INFANTS AND MILK

Hebrews 5:11 to 14 - 

"We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. [The "this" about which the author has much to say is Jesus's role on our behalf as high priest in the order of the Old Testament's mysterious Melchizedek.] 

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."

The author of Hebrews pulls no punches in his smackdown of immature believers who "no longer try to understand" and are being demoted to milk instead of solid food. The prescription for them is to find "someone to teach them the elementary truths of God's word all over again"!

In any Christian community - church, small group, ministry - we should not be overly surprised to find individuals who call themselves believers but who do not have a firm grasp even of the basics of the faith they profess.

This makes me think of numerous short term mission teams who visited Haiti during the years we lived there. The experience of those who visited our OMS campus typically included a trip into a nearby village to share the gospel and distribute solar powered radios tuned to Radio 4VEH, our Christian broadcast ministry.

This terrified people.

The majority of individuals on these teams could be found sitting around the table the evening before their evangelistic experience processing their fear of sharing the gospel. 

That fear always stemmed from their inability to explain the basics of the Christian faith to another person. 

I was sympathetic, of course, but it always left me wondering this: How can a person claim to truly believe something that he can't even articulate?