Punctum Saliens

I was feeding our nine month old daughter tonight and started thinking about the milk/meat analogy that Paul uses in I Corinthians 3 and Hebrews 5. Now that we have a baby, this analogy has gone to an entirely new level for me. God, I love a good analogy!

Earlier today, my wife and I were talking about whether or not to start giving our baby some finger food. You know, cereal, soft crackers, and the like. I want to but am scared to death of her choking on a bit of food. We make our own baby food and are no longer puréeing everything but are leaving it a little chunky. Every once in a while, she will try to swallow too fast or something and will start gagging a little. Nothing major and she always manages to get it down but when she does this I feel myself starting to panic.

So I started thinking about the transition from milk to meat, both the physical one with actual food and the metaphorical one with spiritual food. First of all, the transition is a slow one. No baby actually goes from drinking milk one day to eating meat the next. It takes time to work in new foods slowly. You have to be careful to not overstress the baby’s digestive system and you have to avoid creating food allergies from introducing certain things too quickly. The same thing applies with spiritual food. I think there has to be a gradual change in our spiritual diet; we have to work our way slowly from milk to meat. This means that there must be more than two categories of food. There must also be the spiritual equivalent of rice cereal and mashed sweet potatoes. Now, this also means that just because you’re not drinking the milk it does not mean that you’re ordering the holy lamb shank.

Secondly, the transition cannot progress without a little grimacing and gagging. As we introduce new foods into our daughter’s diet, invariably the first few bites give us much laughter as she shudders and shakes and contorts her mouth in reaction to the brand new flavors. But as we eat a little bit to show her how good it is and she gets used to the new tastes, she is soon eating faster than we can fill the spoon. And there will be some gagging as she eats bigger and bigger pieces. It’s just something that I have to accept as she gets used to eating. Again, there is a parallel with spiritual food. Some truths and doctrines may not seem very appetizing at first and others will be difficult to swallow. But we can’t just ignore them and rationalize our way out of taking them in. If we do that, we’ll end up eating diced peas and carrots the rest of our lives.

All this got me thinking about the Christian doctrines we have today. My guess is that anyone you talk to will probably say that these doctrines — the virgin birth, the Trinity, the historical Jesus, etc. — are spiritual “meat.” But I wonder. Just as a baby has no idea about the foods she’s not eating yet, can we really say whether our doctrines are meat or mashed taters? They may seem solid enough to cut with a knife but could they not be mashed up versions of something bigger and better but totally beyond our comprehension right now? Maybe we are still eating puréed notions of God.