• To the disciples: “Unless you change and become like a little child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 18:3)
• To the chief priests and elders: “The tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of heaven before you” (Mt. 21:31)

This is what I mean, in yesterday’s post, by “Do not rule out any kinds of questions and observations from the conversation, even ones that (initially) seem unsuited to Bible study or insufficiently sophisticated.” Ask the questions that little children would ask; ask the questions that those on the outs from elite society would ask. This is, notably, difficult for those formed by elite society! The whole enterprise of contemporary Western elite education is meant as much to inculcate the habits of mind and speech proper to the ruling class in its next generation as to render that class accessible to the lower socioeconomic strata. Note well that this last sentence is not a criticism, per se, of contemporary Western elite education; indeed it’s a sentence that could hardly have been written without it. (The various so-called critical theories mostly exist, not principally for the powerless to critique the powerful, but for the already powerful to engage in the discipline of self-critique.) Nevertheless the ruling strata are always peculiarly able and constantly tempted — by Mammon, mostly — to drown out the voice of the Word by virtue of those habits of mind and speech. Wherefore it is a most useful and spiritually edifying exercise to treat them, as frequently as possible, as rubbish. Change, at least for the hour of Bible study, and become like a little child; ask questions of the text (of Jesus!) that the tax collectors and the prostitutes would ask, and follow their lead into the kingdom. With such people Jesus prefers to feast.