Be like children
Robert Duncan. "Good grandfather snowman." 1952.
The Lord in the Gospel repeatedly calls on every person to become like a child. Be “like little children” (Matthew 18:3), “for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14).
Every person grows, develops, becomes more mature. And this is not only the reality of our time. Even before the Fall, man was called to grow in the love of God, to develop his abilities. Thus, he learned about God’s creation and named the animals (see: Gen. 2:20). According to St. Basil the Great, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “was given because a commandment was needed for our obedience.” That is, in heaven, a person was brought up and developed.
In the same way, as we grow up, we are called to become better, to grow physically and spiritually. We must master our abilities and develop God's gifts. Is it really in spite of this that the Lord says: “Be like children” - inept, undeveloped, helpless? Intuitively, you and I understand what He means. Everyone, seeing a child, feels what we have lost while growing up, in which children are really better than us. Let's try to understand a little about what Christ valued so much in children.
At an early age, children still retain an amazing integrity of mind, heart and will. Such qualities of an adult as double-mindedness, guile, and hypocrisy are alien to them. Harmony in a child’s soul allows you to see harmony around you. It turns out that this is the true Kingdom of God, which is “within us” (Luke 17:21).
Children are characterized by simplicity, spontaneity, and a special realism of the soul. The world of fantasy and the world of reality often do not have clear boundaries. As they master the world around them, they immediately create something new, perceiving their fantasy no less real than the world around them. The same applies to time. Remember how long it takes a child to master our usual time categories. He already speaks well, knows and remembers a lot, but, for example, “yesterday” and “a year ago” are the same for him, the past lives in the present, and the present dominates the future. We can say that this is an image of future life in eternity.
We, having gained a lot of knowledge and experience, lose the direct connection of the heart with God, characteristic of children
Children are by nature open and sociable. They absorb new knowledge, and their hearts are open to the word of God, goodness, and light. Christ, seeing how children are drawn to Him, listening with the spirit of love and purity of heart, in His prayer to the Heavenly Father says: “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You hid this from the wise and prudent and revealed it to babes” ( Matthew 11:25). We, having a lot of knowledge, intelligence and experience, lose the direct connection of our hearts with God.
Trust and goodwill towards people. Children are not characterized by hostility, malice, enmity, or hatred towards anyone. “Be childish to evil” (1 Cor. 14:20), says the Apostle Paul, meaning how children often do not even see the evil around them, and if they feel evil against themselves, they very quickly forget and forgive the offenders. Indeed, like is known by like. A child, who by nature does not know evil, will not see this evil around him. A parent who punishes his child with anger will for a long time feel a heaviness in his heart - a consequence of the sin he has committed. The child, having quickly forgiven, again runs to the parent with a heart full of love. Everything good and pure inspires trust and attraction in a child.
Faith is natural for children; it is an experiential part of their lives. On the contrary, they are not characterized by doubts, hesitations, crafty wisdom and self-justifications. Their faith is unaccountable and at the same time sincere. A child with any trouble runs to his mother, knowing that she will always help. This belief in unconditional love and help extends to spiritual life; a child’s natural faith in God is formed through the experience of love and trust in parents. Children believe in the words of adults, for them these words are the same as their deeds. If parents do not throw words to the wind, but confirm reasonable words with reasonable deeds, then they gain authority in the eyes of their children, complete trust and cordial friendship. Children's faith in adults, the latter's faith in children lead to deep, sincere and natural faith in God.
The child has natural humility. As we grow up, we retreat from this saving virtue
When the disciples asked Christ: who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, He, placing a child in the midst of them, said: “If you do not turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven... Whoever humbles himself [humbles] like this child, the same more in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18: 1-4). A child is “little” from birth; he has natural humility and modesty. Growing up, we lose this saving virtue and cultivate pride, ambition, and vanity. We already consider ourselves, if not better than everyone else, then certainly no worse. Moreover, from early childhood we often instill in our children the desire to be better than others.
