Marc Barnes on one-year-olds’ birthday parties

I’ve often thought, and been asked, whether throwing a birthday party for a one-year-old is a little excessive. And while there can be excesses in the way it’s done, I think Marc Barnes has a point that it’s only pointless to throw a one-year-old a birthday party if it’s pointless to throw a birthday party for anyone of any age. Here’s an excerpt from his essay.

The child rips us out of the world—where good deeds are done in exchange for glory—and naturally inaugurates the kind of action adults perform, by grace, within the kingdom of God—where good deeds are done for the sake of reality. I was once asked, “Why celebrate a birthday party for a child too young to remember it?” I answered spontaneously, “Because the world is real!” Not entirely lucid, I’ll admit, but it seems to me now that these early celebrations are holy celebrations for precisely this reason—that they are done “in secret.” The child will not comprehend the party, much less remember it, and so the party cannot be confused for an exchange of cake, ice-cream, and effort for goodwill, good memories and impressed friends. One must face the fact (as your one-year-old spreads frosting on his scalp) that the reality of his birth is worth celebrating for its own sake; that the goodness of existence is real, quite apart from what its celebration can do or what glory it can accrue.

St. John Chrysostom on giving our children riches

As quoted by New Polity:

Let everything be secondary with us to the provident care we should take of our children, and to our bringing them up in the chastening and admonition of the Lord (Eph 6:4). If from the very first he is taught to be a lover of true wisdom, then wealth greater than all wealth has he acquired and a more imposing name. You will effect nothing so great by teaching him an art [i.e. a profession], and giving him that outward learning by which he will gain riches, as if you teach him the art of despising riches. If you desire to make him rich, do this. For the rich man is not he who desires great riches, and is encircled with great riches; but the man who has need of nothing. Discipline your son in this, teach him this. This is the greatest riches. (Homily 21 on Ephesians)

How children, and we, know God

I had a delightful conversation with Beth yesterday reflecting on her experiences at Rainbow Riders Childcare Center, where she currently works, and the idea of whether we would send our children to a Christian preschool or school. Our sense is that many of today’s Christian preschools are kind of propaganda machines. We agreed that we value teaching our children about God, but we think that an overemphasis on the story of Noah, our weekly memory verse, and a simplistic message of salvation can make children “get saved” when they really have no clue what they are doing, they are just being herded blindly into demonstrations of Christianity by teachers too eager to “get them saved young.” The better way is to follow Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s parents and instill critical thinking, asking them to question why. If you do this in a context where Christian practices such as liturgy are observed, and which the children are made a part of, eventually children will ask questions like, “Why do we eat the bread and wine?” And then parents will genuinely answer their questions. This puts an exploration of the sacred mysteries of faith on the same ground as any learning a child does: it’s best done when there is a level of self direction and autonomy by the child. Beth’s Reggio Emelia method supports this, and it makes sense. Now don’t get me wrong, we’re in favor of explicitly teaching the Bible and Christian doctrine. But just in a gradual way that treats doctrines as holy and recognizes that the ability of a child to participate in Christianity grows with their ability to comprehend abstract thought.

At that point I had a thought worth remembering:

As a father, regardless of how much I try to make my children understand the abstract ideas of their Heavenly Father, I am the concept of God they will understand.

Children understand things symbolically and incarnationally. They can have some ideas about Jesus and God, but at a young age he will be in the same category as Santa Clause to them. Beth was saying how her children made up some wild extrapolations about Santa Claus. One said, “Santa Clause lives in the cold, so if he comes out of the cold, he will die!” Child logic is not very trustworthy. Don’t give them guns and knives, and don’t give them complex conceptual structures. I think this goes for telling them about God too.

In fact, really, all of us humans can only really know things through incarnation. I saw this the other day, speaking to my colleague. She said, “I explained everything about an opinion essay to my students, in excruciating detail. Then we went to write one and my students didn’t have a clue.” My response was, “I find that my students don’t have a clue what I’m talking about until they actually do it, or at least look at a good example.” ESL students need concrete examples and models, and they need to participate personally in something, before the intellectual understanding really comes through. Intellectual understanding rarely produces real comprehension by itself.

It occurred to me: This is why Jesus came! He is the incarnation of God to us. He knew that, without him, all of God’s revelations would eventually produce distorted constructs in our minds. We would go about saying, “God can’t leave heaven because he’ll melt,” or things like that. So he took on flesh and dwelt among us, the image of the unseen God.

It puts an immense pressure on me as a future father. Lord, help me not only teach, but BE a right image of you.

And it creates a beautiful sense of awe at the Christian faith, which, more than any other religion, understands the needs of the humans, the incredible mix of spirit and flesh, angel and animal, that we are. Thank you Lord for coming incarnate so that we might know you.