Childlikeness

Don: What was Jesus trying to help us understand when he talked about the need to be childlike? Like the sinners, tax collectors, women, gentiles, and Samaritans with whom Jesus associated, children were held in low regard by society at that time and as little more than a nuisance—even by the disciples:

Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:13-14)

And they were bringing children to Him so that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them, “Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” (Mark 10:13-15)

When Jesus asked his disciples what was on their minds during one of their journeys, he took the opportunity to re-affirm the vitally important status of children:

They came to Capernaum; and when He was in the house, He began to question them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had discussed with one another which of them was the greatest. Sitting down, He called the twelve and said to them, “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.” Taking a child, He set him before them, and taking him in His arms, He said to them, “Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me.” (Mark 9:33-37)

What did Jesus mean when he said: “…whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all”? What does “receive the kingdom of God” mean?

We know something about the childhood of Jesus—his birth, his siblings, his early development, and his maturing. In scripture, in passages like those quoted, we see him embracing, blessing, and healing children. He cast a demon out of one (Matthew 17:14-18), raised one from the dead (Mark 5:35-43), and healed another who was also possessed of a demon (Matthew 15:21-28). He even used the lunch of a small boy to feed the five thousand (John 6:5-15).

Jesus said that when we receive a child in his name , we receive God (Mark 9:37). This is reminiscent of his remark about judgment:

“…to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.” (Matthew 25:40)

But there’s more to all this: Not only must we be like little children, but also we are admonished to grow spiritually—to mature in a spiritual way. For example:

Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature. (1 Corinthians 14:20)

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. (1 Corinthians 13:11)

… until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, (Ephesians 4:13-15)

There seems to be a distinction between being childlike and being childish. A characteristic of early childhood that is somewhat like that of pre-Fall Man in the Garden is the lack of differentiation between the child and the father. Infants do not recognize themselves as separate from their parents until they begin to develop self-awareness around the age of 18-24 months. In the Garden, Man and Woman saw themselves as one with each other, with God, and with Nature (Genesis 2). It was evidently God’s original intention that Man and Woman would continue in this way, in a state of only limited self-awareness.

Immediately after the Fall, when God went looking for them, Adam and Eve…

…heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”  (Genesis 3:8-11)

And yet we learn that the way back to the Garden is through true self-awareness—awareness of our sinful nature and of our need for God’s grace. In other words, self-awareness was undesirable before the Fall yet necessary for salvation after it. Even more perplexing is the need to be born again, as Jesus told Nicodemus was pre-requisite to salvation:

Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? (John 3:3-12)

A newborn has not had time to become self-aware, is still one with its parents, and is therefore in the ideal pre-Fall state necessary for living in the kingdom of God. So how can it have the self-awareness necessary for re-entry into the kingdom of God? A new birth is the result of the grace of God. The path of self-awareness leads to a profoundly felt and understood need of the grace of God. This felt need is a result of re-booting, as it were, our relationship with God. It is like re-booting a computer—extinguishing then relighting it, making it “born again.”

So it seems that:

(a) God’s original intention was for us to live in oneness with him in the Garden with, at best, limited self-awareness. This was the state of childlikeness;

(b) But the Fall set Wo/Man on a path to self-awareness apart from God. This is a state of childishness;

(c) For the most part, the path of self-awareness is through the stages of faith—the chaotic, antisocial stage 1, then the formal, institutional stage 2, then the sceptical, individual, questioning stage 3, to the mystical, communal stage 4;

d) A new birth can occur as a result of the gift of God, which was highlighted by the statement of Jesus that unless we receive the kingdom of God—this gift of grace—like a child, it can occur anywhere along the path through the stages of faith and is a product of the fourth of the four great mysteries we have discussed: The mystery that we shall all be changed (1 Corinthians 15:51).

As stated in John 3:8 (above), the new birth is no more controllable by Man than the wind. It is the product of something supernatural. Even though we know today the scientific explanation for wind, at the time of Jesus its origin was supernatural, divine. So what exactly are we supposed to do about re-birth? Why are children better qualified for entry into the kingdom of heaven?

Jay: For me, this is one of the richest similes of the Bible. The kind of conclusions one can draw from these verses are many and deeply profound. I can’t count how many varying sermons I’ve heard about what it means to be childlike, but despite the differing interpretations they are all powerful on a personal level. I interpret it less as an issue of self-awareness and more as an issue of reliance on the child’s parents. The child simply can’t survive without parental involvement. It takes us back to the topic of free will: A newborn has no apparent will other than a will to eat. As well, the younger the child, the greater the capacity for unconditional love.

Robin: Children also accept as absolute truth whatever adults tell them. They are not jaded, they don’t look for ways to find fault in an adult’s pronouncements. They accept.

Jay: Children seem to have a much higher capacity for faith.

Kiran: Children are quicker to forgive—and forget. Some scientists consider the infant human brain being at its peak and going downhill into adulthood. The adult brain may learn quantum physics but that is nothing compared to learning to talk. The child’s brain is more curious.

