MOVING BEYOND BABY TALK

As the father of three children and grandfather of six, I know that through the years I've made lots of nonsense sounds as I've related to them as infants. But according to a recent study, I've actually done a good thing. The study reveals that "the singsong, drawn out, exaggerated form of speech has a melody to it. Inside the melody is a tutorial for the baby that contains exceptionally well-informed versions of the building blocks of language."

While these types of "conversations" with infants may be beneficial, to do the same thing with adults would leave people thinking I've taken leave of my senses! The point is that there's a time to move beyond baby talk—and that is no less true of believers. Each of us as Christians needs to give evidence of moving beyond the babble of infancy.

When Paul first arrived in Corinth, he spoke to audiences that weren't at all spiritually minded in their speech, conduct, or thought processes. Living their lives in response to the desires of the flesh, Paul rebuked them as "worldly" (1 Corinthians 3:3). Some of them had already been Christians for four or five years, and were still feeding on "milk" instead of feasting on "solid food." This was unacceptable, according to Paul.

Yet, sadly, many Christians even today never seem to move beyond the most elementary of spiritual truths. Eugene Peterson, in The Message, poignantly paraphrases Hebrews 5:11-6:2 as follows: "You ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one—baby's milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago! Milk is for beginners, inexperienced in God's ways; solid food is for the mature, who have some practice in telling right from wrong.

So come on, let's leave the preschool finger painting exercises on Christ and get on with the grand work of art. Grow up in Christ. The basic foundational truths are in place: turning your back on 'salvation by self help' and turning in trust toward God; baptismal instructions; laying on of hands; resurrection of the dead; eternal judgment. God helping us, we'll stay true to all that. But there's so much more. Let's get on with it!" Well said, indeed!

--Paul W. Brubaker
September/October 2006

More helpings from the Bread Basket:

The Crowning Glory of God's Creation (M/A 2007)