Listening to Children on the Spiritual Journey

Guidance for Those Who Teach and Nurture

Stonehouse, Catherine, May, Scottie

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781441212030
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

How do children experience and understand God? How can adults help children grow their life of faith? Throughout more than a decade of field research, children's spirituality experts Catherine Stonehouse and Scottie May listened to children talk about their relationships with God, observed children and their parents in learning and worship settings, and interviewed adults about their childhood faith experiences. This accessibly written book weaves together their findings to offer a glimpse of the spiritual responsiveness and potential of children. Through case studies, it provides insight into children's perceptions of God and how they process their faith. In addition, the book suggests how parents, teachers, and ministry leaders can more effectively relate to and work with children and pre-adolescents to nurture their faith, offering a helpful picture of adults and children on the spiritual journey together.

1

Why Listen to Children?

“Well,” announced three-year-old Drew as he headed down the stairs to his grandpa’s office, “I’ve got to go do my paperwork.” A few hours later his family watched him on his toy cell phone, listened to one end of a “serious business” call, and smiled at this miniature reflection of Daddy or Grandpa at work. The adults in Drew’s family listened to him with pleasure, loving him for his cuteness. But there are many other reasons to listen to children.

Listening to children is a crucial part of our relationship with them. It brings pleasure, helps us know what the child needs, and can even teach us valuable lessons. This book is about listening to and learning from children. It grows out of many hours of listening to girls and boys talk about God, their experiences with and their efforts to understand God. We also listened to parents reflect on times when they caught a glimpse of their child’s spirituality and to adults reflecting back on their spiritual experiences during childhood. We invite you to join us as we reflect on what we can learn by listening to the children whose voices you will hear in the following chapters.

Before beginning to listen, however, it is important to note that our perceptions of children influence what we hear in their words or see in their actions. Those perceptions are filters that cause us to notice some things and miss others. They also impact what we do with what we hear. Many factors contribute to the forming of our perceptions: our personal experiences, the philosophies and practices of our culture, and the theology we embrace, to mention a few. Much of this forming takes place subtly over time, and we are often unaware of the perspectives that make up our assumptions about girls and boys. As persons who care about children, it is important for us to examine our view of them and its influence on how we listen and learn from them. To help us with that task, in this chapter we will briefly explore several questions. How did Jesus view children? How did his beliefs compare with the cultures around him? How have adults in past centuries viewed the young and with what results? What are common perceptions today? And why is it important for parents and adults who minister with children to listen carefully to them?

Perceptions about Children

Children in the Cultures of Jesus’s Day

Jesus taught and ministered in a world that held well-established views on children. Greek and Roman adults valued them as their hope for the future. The common people needed sons and daughters to care for them later in life, and Roman emperors encouraged the wealthy to have more children to guarantee the continuance of the state.¹ Although records of Gentile families do show tenderness toward children, attitudes toward them were not always positive. Life could be very hard for the young.²

Stoic philosophers, who influenced the thinking of many in Jesus’s day, taught that in children under seven years of age, reason was not active. Between seven and fourteen, reason developed,³ and schooling, therefore, did not begin until about the age of seven. Children were considered more as young animals to be trained than human beings to be guided in a learning process. In these perspectives we see understandings of children that had probably been passed down from Plato. Listen to his words:

Of all wild creatures, the child is the most intractable; for insofar as it, above all others, possesses a fount of reason that is as yet uncurbed, it is a treacherous, sly and most insolent creature. Wherefore the child must be strapped up, as it were, with many bridles.⁴

Such views led to severe discipline in the teaching of children. In the schools, content was usually delivered with little attempt to find interesting methods, and the rote learning of that content was guaranteed through authoritarian discipline. Even in the case of parents who cared about their children, their understanding of young human beings led them to justify harsh, controlling treatment of the children they loved.⁵

How would adults with these views listen to children? If reason is not active in the young, parents would probably not hear wisdom in their words. Adults who focused on training children for the future would not take interest in their reflections on life in the present. No question about it, Greek and Roman adults were in control, the ones with the knowledge and the skills, the ones responsible for training the young for the future. Such adults would not likely listen to or learn from children. Animal trainers do not look for significant insights from those they train. They give commands, observe behavior, and hand out rewards or punishment.

Throughout the Old and New Testaments we see a much more positive view of children. They are considered a blessing, the sign of God’s blessing. Jews valued their offspring and abhorred the infanticide common in the world around them. Like the Gentiles of their time, for the Jews, children were their hope for the future. The young carried the hope, not only for a particular family, but for a covenant faith community. During the exile, raising children to carry on the covenant took on increased importance. The future of God’s scattered people depended on homes where both husband and wife were Israelites, strictly observing the Jewish faith traditions. Children born into these homes and formed by the traditions practiced there would guarantee the continuance of the covenant communities.

