- Matthew 18:3 and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 ¶ “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Reading some reviews of a relatively new book on the ‘juvenilization’ of the church got me to thinking. Such ‘juvenilzation’ involves the pop-izing (going pop, okay?) of music, holy (as in holes in them) jeans in church, spikey hair, fauxhawks; edgy, entertainment-driven messages, etc, etc, ad nauseum. This youth-driven form of Christianity, some say, is responsible for a resurgence of, and injection of life into, many churches in the United States. It has its drawbacks, and it has its positives – or so say the reviews of the book.
I simply submit the reminder that Jesus says ‘unless you become as children,’ not ‘unless you become as teenagers‘ (I suppose you could insert college student or celebrity in the place of teenager and the line of thought would work just as well).
One of my favorite Chesterton quotes from Orthodoxy is:
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
The child says, ‘Do it again!’ The teenager says, ‘let’s do something new.’ The little one isn’t particularly concerned with being hip. He wants to eat, laugh, play, love, and be loved.
The childlike qualities of awe, wonder, dependence, humility, and the love of the simple and monotonous are sound aspirations. The teenager’s (pardon my generalization) gravitation toward faddishness, insecurity, self-analysis, and the need to be, and participate in, ‘the cool,’ are not sound aspirations, but flaws worth avoiding.
Childlikeness doesn’t mean needing more entertainment. It means being able to be entertained by the same things over and over again. Childlikeness doesn’t mean constantly searching for the next cool and flashy thing, it means that the simplest thing can be cool and flashy so long as it is in the near vicinity. A little child can say the Lord’s Prayer or the Apostle’s Creed over and over again and be just as excited as if it were the first time (I know this from experience with my own kids).
Us grownups act like we want to become teenagers, but the truth is that even teenagers themselves must become as little children. Don’t cause a little one to stumble by making them want to be a teenager, even if that little one is a grownup, or a teenager.
