Complicated or Simple
Introduction: The Complexity of Life
May 31, 2026
Life is complicated. But God is simple. Our hearts long for this. The Holy Trinity is the simple, immense love that we were made for.
Complicated or Simple
Introduction: The Complexity of Life
God so loved the world.
Life is complicated. Life is very complicated—even nature. I was just seeing a photo; they said they have advanced photos of a human cell that they weren’t able to make before, and it’s so complex. And that’s just one tiny cell, and we have so many of them in our body. Just one cell is so complex.
Biologists point out that when you touch one thing in nature, it affects other things in ways that we don’t always realize, because there’s so much complexity in nature.
The Woodpecker and the Butterfly: Signs of Design
Just take one example: the head of a woodpecker. I was just reading about that recently, and the extraordinary engineering of the head of a woodpecker, so that it doesn’t destroy itself in 30 seconds, is really incredible.
There’s this special bone-like material that, I think, is not found in any other animal, but just in the head of a woodpecker. And its tongue—I think it said its tongue is three times longer than its beak, because its tongue wraps around its brain, and it helps in the shock absorbing.
It was talking about how its beak has different hardnesses depending on what part is involved. I think it said the tip of its beak is hard, almost like a diamond, something like that. And even the top and the bottom beak are not exactly together; the bottom is offset, and that makes it work much better.
So, I mean, just in the little head of a woodpecker, how much extraordinary complexity and design there is.
Another famous example is butterflies and what happens in their transformation.
The Complexity of Our Bodies and Psychology
So that’s nature. But in our own body, of course, there’s so much complexity. We don’t notice it as much when we’re young and healthy, but as we get older, and they start giving us all sorts of medicines and stuff like that, we realize how complex things are.
I was thinking of Father Moses. I remember him talking about how he was having bad headaches, and he realized that his headaches were coming from a problem he had in his big toe. A problem in his big toe affected his foot, which affected the rest of his leg, which affected the rest of his bone structure, which gave him headaches. Just one example of how complex and complicated things can be in our body.
But also in our psychology. Our psychology is very complicated, because of sin. And then other people are complicated. You’ve probably already noticed that, right? Other people are complicated, and so that makes relationships complicated times two, or even worse, because then there’s not just two persons, but also the whole situation that we’re involved in.
So there’s all this complicated stuff. Our cars are complicated, and the phones we have in our pockets are very complicated. All this complication can be very difficult, very frustrating.
God Is Simple
But God is simple. God is simple, and our hearts seek and desire this simplicity.
Today, as we celebrate the Holy Trinity, that word “Trinity” might seem abstract and far away, but it’s actually expressing something so simple.
Saint Augustine, speaking of the Trinity, says it’s the lover, the beloved, and the love between them:
the lover: the Father
the beloved: the Son
the love between them: the Holy Spirit
The love of the best of fathers, the greatest tenderness of a mother, are reflections here on this earth of this love of the Trinity.
Not Secret Knowledge, but a Gift
To participate in this, it’s not necessary that we make complicated studies or advanced studies, or that we have a brilliant intelligence, or that we have access to special secret knowledge.
Since ancient times there have been what they used to call “mystery religions,” and different cults and different secret societies and so forth, where only a very select group would be allowed to know the great secrets. But that’s not what the gospel presents.
The gospel doesn’t say you have to belong to some secret group to know these secrets that are only reserved for a small elite. The gospel offers this to all.
What’s needed? Let’s listen to what Jesus says.
Revealed to the Little Ones
He says, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding.” The wise and understanding are those who think they know. And He’s saying precisely that the Father has hidden these things from them. The Father can do whatever He wants, and He is the only one who can reveal this. And He hides it—that’s what Jesus says—from the wise and understanding, the wise and the learned, and reveals them to the little ones.
So Jesus is revealing something essential here: that these treasures are not something that we acquire by our studies and our efforts. They can only be revealed as a gift by the Father. And He doesn’t give them to those who are arrogant in their own understanding, but to those who are little.
Jesus goes on to say, “No one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” Notice again what He’s saying: that no one can know God the Father—the greatest of all knowledge, the knowledge of God. No one can know Him except the Son, because the Son is the only one who knows the Father, the only one who is God who knows the Father, and the one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.
So this greatest knowledge comes not from our abilities, but from receiving it as a gift.
That’s why Jesus says in another place, “Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God.” He’s inviting us to be humble about how small we are and how little we understand.
Human Pride and Artificial Intelligence
Sometimes we can feel kind of puffed up. I was hearing one very intelligent man who knows a lot about Silicon Valley, and he said that some of the leaders in Silicon Valley, as they’re working with AI, feel that they’re about to basically create a divine being—that by their extraordinary technology they’re almost at the point where they’re going to be able to create a god.
That’s the danger, and it’s a danger that humanity is facing like never before: the danger of this arrogance and pride.
When God looks at us—even when God looks at that person who thinks he’s going to create a god—we can create monsters, but we can’t create gods. And when God looks at him, how ridiculously small is human knowledge.
But this also invites us not just to humility, but also to trust in how our Father loves us and how much He takes care of His little children.
The Holy Spirit and the Cry “Abba, Father”
St. Paul, when he talks about the Holy Spirit being poured out into our hearts, doesn’t say it is to give us complicated explanations or very in-depth
May 31, 2026