Is Holiness the End of Childhood?

See also Immaturity, Sin, and Family.

The loss of childhood has a touch of tragedy to it. You may live forever, but will your past selves? I'm significantly different from who I was as an eight-year-old, to the point that if I met him in a different eight-year-old's body (so that I couldn't see a physical resemblance to me), I might not realize he was me. Will that eight-year-old be resurrected on the last day? I think I've written about this somewhere in my notes and wonder, but do not remember, what I had to say then. But my sense, from what I've read is, no? Probably not?

Some people, who love their childhoods, try to prolong them into adulthood. Maybe the real phenomenon is to prolong an adolescence that values childhood. They might do this for years, presumably to keep alive the old ways.

Is holiness the end of childhood? For "holiness", you could substitute "spiritual development", "spiritual maturity", "being in tune with God", "becoming truly wise", "overcoming sin" or even "coming to fully love and trust God". In my mind, all of these are one thing, which has all of those facets. They can seem to involve giving up some aspect of yourself, possibly your childhood. So someone who values childhood might resist them, and in the process, cause harm or even risk hardening.

We generally always have to give something up for holiness or pay more for it than we were initially willing to pay. And that may be the case with holiness and childhood. However, I think there are people who can retain their childlikeness as well as developing their spiritual maturity without holding back. They are open to the process of development as much as it calls for, and do not resist it for the sake of keeping their childhood. And the process of development does not call them to lose their childlikeness, so they keep it. By contrast, holding onto childishness is something that the process of development (God working in us) will not want to keep, though we may want to.

Childlikeness is a positive thing in itself, but there may be something better. God shapes us to be instruments (a utilitarian metaphor) or inhabitants of niches (an ecological one). Our purpose may involve us losing aspects of who we are which are good in themselves.

So holiness is necessarily the end of one part of childhood, and may be, but is not necessarily, the end of another part.

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Could there be a recovery of childlikeness as we mature? I don't see why that can't be.

Being attached to childhood too much can be like any other attachment that is too much, something which competes with God in our hearts. When we are mature, we may not have our old tastes and desires, and probably won't long to be any particular way, other than connected to God.