But being child-like is different from being childish. In fact, Jesus told us that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like children:
Gospel: MT 19:13-15
"Children were brought to Jesus
that he might lay his hands on them and pray.
The disciples rebuked them, but Jesus said,
"Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them;
for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
After he placed his hands on them, he went away."
What did Jesus mean? The website "Key Differences" outlines what it means to be child-like:
Definition of Childlike
A person is said to be childlike, when he or she has very good qualities, like that of a child, especially in their behaviour, appearance, thinking or character. When a person is childlike, they possess the following qualities:
- They trust people easily.
- They are innocent, sweet, simple and pure.
- They are quite honest.
- They are full of energy, excitement and enthusiasm.
- They are curious to learn new things.
- And, I would add, they have the capacity to use their imaginations.
Psalm 131 ►Good News Translation:
A Prayer of Humble Trust+
LORD, I have given up my pride
and turned away from my arrogance.
I am not concerned with great matters
or with subjects too difficult for me.
Instead, I am content and at peace.
As a child lies quietly in its mother's arms,
so my heart is quiet within me.
Israel, trust in the LORD
now and forever!
In the definition above of "childlike," when a person is child-like, he/she first of all trusts people easily. In Psalm 131, the believer trusts in God above all, and comes to God as a Beloved Parent - "mother" can also be "father"- and trustfully, quietly rests in this Beloved Parent's arms.
Child-like believers know above all who they are: beloved Children of God. What does this mean for how they think of themselves and how they live their lives? Bishop Robert Barron (in his Daily Gospel Reflection for August 17, 2019) explains of the child-like: "In this, they are like stars or flowers or animals, things that are what they are, unambiguously, uncomplicatedly. They are in accord with God’s deepest intentions for them." When God's deepest intentions for us are the center of our lives, we are peacefully dependent on God in the best, truest sense as the One Who gives us life, knows every part of us, and explains to us our worth, our gifts, our mission.
In the above definition of "child-like," the second set of qualities is: "innocent, sweet, simple, and pure." In the Beatitudes, Jesus says "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God."
Innocence and purity are often combined with honesty and a love of justice, which is the third quality. Who can climb God's mountain? Only the person with clean hands and pure heart, who doesn't desire worthless things, who has not sworn to deceive his neighbor. (Psalm 24.) Not desiring worthless things goes along with "I am not concerned with great matters or with subjects too difficult for me." The childlike person humbly knows himself; she knows what she is capable of doing or understanding. Anything else is essentially worthless, or unimportant to him.
The pure-hearted one does not deceive his neighbor through lies or cheating. We've all seen children's strong sense of justice and fairness: "You gave HER the bigger piece of pie!" or "No, it's MY turn next, remember?" They are quick to point out if anyone has cheated at a game.
Three great Christian authors who were great friends lived in accordance with God's intentions for them, and exemplify the last three qualities of childlikeness. They were full of energy and enthusiasm to explain and defend their Christian faith. They were full of a curiosity about God and their faith, which led them to be full of wonder and awe. And they used their imaginations to produce literary classics. All of them knew that they had the gift of writing, and they were true to who God called them to be as writers. They were who God meant them to be, and God used them to set the world on fire. G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis specialized in creating characters who were childlike: innocent, pure, single-hearted, honest, and brave lovers of justice. By entering imaginatively into their stories, we can plumb the depths of the human heart and understand how to become childlike.
G. K. Chesterton, a Catholic lay theologian, who was author of the famous Father Brown detective series (now a tv series on BBC) said, "For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy." His priest-detective, Father Brown, is an intellectual who remains childlike. He is an innocent, unworldly priest, interested in the justice of solving a crime and capturing a criminal, and yet he is most interested in saving the soul of that criminal. He has the purity of an innocent mind, but he is the wise innocent (Jesus said, "Be wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves.") Here's a quote, a "taste" of Fr. Brown:
"“Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him. 'Odd, isn't it,' he said, 'that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?” (from "The Innocence of Fr. Brown.")
J.R.R. Tolkien was a Catholic English writer, poet, and academic, who is best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works "The Hobbit," and "The Lord of the Rings." He said this about his Catholic faith:
"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth."
