***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: I remember we’re talking about a denying self, seeing what that self that has been denying means. In the New Testament sin, we now find that he’s the taker of the divine nature, that he has escaped the corruption that is in the worst of us. Believe me if you know I could spend, I believe, six hours without stopping talking about the corruption that is in the worst of us and what it means to escape. That’s a lovely thing. Corruption is the process of killing, becoming part of destruction. If you look around, human life will see it everywhere. Here, what the writer of 2 Peter is saying, by these exceeding brilliant, precious promises, we have become partakers of the world by nature. And we have escaped corruption. All this process of decay, demoralization, and destruction, we’ve escaped that.
Now, that’s just the beginnings of this denied self. That’s just the beginnings. As now we enter into a whole list of things which are added to this. And besides this, giving all physicians, add to your faith, virtue, to virtue, knowledge, to knowledge, self-control, self-control, patience, patience, to godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness, and brotherly kindness, divine love. For these things be in you, and the bound they make you, that you shall neither be truthful, unruthful, or bare, in the knowledge of articles you have described.
Now, does that give you an impression of what is ordinarily called out as a denied self, the kind of nothing that walks around as a kind of nothing? Well, my impression is… My impression is that most people don’t understand by this what Jesus is talking about as a denied self. Because you see, the denied self in Jesus, then, is the fulfilled self. And how it’s fulfilled is found out precisely here. I want you to take that list home and just flip that over and think. Because that is what the person who denies themself is turning to. They’re denying a lesser self or a larger self, a self which guarantees pain and unhappiness and misery of all kinds. Guarantees it. Guarantees it. I am not going to guarantee it, rather than do not guarantee it. Guarantees pain and misery and suffering and disappointment and denying myself for this one, which guarantees peace and strength and fulfillment.
Let’s look at another text, a Roman style. Roman style. Now this is slightly different listening. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Peace with God. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith, into the grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope. Hope, hope. Joy, and hope. Not only so, but we glory in tribulation also. Everybody has tribulation. It just depends on their pain. And here is the kind of self whose glory is in it. Glory is in tribulation.
Now suffering and sorrow doesn’t necessarily do us any good. It depends on how we take it. And this understanding is the pain of life. It makes it hurt us. It may even make us bitter. It may even make us fearful. It makes us withdraw from the thin impact. And if you have time and peace, think, access into grace, that will cause you to rejoice in them, and it will do you good. If we glory in tribulation, why? Well, because we know that if we take this in the right way, our tribulations will work on suffering. Patience. And patience will give us experience. We talk about man being experienced, woman being experienced. That’s a tried person. That’s a person who knows how to get something done because they’ve been there before. Or if it’s not to get something done, they know how to live through it. Live through it well. It’s an experienced person. Patience brings experience. It must experience great hope, more hope.
And hope doesn’t make a change. That is, this hope that we have doesn’t make fools out of us. Now, please be sure to see why this hope doesn’t make fools out of us when you look to the next branch. We’re reading the 10th chapter of Romans, by the way. I forgot to say, but some of you are coming in. Why does this hope not make us ashamed? Anyone tell us. Because the love of God, the most magnificent of gifts, is spread abroad in our hearts. Our hearts are permeated like a house that’s burning. It’s filled with smoke as it moves from one room to another. Our hearts are just permeated, spread abroad in our hearts. It isn’t just put in one room and bottled up. A lot of folks aren’t at an impasse because that’s the way they try to handle it. They love a little of God in an empty room or even a living room. But they don’t let the things just spread over everything. They don’t trust it. They don’t trust it, and of course it takes time for a person to learn to trust it.
This is why the hope that we have doesn’t make us ashamed. Because the love of God is spread abroad in our hearts, not by our own self-efforts, but by the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, which is given unto us.
Then he goes on to talk about this marvelous love of God. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died, but He had God. For scarcely for a righteous man could one die, for a good man some would have been there dying. But God recommends His love, that love which is spread abroad in our hearts, which fulfills our hope, God recommends His love towards us. In this and while we were yet sinners, Christ asked for us. That’s the kind of love, which is spread abroad and fulfills that hope. When that kind of love comes in, then God may deny Himself. That is when you have to deny yourself. That’s the kind of love that Jesus lived. That’s the kind of love over His life.
