It is strange to a modern mind, but makes obvious sense if this is the creation of a good and loving God; that our innate understanding of the world, which we spontaneously experience as young children, often (and ideally) seems to be more coherent than any of the others which come to replace it.
In other words; a child's experience and explanation of reality makes sense and hangs-together better than mainstream modern materialism, and also better than the complex intellectual structures of religions.
However, a vital element of this coherence is the mind of the child - the consciousness of a child (the way he apprehends, experiences, explains the world); which is different from the minds of those who come-up with alternative explanations.
I have come to regard the young child's understanding as innate because God-given, part of divine creation - which is why it is true; so although different, other forms of understanding (e.g. among adults, and in various societies) ought to be compatible with those of the child.
This innate understanding relates to the pre-Christian world, the not Christian world - or what I term Primary Creation: creation without Christ.
A loving child in a loving family knows the goodness of God; and that this world is purposive and has meaning is implicit.
Reality is personal - a matter of beings not things. And the world works in terms of the relationships between beings - in terms of desires, motives, etc.
I don't think young children spontaneously think about "creation"; rather, they implicitly assume that the world is created by personal intentions - the world doesn't "just happen", is not random nor mechanical.
But the child also has an implicit understanding of both entropy (change, death) and of evil that sometimes impinges upon goodness and happiness. He realizes there are threatening beings, that want to scare and harm him.
The child also knows that he is involved in this, that bad things happen in part because of something in himself - e.g. it is because he thinks about them or dreams about them - that monsters and other threats are attracted, and may come. (It is because he got angry that his favourite toy was smashed.) Yet he cannot stop himself from thinking/ dreaming about monsters; cannot stop himself getting angry, spiteful...
This implies a knowledge of evil in himself.
The child also realizes also that people and "things" change, and he does and may lose things and people from forgetting, breakages, destruction, theft, removal, death etc.
And also that when these happen, or might happen; the child will also himself have something to do with it.
Irresistible, irrevocable change is inside himself, as well as outside.
The child's spontaneous "answer" to these problems would seem to be a wish for invulnerability for himself and those he loves; so that the bad things of the world do not affect him or his life.
A wish, too, to be free from those bad thoughts that attract trouble and misery.
This relates to the fascination for heroes - whether divine, demi-god, angelic, or "superhero"... what lies behind this is the idea that we may personally be transformed - while remaining our-selves - such that the bad things of life do not affect us personally, or those we love.
If this were to happen, then we could live in the world without fear of pain, harm or loss; and this I believe is a daydream hope of young children.
So far this is negative; but a child aspires to the positive as well.
Especially if we recognize that a child spontaneously knows that the material is always spiritual, and nothing is neutral - all has meaning and relates to purpose. For a child; everything is personal and relational, and everything has resonance and depth and is important - nothing is mundane or trivial.
Children's play and talk is full of fantasies, of wishful thinking and make-believe. And these are important to the child.
It is here we should be looking to find spontaneous creativity.
One common fantasy aspiration of childhood (which can stand for many others) is to fly - fly without wings and by will-power (again the "superhero" idea, or in the past some kind of spiritual being, were-being, demi-god or the like).
This is a way in which a young child is creative, or proto-creative: wanting to expand his experience, especially in ways that lead to a new quality of experience.
Hoping to do something of his own that adds to the world (adds to creation).
This lies behind the wish-fulfilling fantasies of being a superhero or a princess; of being unique, special, famous. This isn't merely trivial hedonism or conceit; because to a child such a possibility is creative, important - enlarging and changing the world for the better.
It seems to me that - in terms of a young child's world - the meaning of what Jesus Christ made possible lies in the relationship between his understanding of everyday reality; and the world of his wishful thinking and fantasies.
The work of Jesus impinged upon the already existing world; to offer a new possible reality; and this unique historical event may be recapitulated in the development of a child.
Anyone who was genuinely wholly satisfied with "Primary Creation" - with the world as-is - would not be interested or attracted by Jesus's possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven.
What such a person wants is to become something like an invulnerable superhero - a super-man (Ubermensch) who inhabits this world as it is, but is personally invulnerable to the entropy and evils that are intrinsic to Primary Creation.
Resurrection and Heaven are, on the other hand, attractive to those whose child-like day-dreams are of a world - that is, a Second Creation - in which there is only love and no evil in ourselves and all other beings whom we love.
A world in which all change is good: the exciting possibility of growing-up.
What Jesus offers is that instead of only living in this world but becoming invulnerable to its bad things; we can also inhabit a world where we have become all-good, there are only loving relationships, and happy day-dreams can become reality - with our help.
That - in a young child's terms - is approximately what Heaven offers; above and beyond the wishes or hopes of pre-Christian and non-Christian understandings.
Schopenhauer pointed out that due to size of his brain compared to the rest of the body, the child is naturally more intellectual than the adult; his experience is unimpeded by “the will” (the cause of so much unhappiness, and sin in human life) and therefore spontaneously experiences life with all the fascination of a great poem. (Afterwards, for most adults most of the time, the intellect becomes, in Schopenhauerian terms, slave to the will.)
