Saturday, October 12th, 2013.
Pastors like to preach spiritual lessons, and Christians are fat from hearing them.
They are easy to prepare, and easy to hear. They also promote good moral behavior, which many churches wrongly teach is necessary to be a Christian.
Spiritual lessons teach principles such as ‘putting God first in our lives’; being humble; and loving our neighbor by using any verse in the Bible as a springboard.
Spiritual lessons are the pablum of Biblical children.
When Christians raised on pablum hear “not everything written in the Bible is for our participation”, they will choke.
They are not familiar with chewing meat. Anything they hear about the Bible must be swallowed whole without thought or rumination.
To them there is no other meaning to the Bible except the spiritual lessons they have been fed for years.
When the only explanation someone can give for a verse is spiritual, you are dealing with someone who doesn’t know how to eat meat. They are not able to explain the dispensational context.
Your job will be to help them learn how to chew. Cut the meat into small pieces, and make sure you have plenty of water and napkins. Don’t give them the tough meat. Be prepared for a mess.
For His glory,
Justin “small bites” Johnson