It turns out that a child from birth already possesses many qualities for life in the Kingdom of God, but as they grow older, they weaken, are lost, or are even replaced by opposing passions. This is largely facilitated by the examples that surround a growing child. We create people like ourselves. Lacking a genuine spiritual life, and caring primarily about the values of “this world,” we contribute to the rapid departure of our children from their still slightly spoiled nature.
There is a path of the chosen ones from the womb, examples of which we see in the lives of saints who pleased God with their holy lives from infancy. However, for you and me, the Lord offers a second path - the path of returning to a humble childish spirit: the spirit of faith, love, modesty, purity and boundless trust in God.
As the Holy Gospel of Matthew says: “... At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said: who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Jesus, calling a child, placed him in the midst of them and said: Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven; So whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven; and whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me...” But it is so! A small child by nature has an unclouded vision! And his perception is not yet infected with the virus of self-determination. What is happening is experienced in direct experience, without claiming it. Then, when the baby grows up, parents, first of all, and then society, instill in him the necessary behavioral skills to interact with the environment. Well, naturally, at the age of 2-2.5 years, the child develops so-called secondary involvement, as a result of upbringing and conditioning (reconditioning). He begins to think through the prism of the author’s program, for example, I did/didn’t do it! There is suffering, a feeling of guilt and responsibility for what is happening. Thoughts, feelings and actions are appropriated and uniqueness is suppressed...
More than once I have noticed how children rejoice at the most ordinary things with such crazy delight that it can’t help but make me smile - rain and splashing in puddles in their boots, playing snowballs, launching boats in streams! And a running sunbeam that you just want to catch in your palm! A unique perception! :) Even if he got into trouble, got his clothes dirty on the street, and the baby started playing, what can you do now?! I didn’t notice the jeans torn at the knees and came scratched and disheveled, but happy... And individuality (a unique personality in this context) does not suffer from this. Rather, on the contrary, it reveals itself at every moment in the most incredible way - unpredictably! What about soda?! When I was a child, I died as much as I loved her. When there were still vending machines and you could pour yourself a glass for a coin. I just got drunk! Kvass, soda, lemonade - what a thrill! Now I’ve changed my mind - I love coffee! :)
So here's the thing about uniqueness:) The desire to conform to certain standards of behavior, coming from the desire to be accepted; the fear of rejection, the fear of not being like everyone else, that you won’t be liked as you are, actually turns a person into a robot, a unique personality is covered with a false one (mask), and natural manifestations are covered with masks! And the soul suffers! Here the soul is the uniqueness of an individual’s knowledge, perception and experience, how a person thinks, feels, manifests, interprets, describes, etc. And this does not repeat itself, just as there is not a single identical snowflake! The melody of life, its manifestation in the manifested world, which is lived through you, even if you get a SLAP! :)))
As they say in the Holy Gospel of Matthew... Be like children and the Kingdom of Heaven will open to you! :) Life as it is! :)))
It won't work without us
So what qualities should a person who inherits the Kingdom of God have? If we proceed from the fragments of the Gospel discussed above, we will get approximately the following psychological portrait: this is a person who does not strive for power over others, earns his livelihood honestly and looks confidently into the future, is capable of a critical attitude towards himself, and, most importantly, calls on God, ready to live by His truth. This is probably not a very typical image, but it is hardly possible to blame such a person for immaturity. Although some carelessness can still be traced in him. But it is not at all explained by the irresponsibility characteristic of infantile people. It’s just that such a person knows that God loves him, and therefore he trusts God, asks Him for help, relies on Him and thanks him for the benefits received. But at the same time, he always remembers that he himself must also take part in his own salvation. Trusting in God, he tries his best to live according to His commandments. Because, as St. Augustine said, God does not save us without us.
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In addition to the time when we stand in prayer in order to try to turn to the Lord, there is another time - when we do not speak to God, but, on the contrary, He speaks to us. When? When we read His word, living, addressed to all people and at the same time to each of us personally. And experience itself assures us that this conversation is truly mysterious, deeply personal, intimate: after all, the word of God is often revealed to us in a completely unexpected way, as if we were reading it for the first time.
Truly I tell you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 18 :3).
