Jesus Loves the Little Children
The head of a New York City private school that has been accused of indoctrinating students with progressive politics and “anti-racist” orthodoxy privately acknowledged that the school is guilty of “demonizing white people for being born,” according to audio from a conversation he had with a whistleblower teacher (here).
Not just in this country but around the world children are being demonized or berated because of how they were born—as if God made some sort of mistake when creating them or somehow loves one group of humans over another (here). In India, the caste system is still functioning. In Muslim countries in various world locations, Christians are paying for their faith with their lives. Yet somehow people manage to accuse Christianity of hate.
Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
This late 19th Century song was written by Woolsten and borrowed the tune of a Civil War song Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (a song intended to encourage Union Prisoners of War). Jesus Love the Little Children is a precious chorus and with Jesus Loves Me is among the first songs children learn in the earliest years of Sunday School. Woolsten based the song on Jesus’ call to the children in Mark 10:13-16.
Like the chorus says, Christianity is not a white religion—it’s universal.
Some would like to condemn Jesus’ call as a call to a white man’s religion. It’s a lie. Jesus was not white. The Apostle Paul was not white either. Christian culture is Christian—not white. God’s family is ethnically inclusive and the great throne room of heaven will boast family members from every aspect of humanity.
After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9).
As reflected in the children’s song, the gospel itself is ethnically inclusive and therefore opposes ethnic prejudice.
All children are born sinners by nature.
In this they are equal. They have the same bent toward sin and they will inevitably be sinners by choice as well as by birth. All children have inherited these sinful tendencies from their parents (Romans 3:10-23). The children of Africa, Mexico, the US, Canada, and everywhere else in the world have sinful parents as their common experience.
As surely as they are born sinners they are also universally extended the love of Christ.
For God so love the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,
That whosever believeth in Him should not perish,
But have everlasting life (John 3:16).
Jesus did not come to this world to condemn it—it was already condemned. He came as the emissary of God’s love to save it by laying down His own life. That salvation is extended and open to all that will receive it. That is the gospel.
In this sense, racism is a gospel issue.
I am not talking about Social Justice as it is commonly taught today, but rather any type of ethnic preference or superiority. In Galatians 2:11-21, Paul recounts an incident when Jews had come from Jerusalem to Antioch and were refusing to fellowship with the gentile believers there. Paul saw this as sin and rebuked Peter openly for it, calling it a corruption of the gospel (Galatians 2:14). The gospel truth in jeopardy was universal sin and whether one group of people is somehow superior to another group—whether prior to or after salvation. The biblical truth is that all people stand equally sinful before God, have equal need of a Savior, and equally become the children of God once saved.
Children’s experiences are not equal, their suffering has not been the same, their privileges differ, but when they place their faith in Christ, their standing before God is the same and their eternal inheritance will be enjoyed equally. That is a truly loving and unifying message in a world hell-bent on division and anger.
Tell the children that Jesus loves them! Tell them how to accept that love. After the isolation of Covid and the condemnation and doubt that is being forced upon them daily, they need to hear it.
Jesus loves the little children.