Most pre-school children display...
Illustration
Most pre-school children display what D. W. Winnicott has called a "transitional object." Writes Winnicott, "I have made a lot of the concept of the transitional object: something your child my be clutching on to just now, perhaps a bit of cloth that once belonged to the cot-cover, or was a blanket or mother's hair-ribbon. It is a first symbol, and it stands for confidence in the union of baby and mother based on the experience of the mother's reliability and capacity to know what the baby needs through identification with the baby." (Home Is Where We Start From, W. W. Norton & Company, 1986, p. 50)
Children, as most of us have noted, can become quite feisty about these objects; they insist for a long while on keeping them. But in time, what the external object symbolized becomes internalized; since one has that special something on the inside, she doesn't need it on the outside. Maturity is emerging.
It is the emergence of spiritual maturity that Paul has in mind when he writes, "In the past you did not know God, and so you were slaves of beings who are not gods." Just as the child parts company with the transitional object, mature women and men of faith part company with "beings who are not gods" and take their rest and hope in the presence of the One who speaks through Christ Jesus.
Children, as most of us have noted, can become quite feisty about these objects; they insist for a long while on keeping them. But in time, what the external object symbolized becomes internalized; since one has that special something on the inside, she doesn't need it on the outside. Maturity is emerging.
It is the emergence of spiritual maturity that Paul has in mind when he writes, "In the past you did not know God, and so you were slaves of beings who are not gods." Just as the child parts company with the transitional object, mature women and men of faith part company with "beings who are not gods" and take their rest and hope in the presence of the One who speaks through Christ Jesus.
