Of Milk and Meat

Recently, upon arriving in Winnipeg and amidst a host of other life and routine changes, I enlisted the help of a friend to get back to the gym. If you’ve seen me you will know right away that physical activity has never been a strong discipline in my life. I coasted through life as an intellectual and an artist (music being my genre of art) and because those things kept me busy and successful I never really had to justify why my physical body was being routinely neglected in the development of my whole self.

That was until September 30 2003.

On that day my world changed in ways that I never could have foreseen. It was early in the morning, around 2:30 if I recall that I woke up next to my wife of only three months with what I could only describe as a tightness of the chest. I got out of bed and puttered around the apartment for a little while thinking that perhaps it was indigestion or a pulled muscle. I got onto webMD and looked up my symptoms and to my horror and shock the website told me to seek immediate medical attention because I was having the symptoms of a heart attack.

But I was young. I was healthy. I was twenty-three years old and had my whole life ahead of me – there was no possible way this was happening – and the doctors agreed. After waking up Joanna and convincing her to drive me to the hospital we were almost sent home because my claim of chest pain was so preposterous that I’m sure they imagined me a hypochondriac, test after test came back negative for a cardiac event, until the results of the blood work showed several myocardial markers present. After that I saw what must had been half a dozen different cardiologists over the course of the next six to eight hours none of whom believed it was possible that I was actually experiencing a heart attack. A whole host of different theories were floated that would explain away the seeming impossibility that someone like me would be having a heart attack at my age, but in the end they opted to play it safe and ordered and angiogram which confirmed what we had all feared and set me up for a lifestyle change that will continue to dog me for the rest of my life.

Exercise used to be something that I did to feel good about myself and consequently something that I didn’t work very hard at, something that I went through the motions with and just put in time. But along the way I learned a lesson that if I was going to get healthy, if my muscles were going to grow and get stronger, if I was going to strengthen my heart and lose some extra pounds I couldn’t just put in time – I needed to work. I needed to sweat, to be dead tired, to be sore after every work out and know that I’d left everything I have physically on the track or the treadmill or the gym floor. Growing spiritually is no different.

The author of Hebrews in chapter five berates the Church for her lack of maturity. The author spends the first half of the chapter trying to explain some advanced Christological concepts to their readers but in the end says (with tone of exasperation that is almost audible if you read it aloud):

We have a lot to say about this topic, and it’s difficult to explain, because you have been lazy and you haven’t been listening. Although you should have been teachers by now, you need someone to teach you an introduction to the basics about God’s message. You have come to the place where you need milk instead of solid food. Everyone who lives on milk is not used to the word of righteousness, because they are babies. But solid food is for the mature, whose senses are trained by practice to distinguish between good and evil.

Hebrews 5:11-14

To often we are content to simply put in spiritual time. We are content to do the bare minimum in our spiritual disciplines to get by, and alleviate whatever guilt we may have for not being more devoted followers of Christ. We think that because we started out as new Christians on a diet of milk that milk is all we need for the rest of our lives. But the call to the Church is not to remain on milk but to move onto a diet of meat; to grow, to go deeper, to develop our spiritual muscles in a way that will be stretching and challenging and even sometimes uncomfortable.

Recently I read a quote by Natural Church Development guru Christian Schwarz about a conversation he had with sociologist and demographer George Barna in which he asked the venerable researcher what was the most alarming result of all the data he has collected over the years on the church. Barna’s response was disturbing but not surprising. He said, “We are still a church nurtured by milk rather than solid food.” And in my experience, he’s right.

Too many Christians I have known have been happy to stay as infants for far too long. Five, ten, twenty or more years into their walk with Christ their prayer lives consist of little more than table grace and bed-time mantras; their devotional life consists of little more than ten minutes in Our Daily Bread or some similarly surface level daily reading guide. Their efforts to reach their neighbours and friends for Christ hasn’t gone past inviting getting their children to invite their peers to family-friendly church events, and they have shown no interest in growing past these things if it requires any level of discomfort or stretching.

Are you a baby Christian? Then enjoy nursing at the teat of the Church on what Peter describes as the pure milk of the word. But like all babies, there is a time to stop nursing and take on solid food if one expects to grow into a healthy person. Has that time come for you? Have you been cutting your teeth on deeper truths of the Scriptures? Have you been building your spiritual muscles with more challenging disciplines of the faith? We all need to grow up what are you doing to ensure that happens?

Starting this week I’m running my Thursday Tête-à-têtes with Pastor Chris where you can drop by my office any time between 1pm and 8pm every Thursday for a chat, a visit, some coffee and some prayer; and if you are looking to develop a spiritual growth regimen and don’t know where to start I’d be happy to walk you through some suggestions and help you get off your milk addiction and into some spiritual meat. Don’t wait until an unexpected crisis strikes and you find yourself immature and unprepared to deal with the reality of your situation. Start getting healthy now.

Really.

Because spiritual formation is as serious as a heart attack. Trust me. I know.