And sometimes you find theology in Christmas underpants…
I don’t spend a lot of time around small children. My husband and I don’t have kids, and my two closest friends are single, so the bulk of my experience with the under-six crowd is seeing them in passing at church or the grocery store. A couple of weeks ago (on Christmas Day), my husband and I had gone to a walking holiday light tour in the evening for something to do, and I was witness to a great example of childlike innocence that I just have to share with you.
Before we set off on the path, I made a quick stop in the restroom. While I was doing what people typically do in a restroom (which I’ll also mention was packed; there was a line), from the stall next to me I heard a little girl of about three or four proclaim loudly, “Mommy, you’re wearing RED panties for CHRISTMAS!”
I’m sure her mother was just dying, especially since the restroom was oddly silent enough after the outburst that she KNEW everyone heard and was trying not to laugh. But what made the little girl’s exclamation so funny is that it wasn’t that she was wrong, she was just a little too honest. Like most kids that age, she just hadn’t acquired the filter that tells us to not say *everything* that’s on our minds.
It made me think a little more deeply about the meaning of the “childlike faith” that Jesus mentions in Matthew 18:34: “3 And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
What is it about the innocence of childhood that God desires for us to reclaim? How exactly DO you humble yourself like a child? What was it that made me a better lover of Jesus when I was five than I am now?
I often hear people (even pastors and theologians) explain childlike faith as being simplistic, back to the basics. I’m not sure that’s really what Jesus was referring to. Kids do, in some ways, have a simpler view of the world since it’s limited to their own base of knowledge and experience, but they also often make deep and insightful observations that adults are too distracted to notice. Children certainly aren’t content with simplicity; they strive for knowledge and understanding.
I think Jesus was not referring to simplicity, which anyone can achieve by choosing not to trouble themselves with study or contemplation (my understanding of faith would be much more simplistic if I chose not to read my Bible, but I’m pretty sure that’s not quite what He was going for), but to authenticity and desire.
Most children are strikingly authentic. Sometimes they embarrass their parents the best when they simply say what everyone else is probably thinking. They are also less likely to pretend they understand when they don’t, constantly ask questions, and don’t usually try to hide their feelings. I think these are traits Jesus wants to see in all of us; unfortunately they are also what we are usually referring to when we tell people to “grow up.” Part of the transition to being a “grown-up” is learning how to fake your way through life.
Jesus doesn’t want us to fake it. He sees us for who we really are anyway, so only succeeds in fooling the one doing the pretending. Humbling ourselves means being honest about who we are; to have the authenticity that we once had as children.
I think authenticity is one of my biggest struggles in my relationship with Christ and in my relationship with other Christians. I often catch myself in church trying to be a SuperChristian, having the right knowledge and the right behavior and saying the right words. (I usually fail miserably, by the way.) It completely misses the point.
I’m reading the book Messy Spirituality
Reading and knowing his word and spending time in prayer are important, but not because Christ wants us to be “SuperChristians.” He wants those things to be out of our pure, childlike desire for HIM. That’s where the children he spoke of in Matthew had a leg up on the rest of us. They were there out of desire: desire to learn, desire to be loved, desire to just be near.
I’ve never been much for New Year’s Resolutions, mostly because it’s just another thing for me to fail at, but if I were to make one this year it would be to strive for the kind of authenticity and desire I might have had as a child. I want to see what my faith would look like if I could really fall at the foot of the cross and ask Jesus why my professional life doesn’t look anything like I wanted it to, to tell him that I don’t think I really understand the Holy Spirit, and to confess that even though eternal life is supposed to be the ultimate gift, sometimes the idea of really living forever scares the crap out of me so much that I have to curl up and take a nap to make myself stop thinking about it.
Maybe I’ll start slow and tell Him what color underpants I’m wearing today.
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