NO ADULTS ALLOWED!
When I was a little boy, I couldn't wait to grow up - so I could be good.
As a child, I gave in to temptation a little - well, maybe a lot. I took money from my mother's purse without her consent, drank out the condensed milk, stole some sugar, played cricket all day instead of doing my chores and told the occasional fib. My mother gave me many scoldings and quite a few hidings. At such times I longed to become an adult because I thought that adults could resist temptations and always did what was right.
And then I grew up. I discovered as an adult that it was even harder to stay out of trouble! I have behaved well as an adult, notwithstanding the few blemishes I have accumulated along the way. I have been thinking about the state of the world lately, and it's disheartening to realize that adults, not children, are the ones afflicting the world with the most horrendous kinds of evils.
In the late 1960s, when I first became aware of the Vietnam war, I found it hard to believe that adults were murdering each other in the manner reported every morning at 8:00 by the BBC world news. To my childish brain, it didn't make any sense at all. Why couldn't these adults talk things over? Sadly, now that I am an adult, I can understand why there needed to be a war! It just shows that as a child, despite my money pinching sinful ways and my sugar stealing habits, I was a way better person than I am as an adult.
Adults teach children to be kind, speak the truth, be friendly, be helpful, and share. They tell children not to fight or take what doesn't belong to them, be fair, be just, and love and respect other people. But have you seen how adults behave! Mercy!
Adults commit the most heinous crimes. Murder, kidnapping, slavery, stealing, human trafficking, genocide! They lie and cheat and deceive. They oppress and brutalize other people. Some of them brutalize even children. Adults of every stripe are responsible for the evils that prevail globally—popes, priests, prelates, presidents, prime ministers, police, and politicians. The culprits are also kings, queens, dictators, mob bosses, drug lords, and warlords.
The crimes and misdeeds of adults are too many to tabulate. As a child, how could I have known that the most dangerous human is an adult, not a child? It is disheartening to think that adults - people who should know better - are responsible for the poverty, misery, wars, pain, racism, and heartache afflicting billions of people today. Is it any wonder that Jesus invites into his kingdom people who are like children? Now that I think of it, perhaps, there will be very few adults in heaven! Good riddance! And to think, when I was a child, I wanted to become an adult!