When Jesus calls our attention to children, he calls us to becoming childlike. Being childlike is the have the mind of a child, a trusting mind, a mind that accepts its limitations but is filled with an innocent trust upon someone greater. It is a call to develop what Zen Masters call the ‘beginner’s mind’, a mind that is docile and ready to learn. In that sense, our spirituality becomes a way of getting beyond our certitudes and our secure-selves in order to move to the realm of childlike innocence and openness. For Richard Rohr “This is exactly what Jesus is saying in chapter 9 of John’s Gospel: ‘Because you say, “we see,” you are blind.” Indeed, we cannot ‘see’ if we tend to accord the power of sight to ourselves. Self-referencing blinds us to the true version of our identity. Rohr goes on to pass this verdict on religion, particularly on Christianity:

“Religion has lost sight of Jesus’ message here. It has not tended to create seekers or searchers, has not tended to create honest humble people who trust that God is always beyond them. We aren’t focused on the great mystery. Rather religion has tended to create people who think they have God in their pockets, people with quick, easy, glib answers.”(Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer(New York: The Crossroad Publishing, 2003), 35-36.

Nowhere is this type of Christianity made manifest than in Nigeria. Every religion in Nigeria claims to have the answers. Every denomination within every religion in Nigeria claim to have the answers. It doesn’t stop there. Others are denigrated, ridiculed and mocked, often times. The result: God no longer is allowed to be God. The freedom of the Holy Spirit’s activity is only mouthed but never believed. The Spirit’s actions are ‘controlled’ by individuals who feel they have been spiritually empowered even more than the Spirit. No one is tolerant. No one is for peace. Everyone is ready for war based on what he or she is taught to believe. Even the sanctity of human life as well as the dignity of fellow human beings could be sacrificed for religious agenda. 

All have turned into fundamentalists!

Where is our ‘beginner’s mind’? Where is the child in us? Below is a passage from the Gospels:

“People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’  And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.”(Mark 10:13-16)

For us to receive the kingdom of God, we have to receive it ‘like’ a little child, with the openness and docility to ‘be taught be God’ (cf. Isaiah 54:13; John 6:45). 

Question: What does it mean ‘to be taught by God’ in the context of mutual respect and tolerance among different religious communities?