Notes from the Wayside: Lenten Perspective: Won't Somebody Please Listen to the Children?!

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Won't Somebody Please Listen to the Children?!

Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

1 Timothy 4:12 (NRSV)

Who's to blame for the lives that tragedies claim?

No matter what you say

It don't take away the pain

That I feel inside, I'm tired of all the lies

Don't nobody know why

It's the blind leading the blind

From "Youth of the Nation" by P.O.D.

On February 14, a former student walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with a semi-automatic assault rifle. He killed seventeen people - fourteen students and three staff members - and wounded seventeen more. In the days that followed, some of the students who survived the shooting began organizing public demonstrations, demanding that lawmakers take action to prevent future massacres.¹ Last week, on the one-month anniversary of the shooting, students all around the United States walked out of their schools at 10:00am for seventeen minutes, in memory of the seventeen people who were killed.²

These students are angry. They live in age when mass shootings are an all-too-common occurrence, and they have grown up knowing that shootings in schools are a very real possibility. This most recent school shooting has only served to confirm their fears that the grownups in charge are not doing their jobs. They've had enough, so they're talking action.

Reactions to the student-led demonstrations have been mixed. Some people have applauded the young activists for their passion, their drive, and their courage. Others have been more dismissive, suggesting that these students have become puppets for a particular political agenda. Some have even gone so far as to concoct conspiracy theories about the students leading the protests. One writer astutely commented that adults only think that young people are wise when they happen to agree with them.³

In the Bible, we read about a boy named Samuel who grew up in a temple in Shiloh, serving the elderly high priest Eli. One night, while Samuel was trying to sleep, he heard somebody call his name. He got up and ran to Eli, supposing Eli had called him. Eli said that he hadn't called him and told him to go back to bed. Samuel went back to bed and heard someone call his name again, so he got up and ran back to Eli. Again, Eli had not called him. When Samuel ran back to Eli a third time, the old priest realized that God might be calling out to Samuel, so he told the boy to lie back down and, if he heard someone call him again, to say, "Speak, for your servant is listening."⁴

Samuel did as Eli instructed, and when he heard someone call his name again, he said what Eli told him to say. God revealed to Samuel that judgment would soon befall Eli and his family.⁵ Eli's two sons were also priests, and they were utterly corrupt. When people brought sacrifices to the temple, they took portions of the offerings for themselves, and they sexually exploited women who served at the temple. Eli once gave his sons a stern talking-to, but he did nothing else to stop them from abusing their positions of authority.⁶

In the morning, Samuel reported to Eli what God told him. The boy grew up to become a great leader in Israel.⁷

In this story, we see God's calling a child to be a leader at a time when the old guy in charge failed to do his job.

Whether or not you agree with the young activists' views on the issues at hand, you would do well to take these young people seriously. Scripture shows us that it is not outside the realm of possibility that God would call young people to be prophets. God once called a boy named Jeremiah to speak on God's behalf, at a time when his nation of Judah was in a very bad way. Jeremiah objected, saying, "I don't know how to speak because I'm only a child." God replied, "Don't say, 'I'm only a child.' Where I send you, you must go; what I tell you, you must say."^{8 9}

When Jesus began His public ministry, He traveled from town to town proclaiming, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."¹⁰ Later on, Jesus told His disciples that the Kingdom of God belongs to the childlike.¹¹ I once heard my friend Aaron, a philosopher, suggest that philosophers take seriously what everybody else takes for granted. As I see it, children do naturally what philosophers have to relearn. Children are not set in their ways, and they have not grown accustomed to the world as it is. They do not accept unquestioningly the way the world works, and they can even envision a world that works differently.

Jesus once said to a respected religious leader, "I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it's not possible to see God's kingdom."¹² If one must be born anew in order to see the Kingdom of God, I wonder if part of being born anew means learning to see everything with fresh eyes.

We are nearing the end of Lent, a season on the Church calendar set aside for soul-searching and repentance. As I've noted many times in the past, repentance is a change of heart and mind that results in a change of conduct. If God is indeed doing something new in the world, as Jesus suggested when He announced the coming of the Kingdom of God, then we must not be set in our ways. We must have the humility and open-mindedness of children.

I am not trying to tell you what to think about the problem of gun violence. I am warning you not to be so arrogant to think that people younger than you couldn't possibly have anything to teach you or that they couldn't possibly have a message of their own to share with the world. Their youth might actually give them advantages you don't have, and they might have a message that you really need to hear. May you be willing to listen to the prophets in your midst, no matter how young or old they happen to be.

Notes:

Wikipedia: "Stoneman Douglas High School shooting"
Camila Domonoske. "Across The Country, Students Walk Out To Protest Gun Violence." the two-way, 03/14/2018.
https://twitter.com/DavidAFrench/status/965678855636836359
1 Samuel 3:1-9 (NRSV)
1 Samuel 3:10-14
1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25
1 Samuel 3:15-21
Jeremiah 1:6-7 (CEB)
I must give credit to The Wired Word for the recent article that juxtaposed the story of the student-led protests with the biblical stories of young prophets. I must also give credit to the TRAIL class at Travelers Rest United Methodist Church, with whom I discussed this article.
Mark 1:14-15 (NRSV)
Mark 10:13-16
John 3:3 (CEB)