For the past few months, I have been facilitating abolition study groups using a curriculum put together by the Mennonite Church. In one session the scriptural reflection is on the passage from John 6 that speaks to the feeding of the 5000. In John’s version it is a child that has the five loaves and two fishes that Jesus offers up. In the reflection questions the group is asked why a child is put in the center of the story, why a child has what will be become a meal for the whole crowd. It is not the approach to the Gospel story that I am used to. It was a good question that led us all to consider the place that children have in our society. In today’s Gospel reading, Mark 9:30-37, Jesus places a child in the midst of the Twelve, places his arms around the child, and tells them that “whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”
Through words and gesture (placing the child in the center and placing his arms around that child) Jesus elevates the place of children in the life of a community. We are used to hearing scriptural passages at Christmas time regarding the infant Jesus, the child Jesus, and how, from Isaiah, a little child will lead them, but I am not sure that we have as a culture, a nation or a church really looked at the child in the way that is pointed out from today’s scripture – or from the story of sharing loaves and fishes. There is something intriguing, haunting if you will, when we take a second look at these stories and consider the place of the child.
In the ancient world children were not necessarily considered as full persons. “At best, the Israelites held a view of personhood that allowed for collective punishment and saw children as low-level subordinates subject to the wishes and whims of parents—usually fathers. At worst, they were not seen as persons. We seem to see a sort of graduated personhood in some Biblical texts, with older children having more claim to personhood than infants.” (1) Being a person implies agency, social relationships, and the right to basic needs and to seek redress if harmed. Children were viewed more as fledgling adults than as ‘children’ in the way that we understand human development today. As less than full persons, children could be sold to pay off debt, married off to make political or economic alliances, killed off en masse for political purposes, and in some cases sacrificed to appease an angry god or to receive some divine favor. When we consider these things, it becomes all the more important to consider the passages where Jesus focuses on the child.
Just before Jesus places a child in the midst of the Twelve, while Jesus was teaching the disciples that he would be handed over to men who would kill him before he would rise again, we read that the disciples were arguing among themselves about who was the most important. Jesus said, “if anyone wishes to be first, they shall be the last of all, and the servant of all.” Children, in the ancient world, were at the bottom of the social order. The disciples were to serve everyone, including those who existed at the bottom of the social order. Furthermore, it is among those at the bottom of the social order where Jesus will be found, since whoever receives a child in the name of Jesus, receives him. Jesus stood with the child.
Our modern, or post-modern, understanding of children is in many ways very different than the understandings of our ancestors. Childhood as a separate stage of human development is a fairly new concept in the history of humans, having roots in the 17th century, and since that time, we further divided human development to consider infants as a separate phase of early childhood. We have to remember that in the 17th century nearly 50% of children died before they reached the age of ten. The fragility of children created emotional distance from the adult population which made children less likely to be the focus of time and energy in the manner that is given today. Parents today can make long term plans for their children with a higher degree of certainty that their children will in fact grow to adulthood, though not all of them do. We know today that much of a child’s personality is formed in the earliest years – the years when parents in the ancient world were less likely to be attached. We know too that a positive and stimulating environment is important for a child’s mental health and intellectual growth just as a strong and healthy body is dependent on nourishing food, clean water, and a contaminant free environment, though not all infants and children benefit from this knowledge. We have however, made great strides when it comes to serving the needs of children. Gratefully, there are many organizations that are working to spread care, concern, and resources to all children, both in our own nation and around the world.
As our knowledge has grown, we have been able to focus on smaller and smaller bits of human development until in our day we speak frequently of prenatal care, of the unborn child, and even of the rights of the preborn. But it seems that some of this narrow focusing has become less focused on the child as a rightful member of society, one with full personhood, who has gifts to share, and who is valued by God, than on how to gain political advantage. I am disturbed by the path that some of our political and church leaders have been taking in regard to women and their ability to reproduce. The ability to bear a child is a great responsibility and a gift that female persons have been given for the good of the whole species. Laws that would compel the gift even when the pregnancy is not wanted, or has been brutally forced upon a woman, are laws that take away the personhood of the woman, reducing her to being a receptacle or simply a womb – and putting her in the place of the child of ancient times.
Ending a pregnancy should never be taken lightly, but the laws as they are being crafted in some jurisdictions, that allow for no exceptions, and prevent a woman from making a decision, before she knows there is a decision to make, are not a step forward for society, but a step backward for the full humanity of women.
1. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/ancient-israel-children-personhood/ T. M. Lemos is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Huron University College and a member of the graduate school faculty at the University of Western Ontario. Her most recent book is Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts (Oxford Univ. Press, 2017); it discusses the personhood of children in much greater detail, as well as the personhood of other groups in ancient Israel, ancient West Asia, and contemporary America.