Credit: “Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden” by Peter Wenzel (c. 1815) / Wikimedia
Reaping the consequences of sin is terrible and tragic. When Adam and Eve fall into sin, God proscribes many devastating consequences:
To the woman He said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” To Adam Je said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:16-18)
There will be pain in childbearing, pain in work, and eventual death. This sounds awful. Indeed, it sounds hopeless. But then, in the very next verse, we read:
Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. (Genesis 3:19)
Eve’s ability to have children is notable, because God blessed people with the gift of children before they fell into sin:
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28)
Even as God curses people because of their sin, He does not leave them without a blessing in their sin. Even though Adam and Eve will die, new life will come from them, resulting in, supremely, the birth of a Savior.
It can be tempting to believe, when we struggle with sin and experience and endure the consequences of sin, that God has forsaken us because of our sin. But as with Adam and Eve, even when we suffer under the curse of sin, God never leaves us without a blessing. He never leaves us without a promise of a new life.
Eve’s blessing was to be the mother of all the living. Our blessing is to be loved and blessed by the One who came from Eve and redeemed her – and us.
One of the most moving moments of being a pastor is sitting with a family who has just lost a child. Perhaps they had a miscarriage. Perhaps their baby never made it out of the NICU. Perhaps their child lost their life in a tragic accident. There are many questions that a family asks at a moment like this:
How could God allow this to happen?
Did this happen because we did something wrong?
But there is one question I want to focus on in this blog:
Is my child in heaven with Jesus?
This is a weighty question because it reaches beyond a parent’s present pain and cries out desperately for an eternal hope. It deserves our serious consideration.
There is a famous episode in Mark 10 that gives us a glimpse into Jesus’ relationship with children:
People were bringing little children to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, He was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And He took the children in His arms, placed His hands on them and blessed them. (Mark 10:13-16)
There is an interesting debate over Jesus’ words in verse 14 when He says, “The kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” What is the referent of “such as these”? Some say the referent is found at the beginning of verse 14 in “the little children.” This means that Jesus is not only welcoming a particular group of little children into His arms at this moment, but making a broader declaration about how the kingdom of God belongs to many other little children who are like these but who are also beyond these. The phrase “such as these,” then, reminds us that “Jesus loves the little children – all the children of the world.”
There are others, however, who argue that the phrase “such as these” is better informed by the word “anyone” in the next verse. In this interpretation, Jesus is not declaring that little children can enter His kingdom. Instead, He is only calling people in general to have a childlike faith. Though Jesus is certainly calling people to have a childlike faith in verse 15, syntactically, the specific referent of “such as these” is quite clear. In Greek, the word for the phrase “such as these” is tointoun, which is neuter. The word for the children who come to Jesus is paidia, which is also neuter. The word for “anyone” in verse 15 is hos, which is masculine. It is important to note that the genders of each of these words are incidental features of Greek syntax and not determinative of which genders of human beings can and cannot enter God’s kingdom. Syntactically, however, Greek pronouns and nouns do need to generally match in their genders. Thus, the first interpretation of which referent is the appropriate one for the phrase “such as these” is correct: it is children like the ones who are coming to Jesus in Mark 10 who can enter God’s kingdom. Age is no barrier to a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Of course, I would not walk a grieving family who has just lost a child through the technicalities of the Greek syntax in Mark 10 like I did in this blog. But a careful consideration of the syntax is important for my pastoral ministry because it allows me to confidently proclaim:
Jesus welcomes children into His kingdom.
Just because a baby cannot intellectually assent to the great truths of the Christian faith does not mean they are barred from eternal life. Indeed, one of the reasons that adults can have a faith like a child is because there is such a thing as a faith of a child (cf. Matthew 18:6). Children – and even babies – can sing babbling praises to the Lord (Matthew 21:15-16). Babies – and even infants in the womb – can respond to God’s good news of a Messiah (Luke 1:41-42). A child lost to a parent does not mean a child lost to the Lord.
If you are reading this and you have lost a child, this I want you to know:
Jesus welcomes children into His kingdom.
You can have hope.
If you are reading this and you have a child or are expecting one, share with them God’s Word, even from the womb. Allow them to hear the voice of their Savior calling them. It’s never too early to teach the faith because it’s never too early for someone to have faith. And it is by faith that we live – and live eternally.
“Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from Him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” (Psalm 127:3-5)
These ancient words from the Psalmist used to be fairly uncontroversial. But more recently, a flood of studies and stories have been published questioning whether or not it really is good to have children. A 2011 study by Thomas Hansen, for instance, found that parents without children reported higher levels of life satisfaction than parents with children. A 2003 study by the National Council on Family Relations found that couples who did not have children reported higher levels of romance and closeness in their relationships. Finally, a famous 2004 study by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman found that out of 16 activities, taking care of children ranked above only housework and commuting in terms of enjoyability.
The sociologists, it seemed, had spoken. Having kids was not all it was cracked up to be. But new research suggests that what the sociologists once took away in their studies might be best given back.
In a recent story from The Economist, Letizia Mencarini of Bocconi University explains that “a new generation of research…suggests that children are more likely to make parents happy than was once thought,” though parents’ ongoing happiness is not merely based on the presence of children themselves, but on a multiplicity of factors:
Whether parents are married is one. Single parents are usually less happy than married ones. The age of the child is another. Children under ten seem to bring more joy than those over that age. And money matters a lot. David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and Andrew Clarke of the Paris School of Economics managed to isolate the financial strain of raising children as an influence on parental happiness. They argue that it is the cost of raising kids, rather than children in the abstract, that reduces pleasure.
But the most important influence seems to be the pressure of work. It has long been known that the difficulty of balancing the demands of work and home life increase exponentially when children arrive and this results in a significant amount of stress…
This research is interesting, but it doesn’t strike me as particularly surprising. All of these findings seem to correspond to pretty traditional views on marriage and family. Married parents are important to the rearing of children. The teenage years can be difficult. Financial stability allows families room to enjoy themselves. And family is to be prioritized over work, even if your workplace disagrees. All of these things I already knew – not because a sociologist told me, but because my own parents did.
Sometimes, there’s a reason common and classic wisdom is common and classic. In this case, sociological research pointed to a lot of what a lot us already knew. The question, however, is not whether we knew this, but whether or not we will live according to this. Our society is rife with deadbeat dads, self-absorbed parents, and financial instability on the one hand juxtaposed against workaholism on the other. No wonder we’re so vulnerable to being miserable. The problem, it turns out, is not really our kids. The problem is us.
The solution to our unhappiness, then, is not to adjust our fertility rates downward. It’s to adjust our values, our decisions, and our commitments heavenward. For when we do this, we might just find that even though the Psalmist was no sociologist, he was right. Children are a blessing from the Lord. May we be willing to address our own brokenness so we can receive them as such.
ISIS must be stopped. It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion when story after story of the group’s atrocities continue to pour in. In a horrifying iteration of violence that has become ISIS’s trademark, a woman named Alice Assaf recounted how when jihadis marched into her town over two years ago, they killed her son for refusing to disown his faith in Christ, murdered at least six men by baking them alive in ovens, and killed 250 children by massacring them in dough kneading machines at a local bakery.
Are you sick to your stomach yet? I certainly was when I read the news story.
But too many people have not read this story. Stories about emails and Tweets among the two major party presidential candidates have relegated ISIS’s atrocities to the background. Certainly, this year’s presidential election with all of its crazy ups and downs is important. But when many people lose track of, or, I fear, even lose interest in ISIS’s activities, something has gone tragically wrong.
Just last August, it was being argued that we should ignore, or at least downplay, ISIS’s crimes. During an official visit to Bangladesh, Secretary of State John Kerry explained:
No country is immune from terrorism. It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.[1]
The Secretary of State was arguing that by featuring terror attacks in the headlines, we are only emboldening the terrorists by giving them what they want – free publicity, which leads to more recruiting power, which leads to more killings. As it turns out, however, even as ISIS’s publicity retreats, the atrocities continue. A lack of headlines does not seem to temper ISIS’s bloodlust.
We must understand that what drives ISIS, ultimately, is not a desire for fame, for land, or for money. A theology is what drives the group. I am sympathetic to Muslim theologians who argue that ISIS’s theology is not Islamic or representative of Allah in any meaningful or traditional sense, but even if this is the case, ISIS nevertheless has a theology. It has a conception of a god who calls and commands its adherents to do the things they do. And the things this god calls and commands them to do are horrifying. But they will continue to do them, whether or not the world is watching, because they think their god is watching – and is pleased with them.
