Connecting the Christian Faith with Children (part two)

2. Children in the Old Testament

The first challenge to the way we connect our faith with children comes from the Bible. From the Old Testament we find that children are enormously significant both in the biblical narratives and in God¹s purposes.

Children had an accepted place within the people of Israel. “Throughout the Old Testament, children are seen as a gift from God and a sign of the covenant relationship with Him. … Children are a part of the family … They are involved in the ritual that expresses the Jewish identity … [they would] also have been seen as part of the covenant relationship with God that made the Jewish people unique. … Children are part of the family, the faith community, and are the hope of the future. They are not second-class; they are part of the whole.”[1]

As “members of God’s covenant with Israel … it was expected that [children] would assume covenantal responsibilities.”[2] Indeed, from Psalm 8.2 we learn that “it is infants and toddlers who are used by God to silence the foe … Calvin [in his commentary] works out the implications of this with typical vigour: if children are relegated to the background of politics, society or religious community, we run the risk of overlooking and thwarting God’s purposes.”[3]

Children are central to the Bible’s understanding of the kingdom of heaven. Isaiah provides a prime example in which a little child will lead the wild animals in peaceful coexistence.

And, again and again, in the narratives of the Old Testament, children are chosen and used by God as His instruments when the institutions and adults among His people had failed, and “it is notable not just that God used children as well as adults but that he did so at moments of extreme crisis.”[4]

[1] Lake, Let the Children come to Communion (2006, SPCK), pp.16-17
[2] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.35
[3] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[4] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)