A woman was surprised to see, during a stressful interview with their son’s principal, her dear husband’s face crumple like a child’s, a look of terror appearing momentarily.  A young professional was equally surprised that, during a tense team meeting, his boss briefly put her thumb in her mouth. What was happening to these mature, competent grown-ups?

Any adult will bump into childish parts of himself. He thinks he’s grown-up, but some immature, irrational little one pops out sometimes, uninvited and unannounced.  Like a child, that little one needs attention and help, and will keep whining, screaming, or acting silly till he gets it.

Even more so, for those who suffer deeply as children—through any of the myriad natural or human-inflicted causes so shattering to little ones, and so alarmingly common even in Church and family life—those who survive are changed.  The shattered self has built-in ways to survive and grow up.  But the grown-up might carry the shattered bits a long time. Until addressed, they can appear, unbidden and unacknowledged, like lost children.

Advertisement

When Jesus says, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” what does He mean? What are children like?  Some will say innocent, pure, genuine or loving, traits more accessible and less tarnished in children than adults.  But what’s common to all children is they’re small and not fully developed, unable to look after themselves. They’re inescapably dependent and vulnerable.  

As author Sam Leith notes from examining children’s literature across five centuries, fear is a big part of every child’s life.  A child knows the world is dangerous and he’s tiny in it.  What does the child need?  Not to be suddenly strong and grown-up, but to be held as a child is meant to be held.  The adults in his life can’t take away the world’s danger, but can give assurance that no matter what, he’s valued and worth protecting.  The child needs such help to thrive.  It’s a need we all have that is not always met.

The world is hard on children.  Some people respond with a resignation that’s really despair: “Let’s not have children then.” The widespread suffering of children is so normal we’re often numb to it, which is perhaps most shocking.  We might think child sacrifice is from a bygone era, but is it difficult to name five ways our society regularly sacrifices its children?

Advertisement

A man named Peter, grizzled by the time I met him, loved to attend the Catholic church where he’d been baptized.  His unfailing prayer was “for all the children in the world, especially in war-torn countries.” Peter had suffered as child.  He carried that ‘inner child’, formerly with anguish and strange behaviour, now tenderly and with dignity.  Finding healing through Church life, he became more adult, better present, able to let his ‘inner child’ shine through. Shabby and grey, he was stunningly beautiful.

‘Inner child’ is an image known and perceptively developed in the psychological world, but also in Oscar Wilde’s Selfish Giant, the Grimm Brothers’ Little Red Riding Hood, even to baby Moses drifting in his basket of reeds on the river.  Scripture knows the child who suffers and has no refuge. Hear Rachel weeping loudly for her children (Jeremiah 31:15). Even at Christ’s birth, we’re rent by children’s anguish (Matthew 2:19).  During the octave of Christ’s nativity, we commemorate the murder of innocent children. 

God’s coming doesn’t lead to children’s harm but shines a light on harm happening around us. The light of Christ leads to calling us to care for children. It calls us urgently, beyond our comfortable limits, to care for the vulnerable, who are first children. Not only our ‘own’ children, as if all children weren’t in humanity’s keeping, but every child, even that vulnerable, child somewhere in me!

The Gospel painstakingly shows us not only that children suffer.  It reminds us we cause children to suffer, even within the Church— by which we’re rightly shocked because the Church is first of all for children.  It’s led by a Child.

Advertisement

Can we turn to the Christ-child, and “learn from him, who is gentle and humble in heart”? Can we help each other learn from Him who turns as a child to his Abba, inviting us to turn as children to our Abba? God in Christ is not afraid to be held, to be vulnerable – and to care for the vulnerable first, not by inflicting violence but by inflicting care.