Frequently Jesus seems to me to be like a ‘Zen Rabbi,’ making crazy-sounding statements that jolt me out of my conventional ways of thinking. His statement “Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven” would certainly qualify! (Matt 18:2-5)
So, what ARE we to make of this verse? I don’t think there’s ONE right answer — instead there’s many good ones. Here’s a proposal…
What exactly makes an ‘adult’ different from a ‘child’ anyway? One might suggest “innocence,” but children are very capable of being very cruel. “Naivete?” Perhaps, but learning is a lifelong process — I’m hard pressed to say when I “knew” enough to consider myself an adult. Heck, what exactly would be “adult mastery” of the Big Topics that concern us most of all: Love, Death, Eternity, Suffering? Is my lack of real understanding of these issues now, decades later, significantly better than they were when I was a child? These Big Questions don’t seem much more answerable today than they were decades ago!
Instead, I’ve thought about a much more pragmatic approach. Namely: you’re an ‘adult’ when you can ‘take care of yourself.’ You’re an ‘adult’ when you can support yourself, make your own choices and deal with the consequences — whether those choices turn out to be wise or not-so-much, carrying your own weight in your family and society. Are there folks well past their 20’s who can’t do these things? Why, of course, and I think we’d agree that it’s fair to characterize them as ‘not having grown up.’
NOTE: I certainly don’t think that ‘being an adult’ means ‘complying with Society’s generic norm of “go to college, get a job, get married, have 2.3 kids, etc.” People adopt all sorts of crazy lifestyles — crazy to me, but go for it! If it’s not on mommy’s and daddy’s dime — or mine — you’re an adult in my book.
The thing is, at the end of the day, how self-sufficient are any of us really? Especially here in America, we have the story/myth of the ‘Self-Made Man.” To be sure there are individuals of extraordinary ability and drive who soar above the rest of us. Bill Gates would be a modern example. And yet, Bill Gates’ parents were well-to-do enough to send Bill to a private school that had a computer-terminal available for their students to use. Unlike any other school in the area. And then, while in high school he wrote a payroll program and was selling that service. Not likely to happen without some sort of computing resources available.
We keep having this false debate of whether it’s Nature (genes) or Nurture (upbringing) that predicts success. Hello, it has to be both!
How much of the success of any of us is due to our Nature/genetic endowment — something over which none of us had any control? Versus Nurture — the environment in which we were raised, and the opportunities that we may or may not have presented themselves. Gates was born into a family that was able to put him into a school with a computer terminal. Who could possibly have foreseen the results of that?) And he had the Nature (the genetic endowment) to take that opportunity which his Nurture (upbringing and environment) presented, and run with it beyond all imagining.
Which brings me to another verse: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.” Working with that word for ‘poor’ (PTО̄XOS), I think a better translation might be ‘beggar’. “Blessed are the beggars in spirit.” Whereas ‘poor’ might suggest a certain passivity, a beggar is out there doing the only thing they can, given their circumstances of first century Palestine. Including a kind of humility that “this is all I can do. I am completely dependent on the largess of others.”
Which brings me back to the verse that started this meditation: “Unless you become as a little child…”. A child is someone who knows all too well how much they depend on their parents. Meanwhile, although I in no way want to diminish the importance of our individual efforts, there is still a sense in which each of us has been utterly dependent on the generosity of our Heavenly Parent providing us both the Nature (genetic endowment) and Nurture (upbringing and opportunity) to become who we are today.
So how do we become “as a little child”? By being aware of the largess of our Heavenly Parent — to give us both the Nature and Nurture that made us who we are today. And not be so foolish as to think that our current success is only due to our own personal wonderfulness.