Can I give you one of those in your story? Do you think that that love starts with uniting yourself by rejoicing in tribulation? No, the beginning starts with the first reason before, therefore being justified by faith. That is, I would say rather that rejoicing in tribulation is not an effort of self-denying itself, it’s something that’s happening. And there may be some times in that process when you’re going to have to say, yes, I will choose to go through with this rather than drop it and take it easily. And there is a place for choice in that. But I think that is a part of the process rather than the beginning. I see the beginning myself in God’s prevenient grace as it comes into the soul. Before we go out after him, I made a statement of Augustine’s about, I wouldn’t have found you unless you first sought me. Something to that effect that’s not exactly right.
But his teaching that God comes with you, he doesn’t seek you. And he finds us. And when we wake up and begin to exercise God’s choice and effort, one of the first things that Don Thomas says, someone has been working here before. And the statement of Jesus, I have not chosen, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.
Charles Spurgeon used to say that, when you walk into the kingdom of heaven, over the door on the outside, it says, whosoever will may come. And then when you get in the inside and turn around and look back, you see written over the door, you didn’t choose me, I chose you. And I think that’s a lovely way of expressing the fact and experiencing it. Whosoever will may come. But as we get into it, it will be those that someone has been there before, someone that’s been calling us and moving us, teaching us, even framing circumstances with time and soul. I think the tribulation comes in that process later on.
Let’s look at the simplistic story. Now this is the advice of a man who knew what self-denial was and did. And look at how he teaches us to expand our minds and our soul. It says, finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true. Anything is true. Anything that is honest. Whosoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, and whatever things are lovely, whatever things are good report, if there be any excellence, if there be anything that is praiseworthy, think on these things.
They only deny himself. I hope that you will incorporate that in your concept of self-denial. When Jesus calls us to deny ourselves and follow Him, that’s what He’s calling us to. We often understand so many important things only in a negative sense. To deny oneself is only one side of the process of turning to everything that is true, everything that is honest, everything that is just, everything that is pure, lovely, good report.
Repentance is often expressed in a purely negative sense. You know, I don’t smoke, I don’t chew, I don’t go a girl or two, that sort of thing. Negative, negative, I don’t steal, I don’t whatever. But when things, you can’t turn from one thing without turning to another thing. I read a wrong book that very kindly gives me a little clipping that’s come out of his local paper out there from Bishop Sheen, and I wanted to read the last sentence from one of them. This is called Breaking Word. He lists some ways of breaking word which comes to the loss of gold in life. He winds up with this one sentence which I thought was so very good. The law that runs through life is that no one ever mounts to a higher love without a debt to a lower one. No one ever mounts to a higher love without a debt to a lower one. You can invert that. No one ever dies to a lower one without being born from a higher one.
Because life must have strength, and strength comes only from love. And you can’t just turn love off without dying. If you’re going to live and you turn away from some lesser love, it will be because you find strength in a higher love. And that’s why the negative route of making religion consist of what we don’t do is always wrong. Always wrong is a way of death. It brings death. It brings death. It doesn’t matter how loud you sing the hymns or shout avianum. It brings death. It’s just me. It’s got to be a loss in something high. And it’s this higher self, which is one with Christ, one with God, that we turn to and we affirm in the process of denying the lower self.
Well, that’s the end of the last one, this last one. Now, let’s move on to this part of the lesson, okay? Everyone have a seat for the day? The topic for today was Little Children and the Kingdom of God. Through the 18th chapter of Matthew, I have heard just like for me, the passage we will be dealing with in some sketchy manner. The 18th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. We will start right from the first verse.
At the same time, the disciples unto Jesus say, Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Now you can see where their minds work. They were not prepared, you can be sure for the answer. Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Jesus called a little child unto them and set him in the midst of them. A little child. And said, Barely I save you. Now he gives a two-part answer. They asked who will be greatest in the kingdom of heaven. But first he tells them who’s going to be in the kingdom of heaven. And he says, Except you get turned around, get your minds read, adjusted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Please note the word as in there or like or whatever your translation uses, become as little children. It doesn’t say become little children. But we ought to be like little children in a certain way or in a certain way or be like them.
Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Now he takes one particular feature of the little child. It’s what he calls the child’s humility. And he says the greatest person in the kingdom of heaven is the person who has the humility of a little child. Now that’s worthy of a lot of thought.
When you talk in that, who thinks it happens? I thought when he said become as a child, I remember what it’s like to be a child, and the joy you have in being a child. And I thought that’s what he meant. It’s rather, it’s a simple sort of thing. Oh it is, it’s a simple chart? Yes. And man can enter into heaven as one. He’s not saying, he’s not bringing any condemnation there. He’s just saying you want to find joy in being become as a child, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Well it isn’t just joy though. Well what else does a child have in the kingdom of heaven? Okay, good. Well let’s talk about that in a moment. Let me go ahead and read the passage and we’ll come back to that. Because this is where I want to spend the rest of the hour, is on the ways in which a child in the kingdom is like the little child. And then I want also to talk about the greatness of the child’s humility.
But let me just say for the moment that you’ve seen, he says first of all you have to be like a child. Now he doesn’t spell out all the ways, and this is characteristic of his teaching. He gives you a mind teaser and he says, well in effect okay go look at the little child. That’s good advice because very few people really look to the children. Do you know who that is? Even those of us who love them. I think that’s one reason why we tend to be better as we grow older, get more relaxed and able to look at little children. We tend to be better with our children as we grow older. So that the youngest child usually doesn’t have to suffer quite as bad as the older children.
He says just go look at it. You know what it’s like to look at the child. Consider the traits of the child. Now he picks out the one. He says okay, the one whose great is there, that’s what you’re after. And this one you can be sure. You can just see them walking off monthly in their beards. What is that? Watch out it would be great. What? He’s like listen to us. I would love to have been there to see the expressions on the faces of the people. And he just goes you know that would have been a delight if you had seen that. And you can just be sure they just really, they really found that it’s something to chew on.
Whosoever shall receive, now he goes on to expand this not just to the child but to others. And the teachings of this whole passage are very profound about children in several respects which some of which I pick out on the sheet and we’ll talk about in a moment. See I’m asking for this but they got it anyway. Whoso shall receive one such child, one such child, one swan, one such child, one such child. One such child in my name. Receive. Oh the devil. One such child in my name. Receive. Want to know how to receive to you? Receive one child and receive that child as a minister in the cause of sin and be received.
None of us Jesus cuts it down even though it says we can give a cup of cold water to a child. You will live in my life, you will not lose your own life. Always so complicated, a fusticated, distorted, a simple act of our own. Bring it again. Whosoever receiveth one such child in my name. Receive. I don’t know a system of theological teachings. I don’t know a creed of any church that says anything about it. I don’t know how one would fit that into a treatise on systematic theology. It isn’t just moral theology, it isn’t just materialogy, it isn’t just much anything. It is at least a big, raw, punk-out life that one child could be here today. I suppose that when some else do this we think, oh my, let’s go find a corporate somewhere. Starting on the back streets of that? No? If you just walk, just one child. See, Jesus knew the secret of ministering in His name. If you receive truly one child in His name, you’re going to explode. You’re going to explode as a minister. And everything you touch, you will minister to.
Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me. It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of his soul. Can I say something to you, darlings? All right.
Now, he takes us back, but children believe in him. Yes. And then later on he says, what sort does not go? Come to me, you say, by Jesus Christ, who might go to the Father. So in other words, he does not mean it literally. He does not mean that you have to say, I believe in Jesus Christ, you know, as the Savior of my soul. In other words, we start out as children believing him, but rather losing him. And people cause us to stumble. And so many times I find Christians who say, they have to say, I believe in Jesus Christ, Father, you know, the Son, the Father, and all that jazz, but we can get there. And it’s not so he’s saying right there that the child starts out with faith in Christ. The world. Faith in the goodness of life, anyway. The vegan. The vegan, yes.
I think a good book to use as a standard for when people come and say, you must do this and that, the other is divine. That one verse there is excellent. Yeah, well, I’ll take the whole thing. Take the whole thing. That one verse is excellent, right? We need to look more closely at the whole thing so that you know what to say when someone comes and says, aha, you don’t believe in this theory or that theory or so on.
Even everyone that loved this world, God, that goes there, too, I guess. That’s what the Bible says. And the one thing that many people do with that is they downgrade the quality of that love so far that they, for example, they think, well, if they have a good, warm feeling in their heart, they’re born from it. Because we must understand that what that love is is spelled out precisely in the life of Christ, the teachings of the New Testament, the life of the church and so on, we’re willing to look at. Now, at that time of love, John said, he that loved him was born from God. He also said, he that loved not, knows not God, no matter what else he knows.
Who shall think, one of these little ones, which could even mean for better, that a millstone were aimed about his mentor who was drowned in the depths of the sea? These verses tend to make us feel uncomfortable, I guess. We should feel uncomfortable about something else. We’re all in the world because of our fences, for it must need to be that our fences come. Word of fences is an interesting one. Scandalize them, scandalize them, make them fall, trick them up, bust them.
