(Because I'm away, I'm re-using a column that first ran in February 2000.)
        I don't remember having kiddie cars or scooters when I was a kid. And skateboards hadn't been invented.
        But I did have a tricycle. It was blue. A real trike, the British kind, with a chain driving the rear wheels. Once I got it, I could go out on the road for a ride with my parents. They had to ride slowly, granted, but we could go together.
        Inevitably, though, I grew too big for it.
        By that time I could ride adult bikes. Sort of. With women's bikes, I simply stood on the pedals – I couldn't reach the seat. Men's bikes demanded more contortions – I stood with one leg stuck through the frame, me leaning one way, the bike the other.
        I haven't seen kids ride their parents' bicycles that way since I grew up. Perhaps that indicates our comparative affluence – nowadays, families can afford graded sizes of bicycles.
        Then one day, I got a two-wheeler of my own.
        And I left the old blue tricycle behind.

Stages on the journey
        We all understand that process, at the childhood level. You leave the old teddy bear, so that you can lace on skates for hockey. You give up the girl next door for the blonde bombshell, and you give up the bombshell for the girl who becomes your wife. Or for the guy who becomes your husband.
        You give up roving, for fidelity.
        It's part of growing up. We call it maturity.
        So why do we have so much difficulty applying the same lesson to spiritual growth?
        All too often, we feel as if we're betraying the truth if we give up ideas taught to us when we were children. I don't mean to belittle children, but children aren't adults. They can't ride adult bicycles yet, and they can't handle adult understandings of faith yet. So we teach them a simplified version. Hopefully, these simplified versions won't prevent them from absorbing a bigger and broader perception of God.

Fuller understanding
        Adults have never – from the beginning of time – told their children everything they know. About Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. About sex, work, or money.
        So why should we assume that what we were told about God, way back in Sunday school, was the ultimate truth? It was a beginning, a launching pad, a stepping stone. To move ahead means leaving that stepping stone behind.
        A friend described some of the crises in her family. “I don't have any faith any more,” she said, sounding almost guilty about it.
        I must have looked skeptical. She doesn't act like a woman floundering about trying to find meaning and purpose in her life.
        She explained: “I can't – no, I won't – believe in believe in a God who does these things to us.”
        Good for her. The God she doesn't believe in is the beginner God she was taught about in her childhood. She's finally leaving her tricycle behind.