Children and the Moral Life

My wife is a Children’s Pastor at College Church of the Nazarene. She loves her job and the children whom she is teaching. While she both loves and likes children, I have a hard time liking them. This is not to say that I don’t see a deep and important need for raising them within the Christian narrative, but it does render itself to relatively repeated occurrences of annoyance. No matter how cute they are, they still run, scream, bite, hit, cry, and smell. So I go to church every Sunday morning with a smile on my face as I work with these children. (It's really not bad. I wrote most of that in jest).

I could probably go into a lengthy discourse of how we as people learn to be moral. That is to say, we understand our sin only in relation to God’s creation. We act and think that this world is not God’s, that it is our world, and that our decisions are inherently our own simply because we made the ‘choice.’ Christianity teaches us that this is our fundamental sin, and that learning to see the world as it truly is, that we are fallen creatures, is instrumental in any transformative process. Yet, I will not bore you in the development of Christian ethics and the narrative is possesses. Instead, I will tell you a story.

This past Sunday I was leading a small group of fourth graders. We had just discussed the parable of the merciful King. If you are unfamiliar with this story is goes as follows: There once was a King, a powerful King. One day, this King decided that he was going to collect the debt that his servants owed him. He called in his servant who owed him a lot of money and demanded he pay it back. The servant could not pay it back. Knowing full well that he would be thrown in jail, he begged to King for mercy for himself and his family. And the King gave it to him. He dismissed all his debts. The servant, on his way home, saw a man who owed him a small chunk of change and demanded he pay it back. But the man could not. The servant then had him thrown in jail until he could repay his debt. The powerful King heard of this unmerciful act and called his servant forward saying, “Did I not show you mercy and forgive all your debt? Why then could you not show this man the same mercy?” He then had him thrown in jail. (Matthew 18).

During the small group, we began to talk about what it means to show mercy, love, and forgiveness. I asked these children what they would do in certain situations. How would you respond if your brother ripped off the legs to your favorite Barbie? What if your best friend accidentally shrunk your sweater in the dryer? What if your sister spilled kool-aid on your bedspread? What if you were kicked in the shin? The answers I received astonished me. I expected the pat Sunday school answers. We had just talked about showing mercy, and yet the children were honest (I love that about them). They responded, I would do the same back to them: I would kick them back, I would spill kool-aid on their bed, I would destroy my brother’s GI Joe figures. It was in this 4th grade discussion group that I realized an important parallel between children and adults. We as adults act like children.

Let me explain. What would happen if we taught our children a pattern of living that truly was merciful and forgiving? What if they could learn at a young age that retaliation is not the way of Christ? What if the narrative of God’s Kingdom come could be manifest in such a way that their reaction to being kicked is not to kick back but to offer friendship? I wonder if the Kingdom could be seen at a young age in this manner if it would translate to a particular social life. Instead of shooting back, we bring to light the destruction of violence. Instead of falling into a pattern of thinking violence can be redemptive, we recognize what it truly is: a myth of redemptive violence. Instead of suing our brothers and sisters, we could seek reconciliation instead of their money. The list could continue. We as people do a pretty poor job of practicing mercy and forgiveness, both individually and socially. Perhaps, it is because we have learned in the past few hundred years that our life is our own, and so is the world.