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<\/a><\/div>\nWhen I learned over a month ago that Patheos would be featuring children\u2019s spirituality on the public square, I was excited \u2013 it\u2019s something my wife Anne and I have been thinking about a lot lately, as we\u2019ve been instituting the Godly Play<\/a> program here at New Church Westville. The fundamental principle of Godly Play is that children are inherently spiritual; what they lack is a language to articulate and refine that spirituality. In connection with this, I\u2019ve been thinking about how to approach a New Church (i.e. Swedenborgian) theology of childhood. In some traditions, there\u2019s very little to work with; in the New Church, we have the opposite problem \u2013 there is a massive<\/i>\u00a0amount in Swedenborg\u2019s own writings and in the writings of New Church theologians and educators since his time\u00a0that relates directly to the spirituality of children.<\/div>\n\n
So, I had hoped to come up with a concise blog post summarising what I\u2019ve learned from children \u2013 how I\u2019m learning to see the abstract theological concepts about childhood in actual, living, breathing children. Unfortunately, with our recent bad news<\/a> and the upheaval of very quickly preparing to move back to North America, I won\u2019t have time for that. Instead, I\u2019ll just share two of my favourite ideas on childhood from Swedenborg.<\/div>\n\n
Children Have an Innate Sense of Reverence<\/b><\/div>\n
One of my favourite things about Godly Play is that it respects children\u2019s sense of reverence. I was fortunate enough to have been raised with parents who respected this too; and it\u2019s sad to me that popular culture \u2013 including Christian pop culture \u2013 seems to assume that kids need to be entertained, distracted, and made to laugh. They\u2019re capable of much more. There\u2019s a passage from Arcana Coelestia<\/i>\u00a0that captures this childlike reverence. This describes a scene in heaven, and I know very well that it doesn\u2019t always work like this here on earth \u2013 but I also know that there are precious moments when our two-year-old son has quietly gone to his worship bookshelf on his own and knelt down and prayed. Here\u2019s that passage:<\/div>\n
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\nYoung children [in heaven] are taught in particular by means of representatives suited to their disposition; and how beautiful these representatives are and at the same time how filled with wisdom from within. nobody can possibly believe. \u2026.. Let merely one representative which I have been allowed to witness be recounted here, from which the nature of all others may be inferred. They represented the Lord rising up out of the tomb, and at the same time His Human united to the Divine. This was done in a manner so wise as to surpass all human wisdom, and yet at the same time in a manner that was innocent and that of a young child. They also presented the idea of a tomb, but not at the same time an idea of the Lord, except in so remote a way that one scarcely perceived it to be the Lord, except so to speak a long way off. \u2026 After that, with utmost carefulness, they introduced into the tomb something air-like, yet seeming to be lightly filled with moisture, by which they meant, also with an appropriate remoteness, spiritual life in baptism. After that I saw them represent the Lord\u2019s descent to those that are bound and His ascent with those that are bound into heaven, which they did with matchless carefulness and reverence. And the representation had a child-like feature in that when they represented the Lord among the bound on the lower earth, they let down scarcely visible, soft and very slender cords with which they effected the Lord\u2019s ascent. All along they acted with a holy fear lest anything at all in the representation should border on anything devoid of the spiritual-celestial within it. There are other representatives besides these, such as games that are appropriate to the minds of young children by which they are introduced into knowledges of truth and into affections for good. (Arcana Coelestia <\/em>n.\u00a0<\/em>2299<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nChildren are a living picture of innocence<\/b><\/div>\nIt has become fashionable\u00a0among scholars in recent decades to claim that Jesus\u2019 high regard for children \u2013 e.g. His saying, \u201cLet the little children come to me,\u201d that His followers must become like little children \u2013 had almost everything to do with their lowly status in the culture and little to do with any inherent qualities of childhood. With all due respect to scholarship, I don\u2019t buy it. Yes, their lowly place in society is part of the picture \u2013 but the image from Isaiah 11 of \u201ca little child shall lead them,\u201d for example, is clearly about more than just the lowly being raised up. It\u2019s about the qualities of childhood, and chief among these innocence. In New Church theology, innocence is regarded as one of the highest and deepest things within a person. And the innocence of childhood serves\u00a0 as an image of true innocence, which comes with wisdom. From Heaven and Hell<\/i>:<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\nThe innocence of childhood or of little children is not genuine innocence, for it is innocence not in internal form but only in external form. Nevertheless one may learn from it what innocence is, since it shines forth from the face of children and from some of their movements and from their first speech, and affects those about them. It can be seen that children have no internal thought, for they do not yet know what is good and what is evil, or what is true and what is false, of which such thought consists.\u00a0Consequently they have no prudence from what is their own, no purpose or deliberation, thus no end that looks to evil; neither have they anything of their own acquired from love of self and the world; they do not attribute anything to themselves, regarding all that they have as received from their parents; they are content with the few and paltry things presented to them, and find delight in them; they have no worry about food and clothing, and none about the future; they do not look to the world and covet many things from it; they love their parents and nurses and their child companions with whom they play in innocence; they suffer themselves to be led; they give heed and obey. (Heaven and Hell<\/em>\u00a0n. 277<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\nAnyone with kids knows that this sounds\u00a0a bit idealised \u2013 \u201cgive heed and obey\u201d doesn\u2019t happen quite so often as we might like in this house \u2013 and yet (hopefully) most parents can recognise the truth in it. We\u2019ve had those moments where the kids are playing nicely with each other and our hearts fill up. According to Swedenborg, that is their innocence touching something innocent in ourselves. And that childhood innocence serves as a foundation upon which genuine innocence is built:<\/div>\n