The Scriptures tell us that before we can enter the kingdom of heaven (having been reconciled to God despite our sin and its consequences) we must become like little children yet still be mature in our thinking. What becoming like little children entails would take pages and pages and while I do expect to expound on that eventually, there's a loose thread in the tapestry I want to tug on.
As we embrace characteristics of little children, how then should we interact with those within the kingdom displaying mature thinking? I like how Chesterton expressed his thoughts about the idea in his essay "The Defendant":
The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect. We bow to grown people, take off our hats to them, refrain from contradicting them flatly, but we do not appreciate them properly. We make puppets of children, lecture them, pull their hair, and reverence, love, and fear them. When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children.
The point is that we are probably unintentionally inhibiting others in their development of what God intends for them in reacquiring the qualities of little children. I personally believe that these qualities include having a sense of wonder about everything and when expressed by adults is usually received as naivete and typically belittled as a result - either outwardly or inwardly.
No comments:
Post a Comment