The Jews longing for a messiah almost 20 centuries ago looked for a warrior on a thundering steed--someone to rend the oppressive shackles of Roman occupation. But a startling discovery was made in a drafty stable, on a pile of straw laid out for cattle. Here was the Messiah--a tiny child, vulnerable, born into a violent world with no defenses. He entered the world poor, and within days he was a refugee, fleeing to Egypt from a king's fury.
This baby was not yet a fulfillment--but a promise. He was not yet an answer to the longings of the hopeful--but a nascent life requiring nurture and care and the love of family and community to bring him to his full potential. This was God's chosen way.
Three decades later, while his disciples rebuked their parents and tried to push them away, this Messiah invited children and infants to come to him for a blessing. And he challenged his followers to be more like these little ones in their faith. He knew what it meant to honor children, these reminders of hope and delight and promise in our midst, a most precious resource.
One wonders what Jesus would have to say to us today. Every day we adults of the world collectively push 40,000 children out of the way and to their deaths. On this Earth 14 million children under the age of 5 die every year, most of them from preventable illnesses caused by a lack of food, safe drinking water, vaccines, or proper sanitation services.
Worldwide, more than 150 million children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Nearly 100 million school-age children have never been inside a classroom, 60 percent of them girls. Some 50 million children work in unsafe or unhealthy jobs, and 30 million live on the streets.
The severity of the crisis led to an unprecedented gathering in late September. Leaders of more than 70 nations met at the United Nations for a World Summit for Children, the largest meeting ever of heads of state. And in an Ethiopian refugee camp and at the remains of the Berlin Wall, in South Korea's Buddhist monasteries and a London cathedral, at the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument--in 78 countries in all--a million people held 2,600 candlelight vigils in support of the summit.
The "urgent universal appeal" that emerged from the world meeting sounded a note of hope, with the leaders stating their resolve "to give every child a better future." Among their goals, set for the year 2000, are: reduction of infant and child mortality by one-third; reduction of malnutrition by half; universal access to safe drinking water and education; empowerment, health care, and literacy for women; and global eradication of polio.
The summit also made a commitment to promote the ratification and implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This land-mark document, a comprehensive "bill of rights" for children, was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly last year after a decade of debate.
But the question, of course, after such a gathering is always, Will words become action? As one reporter put it, "The speeches were moving, but will the lives of children actually improve? Will Thailand enforce its laws against child prostitution? Will India curtail child labor? Will Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Myanmar (formerly Burma) take child warriors off the battlefield?"
And, we must add, Will the United States refuse to accept its position behind 21 other industrialized nations in infant mortality? Will we address the crisis of a quarter-million babies born underweight each year-in a nation plagued by neither famine nor war? Are we ready to say that it is unacceptable that one child out of every five in this country lives in poverty, and one of every four homeless people is a child? Are we ready to cry out about 2.4 million reports of child abuse last year, and the one-and-a-half million children who were killed in the womb before they had a chance for life?
As Rep. George Mitchell (D.-Cal.) pointed out, "At the same time President Bush was at the World Summit for Children, his agents were inside the budget summit trying to cut programs that assist children." And although 109 of the globe's 160 nations have signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United States is not among them. One of the criticisms by U.S. conservatives is the document's opposition to the execution of persons under 18 years of age. (Only four nations--Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh, and the United States--still execute juvenile offenders.)
SOME OBSERVERS have said that the goals of the summit on children are too "ambitious." But we cannot forget that, even if we do save 50 million children from starvation by the year 2000, at least that many will still die. The goal is not ambitious enough. We cannot be satisfied until every child is guaranteed the right to a healthy and satisfying life.
Many nations in the Third World spend up to half their revenue paying interest on debts or maintaining military strength, while in nations such as ours, the needs of children have not been given priority. The $2.5 billion a year needed from the world's nations to ensure the survival of most of its children is equal to what the world spends now on the military in one day.
We are continually giving the children of the world the message that we don't care about them. There is no money for food, we tell them, or for their education. Yet somehow we find $200 billion to bail out the S&Ls. Somehow the world's nations find a way to finance a military buildup in the Persian Gulf at a cost of more than $1 million an hour.
This is unspeakable scandal. The elected leaders of the world have recognized it. And the World Summit for Children is putting forth the appeal that the children of the Earth should have "first call" on its resources.
In the end, we all win with such a strategy, including the Earth itself, which is taxed in many places by overpopulation. Studies have documented that when parents have reasonable assurances that their children will survive, birth rates plummet dramatically.
And such an approach to our resources is cost-effective as well. In the United States it costs $600 for nine months of prenatal care for a healthy pregnant woman--and $2,500 per day in medical care for an extremely premature baby. It costs $8 to vaccinate a child against measles, or $5,000 in hospital care for a child with measles. Nine months of drug treatment for an addicted mother costs $5,000, while medical care for a drug-exposed baby runs $30,000 for 20 days.
But Jesus would probably look at it differently. If he were here today, he would likely go to Ethiopia or El Salvador or any other of the many nations torn by famine or war. He would take a starving child on his lap, look into her vacant eyes and tell us, "Whatever you do to her--one of my 'little ones'--you do to me."
This Christmas, let us not just welcome the Christ child. Let us welcome every child.
Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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