This commandment of the Savior is most often remembered in precisely this version: Be like children... And somehow it sometimes escapes our attention that in the Gospel it sounds much stricter, much more uncompromising: Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 18 :3).
This emphasizes its importance for our salvation. It captures a holistic image of how the Lord wants to see a person before His Face. This seemingly simple commandment is filled with deep theological meaning, because it reveals the great Mystery of the relationship between man and God...
What does the Lord want from us?
It happens that in the midst of the most prosaic things we suddenly find the key to understanding spiritual things. In the midst of the everyday bustle, some kind of fresh wave will suddenly overcome us, which forces us to think in other categories and makes us contemplatives.
Here I am holding a tiny baby in my arms, an infant. The thought suddenly occurs to me that this helpless creature is completely devoted to me, completely dependent on me. It trustingly and meekly pressed itself against my chest and does not expect any harm from me. It needs my warmth, my care. It strives to communicate with me, cries if I move away. It cannot live without me, and therefore I am responsible for its life.
So man is in the hands of God. God created him to embrace him. He wants us to become helpless, speechless, and dependent on Him in everything. For what? For what? To show us His Fatherly love, to become a Helper for the helpless, a Hearer for the wordless, a Single Hope and Refuge for those who can do nothing and have no hope, and a loving Father and Master for those who depend on Him in everything.
As I carefully held the baby, with tenderness and love, so the Lord holds His children, who look to Him for their Father. Can He throw them to the ground, take them out into the cold, leave them hungry? If we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our Heavenly Father... (cf.: Matt. 7, 11).
Why does it so often happen to us that God appears to us as a Person indifferent to us, and sometimes almost a tyrant? Maybe the reason lies in ourselves? Maybe we behave as if we do not need the Father, as if He does not exist for us? We don't want to be dependent on Him, meaningless without Him. And, without realizing it, we refuse that bliss that gives us the feeling of our dependence on Him...
One man, a priest, burning with love for God, once shared an extraordinary experience that happened to him at the liturgy. While making the Bloodless Sacrifice, at some point he suddenly felt like a baby in the arms of Divine love and felt some kind of blissful helplessness: “Lord, I’m worth nothing, I don’t exist, only You alone!”
Some people experience this as a state, but holy ascetics had this as their dispensation.
The spiritual son of Elder Porfiry, in his book “Where God Wills,” describes how the elder served the Divine Liturgy: “... I saw Father, who, like a little child, raised his holy hands to the Heavenly Father!”
These words contain all the “simple theology” of the remarkable Greek ascetic, which learned theologians did not understand. You hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes (Lk. 10, 21)…
The Lord wants us to seek Him as a Father, so that in infant helplessness we stretch out our hands to Him, so that we believe in His Fatherly love, so that at every time and in every place we cry out to Him “Abba, Father!” Because the Kingdom of Heaven is for babies, for their blissful dispensation...
Dragonfly got it all wrong
One of the main character traits of an infantile person is irresponsibility, unwillingness to take on any obligations, care, or concern. Therefore, the flip side of irresponsibility can without any stretch be considered carelessness. An example of such infantilism is well known to everyone from Krylov’s famous fable “The Dragonfly and the Ant,” where the unfortunate dragonfly spent the whole summer carefreely having fun with his friends instead of making provisions for the winter, and was then forced to go to the economic ant for humanitarian aid. The ending of this sad story negatively characterizes both characters in the fable. But if the ant is unpleasant for its tight-fistedness and complete lack of compassion for its freezing and hungry relative, then the dragonfly here causes bewilderment precisely because of its carelessness, complete inability and unwillingness to take care of tomorrow.
When you read the words of Christ in the Gospel, where he calls on his disciples not to worry about tomorrow, about food, about clothing, the image of an unlucky dragonfly with its infantile life attitudes involuntarily comes to mind. In fact, how else can you understand the words “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear” (Matthew 6:25)? Wasn’t it the same carelessness that led the jumping dragonfly to the deplorable state in which the fabulist presented it to us?
