil and wickedness spreads. Therefore this link between God and man is absolutely necessary.

There is in the heart of man an innate yearning for God, because he is created by God and for God. God has never ceased to attract man to Himself. Forgetting this real truth man frequently strays away from God. People may have various reasons for doing so. Religious ignorance, running after riches and comforts of the world, etc. may be cited as examples. Another reason for breaking the bond with God is the sinful state of man who hides from God due to fear of Him or tries to run away from Him after having refused to obey His call.

The book of Genesis chpt. 3 verses 8-10 speaks about this hiding from God. After having sinned our first parents tried to avoid God due to fear. Here we learn that sin shatters man’s relation with God. Today the greatest reason why man is separated from God is his sinful state while he is running after the pleasures of the world. There is one difference between our first parents and the man of today. It is that Adam and Eve realised that they had sinned, but today man has ceased to realise that what he is doing is sinful.

Another reason why man goes away from God is the lack of knowledge about God and forgetting His love. Even though God led the Israelites through the Red sea and fed them in the desert they rejected God very soon. If we consider the New Testament, we find even some of them who had been healed by Jesus and had been helped by Him gave Him up to be crucified. We see Judas, a disciple and chosen Apostle, betraying the Son of God.

The reason for all these is forgetting His infinite love and not trying to know Him. When Judas came to realise who Jesus was and when he remembered His great love he acknowledged his own guilt. That feeling of guilt blinded him and caused his ruin.

Although everything else is progressing today, our relationship with God shows no progress. On the other hand it is decreasing day by day. That is why although the world is progressing in almost everything, morally it is regressing; injustice reigns everywhere. Man against man ,nation against nation is waging war injustly.

In the Acts of the Apostles in chapter 14 we read about Paul and Barnabas, two Apostles who knew and understood the love of Jesus, telling the people whose relationship with God had been broken:” Friends, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.”(Acts 14:15)

Some people, on the other hand have a clear knowledge about God. The Bible makes it explicit.” What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.”(Rom 1:19) The Bible continues, “Though they know God, they did not honour Him as God or give thanks to Him” (Rom1:21).

Their futile thinking and senseless minds have led at least a few away from God. Their proud minds are darkened. Knowing God they act worse than those who do not know Him. Immorality, Injustice and wickedness are growing; and knowingly or unknowingly we are experiencing their evil effects. ’BlackMass’, homosexuality, foeticide, mercykilling, are all offsprings of immorality and injustice.

Some years ago when Pope Paul VI in his encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’ opposed unnatural family planning methods, he was criticised and opposed by many from various fields. Passage of time has proved that his decision was just and right. As a result of the artificial family planning European nations are experiencing lack of successors and posterity. Today when mercy-killing and foeticide are trying to get legal sanction we can understand to what depth morality has been brought low.

As time passes man, with or without knowledge, is in a hurry to cut off his relations with God. Then we must realise that injustice and immorality will raise their heads. As the distance from God increases evil comes closer. Remember God never goes away from man. On the contrary, it is man who goes away by his deeds and thoughts. Distancing himself from God, man ruins himself.

Keeping ourselves close to God, we who are a small part of God’s creation, must attempt to give Him glory, because man has been created for God. Man is the ultimate goal of creation. “Therfore our hearts are restless until they rest in Him” – St.Augustine

- – - written by Joymon Babichen

It is secular to depend on ourselves, but spiritual to act with prudence.

For the one who believes every outcome is the right outcome, there is no decision to be made. However, for the western society which likes to think we have some influence over outcomes, no better way to think about it. This is not limited to western society at all – we all like to think that we have some influence over our outcomes. Isn’t there a contradiction then between the spiritual and the material? We’ll explore this further on.