And then Jesus, to teach the gravity of the offense, uses the case of cutting off the hand of the foot. He knows, of course, full well that it won’t cover you. Just to cut that off, he’s using this as an illustration of how serious the matter is. It would be better for thee to enter into life all for a man rather than having two hands, or two feet, than be cast into everlasting time. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, cast it from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, than be cast into hell.
Take heed, and watch this. This is a love of two verses. He is aware of the fact that many adults despise children. Now, despising them doesn’t mean, you know, they hate them or anything. It’s that they think they’re insignificant. Despising means just, oh, that doesn’t matter. Now, he says, don’t despise these little ones. See, he realizes there’s a need to say this because of what he sees around him, around the inordinate of life. We’re going to come in a moment to talk about some of the things that, in my opinion, are most offensive to children. And one of the things which is most offensive is this kind of despising of a child, growling them into insignificance, so insignificant that you don’t really pay attention to what’s happening.
Now, Jesus wants to teach how the Father looks at a child. And notice how he says it. I say to you that in heaven, their angels, note that the cessic pronoun bleeds, their angels, do behold the face of my Father, which is the Father. That is, the Father has messengers which belong to these children. And any time those messengers want to get to the Father, they’ve got direct access. They don’t have to go through the secretary of state, the chancellor, the exeter, or whatever. They just go right into the old room, and they’re seeing God based.
Now, why does he say to teach how God highly estimates the little ones, the counteractive despising of the little ones, which is seen in human life? In the eyes of the eleventh person, the Son of Man, has come to say, that which is lost, goes on against the peril of the hundred sheep, and one that is lost in a different setting, finally in the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Luke, he is more concerned to talk about those who are out of the way, without reference to whether they’re children or not, but here he applies the parable directly to the little ones.
Now, to whom are the little ones lost? Well, they are lost not to God, but to man. It is in man’s world the little ones are lost, not in God’s world. We’ve already seen that happen. God cares for them. He knows right where they are. He identifies them. He’s got his hand on them. He accepts them. To whom, then, are they lost? Why are their mothers and fathers, the people who live next door, that are teachers in schools, and their pastors and teachers in churches, and friends that are lost? Do you want to know? Sorry? Do you think the sheep, that’s still the person referring to little children? In this case, I’m sure that you’ve seen it at the end of the parable. He applies it.
Do you want to know how lost little children are? After there’s been a gathering where there were adults and children, go around asking the adults, what children are there, what children? The little ones are overlooked and neglected. If you have a church, you know, if you want to know where, how to have a youth program in the church out there, how do the adults in the church pay attention to the youth? Listen to them. Consider them. Be with them. They’re lost in the adult world.
Now Jesus says, What do you think, that a man hath a hundred sheep, and one of them is gone astray, and not he leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains and seek death, which is gone astray? And if so be, then he find it verily, I say unto you, He rejoiceth more of that sheep, that one lost sheep, than of the ninety and nine, which went not astray. Even so, even so, the application of the parable, it is not the usual application of the parable. It is a typical portrayal of how adults will say, Remember they brought children to him. Why did they bring them to him? They wanted him to take, as the Mark version says, to bless them. He took them in his arms, took them in his arms, and put his hands on them and blessed them. But the disciples said, Get away. Don’t bother him. He’s busy. He’s an important man. You know, it’s just time zone for important things, right? Only for an important thing, but not you little ones.
And Jesus said, Suffer the little children to come with thee, and forbid them not, that this reason was for such as he did. You know, it takes something special to be able to get through all of these perverse categories by which we root people. Men with white, black, church people and non-church people. Those who dance and those who don’t dance, those who smoke and those who don’t. Children, old people, adolescents, grownups, kids. It takes something very special to be able to just go right through all those things and not even spend the most time. But just go through them and reach out to the apostles. That’s what Jesus was able to do. He was able to just simply take the child in his arms and bless them.
That’s what’s out now at second point B, how little children show a character of citizens of the kingdom. Now, I have pretended to give an exhaustive list, and there are many things which I would like to talk about that I haven’t put on. For example, the little child’s enthusiasm. I was reading a book just the other day and it noted a child, a little child can enjoy sitting on a bench and swinging his leg. Just swinging his leg monotonously back and forth. A little child has such enthusiasm for life that he can enjoy what he loves. A little child can do something with his head. Do it again. Do it again. Something silly. Something with no sophistication. In other words, it comes out of this well-spring of joyful enthusiasm.
