Our Diet is for babies, Pt. 3

Series:  What is wrong with church?

Teaching adults a diet of baby food is not just something that the 20^th century church has mastered.  This form of feeding occurred back during the first century.  Listen to how Paul put it:  Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. ² I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready,³ for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world? (1 Cor. 3:1-3)

If a parent feeds its child with milk at an early stage, that’s good since the digestive system is set up for that. Milk has all the nutrients needed to sustain the infant in its beginning stages and subsequent growth. Milk is exactly what is required!

However, there comes a time when milk should no longer be an option. Milk alone no longer has the necessary fuel the body needs to bring the necessary development required for growth. If a parent do not make this important and necessary transition in their child’s life, the child will become malnourished and their growth will be stunted.

Paul is therefore pointing out in the passage above that there are times when feeding people the milk of the word is necessary for their spiritual intake. But they cannot continually feed on the milk of the word and expect to grow up to become mature saints who are going to impact the world around them.

Here, let me share this example.

When a typical child first starts school, they will learn that 1+1=2.  But imagine if the years rolled by and every week the teacher taught the same thing. Imagine if the child is now twelve years old and is still being taught that 1+1 = 2.

That's probably the most basic and foundational mathematical sum there is. Now to a four to five year old child, 1+1 is actually a tough concept to grasp. At that early stage in their development, the child’s brain needs to be switched on and engaged to get an understanding of what this arithmetic thing is all about. But imagine if the years rolled by and every week the teacher taught the same thing. Imagine if the child is now twelve years old and is still being taught that 1+1 = 2, but just in different ways.

Then imagine the child has never been introduced to more complex addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, fractions, percentages or algebra. In this case their growth would be stunted. They would not have matured. Though they are now entering their teenage years they would still only have the understanding of a five year old.  What is more, the child would now be bored, restless, disengaged, seeing no benefit or purpose in coming to class anymore and maybe even looking for answers from other sources.

Just as your school teachers constantly pushed back your horizons and led you into deeper understanding at school, building on what you already knew year-on-year, we should be looking for similar progression in our spiritual lives. And if we don't get that sense of progression and are constantly being fed the spiritual version of 1+1, we will become bored, restless, disengaged, will cease to see the benefit or purpose in coming to church anymore, and will start looking for answers from other sources.

It all starts with the teacher / pastor – setting the bar high.

End of Part 3