Begin as a Child
“My five-year plan is to survive 2020,” has to be my favorite quote of the year. I overheard a masked stranger sigh it into her phone as I passed her on the street. It’s an apt summary not just of the chaotic nature of 2020, but also of how so many of us feel about it. We’re done, ready for next year. So many of us have coped with the challenges of the past year merely by counting down the days to next year. Well, “next year” is here. Is it any better?
As I wrap up this piece, right now, there is a mob storming the U.S. Capitol. So, no, not any better.
Rambling my way through the tumult of these past months, I would sometimes retreat to the infinite scroll of memes to provide a humorous, if temporary, reprieve from the unrelenting stream of bad news. One “meme” of sorts surprisingly came from the May 31st issue of the New York Times. The Sunday Review cover page was nothing but a big blank space, with all the text printed cockeyed, as if it had fallen to the bottom of the broadsheet. The headline? “The World is Broken.” Apparently, even one of the world’s preeminent newsrooms cannot think of a better response to the difficulties of 2020 than a poignant meme.
Blaming, Shaming, Raging, Wishing
All around me I’ve noticed a few common responses to a historically challenging year. There is finger-pointing: blaming someone else. There is finger-wagging: shaming the other for misbehavior or stupidity. There is giving the middle finger: “To heck with all of it! Let it burn.” And there is finger-crossing: simply wishing it all away.
This last posture is perhaps the most widely held. It’s got to get better, right? The common refrain “will 2020 just end already?” is a kind of finger-crossing—a vague cry to chance for something better. There’s graffiti in my neighborhood of abstract fingers crossed followed by the words, “Come on fate, do your thing.” Yet, probability cannot hear this cry. Pixels rendering a new date on a phone calendar cannot issue change.
I can think of moments this past year when I’ve had each of these postures—blaming, shaming, raging, or wishing—but none are adequate responses to hardship.
The Better Posture
Is there a better posture? Is there a better approach to life, particularly in times of trouble? Yes, and it is found in one of Jesus’ most memorable encounters:
And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them. (Mark 10:13)
This is a well-known passage among Christians and non-Christians alike. Even for Jesus, who is famous for his unusual encounters, this one is singular. Here we see an entirely different kind of posture for approaching life. It’s not strength or status Jesus holds up as models for life, but childlikeness.
What then is this childlikeness Jesus refers to? What about children is so consequential that Jesus proclaims, “To such as these belongs the kingdom of God”? What qualities of a child are so essential?
Childlikeness, Not Childishness
First, we should identify what childlikeness is not.
It’s tempting to look at this story of Jesus embracing and blessing children and reduce it to mere sentimentality. “Jesus and the little children, how cute. How quaint. How precious.” But this is more than a photo op. Sentimentalizing children’s innocence, humility, or generosity is dishonest, as anyone who has taken a long-haul flight with a two year-old can tell you. Toddlers are some of the most self-centered people on earth. And “Mine!” is one of the first willful words a child masters and executes with gusto. Selfishness and stubbornness are on display even in very small children. It’s not sentimentality that Jesus is after.
And it can’t be immaturity or lack of agency. The Bible itself praises maturity and growth.[1] No, it’s not the childish that Jesus praises; it’s the childlike.
“No, it’s not the childish that Jesus praises; it’s the childlike.”
When the disciples see people bringing their small children to Jesus, they intervene. The disciples aren’t trying to be cruel. They’re merely being reasonable. An in-demand personality like Jesus has limited time, and it must be distributed accordingly. It’s best to spend it on people of more consequence than little children.
There it is, right there on the page in black and white. There is something about the status of children that makes their audience with Jesus questionable. While they may not be humble in attitude, they are humble in status.[2] These children are being carried to Jesus, implying that they are babies or are very small, unable to bring themselves to Jesus under their own strength. The caretakers then ask for Jesus’ blessing on the children. They can’t arrive under their own locomotion, and when they’re there, they don’t even know what to ask for.[3]
This is the lowest status: helplessness.
The Lowest Status
Today, when I file my taxes, the forms prompt me for my “dependents.” Who are they? My kids. Children are dependent on their caregivers. Even tax terminology explicitly recognizes the helplessness of children.
“There are not thousands of “helplessness” books on Amazon; there are thousands of self-help books on Amazon.”
Of course no great teachers before Jesus spoke like this. Teach the value of helplessness? Are you kidding? There are not thousands of “helplessness” books on Amazon; there are thousands of self-help books on Amazon. “Strength,” “willpower,” “know-how”—these are the cultural watchwords, the implements of someone who gains audience with important people. But Jesus says something altogether different: it is to those of the lowly status of helplessness that the Kingdom belongs. It is the childlike, the dependent, the helpless, that step into real life, because only those who understand their helplessness can be dependent on someone outside of themselves.
