Childlikeness

In an issue of CT magazine, author Jen Wilkin writes:

Individualism says that I should do what’s best for me regardless of what’s best for others. Instant gratification assures me that waiting is an enemy to eliminate. At every turn, I am told that I can and should have what I want when I want it.

Earlier this year, my husband and I spent two weeks with an apparent narcissist named Charlotte. From the moment we stepped into her space, it was all about her. She demanded our full attention day and night. Forget rational arguments or the needs of others; it was The Charlotte Show 24/7. She thought only of herself and demanded loudly and often that her needs be met. Our schedules bowed to her every whim. She uttered not a word of gratitude during the entire 14 days.

And we didn’t mind one bit. Because all 7 pounds and 15 ounces of her was doing exactly what she should. Our newest grandchild’s age-appropriate focus is to declare, Me, right now! Any time she is tired, hungry, or needs a clean diaper. Babies self-advocate as a survival instinct. They understand only the immediate need.

But what is appropriate in an infant is appalling in an adult. In its obsession with “me, right now,” our culture doesn’t just worship youthfulness; it worships childishness, legitimizing it into adulthood. An adult who demands what he wants when he wants it is a costly presence in any community, prioritizing his own needs above those of others and of the group. He has not learned to “put away childish things,” as the Bible says (1 Cor. 13:11, KJV); he has managed to grow physically from a baby to an adult without shedding the childish mantra of “me, right now.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

As parents, our first challenge is to meet the needs of babies crying out, “Me, right now.” But our greater task over the years is to train our children to mature and outgrow their entitlement, to resist the narcissistic norms of our age. It is our job as Christian parents to move our children from the immaturity of individualism and instant gratification to the maturity of sacrificial service and delayed gratification.

We may sometimes toss around the expression "faith like a child." Maybe we should ask South Carolina toddler Sutton Whitt what she thinks of that phrase. Sutton's parents put her to bed without saying bedtime prayers with her first. There was a championship football game on, and they were in a bit of a hurry to say goodnight and get back to the TV.

So, what did Sutton do? She said her prayers herself. Sutton's mom told CNN that she and her husband "started hearing noises upstairs," so they turned on the baby monitor to discover Sutton praying and thanking God for all sorts of people: grandparents, parents, Santa Claus. Her prayer closed "with a resounding 'Amen.'" It's a beautiful example of how "to give thanks in all things."

You can watch the video here.

A nine-year-old boy whose expression of amazement sparked applause and a viral video sensation has since been invited back by the orchestra as a special guest. Nine-year-old Ronan Mattin caused quite a stir during The Handel and Haydn Society’s performance of Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music. During a moment of silence, the boy couldn’t contain himself, exclaiming “Wow!” The crowd of concertgoers burst into laughter, and then applause. Orchestra CEO David Snead called it “One of the most wonderful moments I’ve experienced in the concert hall.”

Mattin’s grandparents were initially reluctant when they heard that orchestra personnel were looking to reach out to the boy, mostly because they thought he might be in trouble. But those fears were allayed when he and his grandparents were invited back to Boston’s Orchestra Hall for a special dress rehearsal performance of A Mozart Celebration.

Dubbed “the Wow Child,” Mattin, who is on the autism spectrum, said few words during his return, but expressed plenty of his famous enthusiasm. “He was tapping the window and jumping up and down,” said Claire Mattin, his grandmother.

Artistic Director Harry Christophers said that Mattin’s exuberance put his job in perspective. He said, “These sort of moments … actually just make us realize exactly what we’re here doing. We’re here to give people a release from their daily existence. With Ronan, it’s spontaneous, it’s an innocence, it’s just lovely.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Jesus told his disciples that unless they become like children, they could not inherit God’s kingdom. Sometimes the only appropriate response to an internal moment of joy is an outward expression, and to hold it back is to deprive others from sharing in that joy.

Sofia Cavaletti is a researcher who has pioneered the study of spirituality in young children. She finds that children often have an amazing perception that far surpasses what they've already been taught. One three-year-old girl, raised in an atheistic family with no church contact at all, no Bible in the home, asked her father, "Where did the world come from?" He answered her in strictly naturalistic, scientific terms. Then he added, "There are some people who say that all this comes from a very powerful being, and they call him God." At this, the little girl started dancing around the room with joy as she said, "I knew what you told me wasn't true—it's him, it's him!"

Similarly, the author Anne Lamott was raised by her dad to be a devout atheist—all the children in her family had to agree to a contract to that effect when they were two or three years old—but she started backsliding into faith at an early age. "Even when I was a child I knew that when I said 'Hello,' someone heard."