During the New Testament period an emphasis on the importance of educating Jewish children was added to the concern for the kind of home into which they were born. The goal of this education was that children would follow in the ways of their parents, both vocationally and in matters of faith. Girls stayed home and learned how to run a household, something very significant in the Jewish faith. Food laws played an important role in maintaining the identity of the Jewish people, and the woman of the home made it possible for her family to follow those laws. Girls learned to fulfill that role from their mothers.

Boys learned a trade from their fathers or as an apprentice, and they also attended the synagogue school. There they learned Hebrew so that they could read their Scriptures. They studied the Talmud, commentaries on the Scripture, for the purpose of coming to understand it. All this was a means to an end. The goal of Jewish education was to raise a generation who knew, understood, and lived God’s laws, a generation to secure the continuance of the faith community.⁶

Even though Jewish adults saw sons and daughters as a blessing from God and their hope for the future, children were still marginal in the world of Jesus’s day. The accounts of Jesus feeding the five thousand give a glimpse of their position in society. Matthew states, “Those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children” (14:21); and Luke reports, “There were about five thousand men” (9:14). The women and children were there, but not counted, not even mentioned by Luke. How well do we listen to those we do not count, whose presence we do not record?

Jesus’s View of Children

In a world where children lived on the margins, uncounted, Jesus repeatedly focused his attention on them. At the request of parents, Jesus healed children (Mark 5:21–24, 35–43; 7:24–30). In his busy schedule, he insisted on taking time to hold little ones in his arms and bless them (Mark 10:16). From time to time Jesus referred to children as examples in his teaching. W. A. Strange observes, “One of the distinctive features of Jesus’s message and ministry was the significance he attributed to children.”⁷ Strange also notes that Jesus’s teaching on children was not a peripheral addendum to the main truth he came to proclaim; rather, it related to a core theme in his message, the kingdom of God.⁸

Jesus began his public ministry by announcing, “The kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15; Matthew 4:17). Mark refers to this message as “the good news of God” (Mark 1:14). In Luke’s account, Jesus reads from Isaiah 61 and declares he has come to fulfill this prophecy, “to bring good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18–19). Linking the ideas of Mark and Luke, we could say that the good news for the poor is news of a new kingdom. Jesus came to teach about the kingdom of God and how to enter it. To the surprise of those who heard him, children played an important role in that teaching.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of parents coming to interrupt Jesus in hopes of receiving from him a blessing for their children (Matthew 19:13–15; Mark 10:13–16; Luke 18:15–17). The disciples, who apparently thought children were not important enough to take Jesus’s time, tried to turn the parents and their little ones away. To their surprise Jesus did have time for the children. In his response to the disciples we find two significant insights about the kingdom of God. Jesus commanded the disciples to let the children come to him because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Jesus continued with an even more amazing statement: anyone who wants to enter the kingdom of God must receive it as a little child. Children, not just adults, belong in God’s kingdom. Furthermore, they are not marginal members of the kingdom, just tagging along with their parents, waiting to grow up and become real members. No, children are models in the kingdom of God, showing adults how to enter.

The disciples believed Jesus would soon set up God’s kingdom on earth, and they expected to be key players, assisting Jesus as he ruled the nation. Looking toward such a future, the apostles struggled with the issue of greatness. Walking along the road just a little distance from Jesus, they argued about who would be the greatest. Jesus addressed the question head on. He called a child into the circle of disciples, and with the child by his side began to talk about kingdom values:

Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:4)

Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. (Mark 9:35)

Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me; for the least among all of you is the greatest. (Luke 9:48)

Through these statements Jesus made it very clear that kingdom values turn the values of the world upside down. God’s ways are not what we expect. The humble not the pompous, servants not rulers, and those as seemingly unimportant as children are valued as the greatest in God’s kingdom. The disciples struggled to grasp these values and accept them. Even at the Last Supper they argued over who was the greatest (Luke 22:24–26).

We saw earlier that the Jewish community focused on producing new generations who followed the ways of their ancestors, children who patterned their lives after the adults.⁹ But Jesus says children are the models of greatness, of discipleship. Children show us what it means to be humble. In Jesus’s day, and still in our day, children represent the marginal, the least. Jesus challenges us to observe, listen, and learn from them how to be great disciples, living out kingdom values.

Jesus challenged his disciples to demonstrate another sign of greatness, welcoming children (Matthew 18:5; Mark 9:37; Luke 9:48). With open arms the great receive children and all those who are assumed to be unimportant. In doing so, they discover they have welcomed the Master. What is involved in truly welcoming someone? In welcoming another we show respect by listening to them. In this way we find out what they consider important; we take an interest in their interests and learn how to meet their needs. Listening to children is a crucial part of welcoming them in the name of Jesus, as Jesus would.

