Cranmer's Curate has noticed that amongst clerics of a liberal disposition the pronouncements of children on matters of divinity are attaining an oracular status.
A cleric who has departed from the orthodox Christian understanding of the divine infallibility and plenary inspiration of Holy Scripture will regale a congregation about how he found a child drawing a picture. 'Who's it of?' he asks. Quick as a flash, we're told, the child replies: 'Of God.'
The cleric will then tell us in hushed revelatory tones that the picture was of an ordinary bloke in jeans and a t-shirt.
In case any member of the youth group is inclined to argue that God Incarnate when He was on earth might have looked fairly ordinary, your curate would reply that He is certainly not ordinary now in His transcendent, heavenly glory. Read the first chapter of Revelation for a description of the awesome majesty of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, soon to return to judge the living and the dead.
He is a universe away from our image of a regular guy dropping his kids off at the day nursery.
Children should certainly not be listened to when they spout rubbish about the Almighty Triune God, any more than adults should be listened to when they peddle erroneous, sub-biblical views. 'Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men,' says the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 14v20 (AV). 'In Understanding Be Men' is of course the title of a rightly celebrated 1936 doctrinal work by the then Principal of Moore College in Sydney, Archdeacon T.C. Hammond.
As with cc when he is wrong about God, children should be told the truth and properly instructed in God's Word.
Sunday, 12 July 2009
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3 comments:
As regards to the opinions of children: Have you ever read P G Wodehouse? His take on Milne is priceless.
Being Irish myself I can't help but point out that TC Hammond was Irish (lest there be any confusion) and cc may be encouraged to know he was curate and then rector of a very ordinary parish in Dublin for 16 years.
Indeed he was Irish and as an Australian of Irish descent I am thankful to God for the positive influence that one Irishman had on the church in Australia. Incidentally, I am led to believe that T.C.H. wrote "In Understanding Be Men" on the ship out to Australia.
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