By: The Rev. Dr. W. Ross Blackburn
The picture of Jesus receiving a child in this passage is revealing. He took the child into his arms. Not only did Jesus tell the disciples to receive little children, but gave them a picture of how to do so. Into his arms. No wonder the NRSV translates the Greek term as “welcome.” Jesus certainly welcomed this little child.
Two brief reflections on the above passage that strike me as pertinent to the question of the church’s response to abortion.
First, the pro-life movement is not chiefly about winning an issue, it is about receiving children. In particular, it is about welcoming children that, due to surprise or difficult circumstances, aren’t being welcomed by those closest to them. Part of what needs to happen in the pro-life movement is to seek to foster a culture that welcomes children. In other words, not a culture that puts up with children, but delights in them, seeing children as a blessing, not a burden. A Christian culture that honors children in our speech, that visits and/or adopts the orphan, that lends practical help to parents who struggle, and where fathers and mothers spend time with their own children, and others’—not just out of duty, but because they want to.
Jesus doesn’t say protect. Or put up with. Or give rights to. All of that may be important, but Jesus’ words suggest a spirit that some of us need to fight for. C.S. Lewis put it helpfully in The Abolition of Man: “I myself do not enjoy the society of small children: because I speak from within the Tao [a term Lewis uses to refer to natural law] I recognize this as a defect in myself – just as a man may have to recognize that he is tone deaf or colour blind.”
Secondly, receiving children is at the heart of the Gospel. Jesus’ words could not be clearer: “whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” This is what it means to be great in the kingdom of heaven. Can there be a faithful walk with God that does not receive children?
One might object to seeing this passage speaking to abortion. A prominent New Testament scholar (who will remain unnamed) mocks the use of this passage to speak of unborn children, arguing that it clearly refers to born children. Of course Jesus is looking at born children here, but it bears mentioning that the Bible knows nothing of what we call a “fetus,” for there is no word for “fetus” in either the Old Testament or the New. In the Bible, unborn children are referred to, simply, as children. Always. The distinction we make between the born and the unborn is modern, and conveniently self-serving. The idea that Jesus would not hold out the same enthusiasm for the unborn child as he does the born child utterly misses the spirit of the Man, and of God.