In 1939, Dorothy Sayers, an English mystery-writer, essayist, and Christian humanist, wrote an article entitled "Strong Meat," an essay on Time, in which among other things, she bemoans her culture's (in 1939!) fascination with youthfulness. In 2014, actually just a few days ago, I read it and discovered a somewhat different twist on one of Jesus' most famous sayings, "Except ye become as little children..." She comments that although children differ in many ways, they have one thing in common. "All normal children (however much we discourage them) look forward to growing up. 'Except ye become as little children,' except you can wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five, 'ye cannot see the Kingdom of God.'"
My earliest Christian training came through the auspices of Westside Baptist Church in Greece, NY. I cannot praise highly enough the thorough grounding in Christian faith, ethics, and doctrine that I received there. Pastor Ellis' preaching, Helen Beach's and Chuck Bassett's Sunday School class, Ozzie Palmer's leadership of Christian Service Brigade, coupled with Sterling Huston's and Fred Thomas' leadership of Youth for Christ, gave me a foundation that stands to this day. When I attended a liberal United Methodist seminary, it was the solid stuff of those early years that sustained me.
One thing however, bothered me, and bothers me to this day. Westside's eschatology was straight out of C.I. Scofield, whose roots were in J.N. Darby's dispensational theology with its teaching of two separate "Second Comings" of Christ, the first being the Rapture prior to the Great Tribulation where Christ whisks his people away, thus avoiding the calamity that comes upon the rest of the world. The second Second Coming is the one plainly taught in Scripture, when Christ returns and establishes his kingdom on earth, ushering in the Eternal Age.
Although I believe there are sound Biblical, theological, and historical reasons for questioning, if not completely rejecting this teaching, my real discomfort with it is the attitude of escapism that it fosters. I have lost count of the times people have said to me when conversing about the issues of our day words to the effect of, "Well, I don't think we'll have to worry about that. I'm counting on Jesus coming and taking us away." Often these words accompany a kind of fatalistic resignation that refuses to grapple significantly with the real human issues of justice, poverty, and institutionalized sin.
Sayers' comment on receiving the Kingdom of God as a little child is telling here. It is proper for Christians to look back to the Cross as they contemplate their salvation. But how many of us look back instead to the date of our conversion, and to the glory days of the past when churches were filled and our culture supported Christian thought and morality? Many Christians I know seem stuck in their past, or are looking for an escape to a utopian future, but aren't seeing the blessing and grace of God in the here and now. To, as Sayers says, "wake on your fiftieth birthday with the same forward-looking excitement and interest in life that you enjoyed when you were five," is often lacking in Christian circles.
I for one, don't want to live that way. I remember living with that kind of abandon as a little boy, but somewhere along the way, I lost it, and even as a Christian, it eluded me for years. As an adult, I know as children do not, the troubles and worries of life, and the way life has of interrupting our plans, but I have also learned that every day is a gift from God, and I want to wring from each one every drop of life I can squeeze out of it. I simply want to grow up in Christ. Tonight, as our neighbors to the north are valiantly struggling to survive a storm of historic proportions, I am grateful for a warm home, for those who plow our roads, those who staff hospitals and nursing homes no matter what the weather. but I am even more grateful that the difficulties and challenges of life are the tools God gives me to help me grow up in Christ. I am looking forward to growing up!
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