“Why does everything have to be so complicated?” These were the words to a pop song hitting the charts in recently, and it is a question that I have asked myself on occasion.  A quick internet search indicates over 2300 web sites asking this very same question.  Do you find yourself seeing things as being complicated?   It seems that as we grow up we tend to allow this to happen to us, the older, the more so.  A question was posed to adults and kindergarten students that went like this, “What is stronger than God, more evil than Satan, poor people have it, rich people need it, and if you eat it, you will die.”  Do you know what it is?  Kindergarten children responded correctly within seconds of being asked, while adults pondered it at length, many having to give up.  The answer?  Nothing…

Why do we have to make things complicated?  The world is complex enough for us to have to add to it.  Perhaps we feel a necessity to complicate things in order to give them some sort of validity.  How ridiculous is that?  Take religion, for example.  It is recorded that there are 22 major religions practiced in the world.  One of those, Christianity, has hundreds, if not thousands of splinter groups or denominations, determined to follow Christ as best they can.  In them we find creeds, catechisms, and doctrinal teachings unique to their beliefs, many of which that are based on tradition.  My question is this, “Does it really need to be this complicated?” 

On three occasions in the gospel accounts we are told by Jesus how simple it really was.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, strength, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  On these two commandments depend the Law and the prophets.  (Matthew 22:40)  If we can only do these, Jesus says, all the rest will fall into place.  In Luke 10:28, Jesus told a “certain lawyer” who responded with these statements, “If you do this, you will live.”  The man’s original question was “What shall I do to inherit eternal life”.  Was it really all that complicated?  Is it really all that complicated today?  Only if we allow it to be so!!

Copyright © 2007, Nolan P. Rutter