
“I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready” (I Corinthians 3:2 NIV).
The other day, I went for a walk around town. It was before noon, and a lot of families were out enjoying the day together. One little girl repeatedly pointed to posters on one of the store fronts, asking her dad, “What’s this?” and “What’s that?” Her dad patiently answered every time. “That’s a nose.” “Those are ears.” “It’s a mouth.”
I love seeing interactions like this. Kids have an insatiable curiosity. And there is so much they don’t know that they are trying to learn. But I also think there is something comforting to believing that Dad has all the answers. Dad is wise. Dad knows everything.
A while back I had a youth group student who was always asking questions about faith. Why would God do this? Why didn’t God do that? Why does God allow such and such? Isn’t there a scientific explanation for this? And on the questions went. If it could be asked, he asked it. I knew he wanted to learn, and besides, I have always been one to question, so I did my best to answer them. The problem was, my answers were never good enough. So finally, I told him, “Look, I love your questions, but you are asking things that theologians haven’t figured out yet and expecting the perfect logical response to all of them. So what I’m going to ask you to do every time you have a question is to suggest a possible answer. It doesn’t have to be any good. But I need you to try.”
The rest of the night was interesting. He would start to ask a question, catch himself, pause, then say this is really hard. And sometimes he came up with potential answers (which he was also able to pick apart because they also weren’t perfect logical responses), and the discussion continued. This continued for a few weeks until his mom confronted me and asked me to please answer his questions. “He’s just trying to learn,” she told me. Maybe so. But I am still convinced that he learned more by trying to find his own answers.
“We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil (Hebrews 5:11-14 NIV).
When we’re first learning how to follow Jesus, we need a lot more help and a lot of answers, but as we grow up in our faith and in life, some things begin to be second nature. We no longer need our pastor to be the sole interpreter of scripture—we can read and understand it for ourselves. We don’t need someone else to tell us what our spiritual gifts are or how we should be serving the church—we have learned how our passions and skills have been and continue to be a blessing to the church. We don’t need a top-down vision of what God is doing—we can see for ourselves how God is working and find joy in participating with him.
At least, that’s how it should be. Too often, we don’t trust our relationship with God enough. We have also paid for a pastor to study and cast vision and build the church. Or we’re too busy and lack interest in growing up. It’s so much easier to be spiritual infants, relying on someone else to answer all our questions and feed us. But that’s only supposed to last for one life stage, not our entire lives.
So church, I beg you to grow into mature adults, continuing to ask your questions while putting into practice the things you know to be true, holding yourself and your community accountable. The world needs to see what it could look like for all of us to follow God together.
And pastors, challenge and encourage and allow your churches to grow up. I know it can be scary. They might not need us in the same way as they did as infants. They might even grow strong enough to challenge us back. But if they are healthy and mature, that’s a really good thing. Together, all of us will grow to be so much more than we are now. And God will get all the glory.
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