BECOMING LIKE CHILDREN
 
In the Gospel of Matthew (18:3-4) there is the well known story, in which Jesus says that a real spirituality requires a mental state, which little children have:

 

 

 … and said, Most assuredly I tell you, unless you turn, and become as little children, you will in no way enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
 

The gospel does not explain what this likeness of children actually means. It is no wonder, if the message is often understood too concretely – so that it would have something to do with being childish.
In a childish meaning being like children is found both from Matthew and Luke:

 

 

 

 

Matt. 11:16 But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces, who call to their companions
Luke 7:31-32 To what then will I liken the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace, and call one to another, saying, 'We piped to you, and you didn't dance. We mourned, and you didn't weep.'


St. Paul, as well, gives some light to the issue in his 1th Corinthians (13:11):

 

 

 

 

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.
 

But turning to the spiritual sense of the symbolic use of the word child we can take a fine example from the Gospel of Thomas (log 46):

 

 

 

 

Among those born of women, from Adam until John the Baptist, there is no one so superior to John the Baptist that his eyes should not be lowered (before him). Yet I have said whichever one of you comes to be a child will be acquainted with the kingdom and will become superior to John.
 

Here, too, we find a promise of seeing the kingdom, but without any degrees among those who enter the state. There is no real disagreement between Matthew’s and Thomas’, for these differences are due to the characters of the authors. Matthew had a habit to colour his stories more than most other gospel writers.
In Thomas’ the role of John is probably an allegory of the kind of person who has grown up in a spiritual sense up to the point where a human being at his best is able to develop by his own efforts.
Becoming like children, however, requires in addition a clearly different kind of factor to come along into the process. This we can get an idea of from John’s Gospel (17:21):

 

 

 

 

Most assuredly, I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can't see the Kingdom of God.
 

This rebirth (not reincarnation) is certainly very close to becoming like a child, a mystical meeting of human and divine nature – and not only a temporary occurrence (being ‘caught up’), but a permanent union in consciousness.
To ‘see’ in a state like this does not mean a sensory perception, not even a feeling or thought, but a perfect consciousness and knowledge of the essence of all.
The final aim is deferred to in John 17:21

 

 

 

 

... that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us,…

 

 

 

Being one here does not mean a ‘holy simplicity’, or even being together, but a ‘holy oneness’ – a unified being and consciousness.

We can find a fine example of the becoming like children from the ‘godless’ philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who in his Zarathustra wrote of three stages in human development: becoming like a camel, a lion, and finally a child.


But what is it that a child can do but not a lion? Why must he now become like a child? A child is innocence and oblivion, a new beginning, a play, a wheel rolling by itself, a first movement, and a holy optimism.
 

A lion denotes to the same state of mind as ‘John the Baptist’ in the Gospel of Thomas, an ability to stand on one’s own feet in all affairs – certainly not on one’s selfishness, which should now be a totally lost quality.
Innocence, of course, means a total purity of mind from all forms of selfishness. Oblivion denotes to a mental change that prevents one’s mind from reflecting past experiences as automatic patterns for future situations.
A new beginning tells something of the unique nature of the consciousness at this point – the nature, of which the gospels of Mark and Matthew defer as writing of ‘new wine and old wineskins’ (Mk. 2:22)


No one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the skins, and the wine pours out, and the skins will be destroyed; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins.
 

A self rotating wheel could symbolize the united, highly advanced state, where personal motives have no effect on one’s actions and functions any more. At its utmost state this might bear the same idea as Jesus’ saying of his own origin in John 8:38


I say the things which I have seen with my Father; and you also do the things which you have seen with your father.
 

In this connection we may take a peculiar claim of St. Paul from his Cor. 12:10


… For when I am weak, then am I strong.
 

This sentence, as well, has much to do with becoming like a child: one’s personal will has stood aside handing its place over to the universal, divine will, which has the only real right to be called strong.
Nietzsche uses a very beautiful verbal image – holy optimism – to depict the reached mental state. This is by no means a common state of positivism, forcing one’s mind to positive thinking and feelings, but a love that dwells from deep and unknown levels, love, that cannot any more turn into its opposite if the circumstances are changing.
From this statement we may easily move and identify the likeness of children into the famous definition of love in St. Paul’s cor. 13:4-7


Love is patient and is kind; love doesn't envy. Love doesn't brag, is not proud, doesn't behave itself inappropriately, doesn't seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil;  doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
 

Even if the previous sentences are often quoted in wedding ceremonies, it is hardly meant to define common love between people, but a universal, divine love that embraces equally all living things. Human love is very seldom capable to fulfil and realize these high requirements, for a human mind is based on mutual benefit and a very limited idea of the truth.
As a result of these fragments we could say that the likeness of a child must be in spiritual sense interpreted as a state of mind that clearly excels the common idea of adulthood.
To be a child requires naturally the event of birth. A human child is born from a human being - from a human being to a human being. If we try to derive from this an analogy up to divine things, we could say that it is not possible to become a child of God by joining some congregation, or being baptized.
A hermeneutic principle for deriving an analogy here could be that a child of God is born from God, in God to God (according to Master Eckhart)!

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