{"id":15615,"date":"2021-07-29T19:28:10","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T23:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15615"},"modified":"2021-07-29T19:28:10","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T23:28:10","slug":"suffer-the-little-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15615","title":{"rendered":"Suffer the little children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
“The Last Judgment,” from The Small Passion, by Albrecht Durer, ca. 1510. Metropolitan Museum of Art, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I had a theological idea<\/strong> the other day. It gave me great enjoyment when it occurred to me, but it also worried me. In 2,000 years of church history, I can\u2019t be the first person to think about this, but I\u2019ve never heard it discussed in these terms. Probably because the idea is fraught with danger. And I do care about orthodoxy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things that troubles me, in my long sleepless nights, is the thought of all the \u201cwasted\u201d people who\u2019ve ever lived. Not wasted in the modern sense of being destroyed by alcohol or drugs. Wasted in the older sense \u2013 people simply thrown away. Discarded. The Gospel teaches us that there is nothing more precious than a human soul (think of the parable of the Lost Sheep). But uncounted millions of people have been born into slavery or peonage, worked without respite all their short lives, and then left to die\u2026 or killed. Like animals. Also, so many have died young, with no chance to live. Not to mention those aborted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat will the Lord do with such people at the Last Judgment?\u201d I\u2019ve often wondered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then I remembered an important Christian doctrine. It\u2019s even in our creeds. The Resurrection of the Body.<\/em> When I was a kid I thought that meant Christ\u2019s resurrection, but it doesn\u2019t. It refers to the resurrection of our<\/em> bodies, the bodies of every human being who\u2019s ever lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Last Judgment, every human who ever lived will get their bodies back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And a picture came into my mind, of a great throng of those \u201cwasted\u201d children, crowded around the throne of Christ, who will do the judging according to Scripture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remembered that in the Old Testament, judgment doesn’t always mean condemnation. It also means the place where the poor can get justice against their oppressors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the picture of Jesus surrounded by little children gave me a strong sense of peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t make a doctrine out of it. It would be wrong to do that. Universalism must be resisted at all points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I feel good about this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a theological idea the other day. It gave me great enjoyment when it occurred to me, but it also worried me. In 2,000 years of church history, I can\u2019t be the first person to think about this, but I\u2019ve never heard it discussed in these terms. Probably because the idea is fraught with … Continue reading Suffer the little children<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[3793,3792],"class_list":["post-15615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-the-last-judgment","tag-the-resurrection-of-the-body"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15615"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15617,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15615\/revisions\/15617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}