In its article, “Nutrition: Quality, not quantity,” the Economist succinctly discusses the issue of micronutrients (vitamins). While many in the world are starving, there is a far more widespread problem of hunger and malnutrition. Malnutrition occurs when you get enough food to eat (e.g. enough calories) but it doesn’t contain any vitamins, and so you don’t get enough nutrients. The Economist puts quite starkly what happens when you lack these vitamins: for example, a lack of Vitamin A can lead directly to blindness; a lack of vitamins generally leads to poor performance in education.
On the surface this is a huge issue with some very cheap cures that the church ought to be involved in. It clearly affects the least-reached. And while not losing sight of that–and what we as the church should be doing about it–I would like to make a spiritual allegory out of this.
Just as many people are getting fed on cheap rice lacking in the essential vitamins–thus they have the appearance of being full, yet do not grow strong–so many people in the world are getting spiritually fed with “cheap rice.” It lacks the essential nutrients we need to grow spiritually strong. I have been known to refer to this as “Christianity on the Cheap.”
Rodney Stark has shown that time and time again when churches become liberal in their beliefs and teachings, they tend to settle into a slow pattern of decline. When churches become more radical in their convictions, they tend to grow more robustly. True, they might not grow to the same overall size as larger, more mainline denominations: but which would you rather have, 10 denominations attended very loosely by 60% of the population very loosely, or 100 denominations attended very strongly by 80% of the population? Personally, I’d opt for the 100.
We must not fear to feed people vitamin-rich spiritual teaching just because they would prefer cake. If I gave my kids cookies and chocolate every time they asked for it – and never required them to eat fruits and veggies – we all know what the result would be. We say the church needs spiritual fathers, but fathering requires us to stand up and insist we all eat our vegetables. We must organize our church programs of discipleship so that they deliver the goods.
There are two ways in which a church grows: one, by raising up children in the church in such a way that they grow up as strong disciples and remain in the church; and two, that we make converts and disciple them such that they too remain in the church. In other words, we must close the door to nominalism which leads to defection. Today we lose about 12 million people every year to this defection. Perhaps if we gave people more spiritually healthy food, we would see a decline in spiritual malnutrition.
When you’re called on to climb a mountain, eating cake for breakfast doesn’t cut it. When faced with the challenges and temptations our world can fling at us, spiritual sugar won’t cut it, either.
{ 0 comments… add one now }