The teaching of Jesus shapes who we are. But it’s just as true to say that who we are shapes what we make of the teaching of Jesus. Who Peter Sidebotham is — a loving parent and a paediatrician dealing daily with suffering children — has fashioned his understanding of what it means to be a child of God. Who he is, father and beloved physician, is his personal imprint on every page of what is, quibbles notwithstanding, an engaging and perceptive little book.
The Church Times have published the following review of Growing up to be a child:
Growing Up to Be a Child
Peter Sidebotham
Westbow Press £9.14
(978-1-4908-4067-3)
Church Times Bookshop £8.23
Reviewed by The Revd Dr John Pridmore, a former Rector of Hackney in East London
PETER SIDEBOTHAM is a senior consultant paediatrician. His book is a series of reflections on the puzzling words of Jesus: “Unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” So far, so familiar.
But Sidebotham’s approach to these words is a novel one. He voices his thoughts as a series of letters to his daughter Esther, who has left home for university. He invites Esther — and us — to think about the children we must become, in the light of the child she once was. He draws deeply on his experience of the children he has cared for professionally, but it is the childhood of his own Esther that he wants us to see as the pattern of our discipleship. Here, then, is an original and unusually personal study.
An original and unusually personal study
Sidebotham finds multiple analogies, some more persuasive than others, between the pattern of our human infancy and our condition as “babes in Christ”. We must, each of us, be “born again”. His daughter’s birth — a “Herculean ordeal” for her mother — teaches us that our rebirth in Christ is bound to be painful, too.
Little children, such as the new-born Esther, are vulnerable and dependent. To become a child is to accept that our spiritual situation is the same. Less likely to have occurred to us is the fact that, both for babies and for the children of God’s Kingdom, attention must be paid to hygiene. As Sidebotham puts it, “Stuff goes in one end and stuff comes out the other.” We must “confess our sins, and be washed clean”.
The call “to become a little child”, Esther is advised, is a call to cultivate humility. To which Esther may wish to say (as may we): “Yes, but. . .” Babies are not models of humility: they have to be self-centered to survive. Esther’s father is on safer grounds when he points out that “babies complain” — as we should.
Sidebotham reminds his daughter and us that to become a child is to become the child who grows. The child who is our exemplar is one who learns to stand, to walk, and to run. Such a child is the pattern for our spiritual development, not the one who is content “to explore their world from the secure base of their bottoms”. In a word well-chosen, we mustn’t be “bottom-shufflers”. Indeed not.
The teaching of Jesus shapes who we are. But it’s just as true to say that who we are shapes what we make of the teaching of Jesus. Who Peter Sidebotham is — a loving parent and a paediatrician dealing daily with suffering children — has fashioned his understanding of what it means to be a child of God. Who he is, father and beloved physician, is his personal imprint on every page of what is, quibbles notwithstanding, an engaging and perceptive little book.