Reflections
What happened to childhood?

Don’t children grow up quickly today! 

This assertion is something of a cliché, in that people say it without thinking. However, I believe that it is truer at the beginning of the third millennium than it was in past generations. That is because children today are the first to be commercially exploited by the media and fashion-world as ‘fashion setters’.

How do you nurture children as Christians in this culture? There are, I believe, five principles we need to remember.

1.  Our children need more understanding and less information

The curious thing about the public’s response to the new technologies is that it heralds access to information itself as the goal. But more and more information is useless to us unless we learn how to interpret it. To decide what is good, and what is bad; to distinguish between what is trivial, and what is important. Knowledge is power, not information. And as our children are bombarded with all kinds of news, views and choices, they need the understanding to make wise choices. Jesus spoke about the parable of the sower, where the word of God is the good seed that grows into a crop. If our children are not to be buried under a mountain of grain passing for information, we must help them to filter out the good from the bad; the word of God from endless words.

2.  Our children need more simplicity and less clutter

The effect of living in the modern world is quite disorientating at times, leaving your brain feeling like an overfull sponge. Noise and bustle pass for a life well lived, and quietness and simplicity for a life not lived. Yet the teaching of Jesus warned powerfully against the lure of materialism because of its addictive properties. You never feel settled with what you have, sensing instead a painful restlessness for more. And Jesus spoke of the dangers of this to people who had nothing by our economic standards. This virtue of simplicity can only be passed on to children by example, but it is one of the better gifts we can give them. 

3.  Our children need more wonder and less sophistication

We exercise so much control over our world now that we get cross when the smallest piece of technology lets us down. One of the by-products of sophisticated urban living is that we begin to lose a sense of wonder about our world. We want to master our environment, rather than stand in awe of it. But this sense of amazement inspires our worship of God, because He has made us and this world with a stunning

beauty and complexity. Children are naturally more aware of this. They will stop and admire the tiny touches of God’s creation while adults hurry to their next appointment. Jesus told us to consider the lilies of the field as evidence of God’s goodness, but we are far too busy to notice them. This gift for wonder is a quality we could learn from children, rather than squeezing it out of them.

4.  Our children need more trust and less cynicism

As our world has become more anonymous, we have become increasingly careful in how we relate to each other. We assume that if others take an interest in us it must be for personal gain. We have also grown tired of the institutions that bind us together on both a national and a local basis, passing on to children a very cynical view of the world. Children need to know that other people and their institutions can, and will, let them down from time to time, but that this need not translate into a world-weary cynicism. Trust is a prized possession to pass on to children, the mark of a strong society.

5.  Our children need more content and less image. 

Through aggressive marketing, today’s fashions persuade children that how you look is more important than who you are. The Christian gospel is self-consciously about content, not image. A faith that puts a crucified man centre-stage makes an anti-fashion statement. Who you are inside matters to God far more than what you look like on the outside. To encourage a child to believe it requires us to stand four-square against the advertising industry, but with love and attention, it can be achieved.

Understanding, not information. Wonder, not sophistication. Simplicity, not clutter. Trust, not cynicism. Content, not image. These are the poles between which we oscillate in practice. Jesus called his followers to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. It is something of this virtue that our children need. Innocence is knowing how much God loves you, despite what others try to get you to believe about yourself.

This innocence, however, should be reinforced by a subtle wisdom. This is not the street wisdom that helps children quickly to sift what is fashionable from what is not. Rather, it is a wisdom that helps them to identify the pressures which try to make them conform to the way everyone else is, but which only serve to squeeze out their God-given individuality. We are not asking God to make them the odd ones out; we are praying that He will make them the human beings He intends them to be: better able to express the gifts they have and form the relationships waiting for them.

The Revd Simon Burton-Jones became a Trustee of the Jubilee Centre and of its sister organisation, the Relationships Foundation, in October2000. He is Vicar of St. Mary’s, Bromley, South London and has a special interest in relating his faith to social and economic issues of the day. He first developed this interest whilst working as a researcher for the Jubilee Centre and the Keep Sunday Special Campaign ten years ago. He is the father of two children aged 5 and 8.
 

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