Am i still a baby? (Hebrews 5)

Do we really know good from evil?

I remember a story shared with me about the keen perception of my mother-in-law. Laura, my wife, was studying in Spain for a year in college. Her parents brought her cousin for a visit over Christmas break. While they were moving through one of the crowded bustling streets Laura's mom spotted a man who she new had just robbed someone. She even said it out loud. But Of course she had not seen the robbery, she just new some how it had happened by looking at this man. Sure enough Laura's cousin soon discovered the money she had in her breast pocket was gone. She was the one who had been robbed. Laura's mom also seemed to have this discerning gift when she refused to let Laura babysit at a certain families house alone. It turned out the father was an abuser and molester, but they didn't know that until after wards.

Is this what it means to know good from evil? Can we really perceive these kinds of things?

Hebrews chapter 5 talks about what it means to be mature in Christ. The readers are almost chided because they should be able to teach the things the letter is instructing and yet they are sill in need of intense nurture on these subjects. So much so they are compared with infants who still need to be fed spiritual milk rather than real food. This castigation is finished with the explanation of what it means to be mature in Christ. To be mature is to know good from evil.

It is interesting this lesson on maturity comes at the end of teaching about Jesus as our high priest. The teaching that he cried out to God for deliverance, went through suffering on our behalf, and then was made perfect at his resurrection thus becoming the source of salvation for all mankind. What kind of evil was against this good? I wonder if the people were still coming to God through priests rather than strait to God through Jesus? Had there been a re-commitment to the old rituals of sacrifice and looking to their own works to save them from sin? I'm not sure what the historical context is presenting here, but I does bring questions for us today.

Do we know what is good and what is evil? So many times the evil we rage against as Christians are behavioral acts like what movies or music are bad. Drinking, smoking, premarital sex. These are the things that are evil. Whether to have drums in the church or not, good or evil?

It seems to me, just perhaps, this passage is suggesting true evil are the things which misplace Jesus. When we think we need to go to God through some good and pleasing action of our own, or when we don't approach God at all because we don't think we are worthy to do so. We need a priest or a pastor to pray for us. We can't really go to God...can we? But scripture is telling us we can, and Jesus is the source, the way of this salvation. To be with God, reconciled to God.

The behavioral aspects are important, don't get me wrong I am all for purity of heart, mind, soul, and body. But the only reason they are important is because they are indicators we are still separated from God. When we focus on them we miss the point. We may correct some of the behaviors, but we will still miss God who is to be our focus. When we look to him the other things will fall by the wayside.

Does it show how much of a baby I am, that when I read this passage the first things I thought of with good and evil where what books I was reading and movies I was watching? Spending time in the Bible, pursuing God's intentions and will revealed to us, and learning of who Jesus is. When we are focused on God who is good, I don't think the evil will be to hard to spot.

My life is filled with so much gray sometimes of what is good and what is evil, it is really hard to tell. I wonder if I was a little more focused on the light if the shades of gray would become more distinct.

May we grow in maturity today. May we be able to discern the good from the evil, because we are so focused on the good, so in pursuit of God the evil will become so much more apparent and so much less desirable.