Don: What is the characteristic element of “receiving” the kingdom of God that is childlike?

Michael: The childlike characteristic is to receive without question anything that is offered freely to it. The adult mind has learned to be suspicious of free gifts, to believe that there is no free lunch. This includes the free gift of the grace of God.

David: It boils down to trust and faith. But we still need to determine just what Jesus meant by “childlike.” There’s plenty of scientific understanding of childhood development, including the brain, physiology, and emotional development. Is Jesus pointing to one stage in that development, or was he referring to some general attribute that lasts through most of childhood, such as trust? Or innocence? If we trace the stages of childhood backwards, the earlier the stage the more innocent the child and the ultimate stage of innocence is in the child in the womb. We’ve all been there but we have no idea what it is like to be in that state—we have no recollection of it.

Michael: In early childhood, children are egocentric. They are the center of their own world. Everything around them is an expression of what they think, what they see, what they do. But I don’t think this is the stage Jesus was talking about—I think he meant we need to get out of that stage, maybe to an earlier, more amniotic stage. [Michael: “Amniotic” is what the word you used sounds like on the recording, and it seems to me a most apposite word; but please forgive and correct me if it is not the word you used—DE]

Don: It seems that in the Garden, God wanted Wo/Man to be un-self-aware. The key element of the Fall seems to be the emergence of self-awareness in Adam and Eve and God’s evident disapproval of it (“Who told you you were naked?”) Is this the element of childlikeness Jesus meant?

Charles: A phrase in scripture I long struggled with is “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). In time, I came to equate poor in spirit with humility—which is a consequence of self-awareness. One of the messages throughout scripture is that—in contradistinction to faith, spirituality, and humility—self-reliance, materialism, and pride are hazardous to spiritual health. Babies are the ultimate example of humility. They have no frame of reference beyond the parent. Being childlike implies total trust, total faith, and lack of self-awareness. At the Burning Bush, God said to Moses: “I am,” not “You are.” A child is not loved because of what s/he does but for who s/he is. I think that is why we find the mistreatment of children so abhorrent. That kind of love is pure grace—the child does nothing to earn it—and God is asking us to be childlike in terms of our acceptance of his love and grace, as well as in terms of being humble and faithful as opposed to prideful and self-reliant.

As for the admonition to put away childish things: The closer we get to childlikeness then the more capable we are to be involved in the growth of our own spirituality and the more God can reveal to us because of our openness by virtue of letting go of our pride and materialism and sense of self-reliance.

Don: As adults, many of us find it difficult to accept gifts. In part, it is because of the presumption of reciprocity—that we must give something in return. A child has no such qualms—s/he is just happy to receive and rejoice in the gift.

Chris: When Adam became self-aware, he hid from his father. When my eight-year-old becomes aware of something new and frightening about life, she doesn’t run and hide—she comes to me for comfort, to put it behind her, to become “unaware” of it, as it were. My two teenagers, on the other hand, think they are aware of everything and don’t want my input. So the issue with awareness is how one responds to it—to “lose” it, as my eight-year-old does, or to wallow in it, as my teenagers do.

David: I’ve mentioned before a Piaget-like theory of child development that has stages going from infant (Good is what I like, Right is what I think) through pre-teen (Good is what I like, Right is what mommy thinks) to teen (Good is what I like; Right is what my peer group thinks) to mature adult (Good is what society likes, Right is what society thinks). (I have not been able to find this theory or its author.) Which of these phases of child development might Jesus have been referring to when he wanted us to be born again into it? Should we be reborn as infants and stop developing from that point on? Is the infant’s worldview—Good is what I like, Right is what I think—the one he wants us to have? Or could it be the phase before any of these—the phase when we exist but have not yet actually been born (i.e., when we are in the womb, when we are one with our mother, when there is no separation)—is this the place Jesus wants us to return to? The problem is we know nothing of our state  in the womb—we have no awareness of it, so we can’t know what to return to. Once we are born, awareness starts to grow.

Is God really concerned about self-awareness? Wasn’t he most concerned at the Fall about our awareness of good and evil? He might have been annoyed at Adam’s awareness of his nakedness but surely that was nothing compared to Adam’s awareness of good and evil? In the womb, awareness neither of self nor of good and evil exist (I guess!) but to the extent we think and feel at all in the womb, Good can only be what we like and Right can only be what we think (again, I guess!)

Charles: Did Genesis refer to awareness of good and evil or to the authority to judge the difference? The danger lies in not deferring to God as the arbiter of good and evil, in making ourselves the arbiter. It’s a matter of our will and judgment vs. God’s will and judgment. Self-awareness is in some way parallel to self-importance, pride, self-reliance, self-will. This where the hazard lies; this is where God is urging us to be more childlike in the sense of being more humble, more deferential to God.

Don: Next week we will examine the story of the Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16-), which may shed some light on the question we have been discussing.

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