Clarification is also needed here. In Russian, the word “take care” has a predominantly positive meaning, so refusal to care is immediately perceived as a kind of frivolity and irresponsibility. But in the Greek original of the Gospel there is a much more ambiguous word “merimnao”, which can be translated not only as “care”, but also as “anxiety”, “sorrow”, and even “spiritual division”. If you read the words of Christ, bearing in mind all these meanings, then the meaning of what was said immediately becomes clear: do not be tormented, do not torment yourself, do not poison your life with anxious thoughts about your future. God does not leave any living creature without care, and you, too, will receive from Him everything you need for life. Therefore, free your mind and your heart for the main thing - learn to live on Earth the way the Creator intended you to live on it. Follow His commandments, seek first of all God’s truth, strive to live by it. And you can earn the rest for yourself without tormenting yourself with worries about tomorrow, because today’s bread comes to you by the sweat of your brow. Therefore, work today, but do not tear your soul with heavy thoughts about the future, free it for communication with God. Here is how Blessed Theophylact writes about this: “By the cares of the day, the Lord means contrition and sadness. It is enough for you that you lamented the present day. If you begin to worry about tomorrow, then, constantly worrying about yourself because of the physical, when will you have leisure for God?
The Lord is coming!
Teaching His disciples the practical skills of spiritual life, faith in God and the conditions by which a person can become an heir of salvation from eternal destruction, Jesus Christ set children as an example: “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter to the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:2-4). Oddly enough, adults can learn a lot from children. After all, the harsh realities of life on a sinful earth forced adults to leave many valuable qualities in their childhood. Jesus, pointing to children indirectly brings back the memory of adults to the best years of their lives. He draws parallels between the attitude of children towards their parents and the attitude of people towards their Creator God.
What can children teach us? Faith and Trust Look at the children's faith. Children, unlike adults, tend to easily take their word for it. To say that young children are more trusting of their parents than adults is an understatement. As a rule, initially children believe their parents 100%. Try seriously telling your guilty little child: “Okay, now I’m going to treat you for disobedience. I’ll give you an injection.” You will see how much faith there will be in his frightened eyes. He is in fear and with tears will loudly ask you not to do this, although you simply intimidated him. By the way, with such intimidation in order to achieve obedience, parents gradually weaken the trust of their young children. When we promise something good to children, they look forward to it as if what was promised was already in their hands. If the promise is not fulfilled, they are perplexed at their level and experience terrible disappointment. Unlike adults, children do not suffer from skepticism. They tend to believe in miracles. They do not have the mundane limited experience that supposedly proves that miracles do not exist. Using the example of children's absolute trust, Jesus teaches people to also trust God and His Word. One day, the angel Gabriel, informing Mary about the miraculous birth of the Savior, affirmatively said: “For with God no word will fail” (Luke 1:37). Frankness and sincerity Unlike adults, small children are very frank and sincere. They are not so hypocritical and crafty. Without any complexes, they will tell Uncle Petya and Aunt Lyusa everything that Mom and Dad said about them in the kitchen. Before God our life is like an open book. He personally does not need any additional information about us. What He sees is the absolute truth. It is impossible to hide anything from him. However, the Lord appreciates our sincerity and frankness. After all, we speak sincerely and openly about ourselves, our thoughts and feelings only with those closest to us - those whom we trust. When we sincerely pour out our souls in prayer to God, He hears us. This is exactly what the Bible calls for: “Trust in Him at all times; pour out your heart to Him: God is our refuge” (Psalm 61:9). Children are not vindictive Small children quickly forget grievances. When their parents punish them, they do not become bitter like adult children, and after that they are able to show even more love. They understand that the parents who punish them love them and they cannot imagine life without them. Small children do not blame their parents for all their problems. When they feel bad, they do not run away from them, but, on the contrary, immediately ask them for help. “Those whom I love, I rebuke and punish,” the Savior once said. Also in relation to their peers, they hold grudges and grudges. When they meet after any quarrel, they do not remember and do not demand “justice”, the main thing is that they have a common activity - in the sandbox or with a bicycle... Affection and patronage Small children, unlike adults, are extremely attached to their parents. They can’t even imagine a day without mom and dad. They know that their dad and mom are the best. When a child in a crowd loses