NOTES for Luk 18:16-17

People often cannot understand Christ's call to become like infants, to try to be like children, "for to such belongs the Kingdom of God," as today's reading tells us. "What does this mean?" they ask. "After all, children not only lack the proper measure of reason; they also do not know sacrificial love. Their love is selfish. Only as people grow up, and not all of them even then, do they master this most difficult art of loving without receiving anything in return."

As so often happens, in our lack of understanding the apostle Paul comes to our help. It does not follow at all from his letters that we must blindly try to become like infants. On the contrary, in some places he speaks negatively about our infancy: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I put away childish things" (1 Cor 13:11), or, for example, 1 Cor 3:1, Eph 4:14, Heb 5:13. At first it looks as though this contradicts Christ's call.

But the solution is given by another text from the apostle: "Brothers, do not be children in your thinking; be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature" (1 Cor 14:20). This, then, is what Christ is speaking about: that we should perceive evil as infants do, just as defenselessly, just as having nothing in common with it. "He is still an unspoiled person," people say in such cases. It is to this unspoiled perception of the world that the Lord calls us.

When we say that God is not like us, this does not simply mean that He is kinder, stronger, wiser than we are. It means that He sees the world differently from the way we see it. When before us there appear at the same time a pious, honest, decent person and a rich tax farmer with many tears and sorrows on his conscience, our sympathies instinctively are not on the side of the "new Russian." The story of the Pharisee and the tax collector is calculated precisely for this reaction: God sees differently; He has different ideas about faith. If one says, "Thank You that everything is fine with me," and another says, "Have mercy on me," then the decisive point turns out not to be piety, not the observance of fasting or other prescriptions. It is simply that one needs praise, and the other needs love. God sees each person's heart; as for us, it is good if we see our own.

In what sense does Jesus call us to be “like children”? How is a child's perception of the world so different from ours? A hint of the answer can be found in the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee. It would seem that the Pharisee is telling the complete truth about himself. He was hardly being hypocritical when he thanked God that he was not like the tax collector standing beside him. No Pharisee would ever allow himself to commit a deliberate sin. There were exceptions, of course, but on the whole the Pharisees, as deeply and sincerely religious people, really did try to avoid every sin.

To become a publican, a tax collector, and cooperate with the Roman authorities was an obvious sin in the Pharisees' eyes. And the tax collector himself, it should be noted, has no doubt about this at all. He merely asks God to forgive the sins he has committed without even trying to justify himself. He understands no less well than the Pharisee standing beside him that apart from his sins he has nothing to present to God. The Pharisee is in a different position: he has something to say to God and something for which to thank Him. Indeed, what religious person does not thank God for the life He has given him? At least as long as that life proceeds more or less steadily, without serious crises or spiritual breakdowns.

The problem here is not what each of them has brought to God. The problem is whom the Pharisee is looking at and whom the tax collector is looking at. The Pharisee looks at himself. He lists his merits before God and admires himself. It is as though he were saying to God: look at how good You have made me! Thank You, Lord, that I have turned out so well in Your hands. And there would be nothing wrong even with such gratitude but for one thing: the Pharisee has no time to communicate with God. He is occupied with self-presentation. He is presenting himself to his God.

But God wants simple, ordinary communication. He already knows everyone; He knows that the Pharisee has succeeded in his religious life. What matters to Him is that the Pharisee should succeed equally well in his spiritual life. And for this a person must look not at himself, but at God, even if he is very religious, and perhaps especially if he is very religious. One can live a spiritual life only by keeping one's eyes fixed on God. Like the tax collector. He repents of his sins without taking his eyes off God. That is what matters most. God will do the rest. For Him there are no insurmountable sins. And this is where children find it easier than adults.

Up to a certain age, they usually pay almost no attention to themselves or to how they look in the eyes of others. They are not focused on themselves. Even if a child is a pronounced introvert, he does not look at himself. He simply lives in his inner world and looks at that inner world, not at himself. This freedom from self-absorption is the most important condition for a full spiritual life. Otherwise it is impossible to keep one's eyes fixed on God, and such a gaze is a necessary condition of salvation. Necessary and, on the whole, sufficient, for nothing is impossible to God's love.