Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Those Who Are Ready for Meat Can Be Malnourished If They Are Served Only Milk

"When I was a child, I thought as a child," is easy to understand and perpetuate - but Paul also said, "When I became a man, I put away childish things."

I know it's cliche and too broadly quoted, but there really is great wisdom in the idea of milk before meat. The problem arises when it's time for meat and only milk is still being served. The lure and temptation is to focus on those who still need milk and call it a reasonable sacrifice for those who are ready to eat meat; the problem is that those who can eat meat need to eat meat to remain strong - or, to be more precise, to grow stronger.

Our ultimate goal isn't for everyone to be reasonably healthy - or even for nobody to be sickly; it's for everyone eventually to be incredibly strong.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes! Parables offer both. But when were we last given a new parable?

David said...

While I love general conference, I feel this applies to it the majority of the time.

ji said...

I appreciate the original posting. Unfortunately, some people can't tell the difference between gospel meat and doubtful disputations, and want to disguise the latter as the former.

Alison said...

But don't you often find that those who think they have graduated to meat are those who most need milk?

To me it's kind of like how those who want power are usually least able to handle it.

Papa D said...

Sometimes, Alison, but more often the ones who want meat the most are those who have been getting the exact same milk for years. Seriously, I asked my Sunday School students the first time we had a lesson on the Plan of Salvation how many times they had experienced a lesson on that topic in their lives. They are high school students, and their response was dozens of times. I asked them how many types of lessons they had experienced on that topic, and they said probably two - with most of them being the exact same lesson. Since I started teaching that class, we have had seven lessons on the topic - and we have had seven different types of lessons. These kids don't need the same old, same old. As my Bishop told me when I was called to teach them, they have learned to read the standard flight manual; now they need to learn to fly their own planes.

Also, most of the people begging for meat want to understand the Gospel more fully. It absolutely is NOT a prideful thing, nor is it bad in any way. As President Hinckley said, they want to be nourished by the good word of God.