In an article in The New York Times Magazine, writer Dana Tierney described how both she and her husband John had rejected their childhood faith. They had their son Luke baptized to placate their families, but that was it. When Dana's husband went to Iraq as an imbedded reporter, she was understandably fearful. But she was surprised at how calm four-year-old Luke was. She assumed that it was just youthful naiveté, until one day when they were watching a TV interview with a U.S. soldier who was sharing his fears about returning to Iraq. For just an instant, Dana saw Luke form his hands to pray. When she asked him about it, Luke at first denied it, but after he did it a second time, he confessed that he had been praying.

Dana was stunned, partly by Luke's faith, and partly by how his faith allowed him to be calm and her lack of faith caused her to be fearful. She was also embarrassed that her four-year son instinctively knew that praying for his dad was socially inappropriate.

When Dana asked Luke when he first began to believe in God, he said, "I don't know. I've always known he exists." Throughout the article Dana never patronizes believers. At one point she described how many of her non-religious friends feel freed from religion as if they've been liberated from superstition. Not Dana. She feels like she is missing out. As Dana explained, "[My religious friends] have an expansiveness of spirit. When they walk along a stream, they don't just see water falling over rocks; the sight fills them with ecstasy. They see a realm of hope beyond this world. I just see a babbling brook. I don't get the message."

Writer Ralph B. Smith once made an observation that children ask roughly 125 questions per day and adults ask about six questions per day, so somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we lose 119 questions per day. A child's innate curiosity about life is instilled in them at birth by the One who longs to be discovered. The more questions they ask, the more they discover about the world around them. The more they discover about the world around them, the more they discover about the One who made them.

Possible Preaching Angle: Disciple; Discipleship; Sanctification—Disciples are called to be lifelong learners about the way of following and knowing Jesus, being conformed to his image.

In his book Imagine, Jonah Lehrer writes about the advantages that come with having a childlike attitude:

Take this clever experiment, led by the psychologist Michael Robinson. He randomly assigned a few hundred undergraduates to two different groups. The first group was given the following instructions: "You are seven-years-old, and school is canceled. You have the entire day to yourself. What would you do? Where would you go? Who would you see?" The second group was given the exact same instructions, except the first sentence was deleted. As a result, these students didn't imagine themselves as seven-year-olds. After writing for ten minutes, the subjects in both groups were then given various tests of creativity, such as trying to invent alternative uses for an old car tire, or listing all the things one could do with a brick. Interestingly, the students who imagined themselves as young kids scored far higher on the creative tasks, coming up with twice as many ideas as the other group. It turns out that we can recover the creativity we've lost with time. We just have to pretend we're little kids.

Yo-Yo Ma echoes this idea. "When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them that the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner," Ma says. "In order to become a professional, you need to go through years of training. You get criticized by all your teachers, and you worry about all the critics. You are constantly being judged. But if you get onstage and all you think about is what the critics are going to say, if all you are doing is worrying, then you will play terribly. You will be tight, and it will be a bad concert. Instead, one needs to constantly remind oneself to play with the abandon of the child who is just learning the cello. Because why is that kid playing? He is playing for pleasure. He is playing because making this sound, expressing this melody, makes him happy. That is still the only good reason to play."

Possible Preaching Angles: As these examples show, being childlike can help us be more creative and perform better as a musician, but childlikeness can also help us spiritually. (1) Jesus says we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven unless we become like a child. (2) Living in childlike trust in relation to our Heavenly Father can enable us to walk in obedience to him.

Sofia Cavalletti relates the experience of a 3-year-old girl who grew up in an atheistic home where no one ever spoke of God:

One day she questioned her father about the origin of the world: "Where does the world come from?" Her father replied—in a manner consistent with his ideas—with a discourse that was materialistic in nature. Then he added: "However, there are those who say that all this comes from a very powerful being, and they call him God."

At this point the little girl began to run like a whirlwind around the room in a burst of joy and exclaimed: "I knew what you told me wasn't true; it is Him, it is Him!"

In her book The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom tells of an event that took place when she was 10 or 12 years old as she traveled with her father on a train from Amsterdam to Haarlem. She had stumbled upon a poem that had the words "sex sin" among its lines:

And so, seated next to Father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, "Father, what is sex sin?"

He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but, to my surprise, he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor.

"Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?" he asked.

I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.

"It's too heavy," I said.

"Yes," he said. "And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you."

And I was satisfied. More than satisfied—wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions; for now, I was content to leave them in my father's keeping.

God is mysterious not simply because he is God, but because we are children. And in his love our childhood is protected. We should view both childhood and God's mysteries as a source of wonder and even comfort; there is a creator and we are among the created. There are answers to all things safely in our father's keeping.

