What is the most important ingredient for a good children’s story? Is it the level of fantasy or creativity? Is it a good storyline or the allure of the illustrations? Is it the amount of silliness? While there are countless differences between Dr. Seuss and Margaret Wise Brown, every exceptional children’s story has one thing in common: it takes childhood seriously. Of course, there is room for silliness and play, but I don’t think a children’s book is able to reach the intercessions of a child’s heart unless it speaks with the same amount of sincerity as it would a grown-up.
The shining example that comes to mind is the 20th-century English author John Burningham. With understated pictures and a dry playfulness, Burningham asked children, “Would you rather be chased by a crab, a bull, a lion or by wolves? Would you rather be crushed by a snake, swallowed by a fish, eaten by a crocodile or sat on by a rhinoceros?” I first encountered these questions at the age of five and, thirty years later, I’m still not satisfied with my answers. Not only did they take my fears seriously, but they allowed me to sit with them until their looming shadows weren’t quite so big.
When visiting America in 1962, Karl Barth was asked to paraphrase his entire published work of over 600 writings in a single sentence. He responded, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” The story, of course, says a lot about Barth, but it says even more about the Gospel — that the greatest theologian of the 20th-century could boil all of Christian doctrine down to a nursery rhyme. It’s a message that speaks to the wisest of elders and the drooliest of crawlers. It somehow treats everyone equally without compromising itself.
But with all the demanding responsibilities of adulthood, the troubles of young people often go underestimated. Adults, of course, have a lot more on the table — there’s more at stake when bills and mortgages are on the line — and yet sermons on worry and anxiety can sometimes pretend that only adults are in the room. There even seems to be an unspoken pressure to avoid being too dour “to keep the young people interested.” That assumption, however, implies that the gospel is yet another “grown ups only” club or, at the very least, something that children will only understand when they’re older.
This isn’t anything new, of course. For some reason, it’s embedded into our nature that the gospel is serious business that children don’t need to worry about. Even the disciples would have denied children access to Jesus if he hadn’t rebuked them (Mt 19:13). Our attempts to make the gospel into something more advanced, however, might stem from our own disbelief. Thinking that Christianity is complicated and/or serious business is not only to a child’s detriment, but it runs the risk of not understanding the gospel ourselves.
It turns out that you don’t have to be old to understand life’s troubles. The circumstances may be different, but the need is the same. Young people, who are constantly told that they have their whole lives in front of them, are often the ones without any hope at all. Chesterton was good to remind the aged that they hardly have a monopoly on anxiety, writing “Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world.” Judging from my own experience, he’s right. I remember being shamed in front of my second grade class for not knowing how to tell time with an analogue clock — I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider running away forever. From where I sat, it was the end of the world.
The worries of childhood themselves may look different, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less significant. We adults might not understand a child’s concerns, but the fear of going to a new school is just as real to them as the unpaid credit card bill is to us. It might be that children are resilient, but it’s just as likely that their traumas and/or anxieties manifest in ways adults tend to discount, whether it be misbehavior at school, an inability to sleep, or bed wetting. So when it comes to kids, the long arm of the law knows no bound. Children are instructed on everything from taking a bath, to not pouting, to sitting still in church. This kind of moralizing often reflects an instrumental view of childhood, as if the only purpose of childhood is to become a well-adjusted adult. One result of that framework, of course, is that it leads adults to instrumentalize their current lives toward some imaginary future bliss (that will likely never come).
One reason why the gospel speaks to everyone is because every age has its own particular need for it. From cradle to grave, each point in life has its fair share of vexations and vices. Just as you find yourself to be out of the woods in one stage of life, a whole other forest engulfs you. But, to extend the metaphor, we have a tendency to want to chop the trees down behind us. Many of us think children should be shielded from the harsh realities of death and decay. We want their childhoods to be preserved in nostalgia. And yet, we are often surprised when our kids can’t fall asleep at night with the same core fears that we have ourselves. Sure, the circumstances might be different, but the need is the same.
From 5 to 105, we need divine assurance to know that we’re loved and peace about what happens when we die. Every kid may not be preoccupied with the thought of their own death, for instance, but most have pondered the death of their parents (if not by their own volition, then certainly after watching their first Disney film).
This is where a song like “Jesus Loves Me” reveals its ageless power. Believe it or not, the song first made its appearance in a 19th-century novel when a character sings it to give comfort to an ill child in the waning hours of his short life. What does it proclaim? That the boy is loved and that he belongs to Jesus. Death may be at the doorstep, but Jesus will be there to greet us with a hug. Given the chance, I’m not sure anyone could say it better than that, no matter how old you are.
