Innocence in Education

by Rev. Robert S. Jungé

"Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk." (Exodus 23: 19)

A little child reaches out in complete trust and love to his or her parents. (AC 6107) When the child cries, it is a sign of his or her total dependence upon his or her parents for sustenance, even for the protection of his life. The innocence of little ones, trusting and willing to follow, stirs our own hearts with innocence and kindles in parents the love of their offspring, and from that the ability to represent the Lord to the child. It is through the innocence and trust of children that the Lord can establish good and true affections in their hearts that will counterbalance, even through adult life, the evils of heredity. Without these remains inflowing through innocence the child would be steeped in evil alone - worse than a beast. (AC 560) "Innocence, then, is the receptacle of all things of heaven." (HH 341) These states of innocence are the little children that the Lord takes up in His arms, and blesses.

We all want our offspring to mature, to grow, and to accept responsibility. Yet we must guard lest we hinder the full range and development of innocence in each new state. True education looks to richness of state, not the forced advance of states. In fact, states advance in large measure according to internal affectional changes which are in the Lord's hands. The order, timing and sequence of states should be patterned by the Lord and the teachings of His Word.

Our times are so filled with rushing! There is so much pressure, and such demanding intellectual standards are set for our children, that we cannot but wonder whether the innocence and the fullness of childhood do not suffer. Do parents provide time for gentle, orderly play, when the imagination can expand as a treasure-house of delight for the child? (TCR 335: 7) In fact, even the highest angels use an interior imagination. ( SD 679; HD 48: 5 and references)

Those tender times when our children find the security of a strong lap, or when they sense the protection of their parents' arms, are all too often cut short. The innocence from parental love inflowing into the souls of parents conjoins itself with the innocence of infants, particularly through the touch. Unless parents themselves are innocent, they are affected in vain by the innocence of their offspring. If parents do not cultivate innocence in their hearts, and provide times when they can quietly share this state with their children, the gentle states of the children fall like seeds upon flint. (CL 396)

Now worship together provides one of life's tenderest opportunities for sharing affections and loves. Yet it is so easy, with today's pressures, to neglect the daily bowing of our heads as families before our Heavenly Father. The ultimate of the Lord's Word, read together in the simple sphere of willingness to learn of Him, is the cornerstone in the building of the home. This is true, not only because it brings about the conjunction of parent and child through innocence, but also because it builds what is truly human with man. (AC 560) It builds the human because it brings the presence of the angels of heaven. Their presence in turn builds the affection for spiritual truth, which makes man uniquely human - uniquely capable of seeing and loving the Lord.

While worship, then, is the heart of religious education, nevertheless religious education in the home is much broader. The parents as shepherds lead and protect their innocent flock day and night. One of a shepherd's primary duties is to keep the flock together and in order. Order is essential. With children, order is the example they see at all times. It is the peaceful times established for patient, truthful answers to their questions; it is also the discipline of justice and judgment tempered with mercy from tender love. These states and their affections may be aroused during meals, during play, at any time. There is no substitute for parents in this role; for the Lord has given them storgé, the love of their offspring, to lead them to a special light which will guide them in this use. That light must never be hidden under the bushel of self-love. The innocence of infancy itself causes that parental love in the wife, and it is then transferred from her to her husband. (CL 395, 403) As Isaiah says: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?" (Isaiah 49: 15) Yet in disorderly times the prophet answers: "Yea, they may forget"; and so we in our day must ask: If our sons ask the bread of love, will we forget and give them stones? (See Matthew 7: 9)

Innocence is always associated with peace in the doctrines of the church. Do we not owe it to our children to give them a full measure of both external and internal calmness and peace in their homes? From the mistaken urgings of spurious conscience we are often tempted to indulge too much in this or that worthy cause, even church causes, even causes related to the education of children; but let us never forget our primary responsibility - the most sacred trust given to parents - the care of children born into their home.

It is true that the innocence of infancy is external "and dwells in dense ignorance." (AC 9301) Hereditary evil dwells in everything that children do. Actually the truths which belong to this ignorance are "founded upon the fallacies of the external senses." (AC 4563: 2) Much of our teaching of children is through those appearances which consist in believing that all that they know and think, and also all that they will, is in themselves. "The ignorance excuses, and the innocence makes it appear good." (AC 1667) They do not understand these apparent goods and truths, which are in reality selfish; therefore they are not held accountable.

Nevertheless these fallacies must be shaken off gradually by education if man is to advance towards wisdom. The innocence of infancy is followed by the innocence of ignorance during the child's active instruction, perhaps from five years of age to age twenty. (AC 2280: 2, 10225) The tender innocence of infancy - continuing up to five years or so - is the plane upon which the scientific" and later cognition" of childhood are built. (AC 1555: 2, 3, 3111e) The innocence of ignorance which follows infancy must not, however, remain innocence without knowledge. It becomes at first innocence coupled with knowledge" which look to self; (AC 1667) but gradually these apparent truths give way to genuine truth as the youth approaches maturity.

