Children Are To Be Seen And Heard

It has been a joy to have our grandchildren with us for Thanksgiving this year.  Not having been with them for eight months, we’ve marveled at how much they’ve grown and what new interests they have.  Our granddaughter, aged six, asked to help prepare the Thanksgiving meal.  Our grandson, aged nine, is still not too old to play on the floor with his father’s childhood toys.

Our house hasn’t seen so much chaos and heard so much glee since our children were their age.  Only once, when they decided to turn the volume on the piano keyboard to full blast, have we pleaded for them to tone the sound down a bit.   

The one word that has come to mind with our grandchildren’s visit is “normal.”  As our children grew up, they never heard the stern admonition that my wife and I heard when we were young—“Children are to be seen, not heard,” and we’re glad our grandchildren have never heard that phrase either. 

Children want to be both seen and heard.  That is true of all children.  And this Thanksgiving, I know that I’m not alone in thinking about the children in Gaza and Israel.  They too want to be seen and heard.

In times of war, we often fixate on questions that children are too young and innocent to comprehend.  Which side in the Hamas-Israel war is in the right?  What tactics and weapons should be  permitted in modern “rules of war?”  What is the long-term solution to this conflict?  Those questions are so complex as to leave all of us, no matter what our ages, confused and discouraged.   

We might all agree that these questions should be off-limits as we sit down for our Thanksgiving dinners, for Thanksgiving is meant to be a pause.  President Lincoln instituted our modern understanding of this holiday during the dark days of the Civil War, hoping that the day would be a pause from that deadly conflict.  And ironically, the pause that has been agreed upon by Hamas and the Israeli government coincides with our Thanksgiving holiday this year.

The entire world welcomes this pause in the war, but we hope and pray that both sides will make good use of this pause.  I’d like to suggest, in this temporary pause, that we consider another question. 

Let’s put aside questions of tactics and which side is in the right by focusing on this question: “What is in the best interest of the children—the children on both sides of this conflict?”

For me, that question helps clear the fog of war.  What is in the best interests of Israeli children is what is in the best interests of Palestinian children.  All children deserve a safe childhood.  All children deserve food.  All children deserve good health care.  All children deserve education.  All children deserve places and opportunities to play.  All children deserve to dream of fulfilling employment in the future. 

Ensuring these basic rights should be the goal, the endgame, of the Hamas-Israeli conflict and all other wars.  And providing these basic rights to children is our best way to prevent wars in the future.

I am reminded of what the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed seventy years ago.  If we want to live in safety and security, we need to make sure that our neighbors live in safety and security. 

I would amend Niebuhr’s wise thought to be, “If we want our children to grow up in safety and security, we need to make sure that other children live in safety and security.”