This is why we must continue to pay attention. We must continue to pay attention because we serve and worship a God who does not order the execution of the oppressed, but cares about the plight of the oppressed and invites us to do the same. We must continue to pay attention because we serve and worship a God who hates injustice and promises to confront it and conquer it with righteousness.
Perhaps what was most shocking to me about the article I read outlining ISIS’s bakery massacre was the headlines in the “Related Stories” column of the website I was visiting:
All of these articles carried datelines of August and September of this year. ISIS is still on the loose, even if we don’t see it or know it. Perhaps it’s time to see and notice once again. After all, the blood of those it has slaughtered is crying out.
Women cry during a funeral for victims of the attack on a wedding party that left at least 50 dead in Turkey. Credit: Ilyas Akenginilyas Akengin / AFP / Getty Images
Late last week, word came that more than 50 people had been killed at a wedding party in Istanbul when a suicide bomber walked into the party and blew himself up. In a nation that is always on high alert because it has seen so many of these types of terrible attacks, how did a terrorist slip into this party unnoticed? Officials estimate that the suicide bomber in question was between 12 and 14 years old. In other words, no one noticed the bomber at the party because this bomber was, in relative terms, a baby – a child. And children are harmless – or so we think.
Exploiting kids to kill its enemies has been a longstanding and and cynically promoted strategy of ISIS. Reporting for USA Today, Oren Dorell, citing the expertise of Mia Bloom, a researcher at Georgia State, explains:
In the initial seduction phase, Islamic State fighters roll into a village or neighborhood, hold Quran recitation contests, give out candy and toys, and gently expose children to the group. This part often involves ice cream…
“To desensitize them to violence, they’re shown videos of beheadings, attend a live beheading,” Bloom said.
Then the children participate in beheadings, by handing out knives or leading prisoners to their deaths, she said. The gradual process is similar to that used by a pedophile who lures a child into sex, “slowly breaking down the boundaries, making something unnatural seem normal,” she said.[1]
In another article that appeared in USA Today last year, Zeina Karam explains how ISIS teaches kids to behead their victims:
More than 120 boys were each given a doll and a sword and told, cut off its head.
A 14-year-old who was among the boys, all abducted from Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority, said he couldn’t cut it right. He chopped once, twice, three times.
“Then they taught me how to hold the sword, and they told me how to hit. They told me it was the head of the infidels,” the boy, renamed Yahya by his Islamic State captors, told the Associated Press last week in northern Iraq, where he fled after escaping the Islamic State training camp.[2]
All of this is ghastly, of course. The thought of children being trained to commit brutal acts of murder feels utterly unthinkable to us. But why?
Scripture is clear that all people, from the moment of our births, are sinful. To cite King David’s famous words: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). So that a child could or would commit a sinful act should not be particularly surprising to us. Little kids commit all kinds of sins – everything from lying to defying to hoarding – all the time. But the thought of a child committing murder seems different.
Theologically, the thought of a child committing murder seems different because, at the same time all people are born sinners, we are also born as bearers of the image of God. In other words, at the same time we all have sinful inclinations, we also have a righteous Creator who has endowed us with a moral compass. When this moral compass is violated, guilt ensues, for we cannot fully escape the mark of our Creator.
God’s mark proves to be particularly poignant when it comes to the sin of murder. This is why God’s image is specifically invoked against the taking of a life: “I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind” (Genesis 9:5-6). To watch one person kill another person is so completely incongruous with who God has created us to be, it cannot help but startle us.
In a human, then, there are two tugs – one that is of sin and the other that is of righteousness. And these war against each other. ISIS has fanned into a giant, roaring flame the inclination to sin in the lives of little children. This is sadly possible to do because of humanity’s sinful state, but it will not escape the judgment of God. In the words of Jesus:
Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. (Luke 17:1-2)
Christ does not take kindly to those who intentionally and systematically lead children into sin. After all, He made them in His image and He cares for them out of His love. May His little ones be saved from those who would harm them.
