(7.) Women and Children First: God Identifies with Children and Childhood
(7.) Women and Children First: God Identifies with Children and Childhood.
“Every Christian ought to be a refuge… a hiding place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” (George MacDonald, Growth in Grace and Knowledge).
By George! There is no author that has more deeply explored the childlikeness of God and the presence of God’s image in children than the unforgettably profound Scottish author and pastor George MacDonald. Since he has said it better than any of us, or at least better than me, let’s consider some of his thoughts directly from him. All the following quotes are excerpts from one of his “Unspoken Sermons” entitled “The Child in the Midst.”
(1.) “A lofty knowledge of blessedness belongs to the act of embracing a child as the visible likeness of the Lord Himself.”
(2.) “For the blessedness is the perceiving of the truth that the Lord has the heart of a child.”
(3.) “Our Lord was, and is, and ever shall be divinely childlike.”
(4.) “Perhaps in heaven we will see in Jesus reflected a pure childhood of radiant serenity of faith in His Father.”
(5.) “God is represented in Jesus, for that God is like Jesus. Jesus is represented in the child, for that Jesus is like the child. Therefore God is represented in the child, for that He is like the child. God is child-like. In the true vision of the fact lies the receiving of God in the child.”
(6.) “To do as God does, is to receive God; to do a service to one of His children is to receive the Father.”
(7.) “Childhood is the deepest heart of humanity, and so in the name of the child we receive all humanity.”
(8.) “If we must become like children in order to enter the Kingdom of God, then the Kingdom of God must be pervaded by a spirit of children.”
(9.) “The child is a sign of supreme divinity.”
(10.) “Theologians have misrepresented God when they represent Him as a lofty king upholding His glory by smiting sinners. Rather, our God kisses children and says they are like Him. He embraces us with compassion and is sorrowful when we cannot understand that about Him. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were – no, not a truer, for the other is false, but – a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.”
A Living Hell. All the numbers these days are pointing to the tragic fact that our society is making a living hell for too many of our children. The Judeo-Christian ethic has always believed that mistreatment of children is an abomination in the eyes of God. Children unfortunately fit into the category of the “least of these” in America, and when we care for the children in our midst, we in fact are caring for Jesus who is intimately present with each child. The truth is that our Lord is divinely disgusted with the horrors that our nation is putting our kids through. But first the good news of God’s love of children, before the bad news of how they are dishonored and harmed in our society.
“He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, Jesus said, ‘Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embrace me, and far more than me – God who sent me… Woe to anyone who is the downfall of one of these little ones. If you give one of these children a hard time, bullying, corrupting, or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck.’” (Mark 9:36, 37, 42; also Matthew 18:5-6).
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO HONOR CHILDREN. What did Jesus mean when, after taking up a child into His arms, He said that whoever welcomes one of these little ones in His name in fact welcomes Him? (Mark 9:36). It seems to me that Jesus might be saying:
Here’s the bottom line, people… I love children. I knit every one of their little bodies together in the womb, I strung together their DNA, I wired each nervous system. I breathed their first breath through my Spirit to each and every one of these children! I invented each personality, fashioned each child from scratch, and then danced a jig to celebrate every birth. And so I designed each child to represent much of what is true of my Kingdom: simple and transparent, playful and straightforward, relational and curious, zealous and dynamic, dependent and trusting. Children, all of them in general and each one in particular, are my pride and joy. Unfortunately, each one of my prize packages is also vulnerable in this fallen world of mine. So they have my heart, and I have their back.
I’m like any devoted parent, only more so. I take personally whatever happens to them, as if it happens to me. I’m like the parent who screeches “ouch!” when the child falls on the sidewalk. I identify so closely with my children that when a child is bullied, I feel the humiliation. When a child is victimized, I feel the shame and revulsion. When a child is harmed in any way, I head in the direction of justice for that child. On the other hand, when a little ragamuffin kid is received with kindness and respect, I feel like I’m being received that way too.
When parents graciously open their hearts and home to be blessed with a child – as an act of faith and trust – they had better set an extra plate at the table for me. When schools welcome students into their classrooms as honored guests made in my image, they’d better get an extra desk for me. Whoever welcomes a child, welcomes me, the Lord of children. And in this process arrives the Father, from whom all fatherhood gets its name.
I become a household name whenever love for children is a natural outgrowth of love for me, whether the child is sick or healthy, athletic or awkward, academic or artistic, passive or exuberant, a rock star or someone who is easily lost in the shuffle. I especially root for those underdogs, because I know what that feels like. I was once an unknown child, often dismissed as being “just a kid.” As I grew, I was considered a fool and a misfit. I remained a child at heart, even though I was judged and abused as an adult. I know what those children feel like in an adult world. So, by all means, by every means, welcome my children into your embrace, and you will find that you’d better open your arms a little wider, because I’m right there with you. Make room for me too. And don’t even think about mistreating my children. I have a millstone waiting.
Each Child is Sacred. Creator God hates any type of dishonoring of children, any type of treatment that shows an unwillingness to accept the eternal value of children. Every child is made in the image of God, and so is a sacred human being. In the Judeo-Christian faith, children are honored, held up as valuable and treated as such. Jesus reserved one of his starkest warnings against those who would harm children. Children are highly valued by Jesus, and He went way out of His way to communicate that. He said that there was a special punishment reserved for those who harmed children in any way. He gave a recommendation for anyone who mistreated children: It would be better for you to have a huge boulder, a giant millstone, tied around your neck and be thrown into the deep blue sea, than to receive the punishment you richly deserve. The grotesque devaluing of children today is rampant in our society, and it is no exaggeration to say that the modern world’s mistreatment of children is in the spirit of old-world child sacrifice.
Susan Tedeschi – Lord Protect My Child (Live at Farm Aid 2005)