Some suppose that the innocence of childhood, or of ignorance, is preserved by keeping a child figuratively in the dark, or in ignorance, about external things or scientifics. Nothing could be further from the truth. For the child, when his affection of knowing is kindled, will learn of these things. He will grow, for it is ordained that he should. We can not hold back these states indefinitely, nor should we try to do so. When a child comes into affections which need knowledge and instruction, the best way of preserving innocence, the best way of weaning the child, is to try to protect him from fallacies and to feed him the truth. Scientifics which are not darkened by fallacies are true and adaptable. They can later be brought into a perfect one with regenerate love. (AC 6112) To teach a child without fallacies is to feed him scientifics and natural truths, in subordination to the teachings of the Lord and His kingdom.

Now the giving of this instruction is the clear duty of husband and wife together. It is true that the duties of the husband and the duties of the wife are distinct, in that "the care of the suckling and the education of infants of both sexes, and also the instruction of girls up to the age when they may be marriageable and associate with men, is a duty peculiar to the wife," and the "care and instruction of boys after childhood and up to puberty is a duty proper to the husband." (CL 176) Nevertheless, parents should mark well the teaching that "these duties conjoin themselves by counsels and support and many other mutual helps," and that "as to their distinctness, and their conjunction, these duties make one house." (Ibid.) One house, serving the Lord, will prepare the way for genuine innocence, not of ignorance, but of wisdom.

Now the Writings teach that conjugial love is innocence itself. (AC 2736) To represent this, "it was customary in the representative church to enter in unto a wife by a present of a kid of a she-goat." (AC 3519) This meant that there could be no entrance into conjugial love except in a state of innocence. That is why youths are instructed to shun wandering lusts and to pray for a conjugial partner from their youth up. But the innocence of entrance into conjugial love is not founded upon the fallacies of the senses, which dwell only in the externals and lack the ordering power of the Lord. The innocence at the heart of conjugial love is the innocence of wisdom, which recognizes that all life, and thus all genuine love, is from the Lord alone. The offering of the kid of the goats represents this innocence which a young man must bring to his marriage. To enter into the use of the home, there must be this fundamental willingness to be led by the Lord. What is essential in entering the marriage state is that the wisdom of life should acknowledge that the Lord is the first of any marriage. When the externals of preparation for marriage, and of marriage itself, are ruled by such a conviction, genuine innocence then rules. With the gradual growth of innocence throughout life come peace, tranquility, full confidence, and a mutual desire to do each other every good.

We want our children, then, to be weaned from the innocence of ignorance. Mature innocence even in external life is represented by the kid. of the goats mentioned in our text. We do not want that mature innocence in our children to be still dependent on us when they are full grown; seething, or boiling, in the milk of their innocence of ignorance. When the fallacies of that former state are clung to in mature life, they become devastating falsities. But the gradual weaning process from a completely self-centered innocence to a genuine innocence of life is effected through the truth. We want our children to enter freely into the mature loves of life. But one of the greatest rules of education is framed in the Lord's own words: "know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8: 32)

The Writings set forth a wonderful ideal, particularly regarding the education of our daughters. They say of young women in heaven, and similarly on earth, that "after the nuptials, their virgin state was changed into a new state of which they knew nothing at all before ... that after this the flame of love burns for the husband alone.... But it is different with those who catch allurement from erudition before marriage." (CL 502) By erudition before marriage the passage seems to mean learned information, perhaps based upon sensuous things and even upon experience. Substantial evidence indicates how wrongfully experienced many of our young people are in our day.

It seems clear that this passage does not mean that ignorance prepares for marriage - neither ignorance of the externals already filled with the fallacies of the external senses, nor ignorance of spiritual truths and responsibilities. In an orderly state, external truth is conjoined to internal as a servant to a master. The fallacies are combated by external truths properly subordinated to spiritual truths. We can rush the learning process, and can hamper and limit it by pushing - advancing a state beyond what the affections indicate.

But how shall we, as parents, learn when our children are ready to be given certain truths? There is but one way that we can learn of these deep affectional needs - from the Lord's Word, seen in the light of parental love. The whole curricular structure of New Church education is founded upon knowing from the doctrines the internal affectional needs of different ages. There are alternations between negative states and highly idealistic states which must be met in their own way, always leading from generals towards particulars. Yet surely a very different type of knowledge is appropriate to the betrothed state, when that solemn change of state occurs when the universal love of the sex is determined in each partner to one of the sex, and when conjugial love is proceeding from its spiritual origin to its nuptial flame. (CL 301) When in the light of parental love the needs for instruction are expressed - sometimes affirmatively, sometimes as obvious, negative demands and even disorders; when the affections for knowledge are aroused in new states, then we cannot neglect to feed our children. If we do, our flock will scatter from us in disorder, turning its back on our leading as shepherds in those things which require, perhaps, the tenderest innocence of all.

The education of our children in all the paths of innocence is an awe-inspiring and profound task. We may be tempted to hesitate and to question our own worthiness to live up to this work. But the Lord always helps those who themselves are innocent and thus are willing to be led by Him. If we make sincere mistakes from lack of knowledge, the Lord will nonetheless overrule them for good. (AC 6765e, 6405: 3)

If we in our own limited way can help our children to lift their eyes to the mountains of love to the Lord, to look beyond the valleys of merely external delights and the fallacies of the senses, we will have weaned our children successfully. They will stand as mature adults before their Heavenly Father and His church.

-New Church Life 1964;84:349-354

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