We Are Not Free Until the Smallest Among Us Are Free
Throughout history and in the world today, children are among the most marginalized of social groups, but their oppression often goes overlooked or is not taken seriously. Of course, the injustice children face will be exacerbated in some children more than others because of certain intersections of identity. Black and brown children, for instance, are more likely to be victims of police violence than white children. Girl children are more likely than boy children to be sexually abused, although sexual abuse does happen to children of all genders, usually from within those children’s own families. Children in colonized countries such as Palestine are in danger of death or injury from war in a way children from wealthier countries are not. And trans and queer children face harm from non-affirming religious institutions such as fundamentalist churches and conversion therapy centers.
However, even the most socially privileged of children live in precarious positions that leave them subject to violence, simply by virtue of their being children. Children as a class lack many of the protections afforded to adults of similarly marginalized groups. In the United States and many other countries, for example, it is legal to physically punish children in ways that would be deemed physical assault if committed against another adult. Children face greater difficulty escaping abusive situations than adults as well, with the legal removal of children from homes requiring proof of abuse that often does not come until it is too late. Even in less extreme situations, children are often viewed in ways that dehumanize and diminish them. They are seen as too noisy, a nuisance, as not fully capable of human reason and thinking like adults are.
We are all, at each stage of our lives, created in the image of God. This includes children, so much so that when God came to earth in the person of Jesus, he was incarnated not as a “fully formed” adult, but as a child. Not only that, but Jesus became a theologian as early as the age of twelve, in dialogue with the leaders of the temple when his parents lost him for a few days. Later, as an adult, Jesus’s ministry lifted up the experiences and agency of children in ways that rebelled against how his society was organized. Think of how he stood up for the children who wanted to come talk to him after the disciples tried to shoo them away!
Jesus’ views on children were both radical for his time and remain radical today, but he certainly wasn’t the first to advocate for children’s liberation and agency. A focus on children’s need to flourish appears in much earlier pieces of scripture, including the reading for the Third Midweek of Advent, Zechariah 8:1-17. Unlike Jesus, not many details are known about Zechariah beyond that he is one of twelve “minor prophets” in the Hebrew Bible. He would have written after the period of Babylonian captivity, during which the Israelites were learning to live in peace after a time of great trauma and violence. After all they had endured, it was hard for them to envision what a life outside of bondage felt like, but the prophet Zechariah came in with a vision from God to help them out, “[e]ven though it seems impossible to the remnant of this people in these days.”
For the prophet Zechariah, part of what a flourishing society would look like is this: “the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.” Children in this vision as told by Zechariah are not treated as subhuman or as just the property of adults. Their joy is important. Their right to exist as they are, even if that existence is noisy, is important, as is their right to live into old age, when they will sit in the streets instead of playing there.
(Given the emphasis on people, young and old, existing peacefully in the streets, I would also argue that Zechariah’s vision of peace hinged upon walkable cities, but I digress…)
For the prophet Zechariah, as for Jesus, liberation is incomplete if it does not include the liberation of children. In the wake of modern injustice like what I described at the beginning of this commentary, it does not seem like this is a lesson we have learned, despite how many times the Bible tries to teach it to us. In fact, we seem in many ways to have gone quite the opposite direction, not only denying children their joy and agency but also using them as pawns in larger political games that harm the livelihood of both children and adults.
The current moral panic in the United States around the transgender community, like so many moral panics throughout history, falsely tells us our children need to be protected from society’s scapegoats, which today take the form of drag queens and transgender people. Meanwhile, if children are being harmed, as they often are, it is by the same forces and the same people who are working to oppress the trans and queer communities—not by the trans and queer communities themselves. Children’s access to information about trans and queer communities is limited by book bans, taking away children’s avenues toward a better understanding of themselves and others. Queer and trans children are hurt and even killed by lack of access to queer-affirming spaces and gender-affirming care, whether this is by suicide or at the hands of people and institutions committing homophobic or transphobic acts of abuse—acts of abuse from which children are often not protected by law. When children are not able to live as themselves, and this includes living as the genders God has called them to be even if these are sometimes not the genders they were assigned at birth, their capacity for a joyful life depicted by Zechariah is taken away.
The third week of Advent represents joy. This is not a shallow, watered-down kind of joy but the joy of justice and liberation, the kind of joy that can only happen when all of us are set free. This is the joy that was proclaimed by Mary in the Magnificat, and this is the joy God has always wanted for Their creation. This kind of joy, in our world today and throughout history, can often be so difficult to envision, but prophets like Zechariah show us that all things are possible if we can see, believe, and work toward them.
Perhaps if you’re reading this, you’re thinking that what I have written doesn’t feel particularly joyful. Perhaps it seems downright angry. However, as God—speaking through the prophet Zechariah—reminds us in this passage, for the joy God wants for all of creation, there must first be a reckoning. The Israelites, God says, have made God angry in the past, provoking God to wrath. However, there is a path forward for peace, reconciliation, and yes, joy to blossom. “These are the things that you shall do,” God instructed to the Israelites then and continues to tell us through scripture today, “speak the truth to one another, render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace, do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these are things that I hate…” It is only then that “there shall be a sowing of peace; the vine shall yield its fruit, the ground shall give its produce, and the skies shall give their dew…” It is only then that children will be able to play in the streets, as themselves, joyfully and without fear.
Mississippi Civil Rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer is quoted as saying “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” A world, then, is only as free as its children, who are all too often put in harm’s way by the systems of oppression adults have created. We are only free when queer and trans children are no longer in danger of homophobic and transphobic violence, when Black and brown children are no longer in danger of police violence or deportation, when girl children are no longer subjected to the sexualized violence of the patriarchy, and when children in colonized countries like Palestine are no longer victims of the violence of war. We are only free when all children, everywhere, no longer have to fear violence from their parents or other adults who do not afford them the dignity they deserve. There is a lot of work to do, but God calls us toward this pursuit of justice, peace, and joy. We are not free until the smallest among us are free.
Ellis Billington (he/him) is a longtime grad student, having received his Master of Divinity (MDiv) from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in spring 2024, and anticipating completion of his Master of Theological Studies (MTS), also from Garrett, in spring 2026. He plans to pursue a PhD and work in academia in the future. His research focuses on theology and ethics for Christians with marginalized sexual identities, including queer and trans communities as well as polyamorous and kink communities. He was born and raised in Golconda, IL, but has moved all around the midwest in his adult life. He will likely have to move (again!) for his PhD studies, but he currently lives in Kansas City, MO, with one human roommate and four feline roommates.
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