The Faintly Burning Wick

I had just turned sixteen. Understandably, I was eager to get my driver’s license; it’s no fun trying to arrange a date night by way of the local transit schedule. Greatly to my distress, my father put a damper on my mobility aspirations by pointing out that the cost of insuring a sixteen-year-old male as an occasional driver of the family vehicle was well beyond his means. I was welcome to get a part-time job after school and pay the cost myself if driving was all that important to me.

Well, driving wasn’t, but grousing was.

Irritated by Dad’s lack of enthusiasm for my desire to get around town like other kids my age, I gave up all interest in driving for over five years. Even when the cost of insurance had dropped significantly, I obstinately declined to pursue any opportunity to get my wheels. My mother would have called that cutting off my nose to spite my face.

Growing into Independence

Such behavior may seem self-defeating, and it is. Nevertheless, kids will do such things, especially young males in the process of becoming independent from their parents. We show our independence by saying, “If you don’t care about what’s important to me, then I don’t care about what’s important to you.” Smart? Not so much. But it’s very common behavior, including in areas of personal development much more important than driving.

A pre-teen asks to be baptized along with his older brothers. His parents say, “Maybe in a few years. You’re too young right now.” Unless he’s a very spiritual child … and stays that way … good luck getting that lad into the baptismal tank when you think the time is finally right.

I’ve been thinking about this in connection with the Lord’s Supper. “Dad, why can’t I remember the Lord with you?” Good question.

At what age is it appropriate for professing children to participate? Opinions vary, and with good reason. Children do not all develop spiritually at the same rate, nor do all baptized youngsters carry on in the faith. When I was growing up, most parents were cautious about allowing their children to break bread and have a sip of wine (or grape juice) with the adults. Few children were permitted to participate prior to their teens. I accepted that as normal, and most of my friends did too.

Let the Children Come

Why was that? Why is it still often the case today? Didn’t the Lord tell his disciples, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven”? I often hear that verse applied in questionable ways. To me, remembering the Lord is not one of them. He commanded his disciples to remember him, did he not? Shouldn’t obedience to his command be the default for all those who profess faith in Christ and want to participate, unless there is some genuine biblical impediment? Shouldn’t it be … normal?

Again, Paul tells Colossian fathers, “Do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” There is little more discouraging to a young male than to hear, in so many words, “You’re not allowed to grow up yet. You’re too young.” On the list of potential paternal provocations, dismissing a child out of hand is right up there. If Christian fathers are to avoid discouraging children as a general principle, how much more ought we to be careful about discouraging young believers with respect to arguably the most important spiritual activity in which they will ever engage?

Eating and Drinking Judgment

Looking back, I suspect more than a little parental reluctance to allow younger children near “the elements” had its basis in concerns about divine judgment. Back then, passing the loaf and cup through the congregation was often preceded by a brief, solemn word from one of the older brothers concerning the need for self-examination, always from that familiar passage in 1 Corinthians 11:

“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”

“Let a person examine himself”, they explained, meant taking a daily or weekly inventory of our thoughts, words and actions in order that we might not come to the Lord’s Supper with a heart full of unconfessed sin. Moreover, the warning rarely involved any explanation of what Paul meant by “discerning the body”. When it did, I recall some vague association with the intensity of the Lord’s suffering on our behalf, and how we ought to regard his person as very precious on that account. Putting these two ideas together, perhaps parents in those days feared their pre-teen children might not be sufficiently mature to perform this necessary self-examination, and might find themselves under God’s judgment for taking the sacrifice of his Son too lightly.

Becoming Blasé

Now, I’m not suggesting it’s a good thing to take the Lord’s suffering on the cross lightly, nor am I of the opinion that clearing our conscience before the Lord prior to sitting around the table together is a bad idea. Not at all. But I’m not convinced the received interpretation of that passage is entirely correct. Is it possible, for example, that “discerning the body” means something else entirely when we read it in context, as I suggest in this post? Might it not be that the self-examination Paul has in mind is something other than a generalized personal inventory? Could it be that the “body” the Lord so wants us to discern is mystical rather than physical? The context strongly suggests this is the case.

Moreover, even if a personal inventory really is required, I’m not convinced children are significantly less able to do this than adults. At six years old, the thought of Christ’s sufferings reduced me to tears in a way it almost never does today, and rightly so. I was young, inexperienced and gentle enough to be shocked and appalled by the way he was treated. Sometimes these days I wonder if we are too blasé about that. “Marred more than any man”? We mouth the words easily enough, but do we feel their impact? Do they touch our hearts?

Judging Another Conscience

Moreover, how do we judge the conscience of another, adult or child? Looking back from many years later, I can say that I have taken the bread and the cup over a thousand times in my life. You know what? There was not a single occasion on which some unconfessed sin did not lurk in my heart as I ate and drank, and not because I was thumbing my nose at the Lord and deliberately courting his judgment. No, it was because I had yet to discover the sinfulness of sin, the myriad ways in which I can deceive myself about my own motives, and the endless opportunities that exist to do wrong even when I am trying to do the right thing. You can’t confess things you don’t know are wrong and don’t yet feel guilty for. Years of reading scripture have given me a much better idea how much I owe the Father for sending the Son on my behalf. My judgment would have been great indeed. Thank the Lord he dealt with it at the cross.

Yet remarkably, despite eating and drinking before the Lord oblivious to the extent of the baggage I was carrying on many, many occasions, I sit here today relatively unmarked. So do you. We’re not weak and ill, and we’re definitely not dead. What I’m saying here is also true of thousands, probably millions of other believers. We confess what we know about ourselves as the Holy Spirit reveals to us the need, but we never get to the bottom of our own sinfulness. There is always more to learn. God is infinitely holier than we know.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that if fellowship with Christ required that every communion participant come into the presence of God with every new sin, active and passive, recognized, recalled and repented, then every gathering of Christians to remember the Lord would end in a smoking crater. Manifestly, they do not.

A Special Treasure

So then, if the Lord is so immoderately gracious with his adult disciples, how much more accommodating can we trust him to be with respect to the spiritual struggles of children earnestly trying to follow Christ? If our Great High Priest sympathizes with the weaknesses of his often-obstinate adult sheep, how much more does he understand and make allowance for the imperfect and irregular development of his tender lambs? Should we really expect of them the sort of spiritual consistency we rarely demand of ourselves? If the Lord does not break bruised reeds or quench faintly burning wicks, are his servants following his example when we mow down new spiritual growth or snuff out the faltering expression of love for Christ, even when we do it with the best of intentions?

A heart that desires to worship Christ is a special treasure, a blessing to nurture, feed, water and protect. Not all youthful requests to break bread with the adults are on that level, but some are. My children are grown, and I’m not the one making these sorts of decisions these days. But if I had to choose between encouraging an early expression of desire to honor the Lord at the risk of future disappointment, or shutting it down until some more appropriate moment that may never come, my inclination is to give a little gentle direction from scripture and say, “Go to it.”