After establishing the first principle that decisions cannot be judged from their outcomes, we learn that a decision can only be judged by “the light the decision-maker had when making the decision.” In other words, we have to travel back in time to the point where the decision was being made, and look at all the information the decision-maker had. We have to then see how the decision process unfolded, by examining it in light of the six elements of decision quality, which can be applied by anyone in any decision situation:

Appropriate Framing: Think of the decision as similar to taking a photo. Was the decision “frame” too restrictive, or was it too broad to be useful? Did we make assumptions that we ought to have explicitly stated and challenged? Recognizing one’s assumptions requires taking a step back. Most of the time, we narrow our frame too much and don’t zoom out to see how much room there is. At other times, we are so overwhelmed by our lack of focus that we cannot recognize what our decision is. Developing an awareness of when to zoom in and zoom out is at the heart of arriving at the appropriate frame. When discussing our decision frame, it is extremely important not to be trapped by our own rhetoric, and so we have to try our best to use value-neutral language (language that does not evoke value-judgments). For instance, there is a big difference in our emotional reaction when using the word “pollution” over the more neutral “emission.”

Creative Alternatives: Did we find ourselves restricted by the alternatives at hand, or did we make a sincere effort in coming up with creative alternatives? Most of the time, when we have a favored alternative, we jump straight in without reflection. Sometimes, we are so attached to our favorite alternative that we may even be manipulative in making sure it is chosen. Breaking our attachment and giving ourselves room to be creative is necessary in order to find out-of-the-box alternatives.

Clear Values: Did we think about the important sources of value? What is it that is fundamentally important to us? What is instrumental? Do we appreciate all the values that are important and how they relate to each other? Understanding what we want involves understanding ourselves. Did we slow down to reflect on what’s important to us?

Useful Information: Did we try hard enough to resolve the most critical uncertainties in our decision situation? Or did we spend our time gathering useless information that would not help our decision-making? We live in the age of “information explosion” thanks to the Internet, and can easily be overwhelmed by it. Instead of trying to get as much data as possible on anything and everything, we can direct our attention to the information that affects what we value the most. More fundamentally, it is important for the decision maker to recognize that information is a state of mind. There are no probabilities out there in the universe that can be discovered by plunging into a haystack of data. Probabilities are a measure of our beliefs about the universe, and they only exist in our head. This distinction helps keep us honest by avoiding misleading terms like “objective probability.”

Sound Reasoning: Were we consistent with our values when using information to come up with the best alternative? Did we contradict our values? This is the only element of decision quality that can be considered “objective.” Given all the same inputs, the process of decision analysis will give us the same answer every time. However, it is rare for two people to have the same inputs. Each individual has different values and different beliefs. Decisions therefore are necessarily subjective and so, if we take the decision-maker out of the decision, the notion of a decision becomes meaningless.

Commitment to Action: While we may do a great decision analysis, when it comes time for the rubber to hit the road, does the car stop? How committed are we as decision-makers to follow through on what we believe to be a good decision? Lack of commitment to action can render the best decision analysis useless.

What else after the decision is made?

You can only judge your own decisions: a consequence of understanding decision analysis is in seeing the logical fallacy of being judgmental. Given the above elements, you can’t possibly judge the quality of another person’s decision, as it’s too hard to get all this information. This is fascinating – even without talking about spirituality, decision analysis brings to the fore the futility of judging other people.

Sunk Cost principle: The past is gone – it isn’t coming back. You cannot hold on to how much you’ve sunk in any calculations on coming out ahead in the future. This brilliant rule knocks out clinging to the past, and incorporates it in our mathematics. In our exams, when students include the sunk cost in their mathematical calculations, they get penalized for making a fundamental mistake! The principle is treated as matter-of-fact, without a second thought given to the huge implications on our lives, which is, as it should be. Why should we spend large chunks of our life regretting the past? The past matters for learning, not for accounting.

Testing our beliefs and values: what if we believed differently – would our decisions change? What if we valued differently – would our decisions change? Do we have to go through all of our values to make a decision? Which values are material to our decision-making (as in, if we change some of our preferences, would our decisions change)? This interaction with our own beliefs and values is invaluable, for it helps loosen our attachment to any one belief and helps create a space of reflection between us and our decisions.

Only when we believe that we have done our best can we let go of all our attachments to the past and the future, and start to be present. When we are fully present, we are free to do our best, at this one instant of time. We are living more fully, more happily.