ReplyDeleteI believe this is why children may be said to be pure (according to Mormon doctrine children are incapable of sin until the age of accountability, 8, which I think is probably best regarded as an approximation). Their consciousness is less touched by the kind of petty egoism that grasps at life as a dwindling resource demanding extraction, or which reduces experience into what Blake called, “A self-contemplating shadow”. Though their intellectual capacities are not nearly as great as the developed adult, they contemplate life just as it occurs to them, without distortion, and therefore can be said to be more wise than the most scholarly of men.
@JE - Sorry but, well, I don't think I agree with either of these statements! At any rate, they aren't what I mean.
ReplyDeleteI think it is untrue that the child is more intellectual than the adult; the opposite is true, by my understanding of intelligence. In that measurable intelligence is much lower, and also children lack self-awareness and the capacity for abstraction (which is what is usually meant by intelligence).
But Sch may have meant something different!
As for whether children are more purer or more good than adults - I don't think so. Children that are born bad are probably worse than adults - there are some really terrible children. I've always understood the CJCLDS idea to be based on capacity to understand the commitment of baptism.
But maybe young children are indeed more wise!
Yes, his was a somewhat unique definition—relating most of all to aesthetic appreciation (taken from Kant’s definition of beauty as being what is perceived without interest, and this thereby being a means of salvation from the tyranny of selfish will). But the main point for me (and which I think relates to your post) is the idea that children are naturally poets, which is consistent with the definition of genius as when an adult’s mature intelligence retains, or reaches, the intensity of a child-like perception.
ReplyDeleteThe sinlessness of little children (though I am not sure when a child should be regarded as no longer little) is indeed Mormon doctrine as established in Moroni 8:8. The idea that the age of accountability is 8 (or that, absurdly, sin only starts at 8) is actually more of a folk superstition, lacking in scriptural support, but not without, I think, decent encouragement, since the idea of the sinlessness of children is connected with the idea of a later baptismal date (Moroni 8:10).
It may be regarded as an overcorrection to the practice of terrifying children with descriptions of hell or the barbaric notion that hell is full of unbaptized infants. I do agree that moral character will display itself when very young.
I would refine this as saying children are more innocent than adults but not necessarily more good. A child needs discipline because many do not understand right from wrong, or choose to go against was is right even if understood otherwise. There is something to emotional maturity that develops. Yet, I do agree that children have more access to a spontaneous playfulness and innocence we often lack as adults. DBH: "wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience."
ReplyDelete@JE and ted - OK, but the goodness of children is not the subject of the post.
ReplyDeleteI am trying to state and discuss something very different and much less familiar.
I don't remember thinking as a child that the material was always spiritual or that everything would have purpose. I do remember being terribly afraid of big machines like tractors and snowploughs, imagining them as monsters out to get me and not being able to grasp that there would be a human driver inside.
ReplyDeleteBut I can observe in my children that it is very easy to cultivate and nourish thie kind of attitude you describe and they can easily relate to animals, plush toys or objects in nature. In fantasy plays, one is excited by the possibilities provided by the world, of growing up.
Your point on the coherence of the child's spontaneous view of the world is important and worthy of consideration.
Last night my four-year-old was in charge of the lesson. I expected he would want me to whisper what to say in his ear, as he has before, but he decided to do it himself. "Why is there always faith?" was the first question he asked us all. Then "Why do we love God the best?" This is what came to my mind when you said, "A loving child in a loving family knows the goodness of God; and that this world is purposive and has meaning is implicit."
ReplyDeleteI've always been unimpressed with the idea of returning to childhood as the ultimate good. And I suppose you mention the reason here. "A world in which all change is good: the exciting possibility of growing-up" This is the primary happiness of childhood. It just doesn't make any sense to go back permanently.
I am very fortunate because my adult life really has been a fulfillment of my childhood dream. I'm the mom now. But it's been necessary to embrace growing up, the charms of which are not what a child may have thought of. I sit on the bench while the children run around at the playground, I read the boring news, I argue with my teens who just want to be cool, I fuss over the lights being left on, etc. All the while I know that my youngsters are hoping to become like me someday. And so I keep in my heart this enjoyment of the realities of growing up, hoping they will also choose to enjoy.
My 11-year-old son read a scripture to us where Abinadi is being killed by fire in the Book of Mormon. Abinadi is a superhero. I explained to my children my belief that Abinadi, instead of foretelling the future, is rather speaking the future into existence. And to me, this would be what we all look forward to, the ability to bring about the things we say. "This isn't merely trivial hedonism or conceit; because to a child such a possibility is creative, important - enlarging and changing the world for the better."
Thanks for your example of enjoying metaphysics. We can attest it has enlarged and changed the world for the better!
@Lucinda - Thanks for your comment - I always value hearing your perspective.
ReplyDelete"unimpressed with the idea of returning to childhood as the ultimate good"
Yes, it doesn't make sense - because you might as well have stayed a child and saved all the stuff in between. That can't be the purpose of mortal life.
On the other hand, I think some souls try growing up and really do not like it; and I expect that if they choose Heaven, they may choose to become much more like children again - although no doubt with inevitable differences.
Since deification to full godhood is always by choice and voluntary, it is probably the case that some people will choose not to go all the way (indeed, they may lack this capacity) - and I presume that God will make allowances for this. There is surely plenty of scope for many levels of maturity in loving families.