Engraving: Christ blessing little children
Many of us have only vague memories of how our minds changed when we were children. Slowly, we became a bit less imaginative, maybe a bit less creative, and certainly a bit less playful. It is the process called growing up.
Columnist Pedro Gonzales recounts the time when, as a child, he was no longer interested in playing with his GI Joe action figures. When one becomes a parent, they must revisit childhood as they watch their own children grow up.
But some have this haunting feeling of embarrassment that they are engaging in childish things. But that embarrassment is not right. C.S. Lewis wrote about how it’s disordered to be obsessed with growing up and escaping childishness. He says: “Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as merely a descriptive term, cannot be adults themselves.”
People who are too concerned with seeming grown up just become oversized children. They look like grown-ups, and they claim that they are adults, but they are stuck being children. This is seen with the DINK phenomenon that has been trending recently. DINK means “dual income, no kids.” According to Gonzales, “Typically, they [DINKs] proclaim their status by boasting on social media about all the things they can do whenever they want to because they are not “burdened” with the responsibilities of having kids. They present themselves as permanent adolescents with a lot more money and time to spend on themselves.”
The rise of Disney adults and Marvel-obsessed grown-ups is another aspect of the childishness of modern American adults. Instead of realizing that we are called by Jesus to become like little children, in relationship to our Lord, we have decided to become immature, and childish, and focussed on ourselves.
Americans need to choose to be childlike in our relationship with our heavenly Father, not childish in relation to each other.
This post originally appeared at https://www.phyllisschlafly.com/family/a-nation-of-child-like-grownups/
