if I had believed in Santa Claus as a child--
really believed he was real,
hoped for him to come,
wondered if it was he I heard in the night before Christmas--
then when I learned otherwise,
maybe I would have learned that just believing something doesn't make it true.
That wishing with all my might doesn't make it more real.
That thinking the creaking house is the step is a jolly old benefactor wouldn't make it true.
That envisioning him climbing down the chimney doesn't mean he is climbing down the chimney
because
he does not even exist.
I would have learned that stories concocted in my mind have no bearing on reality. And that not all stories told by others are true.
Exposed lies can teach truth. Maybe I can learn the lesson right now, as an adult. "When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things." Thinking of myself as the person I wish to be doesn't make me that person. In fact, I have minimal control over how people see me. Wishing for something until I believe it could really happen does not change the quite different facts, and if I'd deal with life in more currency of reality I'd experience fewer disappointments, I suspect.
It sounds like the shattering of childhood style fantasy could lead to doubting God.
But that's a very shallow assumption, because concocted cultural icons are not the same as truths of ancient historical and present validation. A movie "The invention of lying" attempted to poke fun at faith, but undermined itself at every turn by its inability to present a world free of abstract truths, subtlety, and everything else the writers seemed to consider lies.
Letting go of fantasy logic does make for a more intellectual seeking of the invisible holy God.
"For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known. Now these three remain: faith, hoe, and love. But the greatest of these is love." I Cor 13:9-13 HCSV
