I recently went to Disneyland with my nephews. On the way there, one was reading his Picture Bible (my favorite bible when I was a kid and, actually, still is). He asked my husband (an atheist, born & raised) when the last time he read the bible was. My husband and I try to be respectful of my sisters’ faiths (even when they aren’t) and the way they want to raise their kids. Since we have none of our own, we’re in a bad position to tell them they’re doing it wrong… So, my husband tells our nephew, “Not in a long time,” a technically true statement. My nephew nods sagely and says, “Because you work so much.”
Another of my sisters used to live in Mexico and is committed to her children being bilingual. She recently found what she considers to be a great language series, Muzzy. It’s got a cast of five characters and it’s only in the language of your choice. In (Spanish as opposed to Mexican) Spanish, one of the characters, a lion in robes and a crown, says, “Yo soy el Rey.” 
His wife, who is a snout in robes that make her look either Muslim or like the Virgin Mary, introduces herself as “Yo soy la Reina.” Their daughter, a character of indeterminate gender and species, has a small crown and roller-skates. I was watching it with a different nephew and, as la Princesa skates around the screen (“Yo soy hermosa!”), he turns to me and says, “The only thing I don’t like about this movie is that whenever we see la Princesa, she’s immodest.”
One of the few holy texts that I can quote says, “But Jesus said, ‘Allow the little children, and don’t forbid them to come to me; for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to ones like these.’” (Matthew 19:14, World English Bible Translation)
So: intended discussion for the week: such as what? What is it about childlike faith that lends itself to holiness? Lack of doubt? Blindness to other options?
Secondary discussion: is it, a la Sam Harris, irresponsible for parents to raise their children “knowing” (a) that God/dess exists and (b) that their parents worship the Divine in the only way that is correct?
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things. (Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 13:11, same translation).
9 responses so far ↓
1 John // Oct 26, 2006 at 9:58 pm
These are great questions, Miko. For a long time, I considered childlike trust and faith in God a virtue, until I realized that believers typically admire this faith only when it’s directed at their own version of God. Or they admire faith in other gods, but place such faith in a hierarchy below faith in their own.
When I encounter strong faith (in its quiet, individual, worshipful forms, as opposed the more confrontational varieties), it seems to me to be a thing of beauty. As I reflect on your post and the scriptures above, I think that it may have something to do with the “childlike” qualities of innocence and guilessness that I see in these people. But when do such things deserve to be called naivete or immaturity?
I’m tempted to respond to the second question as well-it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot lately, with Jesus Camp and the spiritual education of my own precocious and compassionate children on my mind. I’m going to sit and think some first.
2 Jonathan // Oct 28, 2006 at 8:18 am
Mark 10:15 extends the Matthew 19:14 passage with an additional verse:
So it seems there are two things discussed here. The state of a person’s heart that must exist before the offer of the ‘kingdom of heaven’, and the method of receiving it.
What state of the heart do children possess that adults stereotypically do not? My thoughts about this drift to what is referred to as the ‘Beautitudes’- a collection of ‘Blessed are those who..” sayings in Matt. 5:3-11, and specifically to the very first one:
Who are the poor in spirit? To me, these are the non-religious types who feel that they have spiritual riches because of their incredible knowledge or because of how good they are. But let me be clear here – ‘rich in spirit’ has nothing to do with actually having knowledge or doing good works, but a matter of someone thinking that they deserve God’s blessing based on their own merit.
The person who is poor in spirit has a humble attitude, and I believe an outlook of wonder and awe of the world around them as well. Humility in knowledge to me is a key point here. A person who is humble enough the admit and believe they do not know everything will be in awe of the world and open to new ideas at the same time. Are these not the traits we love in children, and in adults as well? So it is my best guess that this is the attitude Jesus is looking for that seems to be a prerequisite for ‘receiving’ the kingdom of God. Nothing in this attitude is anti-intellectual or fosters checking-your-brains-at-the door mentality. God elsewhere, especially in the Old testament, encourages his people to be reasonable. Reason demands for us to believe we do not know it all. Closed minds are arrogant and unreasonable.
So what is about the receiving the kingdom of God that requires the receiver to have a humble heart and an open mind? It is a free gift. It cannot be earned by a huge amount of knowledge or good behavior or any other form of self-righteousness. I do not believe that Jesus is snubbing smart thinking people, or super-religious people because of their intellectual capacity or career, he is just sadly telling it as it is: If you aren’t humble and are close minded, you can’t except new truth. The kingdom of God is indeed a wild new truth… it’s going to require a person to first of all give it a chance, and to think it through the best he can.
