CHILDISH vs. CHILDLIKE -- Devotional for May 18, from "Good Seeds"

I assure you, unless you turn from your sins and become as little children, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3-4)

Any adult who has spent much time around a kindergarten teacher knows that feeling of being talked to and treated like a little child. Although Robert Fulghum made a good case for adults not taking their maturity too seriously in his essay, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, still, for most of us, when we grow up we want to “put away childish things,” and speak and act and live – and be treated – as mature men and women. But there’s a conflict raging inside every adult between the external “man” and the “inner child.” Jesus Himself said, “unless we come as a little child we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” But I think He would make the distinction between being childlike, which is a good thing, and being childish, which is something certainly to outgrow – and the sooner the better! But the job description of a child is that he wants to play and have fun. Is that something we have to put away and outgrow in order to be taken seriously in the adult world? No. We all love to play and laugh and have fun. Maybe this is why standup comedians are so popular: they bring out the child inside of us. But the secret to their success is that they don’t treat us like children to do it. Hopefully not just entertainers can learn the secret of treating fellow adults with the respect they earned with their matriculation from elementary school, and still coax and cajole them, with the persuasive power of the kid next door, to “come out and play.” But what is it about children that Jesus wanted to emphasize? It was their humility. To be a child means that he, unlike his teenaged brothers and sisters (!), doesn’t know and can’t do everything. Children cry easily, give up quickly, run to Mama at the drop of a hat, jump on Daddy’s lap whenever it is empty, and usually confess their weaknesses and sins readily enough, in exchange for the forgiveness, restoration and help they discover is available to them when they are humble. Heaven will be populated with only saints, to be sure, but we can’t help but think, from reading this passage, that Jesus is assigning the mansions to the childlike humble ones, and the shacks to the self-styled arrogant ones – who may turn out to be the most childish of all! Oh that you and I will finally outgrow the tendency to proudly cover our sins, and grow into a childlike saint who quickly confesses them so we can jump back up on our DADDY’s lap!