Thursday, January 7, 2010

Meat indeed

A woman in my discipleship group raised a question the other day, about how to respond to the query of if all roads lead to truth, why is Christianity any better? The question was posed graciously, perhaps by someone trying to satiate a hunger for truth with the pablum of new age spirituality.

It is a fair enough question. Reasonable.

All truth does come from God, and from Jesus more specifically, given that He -IS- truth.

I gave her the response that I use; agreement with the central premise of religions containing truth, but pointing out that each contains varying degrees and I want the most possible.

And then she asked the harder question: should she specifically raise the name of Jesus Christ.

That one is a toughee.

We are to be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, and that means strategy. For some people, the concept of a "God" is embraceable, but the concept of Jesus just too much to handle. If we are wise about what will help these people grow closer to Him, we must discern that, and tell them enough to allow them to take another step forward. Then we pray for them, and rest in the hope that our Lord will water the seed and bring more opportunities as it germinates.

This all got me thinking about the scriptural concept of milk and meat. Some people are spiritual babies. They can only digest what they can digest. To such as these, we must provide milk. For now. Our God incarnate, Jesus the Christ, is meat.

This struck me as funny. In-carn-ate. Meat. I love all the humor our Lord included in His Word.

1 comment:

Ike said...

It is no more easy to get a dead man to take one step than it is to have him walk a mile. If he is dead.....he is dead.

It takes more power of God to raise one dead sinner to life, than all the power of God in creation.

"I am the way..the truth..and the life...NO man comes to the Father but by Me"! That kind of narrows it down!