You Eventually Need to be Weaned

The more I speak with professing Christians the more I realize just how unimportant it is to people to know the Bible in an in depth way. I recognize that a "babe in the faith" needs time to grow. My youngest son is almost 10 months old and there are certain foods I just cannot feed him at this time in his life. Many foods would cause him to choke and possibly die. As is the natural, so is the spiritual. Some people are new to the faith and have to be fed milk instead of meat. I am not overlooking this at all. What I am pointing out is something similar or the same to what the author of Hebrews pointed out years ago:

"For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of God's revelation. You need milk, not solid food. Now everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness, because he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature - for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil. (Hebrews 6:12-14; HCSB)"

The author tells us of people who should be teachers, i.e. they should be able to explain the more in depth doctrines of Scripture to other people who may still be s in the faith. Wouldn't you say that someone whose been in church for the past 20 years should be able to eat spiritual meat? I sure would, but I find that there are people who have been to church for 20, 30, 40 years and still have not been weaned from the breast. They would be satisfied with listening to a message about John 3:16 every single Sunday morning, and as long as the preacher huffs and puffs a little and shouts to the top of his lungs, they feel like they've been to church for the week.

I'm not against John 3:16, nor do I believe all strong preaching is fruitless, I am just saying that it's time for people who've been Christians all their life to actually know something about the Bible. It's time for them to quit thinking that all that matters is going to church or singing their favorite song in church. This is what the author of Hebrews is speaking of. He tells us that anyone who lives on milk alone is inexperienced with the message about righteousness. I can understand this of someone who has been studying for maybe 1 to 5 years, but after this you got to quit going back to the milk container. Those initial years should have been spent learning the "milk." It's time to eat a steak dinner.


Matthew Janzen