sight of his parents, he immediately begins to panic and looks for them with a frightened look. Children are not shy about admitting their weaknesses. That's why they turn to them for help. God says about His parental love: “Will a woman forget her suckling child, so as not to have compassion on the son of her womb? but even if she forgot, I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15). Convert Jesus Christ not only uses children as examples for His disciples. He directly calls them: “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” It seems that the disciples of Jesus certainly had to fully meet the Savior’s expectations. Nevertheless, Jesus called them to real conversion. As it turned out, they did not yet believe Jesus 100%. They did not take His predictions about His death and resurrection seriously. It was only when this happened that the disciples were shocked to the core. Only then did they realize that Jesus had been right all along. He was never wrong. “And without faith it is impossible to please God; For he who comes to God must believe that He exists and is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Heb. 11:6). Conversion - repentance means a change in lifestyle. Adults are proud of their experience: military actions, labor merits, children born, education, etc. Therefore, it is difficult for them to admit that life without obedience to God does not deserve salvation and is doomed to destruction. In order to convert and repent, it is necessary in complete humility not only to come to the “zero” of your life, but also to realize your spoiled, doomed state without God. And only deep faith, like that of children, will give the strength to bow before Christ and accept Him as a redeemer from destruction and subordinate your future life to Him. “For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved: for with the heart one believes leading to righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses leading to salvation” (Rom. 10:9,10). This is why the vast majority come to God and turn in their youth.
Orthodox Life
THOMAS
The editors of Foma received a question from a reader: “Hello! I don’t quite understand the meaning of the phrase that Jesus Christ says: “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Should we be carefree? And how does this fit with a sober outlook on life?”
We talked with Archpriest Vladimir Zelinsky, rector of the “Joy of All Who Sorrow” Church in the city of Brescia (Italy) and the author of the book “Be like children. Theophany of childhood."
— Father Vladimir, you devoted an entire book to the study of this phrase of Christ about children. Tell us why she interested you so much?
“I was once riveted by these words from the 18th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. They echoed other words that when we receive a child, we receive Christ himself (Mark 9:36-37; Luke 9:47-48). They sounded and still sound firmly and unambiguously, even categorically, and at the same time, it seemed to me, in comparison with other commandments, they did not attract such close attention from commentators.
In the Gospel, Christ’s “child,” I was attracted by some kind of mystery, that is, something more than an edifying example of good behavior for adults. I tried to figure it out. Not in order to unravel, in order to explain that we owe something - the book “Be Like Children” was precisely intended to get away from the moralistic understanding of childhood as a kind of duty that needs to be fulfilled. Her goal was to find another, unexpected dimension of infancy. And if we owe something, then first of all to the child who still lives within us. We have to find him. We must rediscover our own childhood with its experience, albeit unconscious, of the presence of God. In the mouth of Christ, I dare to think, this meant “to be like children.” However, they are not so much obliged as called upon. Called to fulfill the plan for each of us: to be with God.
- How can this be accomplished?
— To begin with, let’s say, be surprised that God decided to give us life. Here's to everyone personally. He wanted us to be, put His thought, His love into this decision. We find evidence of this love more than once in the Bible, especially in the amazing 138th Psalm. Let's try to listen:
I praise You because I am wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works, and my soul is fully aware of this. My bones were not hidden from You when I was created in secret, formed in the depths of the womb. Your eyes have seen my embryo; in Your book are written all the days appointed for me, when not one of them was yet.
The psalmist David does not invent anything here, but, as it were, “remembers” himself in the sight of God. He “remembers” his entire being - from the formation of bones to the days of his destined life, recorded in the book of God's memory. “Remembers” himself as a body and himself as a person. Science has long unraveled the mystery of the emergence of man as a living organism, but the mystery of the emergence of personality is unlikely to be unraveled. Because personality originates from God’s plan for man, even when a person deviates from this plan.
And this idea is revealed in early childhood. It was in early childhood, before the serpent had yet instilled in our growing “I” his main commandment: you will be like gods, knowing good and evil... In early childhood, we are not yet “gods”, we are what God recently created with the participation of our parents, with Him created.
