Teaching children

"Anyone who wants to live with children must first of all recognize his own incapacity for justice in the deepest sense. How difficult educating children is for us human beings, who are not free of sin, and what a responsibility! Only wise men and saints are fit to be educators. Our lips are unclean. Our dedication is not without reservation. Our truthfulness is broken. Our love is not perfect. Our kindness is not disinterested. We are not free of lovelessness, possessiveness, and selfishness. We are unjust.

"So it is the child who leads us to the gospel. If we look at our task with the children, it is quite clear that in view of the holiness of the task, we are too sinful to bring up even one child. This recognition leads us to grace. Without the atmosphere of grace, no one can work with children. Only one who stands like a child before God can educate children, can live with children.

"'You must become like children.' Like children, you must live in the presence of grace. You must learn wonder. In the knowledge of your own smallness, marvel at the greatness of the divine mystery that lies hidden in all things and behind all things. Only then can we be given the vision of this mystery, a vision that makes us forget ourselves because it overwhelms us with the greatness of the cause. Only those who look with the eyes of children can lose themselves in the object of their wonder.

"Educating means struggling shoulder to shoulder with the children under one leader, Jesus Christ. Not that the educator fights the child or the pupil fights the teacher in their common struggle against lovelessness and untruthfulness. That is impossible. The real struggle can begin only when we have realized that we all sit on the same bench and are all in need of strength from above."

-- Eberhard Arnold, from Children's Education in Community: The Basis of Bruderhof Education (Plough, 1976, 2017). Eberhard Arnold (1883-1935) was a German theologian, cofounder of the Bruderhof, and founding editor of Plough Quarterly. Photo above by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash.