Like a Child

Children are our future. We’ve all heard that said at some point, and we all know what it means. As children grow and come of age, they will take over where many current adults leave off. They are essentially the hope for the continuation of our species, and mankind will continue to progress generation by generation as long as God wills it. That’s not particularly surprising. After all, that is what procreation is all about. However, Jesus gave us a different way of looking at children.

People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. - Mark 10:13-16

At first, it seems like Jesus is uttering a similar sentiment. He seems to be speaking about children inheriting the Kingdom of God the same way they will eventually inherit the Earth. When you read further, the truth becomes clearer. Jesus isn’t just saying that children are the future of God’s kingdom. He is saying that they are models for those that seek to enter God’s kingdom. That might seem mind boggling at first. How can children represent what Christians should be? Many of us would argue that most children, particularly the very young, do not even understand the Faith and everything that goes along with it. They certainly don’t know about all the temptations the world has to offer; the very things that threaten to pull us away from God. To some extent, those arguments would be correct. However, they also miss the point. That innocence is precisely what Jesus is telling us we need to have.


The innocence of children is not their only important quality. Children are naturally humble in a way that adults struggle to be. They know they don’t know everything. They seek to learn and understand. They are obsessive about the things they believe are important and are constantly seeking more. That is exactly the way we should be when it comes to Godly things. Perhaps, most importantly, they have a blind faith that is foreign to older people. They believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy without question. To us, we see that as cute in its silliness. Based on what Jesus is saying, it’s important that we start to look at the faith of children in a different way. It’s vital for our own salvations. Children accept God, Jesus, and everything the Bible tells us with the same fervor that they accept fairy tales and fantasy characters. When you teach them that God created the universe or that he helped Moses and the Hebrews cross the Red Sea or that he sent his Son to die and rise again to save us from our sins, they just accept it. To them, it doesn’t matter that the stories in question may defy the rules of science or our own understanding of the world around us. They are told that the Bible is a book of authority and they accept what it says.


Of course things aren’t that easy once you’ve grown up. As adults we become more knowledgeable and, in some cases, wiser. Our understanding of the natural world grows. We often become cynical and learn to question everything. When it comes to worldly matters, all of that can serve us well. This world offers many pitfalls that can mean danger for us if we are not careful. The problem is God is not of this world. He does not exist according to the same rules that define the physical world, and we shouldn’t expect him to operate in the same way that things around us do.


Children are really only expected to grow and become the kind of people society needs them to be. As children, their responsibilities and the things required of them are relatively limited. As adults we have to pay bills, take care of others, and take on jobs and tasks that don’t just affect us but also those around us. We come to put faith in ourselves and what we can do. So, when it is suggested that we should instead put our faith in God, whose existence and will seems to contradict everything that we believe we know, we balk at it. Many people treat God the same way as Santa or the Easter Bunny, and see belief in Him as something a reasonable person grows out of over time. Even those of us who continue to believe in Him often struggle with what believing means. It’s easy to say God exists and frame your life in a way that is generally in line with what the Bible teaches. It’s hard to not just follow the Bible as a general framework but instead adhere to all the fine details that lie in the many verses the book holds. It’s nearly impossible to submit to God’s will and truly put Him at the head of our lives unless we reclaim some of what we lose as we grow up.


As he often did, Jesus said something that seemed very simple but turned out to be wiser than what was immediately apparent. The ramifications of what he said are very important. After his departure, Jesus’ disciples taught the world about the importance of qualities such as humility and faithfulness, but Jesus didn’t just teach us about how important those things are. He gave us the key to recapturing those qualities for our own lives. We were all once children, so none of the qualities that children have are foreign to us. We’ve just trained ourselves to abandon those qualities. Jesus is also giving us hope that we can reclaim some of what we’ve lost. It’s vital that we do because if we truly want to be with God we can’t just say that we are his children. We have to act like it.

Chris Lawyer 

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