In his book The Wisdom of Tenderness, Brennan Manning tells the following story:

Several years ago, Edward Farrell of Detroit took his two-week vacation to Ireland to celebrate his favorite uncle's 80th birthday. On the morning of the great day, Ed and his uncle got up before dawn, dressed in silence, and went for a walk along the shores of Lake Killarney. Just as the sun rose, his uncle turned and stared straight at the rising orb. Ed stood beside him for 20 minutes with not a single word exchanged. Then the elderly uncle began to skip along the shoreline, a radiant smile on his face.

After catching up with him, Ed commented, "Uncle Seamus, you look very happy. Do you want to tell my why?"

"Yes, lad," the old man said, tears washing down his face. "You see, the Father is fond of me. Ah, me Father is so very fond of me."

When I look at a patch of dandelions, I see a bunch of weeds that are going to take over my yard. Kids see flowers for Mom and blowing white fluff you can wish on.

When I look at an old drunk and he smiles at me, I see a smelly, dirty person who probably wants money, and I look away. Kids see someone smiling at them, and they smile back.

When I hear music I love, I know I can't carry a tune and don't have much rhythm, so I sit self-consciously and listen. Kids feel the beat and move to it. They sing out the words, and if they don't know them, they make up their own.

When I feel wind on my face, I brace myself against it. I feel it messing up my hair and pulling me back when I walk. Kids close their eyes, spread their arms, and fly with it, until they fall to the ground laughing.

When I pray, I say "thee" and "thou" and "grant me this" and "give me that." Kids say "Hi, God! Thanks for my toys and my friends. Please keep the bad dreams away tonight. Sorry, I don't want to go to heaven yet. I would miss Mommy and Daddy."

When I see a mud puddle, I step around it. I see muddy shoes and clothes and dirty carpets. Kids sit in it. They see dams to build, rivers to cross, and worms to play with.

I wonder if we are given kids to teach or to learn from? No wonder God loves the little children!

In Something Beautiful for God, longtime British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge tells how he met Mother Teresa while filming a BBC documentary about her work. He was completely captivated by her deep compassion for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta's slums. But he, an unbeliever, could not accept her faith. What especially kept him back was that he could not join the church, such an imperfect and flawed institution.

Once, while Mother Teresa visited London, she and Muggeridge took a walk, and Muggeridge reports, "I took up my well-prepared defensive position about the church, whose deficiencies, crumbling barricades, and woeful future prospects, I expatiated upon, with little effect."

After she left London, she wrote Muggeridge a letter and enclosed a small devotional book. Here are excerpts from her letter, which are a model of how to share your faith lovingly:

"I think I understand you better now. I don't know why, but you to me are like Nicodemus, and I'm sure the answer is the same: 'Unless you become a little child.' I'm sure you will understand beautifully everything if you would only become a little child in God's hands. Your longing for God is so deep, and yet he keeps himself away from you. He must be forcing himself to do so, because he loves you so much, as to give Jesus to die for you and for me. Christ is longing to be your food. Surrounded with fullness of living food, you allow yourself to starve. The personal love Christ has for you is infinite. The small difficulty you have regarding his church is finite. Overcome the finite with the infinite. Christ has created you because he wanted you. I know what you feel, terrible longing with dark emptiness, and yet he is the one in love with you."

Apparently Mother Teresa's love kept working on Muggeridge. Just 8 years before he died (in 1990), he finally overcame his objections and publicly joined the Christian church.

When our son, Tory, was just a small boy, we were coming home from Sunday school and church, and I asked him what he had learned that morning. He told me they had heard the story of the Good Samaritan. He proceeded to give me a blow-by-blow description of what had taken place. Back in his unregenerate days, Tory was on the side of the robbers.

When he was all through, I said, "Son, what was the spiritual lesson of the story?"

It was obvious I had taken him by surprise, and he thought for a minute and said, "That story teaches that whenever I'm in trouble, you've got to help me." It's not the complete answer, but from the view of that man by the side of the road, it is one way of looking at a neighbor.

When my brother and sister-in-law were expecting a baby, I asked my four-year-old niece, Justina, "What do you want, a baby brother or a baby sister?"

"Aunt Donna," she chided, "sometimes you just gots to take what God gives ya."

I neglected to tell my new patient, a little boy, how his hospital room intercom worked. Soon his light flashed. I called his name and asked what he wanted. There was complete silence. I repeated myself. After a long pause he said, "Jesus, I hear you but I don't see you. Where are you?" I couldn't wait to get to his room and give him a hug.

I remember watching a father play with his little boy, repeatedly throwing him in the air and catching him just before he hit the ground. The child is relaxed and having a great time saying, "Do it again! Do it again!"

I thought, If that was me, I 'd be stiff as a board .

"Can you explain why he's so relaxed, even when he's out of control?" I asked the father.

"It's very simple," he said. "We have a history together. We've played this game before, and I've never dropped him."