We Have Sinned and Grown Old

Oftentimes I would use the trip home to bring up things that were troubling me, since anything I asked at home was promptly answered by the aunts. Once, I must have been 10 or 11, I asked father about a poem we had read at school the winter before. One line had described “a young man whose face was not shadowed by sexsin.” I had been far too shy to ask the teacher what it meant, and mama had blushed scarlet when I consulted her. In those days just after the turn of the century sex was never discussed, even at home.  So, the line had stuck in my head. “Sex,” I was pretty sure, meant whether you were a boy or a girl, and “sin” made Tante (Aunt) Jans very angry, but what the two together meant I could not imagine. And so, seated next to Father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, “Father, what is sexsin?”

He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing.  At last, he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor.

“Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said. I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.

“It’s too heavy,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little daughter to carry such a load.  It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now, you must trust me to carry it for you.”

And I was satisfied. More than satisfied, wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions, for now I was content to leave them in my father’s keeping.

from: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie ten Boom

A small portion of this quote has been making the rounds of social media. It’s excellent even in its shortened form, but I have special appreciation for the ending, as it speaks to why it is so important to shelter children and help them retain their innocence for as long as possible.

Corrie, like my children, was raised in a happy home with a loving father. I can see in my children and grandchildren how naturally it comes to them to see God as loving. Those who grow up with problematic fathers, with whom we cannot really trust our tiny, tender hearts, have a harder time coming to see Him that way.  

The current insanity would tell us that children do not benefit from innocence but should be indoctrinated into sexual culture as soon as possible. I’ve had otherwise seemingly sane people try to convince me that the age of consent should be lowered considerably because after all, it’s just another type of attraction. No.Hard no. The wrong question is why do parents and concerned others have a problem with drag queen story hour and the like. The right question is why does anyone want children exposed to such things? What benefit is there to the child? Explain, please. They cannot, because it is obvious to anyone with eyes to see that children should enjoy a long, innocent childhood devoid of predatory adults.

There are three important pieces to this story, from my point of view. The first is Corrie’s reaction to her father’s explanation. She was wonderfully at peace because she knew he loved her and was protecting her from things that she could not handle. She felt safe because she was under the protection of her patriarch, who she knew to be loving and just. Even children who do not grow up in such families deserve to be protected. It isn’t an accident that the most common form of childhood abuse comes from mom’s boyfriend.  

The second is Corrie’s father. He uses the analogy of physical strength to explain readiness for wisdom. One does not start a weightlifting program with 200 pounds on the barbell. Neither should one begin sprinting without any warmups or stretching. Those are recipes for failure and injuries, oftentimes permanent injuries. Many people walk around with permanent psychological and emotional injuries from exposure to too much too soon. The only true healing of these injuries is through Our Blessed Lord. Only He can help us forgive, which heals all wounds.  

The last is the role of the teacher. Though Corrie was born in 1892, schools were apparently already introducing students to inappropriate content for their developmental levels. What possible reason could that teacher have had for teaching those children a poem that included the concept of “sexsin.” I cannot imagine a context in which I would want anyone but loving and responsible parents talking to 10- or 11-year-old children about things that only that adult who loves them should approach. How would anyone else know what is appropriate for them and how to teach them such topics. 

The title of this essay comes from Chesterton, who posits that God may not actually have set the world to automatically do anything, but instead creates the bloom of every flower individually, by His hand.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and Our Father is younger than we.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

It is also true that we can reclaim a certain level of innocence if we quit poisoning ourselves with sin. If we stop watching content in which the Lord’s name is taken in vain, it becomes more shocking when one hears it. That makes it easier to remember to make acts of reparation for them. If we stop consuming content that has the impurity that cable TV engages in, our nervous systems stop craving that dopamine hit. If we no longer laugh at jokes where some child of God is the punch line, we regain our child-like ability to see the other as part of ourselves. We can become younger again. 

I hope that when people read this graphic online, they feel the desire to know more about Corrie ten Boom and her family. I hope that they will read her book and see how it is possible to resist any current insanity of one’s generation. I have loved her story since I first read it as a child in part because I read it and believed her to be not an extraordinary woman. I believed that, in part because of the witness of her and her family, all ordinary people, like me and anyone ordinary reading this, are capable of God’s extraordinary work.