I had the privilege last week of visiting a second-grade faith formation class at a Catholic parish in South Jersey. This was the first time I had been in a room full of seven year olds since I was one of them, and going into that room was actually kind of terrifying—I was acutely aware that I do not understand these tiny humans, what makes them tick, what matters to them.
The experience was, on the whole, rather mundane. We stuck cross- and heart-shaped stickers on little cardboard boxes, and talked about what we would do with Jesus if he wanted to hang out at our house for the afternoon. All the while, I was trying to read body language and analyze the words of these children who said they wanted to eat cookies and play Legos with Jesus, searching for what they really wanted and really cared about.
As it turns out, most of them cared about eating cookies and playing Legos.
My experience with the second-graders in Jersey made me start thinking about what it means to be childlike, and why exactly that is a thing Jesus would ask of his disciples. For most of my life, I’ve been in a big ol’ hurry to grow up, become independent, get a job, make money, buy a house and a car, have a family and live the American dream… and here’s Jesus, telling me to be more like a child? What exactly are you on about here, sir? I don’t have time for silly riddles (or playing Legos), because I’m an adult and there are important things I must attend to, so please explain yourself, is what I would say to him.
So I did say it to him. I prayed about childhood, and started reading about childlikeness, curious to uncover more.
It seems that before we explore childlikeness further, we should first dispense with the pervasive misconceptions about adulthood. The most pervasive of these is the narrative of radical freedom and independence. Children especially seem susceptible to this misconception; they long to be grown-ups so they can “do whatever they want.”
Yet, the predominant thing I have discovered about adulthood is that freedom and independence are vastly overrated, and often end up looking like empty refrigerators and student loan payments.
The deeply-held desire to stand alone is not new; it is not unique to millennials or even to Americans. Our first parents succumbed to this desire: God created them, and the only condition of the honor of existing was that they remain dependent on Him, and yet that was more than they could bear.
The sin of Adam and Eve is not simply disobeying God. Rather, by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge from a desire to “be like God,” they reject the goodness of what they actually are, and try to put on a false cloak of independence. The story describes the beginning of a drama of which we are merely the latest players, and generation after generation continues to see the donning of this false cloak of independence as the mark of a true adult.
We, like our parents before us (and like Simba), forget who we are, and seem afraid to remember. Caryll Houselander considers this forgetfulness: “If we are afraid to know ourselves for what we are, it is because we have not the least idea of what that is. It is because we have not the least idea of the miracle of life-giving love that we are.”1
Blessed John Henry Newman recognized this problem, too, and he sought to explain the process by which we forget. He wrote, “The breath of the world has a peculiar power in what may be called rusting the soul. The mirror within [each person], instead of reflecting back the Son of God their Saviour, has become dim and discoloured… An evil crust is on them: they think with the world; they are full of the world's notions and modes of speaking; they appeal to the world, and have a sort of reverence for what the world will say.”2
Children, strangely enough, seem to have no trouble knowing who and what they are. The rusted crust of the world hasn’t gotten to them yet. Sofia Cavaletti observed that children are also capable of seeing the invisible, “almost as if it were more tangible and real than the immediate reality.”3 Their imagination runs wild, but there is never any falsehood about what is really important—even when what is really important cannot be seen. A child may spend the entire day sailing the high seas with the pirates of her backyard or slaying the dragon that guards the treasure buried in the living room blanket fort, but she knows that, sooner or later, her mother or father will send word that it’s time for dinner. To be childlike is to keep straight which cloaks to put on, and for how long.
Kids know what is important: snack, playtime, stories before bed. They seek these things, and deeply know, in a sense beyond articulation, that they are a means to the eternal good of friendship. They are not bored by monotony, as G.K. Chesterton recognizes: “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.”4 Children have an incredible way of seeing each day, each hour, as something entirely new, and even if the sun rises the same way it did the day before, there is still newness enough to celebrate.
Every kid is a mystic, constantly interacting with an unseen world. Moreover, a child’s imagination gives him true humility: he knows himself, and knows how fleeting the world is and how dependent he is on others. In this way, children paradoxically see things as they truly are, unencumbered by adult seriousness. This gives children a courage that seems to come from fairy tales: “Kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. They're not frightened of being wrong.”5 Free from social paralysis that comes from fear of being wrong, children see, imagine, and explore the world in ways adults are no longer able to.
The burgeoning self-importance of adulthood demands that we make ourselves busy, preoccupied with things we can see and touch and count. The muscles of our innate mysticism atrophy. We are designed to ponder and contemplate the mystery of being, but we’re out of practice and out of shape. When Jesus tells us to be childlike, he’s not asking for immaturity or ignorance. A mature faith uses the intellect with which we were created to think well, ask good questions, and make sharp connections. But growth in spiritual maturity demands that we re-learn how to be mystics, knocking the rust off of ourselves and becoming reacquainted with who we really are—dependent, brazenly hope-filled wonderers.
Every kid is a mystic, constantly interacting with an unseen world. Moreover, a child’s imagination gives him true humility: he knows himself, and knows how fleeting the world is and how dependent he is on others. In this way, children paradoxically see things as they truly are, unencumbered by adult seriousness. This gives children a courage that seems to come from fairy tales: “Kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. They're not frightened of being wrong.”5 Free from social paralysis that comes from fear of being wrong, children see, imagine, and explore the world in ways adults are no longer able to.
The burgeoning self-importance of adulthood demands that we make ourselves busy, preoccupied with things we can see and touch and count. The muscles of our innate mysticism atrophy. We are designed to ponder and contemplate the mystery of being, but we’re out of practice and out of shape. When Jesus tells us to be childlike, he’s not asking for immaturity or ignorance. A mature faith uses the intellect with which we were created to think well, ask good questions, and make sharp connections. But growth in spiritual maturity demands that we re-learn how to be mystics, knocking the rust off of ourselves and becoming reacquainted with who we really are—dependent, brazenly hope-filled wonderers.
1 Houselander, “Becoming Like Little Children”↩
2 John Henry Newman, Sermon 22.↩
3 Sofia Cavaletti, The Religious Potential of the Child, pg 43↩
4 G.K. Chesterton, “The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy↩
5 Sir Ken Robinson, “Do schools kill creativity?” (2006 TED Talk)↩
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