Tolkien's Hobbits Frodo and Samwise are as short as children, innocent, and child-like, and overcome their fears to battle for justice. Tolkien considered Samwise, a gardener, to be the hero of "The Lord of the Rings" because he protects Frodo. Samwise is neither proud nor haughty, and he rejects worldly power when he could have it. He acts out of loyalty, love, and justice. At one point, Frodo is frightened of his immense responsibility. Sam's response to him explains simultaneously why they must go on, and the value of the great stories that kindle their and our imaginations:
"Frodo : I can't do this, Sam.
Sam : I know.
It's all wrong
By rights we shouldn't even be here.
But we are.
It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn't want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy.
How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened.
But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass.
A new day will come.
And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something.
Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand.
I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.
Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo : What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for."
C.S. Lewis, the great Anglican theologian, apologist, and writer of the beloved "Narnia" fairy tales ("The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," etc.) once quipped "It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to." When Lewis first started writing his fairy tales, the Narnia series, he did not intend to make them specifically Christian in nature: he was enthralled by the stories and characters themselves. But his own Christian beliefs could not long remain "outside the story." In one of his last letters, written in March 1961, Lewis writes:
"Since Narnia is a world of Talking Beasts, I thought He [Christ] would become a Talking Beast there, as He became a man here. I pictured Him becoming a lion there because (a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts; (b) Christ is called "The Lion of Judah" in the Bible; (c) I'd been having strange dreams about lions when I began writing the work. The whole series works out like this."
Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis were incredibly brilliant and talented men, and I would call all three child-like in the best sense, including being honest about their faith journeys, as well as points 4 and 5: full of energy, excitement, and enthusiasm about their writing, and constant curiosity to learn new things. Barron describes truthfulness, energy, excitement, and enthusiasm in children:
"...children don’t know how to dissemble, how to be one way and act another. They are what they are; they act in accordance with their deepest nature. 'Kids say the darndest things,' because they don’t know how to hide the truth of their reactions. In this, they are like stars or flowers or animals, things that are what they are, unambiguously, uncomplicatedly. They are in accord with God’s deepest intentions for them. To say it another way, they haven’t yet learned how to look at themselves. Why can a child immerse himself so eagerly and thoroughly in what he is doing? Why can he find joy in the simplest thing, like pushing a train around a track or watching a video over and over, or kicking a ball around? Because he can lose himself; because he is not looking at himself, not conscious of other people’s reactions, expectations, and approval."
Chesterton once famously said: “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.”
I have mentioned that two other child-like qualities are the abilities to be curious and to use our imaginations. Barnabas Piper (at Barnabaspiper.com, "Real Maturity, C.S. Lewis, and Imagination") writes vividly about children's love of using their imaginations and their ability to lose themselves in imaginative play. And adults' ability to do the same thing - if they allow themselves to.
"Children love fairy tales, adventure stories, mystic lands, and heroic characters that launch their imagination and turn a backyard into Middle Earth, a swing set into Hogwarts, a rocking chair into a TIE fighter, and a bunk bed into a Captain Hook’s ship. Every stick is a wand or weapon and every towel a cape. Children embody their heroes in their play and live out the lives of legends. Mature adults love the same stories, are moved by the same heroes, and lose themselves in the same far-away places but without the towel-capes and slat board swords. (I’ll leave you, dear reader, to interpret what this might mean for ComicCon and Cosplay fans.) Many of us call these stories 'guilty' pleasures. We indulge them privately and feel a bit sheepish about it. What if they aren’t “guilty” but rather just pleasures? What if the places our imaginations take us are actually right where we ought to be, healthy and rich places for our minds and souls?"
C.S. Lewis, the writer of fantasy, knew that curiosity and imagination go hand in hand, that, as Barnabas Piper says " the collection of information, the pursuit of knowledge is not enough without the fostering and feeding of imagination. Imagination guides and shapes our use of information. What do we do with information? Where does it apply? How do we do the most good with it? Who knows? The person with imagination, who values the virtue of great heroes and can envision and form a better story, know. That person is curious. Curiosity and imagination are conjoined twins...Curiosity gives flesh to imagination."
Lewis valued the use of imagination, the power of stories to use great heroes to tell great truths. Including fairy tales. The power of stories is that they teach us to journey into the hearts of those heroes who are both like and unlike us, who face challenges not unlike our own, heroes who teach us how to be brave in even the darkest of times. Unleashing our imaginations to delve into story worlds teaches us how to unleash our imaginations to delve into the wounded hearts of the people around us, and understand them better. Lewis understood that it is not childish for adults to read fairy tales or stories - it is childlike. He said,
“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
“The modern view seems to me to involve a false conception of growth. They accuse us of arrested development because we have not lost a taste we had in childhood. But surely arrested development consists not in refusing to lose old things but in failing to add new things? . . .
