society of children

I was recently reading Dostoyevsky’s the Idiot when I was struck by a passage from part one, where Prince Myshkin is revealing his mysterious pull toward children. 

“I don’t really like to be with grown-up people . . . Whatever they say to me, however kind they are to me, I somehow feel depressed in their company and I’m awfully glad when I can get away to my companions, and my companions have always been children.  But this is not because I am a child myself; it is simply because I always felt drawn to the society of children. . . . When . . . I sometimes, on my solitary walks, especially at midday, came across all that noisy gang of children running home from school, with their satchels and slates, shouting, laughing and playing games, my soul went out to them at once.  I don’t know, but every time I met them I was overcome by an exceedingly powerful sensation of happiness.  I stood still and laughed happily as I looked at their little legs, flashing by and always racing along, at the boys and girls running together, at their laughter and tears . . . and I forgot all about my depression. . . . I simply could not understand how and why people are sad and dejected.  I devoted all my life to them.”

With the advent of the coming school year, I will be working as a missionary in the Czech Republic at the Christian International School of Prague, teaching Bible to middle school students.  With all that this opportunity affords, I hope that my time with children will help me to understand what Dostoyevsky meant through a personal experience of serving and loving and teaching children.

But there was a double meaning to the phrase “society of children” that memorably entered my consciousness, and it was the admonition of Christ to live as little children in order to enter heaven:

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, ‘Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’” (Matt 18.1-4 ESV)

Children rely upon their parents to provide for their every need and want.  Dependent, weak, and vulnerable, children cannot survive without the care and guidance of their parents.  As an “adult”, I sometimes forget that I need to be completely reliant on God in every endeavor I pursue in order for it to be fruitful and meaningful.  But I also can see that many people of the world forget or reject God’s power and purpose altogether, and merely scrape by in their lives because of stubbornness or denial.  I don’t want my life to be like that—and I don’t want the people I know and love and interact with to live in that sort of oppression either.

So what if we were to become a society of children? How would obedience to God in little things, and reliance on Him change our lives? At this time in my life, I have decided to become a missionary out of obedience (and maybe what the world would diagnose as a twinge of insanity) and a desire to see God provide first-hand for me and the people around me, and do amazing things in an area of our world where His light is being largely ignored by the populous. The faithful living in Prague are on that mission, and I want to join them—at least for a time in my life.  I want to learn to be a child. And in some small way, I want to inspire the reign of that society in this world.  Lord have mercy.