A radical invitation: Why Jesus calls us to become like children

Among all the people of the first-century Mediterranean world — from Praetorian guards to peasant farmers — the child was the most powerless, and this is the main reason that Jesus uses children as exemplary disciples.

No doubt childhood 2,000 years ago was very different from childhood today. (In truth, even the concept of childhood is a social and cultural development that varies across the world.) Nevertheless, amid all our modern developments, one aspect of childhood remains true across the years: vulnerability.

Children are extraordinarily vulnerable because they are weak, needy, and defenseless, and this is one of the major reasons why, even in the 21st century, children still occupy the lowest rung of the social ladder.

Of course, all human beings are vulnerable. Clad in fleshy bodies that can be fatigued, struck, and broken, sometimes beyond repair, humans are quite defenseless compared to other creatures. It’s not just our bodies, though. Our minds, hearts, and souls are delicate, too, able to withstand much, but also irreparably changed by what we are forced to endure. In truth, humans are perpetually needful. We need things like food and water, protection from the elements, sleep, physical touch, and intimacy with others.

After my oldest child was born, I bought a little sign for his room in a moment of sleep-deprived humor. In curling blue script on a white ceramic background, it read: “Bottomless pit of needs and wants.” I hung it over his crib and smiled wryly about it every day, but it’s a sign all of us could hang over our beds.

Infants aren’t the only needy, wanting ones. Whether we like it or not, human beings are born in neediness, live our lives in neediness, and die in neediness. It’s just who we are.

Whoever takes the path of the child is the greatest in the kingdom.

At the same time, there are few humans as naturally vulnerable as children. Their needs vary depending on their age and physical, neurological, or psychological makeup. While most will grow in independence over time, children often remain dependent on their families and other institutions well into what is now called emerging adulthood. If children find themselves victims of neglect, mistreatment, or exploitation in one or more of such settings, the consequences can be dire.

This is even more so if they find themselves living in perilous places: a country torn apart by war, a region hit by a tsunami, or a school targeted for a mass shooting.

While the treatment of children has generally improved over the centuries, their natural dependency means there is an unavoidable imbalance of power between children and adults.

I have a friend whose toddler son used to try to run out the front door when it was bath time. Stark naked and giggling mischievously, Malachi would race down the hall on his tiny legs and pull wildly at the doorknob. Once or twice, when the door was not bolted, he managed to get it open just before my friend caught him. Each time, she’d scoop him up laughing and carry him back to the waiting tub. Through his squeals of delight, she would say, “Where do you think you’re going? What exactly is your plan?” Malachi was blissfully unaware of the absurdity of his attempted escape or the danger he might be in if he made it out the door.

Compared to adults, children are quite defenseless, especially within private homes.

I am haunted by the image of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh of Aleppo that was captured by photographer Mahmoud Raslan in 2016 after a Russian airstrike destroyed his home during the Syrian civil war. (The photo was ubiquitous online in 2016, but you can see it in one location here.) Slight in frame, Omran sits in a bright orange ambulance seat wearing a stunned, vacant expression. His hands rest forgotten on his thighs. He seems entirely dissociated from his body, which is covered head to toe in thick gray ash. His large black eyes stare blankly into space with one almost swollen shut. A deep red smear of blood runs down the length of his face, and one ear looks torn. His long dark hair, which you can imagine his parents tousling playfully, is a mess and covered with the gray powder of concrete debris.

Omran’s home was destroyed, and his life ruptured by a war waged by adults. Adults created the political and socioeconomic conditions that led to the violent conflict. Adults designed, manufactured, distributed, and deployed the weaponry that enabled the war. Adults recruited, signed up for, and served as soldiers to wage and perpetuate the war, and adults launched the missile that annihilated Omran’s neighborhood. He has his own personhood and story, which I won’t presume to tell, but I think of him now because he illustrates vividly the vulnerability of children whose lives are determined almost entirely by the decisions of people bigger, stronger, and more powerful than they. Omran is one of 2.3 billion children worldwide.

I think Jesus understood children’s vulnerability and the multitude of ways families and organizations fail them, which is one reason why he has dire words for those who would hurt children: “If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

But there’s more.

It’s not just that Jesus knows about the vulnerability of children. Jesus identifies with their vulnerability in a personal, sacramental way: “And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:5). When you receive the vulnerable, socially marginalized, and politically disempowered child, he says, you also receive me.

The only other place Jesus speaks like this is in the parable of the final judgment where he says that those who minister to “the least of these” are, in fact, ministering to him (Matthew 25:31‑46).

The eternal Son of God took upon himself the helplessness, ignorance, and vulnerability of children. Our conduct with children — how we think of them, speak of them, and work with them — must be informed not only by Jesus’ teaching but also by his own life as a child. By joining divinity to humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, God has blessed infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood with their own meaning and dignity.

At the very least, Jesus the child helps us to see that children have their own agency and purpose before God.

One of the challenges is that there’s profound disparity of power between children and adults, especially within private homes. The child’s vulnerability calls for adult protection, but not everyone heeds, or is capable of heeding, that call. And when families are severely stressed, under resourced, or isolated, they can become malignant places.

Still, amid the chaos and confusion, the struggle and hypocrisy, Jesus comes to us, his baffled and bickering disciples, and he comes to us with the child. He places the child in our midst and offers us an invitation. Unless you change and become like children, you won’t enter the kingdom.

Whoever takes the path of the child is the greatest in the kingdom, and whoever welcomes one such child in Jesus’ name welcomes Jesus himself. In fact, as Mark’s Gospel says, “The kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Mark 10:14).

Adapted from "Households of Faith" by Emily Hunter McGowin. ©2025 Emily Hunter McGowin. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press.