[Note: In this inaugural set of Theology Thursday offerings, I’ve embarked on a series of reflections on how children shape the character and spiritual life of the adults around them. These posts will invite the reader to consider how children can be inescapably central to our ‘growing up’ in the image of Christ. They are also snippets from A.J.’s future publication The Teachable Spirit]
In last week’s Thursday Theology post (entitled “On Not ‘Using’ Children”) we explored how children came to Jesus in the gospel of Matthew—and how adults can tend to ‘use’ children as it conforms to their desires and wants. Building on this, we will discuss this week why listening to children can be so formative and life-changing for each of us.
In the early chapters of Genesis 1-2, God handcrafts two human beings, placing them within the lush environment of Eden. God gives them clear guidance and directions on what these humans could do. And what they were not to do. Amid this origin story, God gives the humans power: to name the animals of the garden, rule, be fruitful and multiply, and tend God’s garden space. By the end of these inaugural chapters, God has given the first humans a surprising lot of authority. If this speaks to God’s actual nature—and boy should we believe it does—then the God behind Eden is no divine power-broker who seeks to usurp and consolidate control. No. God, it seems, allegedly desires to give these humans great power that could have the possibility to both steward—and destroy—Eden. God is a power-giving God.
Name one other religion where God gives their creation as much power as this God.
Giving away power requires love, intent and humility. Especially when power is given to those who are deemed ‘lesser.’ We’ve been reflecting on children. Few would disagree: children can be challenging little creations. For many adults, the child among us can be difficult to love, understand, or even be present to. Still, something is lost when we aren’t around children. Everyone wins when we are with the child. Few would question that adults play a formative—even sustaining—role in the life of a child. Adults provide structure, food, safety, boundaries, baths, touch, physical strength, and moral guidance for the littlest among us. Without the care of an adult, the abandoned child is in great danger. Transformation, however, does not go one way. Wouldn’t it be equally true to say that children play a formative role in the adult’s life? The child provides levity, trust, delight, hope, laughter, and unstructured play that adults need to stay grounded in real life. Children need adults. But in God’s economy, adults need children just as much.
Children have much to teach us. And we ignore and overlook them to our detriment. The problem for most adults, again, is their resistance to descend to the level of a child. Interestingly, lowliness and learning go hand-in-hand in Scripture. In the prophetic writings of Job, we find the broken and frustrated sufferer speaking to his friend Zophar:
ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this? (Job 12.7-9)
Job’s friends hadn’t been good friends. Having started well by simply being with their suffering friend in the dust of his trauma, things turn south the moment they start offering Job advice. As with many of us, we can be good friends, that is until we speak. When presence devolves into advice, something is lost. From this moment forward in Job’s narrative, endless religious jargon and bumper-sticker theology spew forth from these three friends’ mouths that now the sufferer has to put up with along with his
pain. For Job, the animals have been his teachers. Along with the earth beneath his feet. Even the fish have taught him. Job learned more from the creatures than from his friends.
A similar vignette rises to the surface in Proverbs 6 where the author instructs the reader to a life of wisdom, writing,
Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest. (Proverbs 6.6-8)
Again, please look at the author’s invitation: we are to get down to the ground on the level of the ant. The best teaching is to be received not, as one might assume, in the lecture hall or the classroom or seminar room. No, God’s wisdom comes by getting down on one’s knees, looking, and beholding the lowly ant in their toil.
This same impulse, finally, is discernible in Isaiah’s prophetic vision of the coming Messiah. In this vision, Isaiah describes a world where predators no longer predate: the lion lays down with the lamb, the leopard shares space with the goat, and the lion won’t pounce on the yearling. To cap it off, Isaiah says,
...and a little child will lead them. (Isaiah 6.6)
The gospel writers would later pick this up (I believe) by connecting Isaiah’s messianic vision to Jesus. Who was this child Isaiah foresaw? Isaiah’s premonition was of the incarnation—of the Divine descending to humanity’s level, coming down to generously listen, hear, and humble himself at the feet of his human creations. Luke would recount the single teenage story from Jesus’ life recorded in the New Testament. There, Jesus is ironically discovered—after having been lost for three days by his parents—among the Jewish teachers of the law. “After three days they Jesus in the Temple courts,” Luke records, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” (Lk 2.46; italics mine) God, as a human child, willingly came to descend to the level of humans.
What amazing power that God gives humans. This is the incarnation—that audacious belief that God is so humble as to come to earth to listen to (and even dare ‘learn’ from) humanity. God came so low as to be a child in our arms. Yet, given the proclivity of adults, we become like those temple teachers. We see ourselves as God’s teachers rather than humbly abandoning everything to learn from him. Had they known who they were talking to, wouldn’t it have been right to drop everything to take in their conversation with God?
We often do not consider children worth learning from. I’ve consistently learned as a father to my beautiful son and as a teacher to many great undergraduate students is that children don’t ask questions I wouldn’t ask, they think in ways I wouldn’t, and they don’t share my assumptions. In short, I am formed simply by being in their presence. We all can learn from these kinds of relationships. The more we make space in our lives for those who are not as far along as we, it always brings about a double win. The experience makes us more teachable. And it invites us to lowliness.
It takes humility to learn from a child.
To learn from a child is to give them power in our lives. A power, mind you, we are slow to want to give away. I learned this a few years ago. As do many, I tend toward workaholism. During an especially busy season, I was faced with a decision about a particular speaking/teaching invitation—to go or not. I struggled to make a decision. If I said “yes,” it would take me away from home for one week. If I said “no,” I’d give up a remarkably opportune chance to grow in my vocation and calling. All the more, I’d be required to stay at that very place (my home) where there is no stage, the applause is non-existent, and no one sees me as an expert. It is this home that crucifies the ego.
Presenting this scheduling difficulty to a trusted friend, he gave me a remarkably difficult assignment. He told me to ask my five-year-old son what he thought about this opportunity. In doing so, I knew what I would be undertaking. I gave my son power, voice, and a chance to speak about what would happen. This terrified me. But I did it. My son quivered as I asked—telling me he didn’t want me to go. I knew what the right choice was. It was my son. Or it was career advancement. I couldn’t do both. I needed to listen to my boy. To listen to children is not just lending them a voice. It is a willingness to give up power. Children, we must remember, are not props. They are image-bearing people who deserve to be heard.
Following my friend’s advice, I gave my son the power to shape my grown-up decision. But it cost me. I am not saying that children are given the role of dictators in our lives. Sometimes, we need to make decisions without their voice. But that experience has had a lingering impact on me. My life is very different when my son has a voice in my life.
Which brings us back to Genesis. As an invitation, I’d encourage you to do what God does. I would invite you, fellow journeyer on the way of Jesus, to consider the possibility that learning from a child is central to our formation. As hard as it is, give a child a big microphone in your life. Be led by a child. At the least, their voice matters. And in so doing, we model just a little bit the nature of God. I know of no other religion where the God of the universe gives as much power to his creations as does the God of the Bible. But I know it reshapes my relationship to my little creation.
Even when it is terrifying.