Tough Love

I was sitting and reading a book by C.S. Lewis called “God in the Dock” it’s a book of essays and letters that Lewis wrote over his writing career it’s really good and I recommend it. Anyway I was sitting in the chair reading and being very tired I dozed off a bit and was thinking about how strong my faith was a few years ago and how weak it is now. I also was thinking about a song, and how I used to listen to a lot of Christian music and then it was like someone poked me in the back and told me to get up. It’s like somebody as whispering it in my ear (God may have been) but I realized that my “faith” a few years ago was just excitement and hype, a belief based on emotion and now the emotion is gone and I am left wondering what happened. I then realized that that is why I hear people, old and young, talk about how when they were younger they had doubts because they lost that hype. When we are newborn Christians God feeds us with milk, He is like a protective mother always watching over us but when we grow up (which can take a year to many years) He takes a step away – not to watch us become confused and leave Him but to help us mature. At some point in my life I was fed solid food instead of milk, and then real food instead of the jarred baby food. I could have been perfectly content to keep on living a life off of milk but then I wouldn’t have the nutrients to grow up and enjoy the physically demanding life I do now. We could be perfectly happy living a life based on continual hype but in the long run it won’t help us at all and we’ll miss out on the real excitement of adult spirituality. It’s a “tough love” thing that God does to us and He ingrains it into His creation, at some point in life He lets go so that we may grab on.