"Where I formerly had one pleasure, I now have two. It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one’s adult enjoyment of what are called ‘children’s books.’ I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty – except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all.”
I know many adults who enjoy the fairy tales of Tolkien and Lewis, as well as many adults who love the fairy tales of J.K. Rowling, her "Harry Potter" series. All of these series make use of the general tools of traditional fairy tales - magic and fantastical creatures - in the service of the ongoing battle between Good and Evil. These great modern sagas remind us of the classic sagas, like the epic King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table stories of a Christian King and Christian Knights who eventually search for the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. Wizards who use magic exist in all these sagas. Merlin, a legendary wizard or enchanter, figures prominently in Arthurian legends. In all these great sagas, spiritual warfare is fleshed out in physical warfare to point out the deadly seriousness of the real inner spiritual warfare each of us engages in every day.
The character Harry Potter very much exemplifies St. Catherine of Siena's quote "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire." Harry is the hero who saves his world from the evil Voldemort. J. K. Rowling has spoken out about Harry as a good role model.
"Rowling says that 'Harry is strongly guided by his own conscience, and has a keen feeling of what is right and wrong. Having 'very limited access to truly caring adults', Rowling said, Harry "is forced to make his own decisions from an early age on.' He 'does make mistakes', she conceded, but in the end, he does what his conscience tells him to do. According to Rowling, one of Harry's pivotal scenes came in the fourth book when he protects his dead schoolmate Cedric Diggory's body from Voldemort, because it shows he is brave and selfless.
"Rowling has stated that Harry's character flaws include anger and impulsiveness; however, Harry is also innately honourable. 'He's not a cruel boy. He's competitive, and he's a fighter. He doesn't just lie down and take abuse. But he does have native integrity, which makes him a hero to me. He's a normal boy but with those qualities most of us really admire.' For the most part, Harry shows humility and modesty, often downplaying his achievements; though he uses a litany of his adventures as examples of his maturity early in the fifth book. However, these very same accomplishments are later employed to explain why he should lead Dumbledore's Army, at which point he asserts them as having just been luck, and denies that they make him worthy of authority. After the seventh book, Rowling commented that Harry has the ultimate character strength, which not even Voldemort possesses: the acceptance of the inevitability of death." (from Wikipedia.)
A Church-going Christian (Rowling belongs to the Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian), J.K. sees her books as incorporating everyone's struggle with death and also as a resurrection story. Harry is willing to give his life for the common good. He dies, but he lives.
On Harry's parents' tombstone he reads the quote "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," while on another tombstone (that of Dumbledore's mother and sister) he reads, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." These quotes, of course, are distinctly Christian. The second is a direct quote of Jesus from Matthew 6:19, the first from 1 Corinthians 15:26. As Hermione tells Harry shortly after he sees the graves, his parents' message means "living beyond death. Living after death." It is one of the central foundations of resurrection theology. Which makes it a perfect fit for Harry, said Rowling."They're very British books, so on a very practical note Harry was going to find biblical quotations on tombstones," Rowling explained. "[But] I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones at Godric's Hollow, they sum up — they almost epitomize the whole series." (MTV:'''Harry Potter' Author J.K. Rowling Opens Up About Books," by Shawn Adler 10/17/2007)
Let's go back to our definition of a healthy, holy childlikeness:
A person is said to be childlike, when he or she has very good qualities, like that of a child, especially in their behaviour, appearance, thinking or character. When a person is childlike, they possess the following qualities:
- They trust people easily.
- They are innocent, sweet, simple and pure.
- They are quite honest.
- They are full of energy, excitement and enthusiasm.
- They are curious to learn new things.
- And, I would add, they have the capacity to use their imaginations.
Humbly allow your soul to rest with child-like trust in your Beloved Parent's arms. Allow yourself to sit close to Jesus so he can place his hands on your head to bless you as a much-loved child of God. Allow yourself to be filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, setting you on fire. Then go forth and use the depths of who you are to change the world. "And a little child will lead them." (from Isaiah 11:6).
"There’s some good in this world, my friends. And it’s worth fighting for."