So the kingdom of God belongs to people like this. The humble ones who are just trying to work things out, who still look at the world around them and are amazed each day at its beauty. These are its true leaders. The kingdom of God is not a future reality (like the rapture-happy think) but a present one – here on earth, right now.
3 Reg // Oct 29, 2006 at 9:12 am
These are indeed the best things about a child; the things that we all wish we could still have (why I enjoyed Disneyland the other day like I never have before). I also agree that the kingdom of God is here and now. This world is what we make it and we owe it to ourselves to make it heaven.
4 Asara // Oct 30, 2006 at 8:13 am
“Secondary discussion: is it, a la Sam Harris, irresponsible for parents to raise their children “knowing” (a) that God/dess exists and (b) that their parents worship the Divine in the only way that is correct?”
In defense of a view I don’t hold, if one really, truly knows one’s faith to be the one and only truth, how can it be irresponsible to raise one’s children with this conviction? To know something and not seek to teach one’s children it … would not this be the irresponsible action? I don’t believe knowing is possible, but this also means I don’t know that knowing is not possible. And if other people claim to know a truth, and teach their children thus, then I can have no objection.
5 Jonathan // Oct 30, 2006 at 9:24 am
Following Asara’s comments, I remember my father and I having a discussion on this when I was about 12 or so. He told me to stop saying “I know” when talking about spiritual truth to people and use instead “I believe” or else, he told me, no one will take you seriously. He followed this rule as well. I remember him always prefacing all of his spiritual truth ideas on purpose with “I believe…” when talking to me or others.
6 pilgrimgirl // Oct 30, 2006 at 3:29 pm
That’s interesting Jonathan. In my experience, most Mormons (at least the orthodox ones) generally say “I know…” because “I believe…” is seen as wishy-washy. But I think “I believe…” would certainly work better when one is trying to create dialogue, especially when speaking in an interfaith setting.
7 Reg // Oct 30, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Dittos (a la Rush) to 4-6. That’s part of why I put know in quotation marks. I believe that spiritual truths are beyond petty human knowledge. I may think I know something with all the being of my soul, but it’s not the kind of knowledge that we mean when we say “know”, generally…I think that was more convoluted than I intended it when I navigated here…which was to say:
I remember watching the Dark Crystal very frequently when I was a kid. When I met my husband, he showed me Labyrinth, which he said was like Crystal. He then bought me a copy of Crystal since I hadn’t seen it in years. We watched it together and, as an adult, I’ve no idea what my kid-self was smoking in order to get through it on a regular basis (and I probably watched it about once a week for a while). But, in watching (or struggling to watch) it, I realized that my current world view is very much informed by it. I’m a dualist. I believe that there is, for example darkness, and there is light; and all colors and distances that we percieve with our eyes are shades of the two. This, I believe, is why Aristotelian morality made sense to me: two polar opposites and infinate variations in between. Now, maybe I’m hardwired to believe this anyway, but re-watching Crystal was an almost spiritual experience, like reading the bible after years of being in Christian school; a sort of “a ha!” experience.
Is there any event or moment in your childhood that has informed your world-view to this day?
8 Jonathan // Oct 31, 2006 at 11:07 am
3 major childhood events/books/movies that had a large impact on my worldview today:
When I was 9, I was in Jerusalem, Israel, and lost on a collage campus near the old city. I had looked around for an hour to find my father, but could not and was frightened to the point of tears. I finally did something I never did before – I prayed. I instantly felt drawn to a certain room in a certain building – I immediately went there, and there was my father. Forever afterwards, I have always thought of God as being interested in the concerns of the most insignificant person, not to mention very much real.
Anyone ever see the Neverending Story as a kid? That movie blew my mind! It ingrained in me that there is something magical and alive in our imagination – the line between something we create in our imagination and the “something” that first created the desire in us to imagine it in the first place has forever been blurred in a very large part by this movie.
Madeleine L’Engle – A Swiftly Tilting Planet – That God is in control of the ‘Butterfly Effect’ and that even our smallest actions have tremendous consequences to everyone around us while we are alive and even more so long after we are dead that we will never know about.
9 Miko // Dec 4, 2006 at 11:15 am
just listened to a great podcast wherein Richard Dawkins explains why teaching children only one religion is a form of child abuse. Hear, hear.
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