My friend Lara, the reading teacher, put me on to an interview with Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass, that was in the New Yorker, or some other magazine. This was actually three or four years ago. In his interview Mr. Pullman was taking issue with the value that people put on childlikeness. He felt that it devalued growing up, which is a good and essential thing. At first I disagreed with him partly because it was C.S. Lewis that he was particularly taking issue with. I also didn't think that lined up very well with Jesus' teaching that one must become like a child to enter the kingdom of God.
Then, over Thanksgiving I was talking with Josh about a similar topic. He mentioned that there's a difference between innocence and purity. Trying to retain one's innocence is impossible in this life. Moving through that loss of innocence and finding a new purity of soul is a great achievement and can only be achieved by grownups. Huh. I hadn't ever thought of that before. So, I spent some time thinking about it.
Now I think that that's probably true. I think Jesus would agree. I don't think he was necessarily saying "Don't grow up. Stay childlike in all ways." Maybe he was valuing the way children are so teachable. Maybe Jesus was valuing how much more unconditionally children love, compared to adults. I don't know for sure, but I don't think that Jesus was saying that your faith has to be unquestioned and unwavering like a child's might be. A faith that has been tested and wrestled with seems a lot stronger. A grownup's faith.
I'm not sure that I'm done thinking about this. More later.
2 comments:
I like that a lot. I really struggled with my faith as I was losing my childlike innocence. Mostly I felt guilty, but at the same time I didn't want to be naive either. So, I was just all confused. And I think in my heart I came to the same conclusion, and didn't really have words to express it. I'm not particularly innocent any more - I mean, I went to a public university of 45000 other non-innocents. I know what's out there. But yet I'm free from it. That was eloquently said, Tonia.
of course i agree, but also, i like the way it's put in the movie "Dogma" which is not in the least bit innocent or pure, but one of the characters says, faith is like water in a glass. When you're young the glass is small and it doesn't take much faith to fill it, but as you grow older, the glass gets bigger and it takes more faith to keep it filled. I would argue that it's not really more or less faith at our different ages but a different kind of faith that is needed to fill the glass through each age of life, perhaps.
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