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01.  Introduction

As with many new mothers whose bodies have gone south on them, swimsuit shopping can be a nightmare. In a dressing room that makes a phone booth seem like the Biltmore, I squished two young children, myself, and all their circus gear. I chose a conservative one-piece, black and fully functional. The girls were still and focused, no escapees this day. After the sheer miraculous act of getting in the suit, I stood looking in the mirror, uncertain of the outcome.

“Mom,” the four-year old said matter of factly, “You have a wobbly bottom.”

Children are born without duplicity. This was a statement of fact. She wasn’t using words to manipulate or hurt, she was calling it like it was. Innocence was on her side.

Her comment reminds me of Nathanael, Philip’s buddy from Bethsaida.Quotations in this section are from John 1:43–51 NRSVUE. All Scripture quotations marked are taken from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, copyright © 1989, 2021 The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. You know the scene: a group of young guys who grew up together, hung out together; they are hometown boys from Bethsaida. These guys had heard the rumors about the Messiah. Some—John, Andrew, and Simon Peter—had even met him. And this Messiah was from a town with a reputation. (Every small town has a reputation. As an example, I live in a one-horse town, and you know exactly what that means.) Everyone knew about Nazareth, but only Nathanael had either the guts or the innocence to say it: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Is there something about Jesus’ declaration that in Nathanael there is no deceit that’s connected to Nathanael’s statement about the shenanigans of Nazareth? Is there something about those two things that are in turn connected to Nathanael’s declaration and belief in the Son of God?

A person without duplicity could be easily expected to say something like, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael is not playing to the crowd; he is not trying to please or deceive anyone. It is a simple thought, a simple question. His second inquiry is just as simple, “Where did you come to know me?” This question is reminiscent of children everywhere who, when watching a feat of amazement, ask, “How did you do that?” In the same way, you can feel the honest incredulity Nathanael feels at being recognized, and he responds in honest awe. The typical mental gymnastics of rationalization and manipulation are missing in Nathanael. From that position of simplicity, he was able to spot the truth: “Rabbi, you are the son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Simplicity helps us see clearly. Duplicity clouds our vision with expectation, fear, and worry. A person without duplicity, a person without deceit, is the one who can spot the truth and follow it.

In an exposition on Matthew 18:3 and 19:14, Clement of Alexandria makes the case that Christian maturity looks something like childlikeness.Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 1.5.12–19; http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement-instructor-book1.html (accessed 4 February 2023). He argues that children are simple and that maturing Christians will eventually return to simplicity. The mature Christian’s “Yes” is “Yes” and her “No” is “No.”See Matthew 5:37. She has no need to lace her responses in flowery talk to impress or manipulate. She is climbing no ego ladder; she has a singular purpose, which is to walk as closely to God as possible and to help others do the same.

Clement also states that children trust their parents and are therefore obedient to them. (Yeah, I know the obedience thing is debatable, so let’s assume he is talking about very young children.) As Christians mature they have their hope and their faith tried and tested. Paul puts it this way: “We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”Romans 5:3–5. Trust in God grows to the point that, like children who trust fully in their parents, obedience flows freely. This is the way human beings move from innocence to character, and it takes a lifetime. In the life of the mature Christian, trust and obedience have become not second nature, but first.

John Chrysostom highlights the connection between children and seniors in their indifference toward status, wealth, and poverty.John Chrysostom, An Address on Vainglory and The Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children, Max L. W. Laistner, trans. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1951). Status is an external attempt to be accepted and loved. Children have no need of status; they are intimately aware of the love their parents have for them. It is a part of their nature. It’s abnormal for a child to be unaware of or insecure in his parent’s love—something that was never meant to be. This type of        condition is usually due to abandonment or abuse, and causes difficulty throughout the life of the child. In addition, children are secure in God’s love for them. I have spent many hours trying to convince adults of God’s love for them but have never spent more than a minute doing the same for children. Jesus does love them, and they really do know it. Seniors have lived a lifetime with the implications of status. Most have been on the giving and receiving end of status and know its futility. Experiences with the grace and mercy of God have given them a true sense of the love their Father has for them. More often than not, seniors have come to the conclusion, “An ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure,” to quote the movie Steel Magnolias.Steel Magnolias, directed by Herbert Ross (1989, Culver City, CA: Tristar Pictures Home Media, 2000) Blu-ray.

