Teen-Toddlers

I have done some questionable things in college which I would rather not remember, but my friend’s story of her time in college certainly beat mine. Apparently, her college friends would go out and buy baby food for lunch. I can’t imagine that baby food costs less than Ramen noodles, so I don’t think this was done for cost-saving reasons. It was a fad. To eat baby food.

Gross.

The problem isn’t what baby food is made of. Basically pureed fruits and veggies, it’s like a smoothie for infants. Adults have teeth, and chewing food is a necessary part of digestion. It stimulates the creation of saliva and all that good stuff.

Solid food is important, is what I’m trying to say.

Both physically and spiritually.

Bottle Babies

Last week, I tried to make the case that truth should be pursued in the study of the Scriptures so we could know God. But after pursuing truth, we have to partake of the truth.

As babies in our faith, we are fed with the milk of the Word. Ask a nursing mother whose baby refuses milk and she will probably share her fear and frustration that her baby is not getting the nutrients needed to grow.

Growth is necessary for our spiritual lives as much as it is for our biological lives.

Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. — I Pet 2:1-3

Paul expressed frustration with the serious problems in the Corinthian church.

And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? — I Cor 3:1-3

I can see him throwing up his hands, “Why are you still eating baby food!?”

After tasting the depth and texture of actual solid food, who would return to the pureed jars of … blech.

Think of all the sensory pleasures of eating food.  Consider the crunch of raw veggies, the plump suppleness of fruits, the salty savor of a steak sizzling in a pan with sweetly-pungent garlic and pine-fresh rosemary. Warm butter pooling in the nooks and crannies of freshly baked French bread all crackly on top and chewy in the middle.

Now I’m hungry.

I haven’t been around baby food jars recently, but I remember them all smelling the same. And except for the colors, they really all looked the same too.

Discerning Diners

As adults we experience the textures of food and begin to recognize what is good and what is rotten. Even in ourselves.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. — Heb. 5:12-15 (emphasis mine)

Like the Corinthian believers, the Hebrew Christians were still not eating solid food, and they risked being led astray.

Whoa, scary! There are numerous false teachers preaching the wrong gospel. Wolves in sheep’s clothing murmur the false doctrines that we want to hear into our ears. Check out the rows of shelves in Christian bookstores filled with books that undermine the truth of God’s Word. Sadly, large numbers of Christians are deceived. Maybe their emotions overrule their discernment, or they don’t know how to notice the counterfeits because they have spent so little time chewing on the truth.

The solid food of the Word is not for us to just delight in the writing of the Bible, but to be able to recognize those that do not come in the name of the Lord.

 

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.