A friend sent me a poignant Nick Kristoff column from the NYT about Rachel - a little girl who truly understood what it meant to love one's neighbor. I read it after viewing the nihilism perpetrated by 'youths' on the streets of London. And then I went to bible study - always a bad idea if you're trying to avoid deep thoughts.
We're studying First Samuel. In it Israel asks God to give them a King like other lands. Samuel calls them sinners for wanting a King to stand between them and their true King - YHWH. But God gives them what they want. I think Samuel's point was that by seeking a temporal authority the Israelites were trying to outsource their responsibilities, under God, to care for the poor, to keep the peace and to live nobly.
Children, in their innocence don't understand that all of the problems that they see have already been 'funded' and 'solved' for us by the King. Naively, with God's word on their heart they still believe that they are personally responsible.
Of course by the time they become teens they will have learned that it's Barack Obama or George W. Bush's fault that cancer victims don't have wigs or water wells aren't dug. Just ask the London rioters.
After Samuel, Israel had kings who failed it (David, Solomon) and Kings who looted it. But all its Kings were in some basic sense 'bad' - manifestations of the people's sinful natures. Such are the wages of trying to outsource our humanity.
But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
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