The child keeps within himself the miracle of the sixth day of creation, when man came into the world from His work. “To be like children,” “to become like children” means to go in search of this miracle. Not in a sentimental sense, not at all, but in an initially religious sense, connecting us with the Creator.
— In the Gospel, we more than once come across the idea that the Kingdom of Heaven will be open to infants, and not to “the wise and prudent.” Are wisdom and intelligence a vice? How should we understand this?
— Let’s try to think: what is open to babies? The love of God is revealed to them - on some pre-rational, pre-rational level. It shines secretly in the creation of the world, in the air we breathe, in our very existence. In the love of parents when they exist. In nature, until it is destroyed. In flowers, clouds, pets. And when a person puts love at the center of his life, reason and wisdom obey it, live in harmony with it. This is how saints arise.
Or the mind becomes the master of our sovereign “I” and its passions, which this “I”, even a very religious and ecclesiastical one, often does not see in itself: pride, pride, egocentrism. From here arises the answer to the question: what to do? Not one answer, but many, because we are free and can choose different paths.
And if we must do something, if we absolutely want to turn to morality, then there is only one thing: to obey love. Bring her into the world. Starting at least with children, with serving them. With their protection, protection from evil.
In general, when you discover the love of God in yourself, and this is the most important discovery of our life, so rarely recognized, you should not treat it as your property, as something that rightfully belongs to you. No, love reveals itself only when you selflessly share it. I have read about families who adopt sick orphans. The love of God becomes visible and luminous in them. Janusz Korczak (I don’t know anything about his religious views), who voluntarily entered the gas chamber with the doomed children, fully fulfilled Christ’s commandment: “became like children.”
—What is hidden behind the definition of a child, a baby, that the Lord gives?
- The Lord does not give definitions in this case. He asks a riddle that we must solve. Not to guess with the mind, not with theology, but with the heart, participating in the love of God. That is, to show it by sharing love, “becoming like children.”
A person finds and defines himself in a child. From such self-determination, in my opinion, true art is born. I cite as an example some poets, especially Khlebnikov, in whom I find an absolutely infantile, almost inaccessible to us, perception of things in their primordial nature, the revelation of the first sinless day of creation. Here is an ingenious image of a grasshopper: “winged with gold writing on the sharpest veins...” The poet reproduces his first, still pre-rational glance at a glimpse of a grasshopper, that instantaneous snapshot of an infant’s perception that is lost in memory, but the poet is able to extract it and then capture it in words. True creativity for me is the liberation of the disappeared child within.
— Have you met people who correspond to this definition of childishness? Tell us when, where, under what conditions?
“I had to meet people in whom this “holy childishness” seemed to manifest itself and became obvious. Oddly enough, it often makes itself felt in old age after a long life of prayer. Vasily Rozanov called childhood and old age metaphysical age. But the point here is not some kind of philosophy, but the acquisition of a gift once given up, lost and regained. Because childhood is a gift that we then spend, erase, lose, but never completely disappear until the very end. It may be easier to return to it, to find it again, in old age, when earthly affairs are pushed aside and their pressure weakens, but only in enlightened old age, which has returned to its childhood beginning in God.
In my book, I mention the special expression of a newborn’s gaze, which Father Pavel Florensky, and not only him, writes about. Sometimes in this look some kind of bottomless wisdom is revealed, flashes only for a moment, then disappears. Many parents happened to meet this amazing gaze of their child, then they forgot about it. Why do I suddenly remember this? Because sometimes it awakens in people who have regained childhood. When we meet the gaze of another person, we often feel in him a stranger from whom we want to hide. But from the eyes of a child - never. And if the gaze of a child awakens in an adult, then the gaze becomes the gaze of a friend, a sympathizer, a neighbor, but not the gaze of a spy. This is the view of the elder, a true confessor. When you meet him at least once, then you don’t forget.
— Some people think that “being like children” means looking at everything through rose-colored glasses...
