Chewing the Meat

The Bible does not come to us in bullet points. It can be summarized, but a summary isn’t supposed to be the end, it’s an introduction. If all you can swallow is milk right now, drink up. But get to work to get on to chewing the meat (Hebrews 5:12 14).

It was a striking thing to read Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People where bishops who traveled to catechize their parish were expected to teach the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. That’s it. The expectations were low because the resources were few. This was before the printing press, before copies of Bibles in vernacular. There were no personal quiet times in Beowulf’s story and yet he still knew that dragons were bad.

We have a different temptation. It’s not that we have too little, but too much. Abundance is better than scarcity, if you grow up to know how to handle it.

Our culture is racing back toward the lowest common denominator. We act as if depth is inefficient. We want the meat, but pulverized into a powder and mixed with water so that it goes down easily. That’s not how it needs to be. That’s not how it should be.

So read the Bible. We’re nearing the end of the school year, not nearing the end of reading. For those who celebrate, Same Page Summer starts today, and tolle lege.

There are complex things to understand that will bless your worship that you will not pick up from TikTok. Courage is necessary for difficult times, and courage comes from working through difficult things. You must repent, and do you know what you must turn from and what you must turn to? Get to the Bible.