Jesus sharply diverges from the popular self-orientation and proclaims the opposite. Want to really perceive your need for someone outside yourself? Childlike dependence is prerequisite. It is childlikeness that brings a person to the strength, power, beauty, and gift that they could never achieve by their own ability.
This is something greater than self, something found uniquely in Jesus.
“You Found Me”
My oldest child turned 17 this year, but I will never forget a moment when she was only three. I had been traveling for work, and at 10 days, it was the longest I had ever spent away from my family. Tired and jet-lagged, I couldn’t wait to be reunited. When I passed through the sliding glass doors and into the main hall of the airport, my daughter’s eyes immediately met mine. She broke into a three-year-old wobble-run and shouted for the whole terminal to hear: “Oh Daddy! You found me!”
This childlike state has been called “wholesome, free receptivity.”[4] It’s wholesome: authentic, genuine. It’s free: natural, easy. It receives: readily, gladly. My daughter and I had been apart for 10 days, an eternity for a toddler, and when she saw her father, what was the daughter’s operating assumption? He had been out looking for her. Of course.
He’s the dad. He finds his daughter. That’s what he does.
She’s the child. She is found. That’s what she receives.
Seeing Beyond 2020
This posture is an entirely new approach to life. It’s an entirely new beginning. It’s a little bit of Genesis 1 in a Genesis 3 world.
However unintentionally, “The World is Broken” headline gets at the biblical understanding of our world after humanity’s tragic fall in Genesis 3. The Sunday Review lede could just as well have read, “It’s a Genesis 3 World.”
The Bible portrays an unmistakable historical arc: a good beginning, a calamitous rebellion, a radical intervention, and finally, another good beginning. At their best, Christians find themselves living amidst the rebellion, trusting the intervention, with their hope invested in the security of another good beginning. We Christians “are too early for heaven, yet too late for the world . . . like crocuses in the snow.”[5]
Over the past 12 months, how many times have you felt helpless? Helpless to make a decision, helpless to effect change, helpless to overcome a virus, helpless to restore order, helpless to connect with friends or family?
I don’t want to suggest that the hardships and heartache of 2020 are God’s doing, but that they are a part of God’s redemptive purposes. Could it be that 2020 stripped away so much of the environment that gave the illusion of our own strength? Could it be that political upheaval, global pandemic, racial injustice, and natural disasters have simply laid bare the human helplessness that has always been there? Do you see it?
“Could it be that 2020 stripped away so much of the environment that gave the illusion of our own strength? Could it be 2020 simply laid bare the human helplessness that has always been there?”
Maybe the control you remember having pre-pandemic wasn’t as certain as you thought. Perhaps the control we all imagined we were exercising over our lives was actually an illusion made possible by the relative prosperity so many of us have had at our fingertips. Could it be you have always been helpless to enter into the kind of fulfilling life you so deeply desire? Could it be you’ve always needed someone outside of yourself? Someone to teach you, to give to you, to take you into his arms, and to bless you?
The difficulties of 2020 haven’t changed the fundamentals; they’ve only revealed the fundamentals.
Your moments of feeling helpless this year are a glimpse into what is real. You need someone. It’s time to drop the pretense, lose the illusion, see through the mirage. You and I, we’ve always been dependent. Now, we can adopt a new posture. No more finger-pointing, finger-wagging, middle finger, or finger-crossing. We can uncross our arms and open our hands with the wholesome free receptivity of a child.
What do you need for 2021? You may need a new budget, a career plan, a fitness app, the courage to move forward, the wisdom to hold back, or a hundred other worthwhile things. But what you need most of all is to run to Jesus as a child.
He is saying “I found you.” Let him take you up into his arms and bless you.
[1] Cf. 1 Corinthians 3:2, 14:20; Galatians 4:3; Hebrews 5:11-12, 6:1, 10:32; 1 Peter 2:2.
[2] See John Stott, “A Child” (speech, All Souls Langam Place, London, July 09, 2000), https://www.allsouls.org/Media/Player.aspx?show_popout=true&show_media=50766&show_file=55444 .
[3] Dick Lucas, “Don’t Hinder the Children: Luke 18:15-17” (speech, St Helen’s Bishopsgate, London, July 04, 1978), https://www.st-helens.org.uk/resources/talk/1661/.
[4] Kent Hughes, “Let the Children Come to Me” (speech, College Church, Wheaton, IL, January 14, 1995), http://resources.thegospelcoalition.org/library/let-the-children-come-to-me.
[5] David J. Bosch, A Spirituality of the Road (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001), p.85).
L.T. Greer serves on the executive team at Orchard Group, an organization dedicated to establishing new churches in cities. Previously, Luke was as a missionary and church planter in the Mexico City Valley. He’s also waited tables, organized youth ministry, and worked backstage for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. You can find him on his website, Twitter, or with his family on Promontory Point.