Well, there are so many things I would like to get to sidetracked. Like the third point, C, I wanted to do all that I was going to do on page of the Center to handle that way, so I just have to say there are large epsilon at the end of both of these lists.
But notice that a child is defenseless. A child is utterly defenseless. Now, the only departure from that utterly are such little things as the ability to smile or take hold of your hand, or to those that can ask for a hand. That’s all it has. They’re defenseless. Jesus said, be wise to certain, and harmless as it does. And in the 12th chapter of Matthew, define as stress on harmless as it is stress on defenselessness.
Now, the child is defenseless in itself. That doesn’t mean that there is no one looking out for it. When we say that a person in the kingdom of heaven agrees to be defenseless and to be vulnerable and so on, we’re not saying there’s no defense for them. We’re saying they don’t run that defensive system. They are willing and able to be vulnerable, to be hurt because they trust in God. They’re willing to be harmless because they trust in God. They learn by spirit in a system of power, which is the kingdom of heaven.
So we learn without reputation. It’s one of the nicest things about having no reputation at all. Just come in and hear that. They say that what I had to do in the church a few months ago, we talked about me personally, and about what Christ meant, and that we had no outline, and we just had a Bible, and they on their own knew most of these things about themselves. The children, like in the church, we talked about this, and I thought that was very touching. Most of the things you have in the church, they knew most of these things important about themselves, and that’s why Christ found them important. I think they knew. It takes quite a while to grind it out. They get the message eventually. It’s a deal.
Now, when they first come, they’re without reputation. As soon as they get reputation as a fighter or as something or other, they start having to defend that reputation. Or as the noises get on the block or whatever. Children, as they are little children, have no pretentious aims, and this is partly related to the fact that early on, they don’t know how to pretend. That means also they don’t know how to pretend to be serious about it, which is always sometimes called hypocrisy. This is serious pretentious. If you don’t know how to pretend, of course you can’t be that great. You learn how to pretend, play it, and play it wrong is not too important, so you get serious about it. But a little child doesn’t know all of that yet.
A child is trustful. That’s why they take so seriously what is said to them by adults. If an adult goes very strongly and the child can complete that adult, even if the adult doesn’t, they trust them. They don’t want judgment without a person. They will associate with anyone. I’m sure all of us have been too green to have our child come in and say, When I grow up, I want to be a gardener. A gardener. But you see, they haven’t learned all these things about, well, you don’t want to be that. You want to be good. The best of all is that. They will associate with anyone and associate with very few people.
And regardless, a little child, as I say here, and Becky taught me this, and of course it’s just because I’m absurd. When Becky was small, she began to observe mine and that other people liked to pull a trick. It was a joke. And so she would try. Of course, she couldn’t do it because she was an elderly guy and all children are not. There’s some guidance that you have to recognize that you have to pull a trick and you cooperate to do so as they implode it. There are some of you guys.
I’ve never seen a young child that didn’t want to learn. Children are young unless there’s really some abnormal problem. The way it gets them to you quickly is to say, you’re going to teach them something, and they will sit with their mouth and their eyes open. Why that? They want to learn. There’s that same uncle, a child, a human, because he’s coming to do work and he wants to learn. They want to know as much as possible.
The tenth one here I think is very important. And I always weep when I say this one because I have offended here so many times. A little child loves to serve. They want to help. There are a few things that thrill them more than being able to help, even if it doesn’t help. You know what I mean? Even if it is an influence. And so often we are in such a hurry that we will not let them help us. And then we wonder fifteen years later why there is a goal between us.
When a child loves to serve, Jesus said, the first who’s greatest is the kingdom of heaven, the one who is certain of all. Now that’s where we come back to humility. You see, Jesus gives us the key as to what he meant by humility. He didn’t mean any fawny, false modesty. He sort of behaved here as Harriet Clinton got the other night. He means sensible service. A willingness to wash the feet of the team to be washed. A willingness to do what is worth crying for those around.
I am astounded how the children love to serve and to work. The principle by which Tom Sawyer got into pen and paint is a little bit different. But I think there is something similar. The enthusiasm of life. When the children are young, the girl often doesn’t know what the pressure means. And they don’t often distinguish work from play. They have to learn that. They have to grow up and learn that from the dogs. Distinguish work from play. It’s just life within. And it’s being with a, of course you know, one of the main reasons why they like to serve is because being in service, they’re with their mother, they’re with their father, their older brother or something of that sort. And service is a way of being with people, and they love that.