Consequently children have no desire for wealth. I don’t mean that children don’t want “things.” (At this writing it is one week before Advent, and I’m being pecked to death by people not even of driving age who want me to buy them their heart’s desire—shiny junk. So, yes, they want things.) I mean they don’t desire wealth. Wealth has implications of security and power. Through their parents, children already possess all the security and power they need. Again, after a lifetime of chasing wealth, the aged discover that they already had all the security and power they ever needed. Mature Christians are able to live quite happily with very little. They have found the secret of enough that lies in rooting security and power through the Trinity.

There is a circular pattern to spiritual formation that connects children and senior adults. For both children and those who are advanced in years, their egos aren’t calling the shots. In children this is called innocence; in senior adults this is called character. Children and those who have aged well are without deceit, without guile. Young children haven’t yet split into the duplicity that comes from hiding one’s self. Senior adults, those who have aged well, have laid down duplicity and become truly themselves; there is nothing left to hide.

James Houston and Michael Parker write about aging well in their book A Vision for the Aging Church. When seniors leave the land of duplicity it is characterized by “the freedom from care summarized in the Sermon on the Mount, of self-renunciation and detachment from what were once idolatrous things. It is a freedom from possessiveness in all its forms, even subtle ones that prevent a selfless attitude.”James M. Houston and Michael Parker, A Vision for the Aging Church: Renewing Ministry for and by Seniors (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 85. This is character, not innocence.

Sitting with a senior friend who has aged well and is now into her eighties, I was lamenting, with rich language of self-aggrandizement, a path of humility I had chosen. She listened patiently as I spilt myself into two. I was the person who had chosen this path, but I was also the person who used it as a way to manipulate what others thought about me. “I liked you better when you weren’t so holy,” she said. Instantly she delivered me from my false suppositions. The character that had taken her a lifetime to develop saw straight through my ego mess. With gentleness and true humility that comes from a life experienced and reflected on, she spoke words that shone a light on my condition.

I have been given the gift of watching my grandmother, Lillian Collum, grow into this state of maturity over the last forty years of my life. Growth into Christian maturity has an ebb and flow, and her journey was no different, but about twenty years ago she seemed to hit her stride. I recently asked what had drawn her into to the life of the Trinity so powerfully. She said it was many things, but mostly the car accident that shattered her hip two decades earlier. She couldn’t do all that she used to do, so silence and stillness became her constant companions. She began not only to read the Bible but reflect on her life in the light of it. Deep healing from past hurts and failures followed. Her trust and security in God grew and are still growing. Wealth is not a determining factor in her life.

When I was a kid my grandparents owned a deli at the height of the oil boom in the ’70s, and in my mind they were the richest people I knew. They had nice cars, nice clothes, and a big house. It’s not that they don’t have what they need now, but it’s just enough. “I realized you never get through wanting,” my grandmother tells me. “I’m as happy as I’ve ever been, maybe more so.”

I know that children must make the journey from innocence to character and that their journey will include failures, hurts, and sufferings. I wonder if, as a parent, I can live and teach some practices that might guide them through this journey. I wonder if there are habits that might open the space for reflection, simplicity, and security in the Trinity.

The children who live in my house and borrow from my chocolate stash are inside the sphere of my influence. I can create spaces where they choose to engage deceit, or duplicity, just to survive. For example, the parent who scolds her crying son, saying, “Boys don’t cry,” is forcing duplicity by causing the child to hide his authentic emotional reactions because they don’t fit what she expects of his gender. Conversely, I can create spaces that are safe places for children to be who they are, to say what they think, to tell the truth about themselves and tell the truth about God, spaces where deceit and duplicity are not the norm.

There are many ways to create these healthy, simple spaces. One is to give children a growing self-governance. When we train children for increased independence we release them from our manipulation and control, we are saying through actions, “You can be who you are and I approve.” Another way is to be available and vulnerable to our children. When we are honest and express our struggles, instead of splitting ourselves into two and playing the part of know-it-all parent, we give our children the permission to be honest as well. We listen and encourage truth-telling even when it may not be what we want to hear.

Since we are in charge of the family schedule, we can also create spaces of silence and solitude throughout our day. Maybe it’s time in a chair that is marked as a sacred space for quiet reflection and prayer. Maybe at the end of each day, it’s a habit of reflecting over the day, noticing the movement of the Spirit and the love of God. Steeped in innocence, children often take their first steps into a participatory life with God from this place of simplicity. This part of their journey is characterized by security, hope, and trust in the love and care of the Trinity. A simple, open faith is a natural outcome. Mature senior adults will come back to this place, but with the wisdom of the journey and the character they have gathered along the way.