The children will lead us. That’s the phrase I keep wanting to use. From Isaiah 11.6. The phrase is common, cliched. It served as an episode title for the original Star Trek serious — an ironic twist on its intended meaning, the children leading through their innocence have been taken control of by an ancient force that kills adults.
The line is almost always misquoted. It is not children. The King James Bible renders it as “a little child shall lead them.” But who is being led? And why? These are important questions, especially today, as we watch the children lead us is protest against the scourge of guns.
The phrase hangs like ripe fruit, ready for the journalist and TV pundit to pluck, but as with so much about this story, these protests started by kids who watched their friends and teachers die in a hail of unnecessary gun fire, the quotation raises difficult questions.
As the blog Theologically Speaking pointed out in 2010, once you read the quotation in context, it becomes clear that “the text has nothing to do with a child leading adults.”
It states that a child shall lead the wolf, lamb, leopard, young goat, calf, lion, and fattened calf. This may seem strange if we do not continue to read a few more verses to get a better understanding of what is being discussed here.
Tim Finley, who writes the blog, says the passage is about the coming of Jesus Christ, who
will remove the curse of sin from our world and restore peace to all of creation. As a result of this peace, wolf, lion, lamb, cobra, calf, bear, and children will all live in harmony. A child will be able to lead a lion (or a wolf, etc.) around without fear of harm.
But that is a very Christian-centric reading. When placed within the context of Jewish history and the Old Testament, we might read the passage as one in which peace reins, as the Lord “appl(ies) His hand again to redeeming the other part of His people from Assyria — as also from Egypt, Pathros, Nubia, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the coastlands.”
They will then assemble and “pounce on the back of Philistia to the west,” and “plunder the peoples of the east,” and the chosen will rule.
Not the children but the Lord and the people of Israel.
This is not meant as a theology lesson — I’m far from qualified on that account. But the traction this phrase continues to have may tell us something about the current moment and the broad public support the teens have won. I wrote earlier this week that we have a responsibility to listen when these teens — when any teens — speak. Conservatives have attempted to dismiss the kids, raising the specter of outside agitators. The teens are too naive, the logic goes, and should not be allowed to drive the debate.
The right — not all conservatives, but enough — believe nefarious lefties have taken over the debate, have turned these teens into pawns for an anti-gun agenda. I find this absurd, though it behooves us to acknowledge that there has been a slow cooptation of the protests by administrators, and a defanging of the political demands. In my hometown of South Brunswick, for instance, the organizers — students — were quick to claim their efforts were apolitical.
Jenna Cohen, a senior at South Brunswick High School, told Patch that the walkout “was not about gun control.”
“The actions taken by SBHS students today was completely non-political. Our message and motives were to support and honor the victims, as well as leave kids feeling empowered to make a positive difference in the community.”
At the Pennington School, the walkout was led by Jake Bongiovi (Jon Bon Jovi’s son) and Ricky Eng. As N.J.com reports,
The pair, both sophomores at The Pennington School, felt inspired by the movement that called for students to leave their schools in unison in support of government action to prevent school shootings.
“It’s enough. It’s happened too many times that we watch it,” said Bongiovi, 15, who is the son of rock star and New Jersey native Jon Bon Jovi. “And we cannot let it go away this time.”
With the support of the school’s administration, Bongiovi and Eng, 16, planned what was meant to be an apolitical event uniting students around a common goal of increasing safety. Although the pair said they want gun laws to change to make students safer, they purposely avoided promoting specific legislation.
The depoliticization of these protests is unfortunate, because it makes it easier to shift the focus from guns to the “hardening of targets” and taking steps to turn schools, most of which already have security personnel and police on campus, into permanently locked-down facilities.
I don’t want to criticize the kids — they are keeping this school shooting issue in the news in a way we have not seen since Columbine. The walkouts, when they were announced, were meant to build upon the more spontaneous walkouts that occurred in February shortly after the Parkland, Fla., shootings. They intended to be political and to happen regardless of whether school administrators were on board. But once administrators bought in, the incentives shifted. Politics had to be wrung from the walkouts. School administrations are risk averse. They seek to fly under the radar as best they can. If they are going to be on board, then the protests have to have broad support and have to become inoffensive.
This does not mean the protests were ineffective. But it does indicate that there will be obstacles and that those of us who see a need to address gun violence and the sheer excess of guns in circulation need to do more. The students are powerful spokespeople for change, but they also keep the discussion too narrowly focused. It’s not a school issue, but a societal issue. We have to prevent future Parklands, but also future Auras and future Pulse Nightclub attack’s and future Mandalay Bays.
We can harden the targets, as some suggest, but by how much? Concert-goers already pass through metal detectors and get searched and there is armed security at all of these events. We can discuss mental health, but the kinds of discussions we have about mental health issues tend to blame and stigmatized those who suffer. We don’t talk about improving mental health infrastructure, but rather seek out ways to further restrict the rights of the mentally ill.
All of these discussions have their place. And the children should be included, their voices heard. But we can’t lose sight of the common denominator, which is the gun and whether we can afford such unrestricted and only nominally regulated access given the kinds of weapons available and the crowded and fast-paced nature of our society.
It’s not the children who should lead, but all of us.