Spiritual health in both individuals and societies is an achievement of maturity in which some excellency of childhood is consciously reclaimed, after being lost in the complexities of life. It is an inner integrity not on this but the other side of inner conflict; it is sincerity not on this but the other side of a contrite recognition of the deceitfulness of the human heart; it is trust in the goodness of life not on this but the other side of disillusionment and despair; it is naivete and serenity not on this but the other side of sophistication. In no case is the exact outlook of the child reclaimed. What is at the end is never really like the beginning. Yet something of the beginning must be in the end, if the end is not to be pure dissolution. In both morals and culture, life and history are therefore constant battles ‘to become as little children,’ to arrest that in growth which is decay, to prevent multiplicity from destroying unity, to prevent increased knowledge from enervating the zest for life and to prevent the atrophy of the imagination in the growth of mind.
I don’t agree with Niebuhr in every respect. I don’t like references to “spiritual health” because I’m never sure what precisely is meant. Further, I don’t think childlikeness in maturity is so much achievement as it is gift. Nonetheless, I do agree with him that God calls us to a “trust in the goodness of life,” to a kind of naivete. (Let me add that this serene acceptance of the way things are does not retard or confuse the anticipation of the way things shall be when God is all in all.) I completely agree with him that what’s at the end is never a recapitulation of the beginning. The end is a novum, a “euchatastrophe,” but the end is new in such a way that the beginning is made sense of, that is, redeemed. This is what makes God’s future telos and not merely terminus.
