Connecting the Christian Faith with Children (part three)

3. Children in the Gospels

The Incarnation of Christ perfectly illustrates all of this. The focus of our modern churches on the culmination of Jesus’ ministry, His death and resurrection, must not be allowed to obscure the “significance that the Bible attaches to His [birth and] childhood”[1]: “The central act of history in Christian terms was God’s unique intervention in coming into the world as a baby … When adult solutions and institutions could do no more, God revealed himself as a newborn infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. The Old Testament motif of God using a child when nothing and no one else was adequate to the task could hardly be more boldly expressed.”[2]

Jesus took up the theme of childhood in His own ministry, and “caring for children was a major part of Jesus’ [work],”[3] something which He “explicitly passed on to His community.”[4]

In the 1st Century world, “strongly influenced by Greek and Roman culture … children had little worth in themselves as individuals except for the continuation of their family line and national identity.”[5] Children “occupied the lowest run on the social ladder, and caring for children was a low-status activity.”[6]

In contrast to this, though, Jesus’ own approach to and relationship with children was very radical. He “did not see children as raw material to be shaped in preparation for life … [He] taught never to regard children on the basis of future worth, but to look at children as full human beings deserving of the care and concern of any adult as accepted members of the community … he reflected Old Testament perspectives but at the same time brought a new focus”[7] which revolved around “their worth both as members of their society and their relationship to God.”[8]

Jesus “held that children have a share in the kingdom of God” (Mark 10.14); “that the kingdom of God was to be received ‘as a child’” (Mark 10.15; Matthew 18.3; Luke 18.17; John 3.3,5); and He “placed special importance on receiving hospitably and with kindness the least important members of society, including the children.”[9]

Jesus redefined “care for children as a mark of greatness.”[10] In His teaching, we find that “what appeared to be an undistinguished activity – care for children, belonging to the domain of women, similarly marginalised people – becomes a prime way for all disciples to demonstrate the greatness that corresponds to the reign of God.”[11]

Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is “a realm of paradox”[12] one aspect of which is that where “children are normally expected to transform into adults … in the kingdom of God adults have to learn to become like children.”[13] And so Jesus “encouraged his followers to recognise, value and learn from the qualities and characteristics present in children.”[14]

In the Gospel tradition, then, children become “a metaphor of discipleship, a way of talking about God and the shared life of faith in the light of Christ.”[15] In the light of which Keith White argues that “the church’s centuries-old concern with issues of boundary, eligibility and membership finds little support in Scripture. Children are an unquestioned part of the Jewish community of faith … In the ministry of Jesus, they are always noticed, welcomed and accepted. What causes concern is anything that comes between them and him. Put another way, the biblical focus on children breaks down some of the compartments the church has built over the years.”[16]

Also, in some contemporary theology, the kingdom is described as both now and not yet. “There could not be a closer parallel with childhood, for there the tension between being and becoming finds its exact counterpart. No wonder Jesus was so insistent on the connection between the two, a connection whose potentially rich implications … theology has not even begun to explore.”[17]

However, precisely because “‘little ones’ are special objects of divine care and protection, … to despise and mistreat them is to put oneself at cross-purposes with the God of the weak and oppressed.”[18] When children were brought to Jesus for a blessing, the disciples tried to keep them away. But Jesus became angry, and suggested that preventing children from coming to him is a sin that “carries the severest punishment.”[19] This passage contains “one of only two references to Jesus’ anger in the New Testament … which fact suggests the seriousness of excluding children.”[20]

Jesus’ last words about children remind us again of Psalm 8. He declares that they are ordained for praise. Their very nature is “to praise God with their entire being … Their inclination, imagination and play will always transcend structures, institutions and boundaries. Were this not so, think how predictable the adult world would have become! Sadly, the image of ageing congregations and formal rites of worship provides an apt illustration of the way that adults turn everything into routine, beyond the possibility of change and renewal.”[21]

[1] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[2] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[3] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.10
[4] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.10
[5] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.37
[6] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.43
[7] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.37
[8] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.38
[9] from Barton, ‘Jesus – Friend of Little Children’, in Astley & Day (eds), The Contours of Christian Education (1992, MacCrimmons), quoted by Sutcliffe (ed.), Tuesday’s Child (2001, Christian Education Publications), pp.194-195
[10] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.43
[11] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.44
[12] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.11
[13] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.11
[14] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.40
[15] Barton, ‘Jesus – Friend of Little Children’, in Astley & Day (eds), The Contours of Christian Education (1992, MacCrimmons), quoted by Sutcliffe (ed.), Tuesday’s Child (2001, Christian Education Publications), p.195
[16] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[17] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[18] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.42
[19] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[20] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.37
[21] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)