These words of Jesus: “Woe to anyone who encourages one of these little ones to sin” is a warning to all who, through ignorance of the Laws of Justice, insult and exploit the innocence of human beings of personality and character in development. At all times, and particularly today, where the media often exposes situations in which minors are tricked and deceived; bullying; child labour, referring to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful; domestic violence; the incentive to addictions; of those who delight in prematurely awakening their instincts and thereby feeding their free will to licentiousness; wars that cause, in the vast majority of cases, irreversible behavioural damage due to the psychological terror associated with the violence to which they are exposed: paranoia, learning difficulties and social integration; of tyrannical governments that, in the name of their backward beliefs, inhibit or forbid girls to learn; from cultures far removed from modern times that mutilate them in the practice of female circumcision. And, including in this list, what goes on in confessionals, which, in the name of their dogmas, explore childhood intimacy with tricky questions.
Below is Huberto Rohden's interpretation of this warning of Jesus.
“It is with these words - “woe to anyone who encourages sin to one of these little ones” - that ends the well-known scene of Jesus blessing children, a scene usually explored only to show the love that Jesus dedicated to these innocent souls, but which opens, behind these words, immense chasms, a real universe of mysteries, which theologians and interpreters of sacred texts leave, in general, without comment.
Jesus affirms that those children “have faith in him” and that, therefore, it is severe to encourage them to sin.
But how? Did any of these children have faith in Jesus? In which way, if none of them knew him? If, for them, Jesus was a simple rabbi, like so many others? What does Jesus mean by “having faith in him?”
This “having faith” is not an act of conscious and explicit faith but rather an implicit attitude of faith. This “having faith” is a state of the soul of these little ones, that is, a Christlike state. Tertullian made transparent in his well-known words that the human soul is Christlike by its very nature. If those Hebrew children had a Christlike attitude, under their human nature, were they in a state of original sin, as the theologians of the Christian churches claim? How was this faith, this Christlike attitude of the soul, reconciled with the state of sin in which they were conceived? None of these children was “baptized”; the boys were circumcised, but the circumcision did not eliminate original sin. And the girls, for whom there was no circumcision? It is evident that all these children, who “believe in Jesus”, were in the state in which they were conceived and born. If they were sinful by nature and inheritance, how were they in a Christlike state? And if adults are cautioned not to encourage them to sin, does it not assume that these little ones were still in a state of perfect purity, without sin?
Jesus ends his warning with the mysterious words: “For their angels contemplate without ceasing the face of my Father which is in heaven.”
What kind of angels are these?
The belief in “tutelary angels” as well as “tempting angels” is universal in mankind. Also, the Bible, whether in the Old or New Testament, admits the existence of these invisible entities.
The Latin word “angelus” literally means “messenger”, designating conscious and free entity, of invisible body, that executes the will of God in several levels of the Cosmos; in the case where it contradicts the will of God, it is the so-called “adversary”, “demon.” If it fulfils the will of God, it is an angel.
There are, therefore, invisible entities that accompany men, influencing them for good or evil, seeking to harmonize or disharmonize their vibrations. These entities are like “auras” or “breaths”, which affect humans, positively or negatively, according to their personal receptivity.
Since the intimate essence of all things are divine, and therefore the human soul, essentially divine or Christlike, exists in the child a positive, good, divine foundation, but this attitude is in a merely potential state, as dormant and embryonic. Under this latent potentiality, the child's soul is neutral, colourless, and can receive both positive and negative influences; therefore, the infant soul is in a transient equilibrium, unstable, neutral, and can be easily magnetized, positively or negatively, by diverting its magnetic needle to the right or left, according to the external influences that the child receives.
Encouraging sin does not necessarily presuppose words or deeds of people of their inner circle; can also be done by the simple presence and inner attitude of internally disharmonized people; a person, when in an anti-Christlike state may encourage to sin a childish soul, still Christlike, to the point of hindering this attitude of “faith”, that attitude of fidelity to its inner Christ. It would be a sort of anti-Christlike poisoning by “induction”.
The angels, these emissaries of the Divinity who protect human souls, who are Christlike by nature, would turn against one who abuses the infant Christlike soul, drawing upon it the sanctions inherent from violating the sacredness of the infant’s soul.”
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