Having reached the mature age of 4, my niece has gained a new level of inquisitiveness. “Why?” and “What?” have become her two favorite questions in conversation. While she has supplied me with many laughs, what continually amazes me is the intellectual depth her little mind is capable of producing. In the past few weeks she has asked the following questions:
“Why doesn’t God feed all the children?”
“Does Jesus ever get tired?”
“Why can’t I see Jesus?”
“If God is Jesus’ Daddy, then how is Jesus God?” (my paraphrase)
“What does God look like?”
I marvel at her insight and am often stumped at how to answer her. How do you explain the problem of evil, the nature of the Trinity, or where Jesus is to a child? How do you explain it to an adult, for that matter?! For in reality, the questions we ask at 4 are the same questions we ask at 34. We just spruce them up with more “adult-like” language:
“Why would a good God allow suffering?”
“How can you believe there is 1 God in 3 persons?”
“Is there proof God exists?”
No matter our age and religious beliefs, we seem hardwired to ask questions about God. Even renowned Atheist Richard Dawkins has devoted his time and attention to answering questions about the Deity he discredits. In fact, throughout history humanity has asked questions and sought answers about God, His existence and character.
Having learned a lesson from my niece, this causes me to ask, “Why?” Why are we constantly asking questions about who, what, or if God exists? Could it be that we’re hardwired to ask questions about God’s existence and character because He does exist? What if our questions themselves are part of the answer, a tangible evidence of God inviting us to discover the answers we seek?
The writer of Ecclesiastes tells us that God “has put eternity into man’s heart.”[1] And Paul informs us in his letter to the Romans,
“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, having been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”[2]
If the God the Bible describes exists and wants us to know Him, it stands to reason He would build in us that desire, causing us to ask questions about who He is and what He is like. This is exactly what we see, both on the pages of history and the pages of our own stories. Maybe the questions my niece is asking aren’t so surprising after all. Maybe they’re simply the fingerprints of the God who created her for Himself. Maybe her questions, and ours, about God find their answers in God.
You are Yourself the answer. Before Your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?[3]
I totally agree. I think our hardwiring is not just a misfiring of the neurons, but instead is a homing beacon. It would only make sense that a designer would have given us a GPS to find our way home.
How would your niece know anything at all about god or Jesus if not told by someone else? If this kind of belief (in the divine) were ‘hardwired’, then we should expect to find the same kind of belief wherever people are.
Is this what we find?
No.
We find this kind of belief very fragmented but correlated to a remarkable degree to geography.
Why might this be?
For the same reason your niece has: because children are exposed to the beliefs of their social setting.
That acting on this fractured and often contrary and conflicting religious belief (in all kinds of descriptions of ‘the divine’) causes real harm to real people in real life is the reason why many of us like Dawkins comment about it and try to reduce this pernicious religious influence that so many people exert over so many children.
Actually, this doesn’t jibe with the neuroscientific theories on the subject. Children are wired to find causation in things, which naturally leads to the suspicion of metaphysical forces, regardless of what they’re taught.