I'll pass on 'becoming as little children'

This shall be one of my more irreverent and less intense posts, but may I assure my readers that I am not contradicting the Master in my heading. I've been doing a great deal of exegesis (of the variety where one reads fifteen scholars' treatments of the same passages and eventually wonders who said what...) recently, so I'm not going to go into exegesis mode here. I shall merely express my own, enduring puzzlement about why the 'simple' and 'childlike' are assumed to have an express ticket to holiness. :)

I shall confess that I have no addiction whatever to children. I further believe that Augustine was quite correct in that, if kids do not get into messes as large as those which adults concoct, it is far more because of weakness of limb than of purity of heart. Yet perhaps my very indifference can give me a wider scope of vision. I am not a believer in some sort of 'mystic innocence' on the part of the very young.

I have neither knowledge of nor interest in 'child development' - my thoughts today are of adults who never get past traits which may be excusable in infants but are deplorable in the mature. Children can be exceedingly cruel - they'll mock their closest friends if they sense it will please anyone whose favour they wish to have. They laugh at other people's misfortunes. They are totally centred on themselves, as if the entire world revolved around their own desires. Though they have some rudimentary sense of 'right and wrong,' accompanied by either a need to 'take their punishment' (not that this has the least effect on future deviltry...) or not to be caught, but virtue plays no part in the motivation.

I have known a number of people who could be classed as 'simple.' In some cases, Francis of Assisi's for example, the simplicity was in one area: Francis had a very uncomplicated (though certainly difficult to practise) view of the Christian life as 'living the gospel' and 'poverty.' It kept this otherwise complex man 'on track' and would lead to holiness - though I dare say that his writings, beautiful as they are, are so terribly simple in a sense that they could be puzzling to those who are somewhat less saintly than the dear man. (This includes the Rule. I think it is no accident that, as a group, the Franciscan Order has had more canonised saints and more prominent heretics than any other.)

But most of the 'simple' are quite narrow of vision. Writers, especially those who used to pen the dreadful 'meditations for Sisters' in the past, always praised the lightness of conscience which the childlike had. I wonder... Is such 'lightness' born of a highly virtuous life, or of not having the inclination to take an honest look at oneself? Children are fickle - many are capable of changing close friends as frequently as they would their shirts. I dare say the 'simple' adults are less inclined to self-examen because they only were interested in pleasing others in the first place. (Whether they slandered Mary to win Anne's favour may not even occur to them.)

The worst deficiency in 'the simple', as I have seen more times than I care to remember, is highly limited vision. Concurrently, they often severely lack compassion. They cannot understand much beyond their own scope of experience - another's pain is incomprehensible, because, for example, how could Suchandsuch be unable to deal with 'this' when 'everybody else' does? A confidence will be shrugged off - or, worse, 'laughed off.'

People who were concerned with obedience (Sisters at the top of the list) often could be 'like the wind,' because they had a concept only of rules - and, if the rules changed, the essence was not considered.

I must meditate on 'unless you become as little children' soon. Of course, we know nothing of Jesus as a child, but, given what a character he had by the age of 12, I would imagine he was a most interesting one... perhaps a child's nature, in his view, was one which accepts total dependence on one's Father.