Back to the beach

Just a month ago Jami and I were at the beach with her sister, Jennifer, Grace, our niece (and Jennifer's daughter) and Gaby (mom, grand mother and mother-in-law). What a relaxing time. When Jesus talks about becoming like a child, we puzzle over that - commentators have for a long time. Like many sayings of Jesus people will will say them, nod seriously, and then go on acting as they did before. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, early on says "we were gentle as children among you" which is quite a thing to say, but the word "gentle", if a letter is added ( as in a number of well attested manuscripts) becomes "infant." Incredible as it may seem, Paul is claiming that he and the apostles have become like infants among them. Infants is a difficult reading, but the change from "infants" to "gentle" is more likely to have occurred: gentle sounds more adult; it's easier to imagine come copyist taking away the "n" of nhepion (infant) in order to make 'epion (gentle). I think for Jesus and Paul, this use of childhood metaphor is intended not as an edict: how does one become like a little child or like an infant? The metaphor is meant to drive us into contemplation and memory - what was it like to be a child? what is it like to realize one's helplessness, one's dependence? what is it like to be at the beginning? what is it like to not know everything? what is it like to create without pretense (for children create, until an adult teaches them otherwise, blissfully unaware of what the "correct" manner of application is? A child has not adopted those codes of conduct, fear of authority and self limitation, adults use to navigate society: they don't know when to shut up; they don't know they're foolish; they don't know they're an embarrassment. They shine, naively creating wonderful works, imagining the world as a magical place. But children have their failings too: they need protection; they become angry too easily; they can be impatient; they don't now how to value things or understand delayed gratification. Could Paul and Jesus be referring to how uncomplicated love and trust are to them. In the Jungian sense the child has not developed the Persona, the mask, and so a child Is without pretense. A child is honest, particularly about herself. In Ephesians (or it could be the parallel in Colossians) where the apostle says "quit lying to each other" the injunction seems curious because lying seems to have been mentioned twice (do not practice falsehood but tell the truth to one another) [a comparison of the two passages eph 4:17 - 5:1 and col 3:1-17 places the practice of truthtelling under the rubric of being clothed with a new self - and yet the passages for their similarity do not quit say the same thing] but I think what is being asked for here is that we stop pretending to be what we aren't: and that is very childlike: a child just is (except when pretending to be a turtle or invisible - but even then, such a pretense is an exercise in humor and not intended as a life definition). I think that Kierkegaard is driving close to this when he says that we can only be ethical for ourselves, that is, that there is no ethics in general we can use as a tool to cloak ourselves in - we can judge only ourselves. We can not say with authority "I think that you are like ...."; we can only say "I am this way about that, about you, etc."
Certainly I've heard this passage about becoming as a child and in my satirical mind have imagined a Lord of the Flies scenario. Certainly Jesus and Paul were familiar with the terrible twos. But I think they chanced it to bring home this point of living without pretense, living in a way honest about ourselves.