One of the books I’ll just go over were some of the basic factions of offenses. If you can pick up this book, Between Parent and Child, I urge you to do it. Between Parent and Child. My name, you’re not, she, I didn’t mean it, so. A. Von Wooten. Cross your daughter’s border. Between Parent and Child. I think you’ll find a lot of very helpful things in that. I urge you to get it for reading. There is another book called In Defense of Children, which is out of print. I don’t know where you can get it. But it also is, I think, even better than this one, In Defense of Children.
Now, again, I give a very partial list, a very partial list of offenses, and I just want to read over them, because I don’t have time to do much of anything else. Maybe I won’t even read over them. That’s too much reading.
I think the first one, I put it first, but I think really it is most important, that the child can take almost anything else, almost anything, if the parents provide the child with this one thing. Not just parents, by the way, it may be another adult. It may be any adult, almost, who can provide the child with this. I say, these things tend to break the souls of the child when the adults around them do not have and, and I’m pleased to stress, and it is enough to have and communicate a sense of firm, purposeful existence. This is one reason why things have changed so much. We have today so many adults who are disoriented and churned the effort to pick themselves. And the adults are, in many cases, not at all blamed. It may be some situation that they’re at work for. So many things can happen that are disoriented, personally.
When a child is raised in this kind of setting, as a child, a deep sense of life is just gripped. It’s just gripped over which you can really do nothing, about which you can really do nothing. They have a sense of cause in the face of circumstances. Again, this is so important today. The minds are trained by television, newspapers, everything else. Having constantly before them things about which they really in effect can’t do nothing.
Number three. When adults are unable to express and, and please note express here, express and receive expressions of love and caring. And there are many, many families where this seems to be an impossible. The effect on this is that the child is emotionally stranded because he doesn’t learn the simple ways, the safe ways that he can express and seek love and care. Now it wasn’t enough for you to love for a child to be loved. It is necessary for that love to be expressed. It is necessary for that love to come over to the child and for the child to learn ways of saying back to their parents, I love you, I care for you. And one of the things which is such a deep wound in the minds of many adults is they have, they were never able to do nothing. And they wanted to so badly. But they weren’t able to. They simply weren’t able.
When the adults fail to share the child’s enthusiasm, I think this is one of the deepest crimes against the child. We are so judgmental about their enthusiasm. We are so dead certain that they’re wrong. Well of course they’re wrong. But now what are you going to do with that child and their long enthusiasm if you don’t stay with them? You don’t have to approve of their enthusiasm. In order to share it as their enthusiasm. And you stay with them and let them work it out and think it out.
There is no safe way to raise children. Do you know that? There is no ironclad, guaranteed way of raising children. In my opinion there isn’t. But there are better and worse ways. And one of the most important things for us to know is to share the enthusiasm with the child. Still what we often try to do is we try to replace their enthusiasm with ours. And they will take that and very shortly there will be a new nation because they are going to have their enthusiasm. And if you will not share them, they will not share yours. If you do share them, they will share yours. Not all of them. Nor will you share all of theirs. They won’t approve of all of yours. And you won’t approve of all of theirs. But you will keep the connection between the generations by sharing those enthusiasms. Whether it’s the enthusiasm of a little kid who are in love that they’ve found. They want you to come and look at it and exclaim over it and appreciate it behind a glossy purple belly. Whether it’s the girlfriend they have, something they’re trying to do in their school, or however that enthusiasm must be shared.
There’s, I’d like to spend so much time with this. I’ll just mention the set, then I will sit down. I think that one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever seen as an offense against a child is when adults, when they have a child fighting, the adult believes, actually comes to believe, that that child hates them. And the adult then responds by expressing hatred and disgust and outrage, lacking the child.
Adults should understand that a child can’t do anything but love their parents. A child cannot do anything but love their parents. Now, I know that there are a lot of things that you may want to talk about with that, but I wanted to let that bold statement stand. And that’s why the scripture does not say that children love their parents. It says honor them. One of the great sicknesses of the adult soul is love that has had to exist in dishonor. Children can’t do anything. You think so? Okay, we have a statement to the contrary left on the board. I’m quite willing to let it stand. And you will think about the book, I trust. My statement is that children cannot but love their parents. The other statement is that children can hate their parents. I’m quite willing to let that stand.