- The words of Christ, if you do not turn and become like children, are addressed to adults. They are not children for a long time, they are burdened with all the lived “I”, all the accumulated, adult, inevitably sinful experience. And Christ does not at all advise them to “fall into childhood” and put on rose-colored glasses, which, however, did not exist then. He calls them to overcome themselves. To a change of mind. To inner work, special asceticism. Such asceticism requires prudence, which is considered one of the main monastic virtues.
In my book, I try to find a connecting chain between turning into a child and becoming a saint through repentance and asceticism, through internal purification. That is, through a struggle with one’s “I”, who wants to establish himself in this world, to “get rich” in it, but not to get rich with God, but with oneself, one’s acquisitions in life, one’s possessions, even the possessions of the mind.
For me, this was a discovery: the connection between childhood and holiness, and, moreover, holiness acquired through prayer and fasting. Our sinful adulthood, that is, the will inherent in us to power, accumulation, possession, service to ourselves, elevation above others, comfortable arrangement of ourselves in this world at the expense of others, etc. is defeated and transformed by the effort of consciously “turning into a child.”
— Some non-believers believe that Orthodox people are often infantile and dependent, and justify this opinion with the same quote from Christ. What are they wrong about?
“They are wrong, first of all, in that they want to parody Revelation. People who do not respect the faith of others, consciously, and sometimes almost instinctively, want to reduce it to the point of absurdity, to the point of parody. Infantility is a parody of childishness. Like rose-colored glasses - a caricature of an infant's gaze.
— How should a Christian’s “childishness” be combined with a sober outlook on life?
- “Brothers! Do not be children in mind; be children in evil, but mature in understanding” (1 Cor 14:20) . The mind that the Apostle Paul speaks of is a mind turned to God and at the same time maintaining sobriety in practical matters. Look how Christ solves the problem of taxes: whatever the government, taxes must be paid. But He finds money for them as if by playing - well, even in the mouth of a fish. He shows: don’t let this be your concern, seek first of all the Kingdom of God, the rest... well, let it take its course.
And Zacchaeus, a known swindler, is treated as a beloved child of God, for he too is the son of Abraham. As - spiritually - we all do. Zacchaeus childishly climbs a tree to look at Jesus, and, responding to this impulse, Jesus immediately recognizes him as a child and says: “I will come to you.” And now the child, suddenly awakened in the tax collector, makes unthinkable promises, without wondering whether he is able to fulfill them. Is it a joke: “I will give half of my property to the poor” - how can a person who is accustomed to counting money say this? We hear here truly childish babble on the threshold of the already opening Kingdom of God. These are the first examples that came across, of which you can find many in the Gospel.
— If we move on to a practical plane: what should a Christian do in order to respond to Christ’s call to be like children?
— I don’t have a ready-made list of practical recommendations. First, you need to find the child in yourself in order to be able to feel it in another and love him, like a former child. Love will teach and remind you in each specific situation how to act, being children in evil and adults in mind, to paraphrase the Apostle Paul.
In my book I write about the “civilization of the child,” which should stand under the sign of Christ’s commandment to “receive a child.” She could teach us how to resist the civilization of apparatuses and smart (“smarter” than us) machines that is approaching us. For a person one day, without even noticing it, may find himself at the mercy of his own inventions and revived fantasies. And the wisdom of childhood in Christ’s vision will then suddenly turn out to be our refuge.
What does it mean to be a child in life? Throw away your fishing nets, your worldly nets and follow Christ like the apostles. If He calls you, walk to Him on the water, like Peter. Recognize Him instantly and confess like the Gospel Nathanael, in whom there is no guile. Shout out with joy like Mary Magdalene when she met Him at the empty tomb.
All these cases are historical, but at the same time they have become the language, or rather, the metalanguage of our faith. Anyone, if they want, can translate this figurative language into the context of everyday situations, their own life path. Christ rarely tells his disciples: do this and don’t do that; He does not guide our every step. He reveals the truth - in the child we were created to be and whom we can recognize in others. It is this truth that we should follow, remembering the words: “the sons are free” (Matthew 17:26).
Interviewed by Anastasia Spirina
