Jesus: in my kingdom, “greatness” means childlike humility (2024)

The disciples asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus answered by calling a little child to sit among them. Our world and culture tend to value children more highly than the culture Jesus lived in, but we’d still be unlikely, left to our natural impulses, to answer a “greatest” question as Jesus did. “In ancient society, children were powerless and often overlooked. Ancient speakers and writers typically offered powerful leaders as heroes and models for imitation.” *

• Pastor John Ortberg wrote, “In the ancient, status-ordered world, children were at the bottom of the ladder…. Jesus said the kind of thing that would literally never enter the mind of another human being to say: ‘And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’” ** When Jesus spoke about “the least of these” (cf. Matthew 25:37-40) we usually think of hungry, sick and imprisoned adults. Do you think Jesus was probably also thinking of the youngest among us?
• Plutarch, a Greek writer who lived shortly after Jesus’ life, wrote that infants were “more like a plant than a human being.” By contrast, the early Christian book The Shepherd of Hermas said, “All babies are glorious before God.” How crucial was Jesus’ regard for children in showing how highly God values children? What qualities of children do you believe make them a picture of the spirit God seeks in all of us?

Children are widely loved in our culture, often described using words like “precious” or “magical.” At 42, I’m no longer young, but remembering my childhood, many adults showered us with love, talking about how important it was to grow into good men and women. There are countless quotes about children—here are a few I found online:

“Children see magic because they look for it.” – Christopher Moore

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” – John F. Kennedy

“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” – Angela Schwindt

So when we hear about how children or youth were not respected in Jesus’ time, it can be a little jarring. Children today are protected and cherished in ways that many adults are not and it’s hard not to see children that way.

But children and young people, while loved, are not always respected. I remember hanging out with some of my dad’s church friends when I was in high school. One friend loudly proclaimed that as long as you were right with God, it didn’t matter how you treated others. I politely corrected him, and the man looked at me like I was the rudest person ever before continuing his rant as if I had never opened my mouth. That was the first time I remember experiencing someone completely dismissing me simply because of my age.

If you really want to see how youth are respected, look at how young voters are talked about. Many adults invite young people to vote and some even propose lowering the voting age to 16, but many suggest that we should not allow young people to vote or even that we should raise the voting age to prevent that. One political pundit famously said that young people are dumb or don’t pay attention, and they shouldn’t vote.

Voting age is not the point of this post. My point is that we love children and young people, but as a society, we’re not great atlisteningto them, and that reveals that we don’t believe they’re capable of wisdom. Jesus’ statement on becoming like little children is easy for many of us to accept in theory, but looking at how we regard the wisdom and opinions of young people—and how we change our own opinions based on them—can show that we don’t always accept this.

There will always be wisdom that comes to us through experience, but there is also wisdom that only comes through a fresh set of eyes and deep knowledge of how the modern world impacts young people. Jesus’ statement doesn’t mean that young people’s opinions supersede those of adults, but our attitudes toward young thinkers often reveal how we feel about their thinking process. Being humble enough to accept wisdom from unexpected sources brings us a lot closer to that child-like faith Jesus called us to.