I've often heard the phrase, "When I became a man I put away childish things," but I never really knew its source. It seems reasonable. It seems accurate. We all begin in a state of childhood, and most of us grow into adulthood.
So, when I came across this again, it included some context I had not heard. It went like this:
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
Well, that's a decidedly different spin on it. How do I put away childish things yet do not fear being childish? How does a man grow up without retaining the desire to be grown up?
Where does this come from, and what does it mean?
It took very little research to find it. This is from C. S. Lewis, the prolific writer, famous for his children's books in the Chronicles of Narnia series. But he is also a very well known Christian writer; some might consider an important Christian philosopher.
I also recalled the Bible mentioned a strikingly similar phrase in a New Testament verse.
"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." - 1 Corinthians 13:11
This seems to be very straightforward. Once one becomes a man, childhood ends. So how can such a well-versed Christian writer and thinker like Lewis say something which seems so contradictory to the Bible he knows so well?
The answer is, of course, found in scripture, too. In the same chapter, even. The entire chapter provides the context. Love.
"If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." - 1 Cor 13:2
The entire chapter talks about what you can have or can do, but without love, you have nothing. But what is love? How can you have love? Again, the verse tells you.
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." - 1 Cor 13:4-7
I'm sure you are asking, "How does love and childishness relate?" Ah, but you've already missed the point. Lewis says to, "put away childish things," but also to "put away" the "fear of childishness." Childishness is centered around unbridled love. The love of the new, or the love of the well known. Just as a child loves a new toy, they also love their old toys. They love a new friend, and they love their 'old' friends. Children are filled with the purest joy. Are we to fear joy? Fear love?
Lewis understood that to fear childishness was to reject love.
Likewise, desiring to be grown is what only children do. They need to grow and mature, so they set about becoming an adult with a seriousness only children can have. Adults have no need for this seriousness. We are already grown. What would adults seek to become - older? We have obtained the heights; we should admire the view.
If our goal is to be seen as adult by other adults, to gain their approval, we aren't seeking love. Love does not boast. Love is not proud. And if other adults judge us for our 'adulthood', then they do not love us.
We should be joyful in our achievement, but we should not fear childishness. Childishness brought us joy once, and it should bring us joy any time we wish.
And here I found the full context of Lewis's quote. And it shows his complete understanding of the scripture about being an adult and about putting away our childish things. It isn't childishness we are to put away. It is the fear of being childish. When we put away the fear, we replace it with love. We cherish childishness.
"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms.
Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C. S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, Part I: 'On Three Ways of Writing For Children'