Jesus takes very seriously the nurture of the faith of little ones. When the disciples tried to send the children away, Jesus was indignant (Mark 10:14). “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them,” he commanded (Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16). Jesus views hindering a child in coming to him or causing a little one to stumble as a major offense, deserving severe punishment (Matthew 18:6–7; Mark 9:42; Luke 17:1–2). Jesus knew that many stumbling blocks would clutter the paths of children, “but woe to anyone by whom they come!” he warned (Luke 17:1).

Do we take the nurture of a child’s faith as seriously as Jesus does? Are we vigilant in our effort to remove as many hindrances as possible? Children are different, and one child may not even notice something that trips up another. How can we know what may be causing a child to stumble? That calls for sensitivity to the guidance of God’s Spirit, and it requires that we listen to our children. With what questions do they wrestle? What concepts, facts, or misunderstandings trouble them? We cannot glimpse what goes on in the heart of a child without open communication, that is, unless we listen thoughtfully to our children’s comments and questions.

Matthew and Luke give us one more glimpse into Jesus’s attitude toward and beliefs about the young:

Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matthew 11:25–27; Luke 10:21–22)

What is Jesus referring to as “these things”? Is it the ability to know the Son and the Father that has been revealed to infants? Probably Jesus is using the term “infants”—or “children” as in other translations—as a metaphor for those considered unlearned and unimportant by the leaders of the day. But is it possible that Jesus believes that God reveals significant insights to the young? Could it be that they can know God and Jesus? A person’s ability to know the Father flows from God’s gracious will. There are many who believe that the working of God’s grace in the lives of young children draws them into an openness to and awareness of God.¹⁰ If God is being revealed to children, we need to listen and watch for what God may show us through them.

Have you noticed how many of the accounts discussed above appear in two or all three of the Synoptic Gospels? From all the things that Jesus said and did, the Gospel writers, inspired by the Holy Spirit, selected the insights they believed to be most important for their readers. What Jesus had to say about children was priority information in the minds of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Children in Church History

How well have church leaders across the centuries embraced Jesus’s perspective on children? Answers to that question can be found in the book The Child in Christian Thought, edited by Marcia Bunge.¹¹ It provides a glimpse of how key theologians from the fourth through the twentieth centuries have viewed children. Since the publication of this volume Bunge continues to reflect on insights from this theological overview. She notes that Christian theologians have used six “central ways of speaking about the nature of children,” which may seem paradoxical. Children have been described as:

gifts of God and sources of joy	or	sinful creatures and moral agents
developing beings who need instruction and guidance	or	fully human and made in the image of God
models of faith and sources of revelation	or	orphans, neighbors, and strangers in need of justice and compassion^12

Often theological perspectives tend to focus on one understanding of the child. Bunge challenges those who care about children to move beyond simplistic, single-focused views. She sees value in drawing insights from all six perspectives, holding the paradoxes in tension to provide a rich understanding of the young and the responsibilities of parents and the church for them.

Across history, the child as a sinful and morally responsible creature has been a common single focus. Theologians such as Augustine, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards highlighted this view. Calvin described the nature of the child as a “seed of sin; thus it cannot be but hateful and abominable to God.”¹³ Such views have led adults to portray for children an angry fear-instilling God. Others, such as Augustine, have defended harsh physical punishment by parents and teachers in order to deal with the child’s sinful actions.¹⁴ Too often the young child’s normal way of learning or expressing needs has been interpreted as sin. This simplistic focus on sinfulness has been damaging for many. In spite of the concern over warped perspectives, however, there is value in thinking further about the issue of sin.

Bunge notes that children are born into a world that is impacted by sin, into relationships that are less than what God intended them to be for nurturing the young. She also identifies a brokenness within the child that makes it easy to become self-centered. Children, at an early age, are capable of self-centered acts that harm themselves and others. As they are helped to understand the impact of their actions and are provided with age-appropriate expectations in the home, church, or school, girls and boys can accept growing responsibility for their actions.

These expectations do not need to be harshly enforced on the young. A. H. Franke, an eighteenth-century German theologian, offered wisdom when he instructed parents to treat children with “gentleness and sweetness” rather ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. WHY LISTEN TO CHILDREN?
• 2. KNOWING GOD IN CHILDHOOD
• 3. EXPERIENCING GOD IN EVERYDAY LIFE
• 4. EXPERIENCING GOD AT CHURCH
• 5. THE FORMATIVE POWER OF GOD’S STORY
• 6. LET THE CHILDREN COME: LOVING, KNOWING, AND FOLLOWING JESUS
• 7. CELEBRATING COMPASSION
• 8. THE CHURCH PARTNERING WITH PARENTS
• APPENDIX A: THE RESEARCH DESIGNS
• APPENDIX B: RESOURCES AND IDEAS
• NOTES