Growing up in the Deep South, I heard my fair share of churchy catchphrases. One of them is making a comeback (or it’s been here for years?), and I’m calling horse manure. Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, stop calling people “Baby Christians.”
The first time I heard this phrase I was in high school. One of my closest and most faithful girlfriends was telling me all about this new guy she was dating. He was undeniably handsome, somewhat debonair, and, as she put it, a “Baby Christian.” I asked her immediately what this insider religious lingo meant. “Oh,” she said as if I had asked her who Jesus was, “it just means you haven’t been Christian that long. So you just don’t really get it, yet.”
I was baffled. I still am. Not only is it patronizing, but it seems to undermine Jesus’s profound love of the youngest. Also, it doesn’t take into account all of those folks who just started faithfully following Jesus around. The woman at the well, the disciples, even that kid with two fishes and five loaves of bread were, it turns out, just Baby Christians. They probably didn’t get it yet.
I know what intentions lie behind this phrase, and they’re pretty wholesome. “Baby Christians” are bowled over by the love of Jesus. They cannot believe the goodness of Christian community. And perhaps, they wake up each morning in total denial and total acceptance of the unrelenting merciful Grace they’ve been given. Well, get me a t-shirt and teach me the handshake, because I’m still in that club.
There’s a fantastic episode of Doctor Who called “Gridlock” where our hero finds himself in an alternative universe where everyone is trapped in a car for their entire lives. People are in an endless traffic jam. They have literally set up homes within their vehicles. They blindly tell one another that they will eventually get to their elusive “destination.” But of course, they never do.
In the final scene the Doctor pleads with one of the characters that their situation is entirely hopeless:
“What if there’s no help coming, not ever? What if there’s nothing? Just the motorway. With the cars going round and round and round and round, never stopping. Forever?”
The answer, according to the writers of Doctor Who, is a very well-known church hymn:
This classification of Baby Christians, just beginning their spiritual journeys, also bothers me because I’m not even sure I believe in spiritual journeys. At least not in the way we tend to conceive of them. I think we are all in a big circle where we drive around captured by the same sins and the same pain. Yet just out the window we see and feel the relief Jesus has to offer. We see our final place of peace in those momentary glances. And we take enormous comfort and consolation in knowing that we have an Advocate with the Father.
It is Jesus who makes us whole. And not this pyramid scheme of Christianity that we seem to all be counting on. It is on that old rugged cross that we see the only journey anyone ever actually took. Not us, but Him. We must guard against the temptation to turn our religious lives into one more place where we have to prove ourselves. If for no other reason, then we will lose the wonder, the sheer magnitude of what has happened to us.
In Between Noon and Three, Robert Capon writes:
“Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.”
All of us wake up as uniformed and undeserving weirdos. I don’t care if you’ve been to seminary or if you’ve never cracked open a devotional: Jesus is astonishing and ridiculous every single day. So perhaps we are all Baby Christians in those terms. Because what is the end game here? A new hierarchy for us to ascend? Are we all supposed to become “Adult Christians?” That sounds like an illicit website waiting to happen. Plus, don’t converts always make the best believers? Perhaps it is still the prodigal son who has something to teach us.
All of the efforts we make: scripture study, church attendance, prayer, is for naught if its main objective is to make us better and wiser Christians. The whole point of those things is to help us see our sin for what it is, so that we might live in constant astonishment of the forgiveness we have been offered. We take our consolation there.
Call people New Members, or New Comers, or That Lady Who Got Baptized Last Week, but please stop calling them “Baby Christians.” It’s an insult to our faith. And to babies.
COMMENTS
9 responses to “Good News From Doctor Who: On Being a Baby Christian”
Leave a Reply
Hi Sarah,
While I agree that it sounds somewhat demeaning, the analogy is actually lifted straight from the New Testament:
“Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” 1 Peter 2:2
“And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh.” 1 Cor 1:1-2
Are you going to tell Paul he needs to stop using the phrase as well?
Peace,
Hey Anglican Advntrs! Yes! I was waiting for this comment and reference. And while I understand where you are coming from, I’m hesitant to think about us being qualified to qualify other people’s spiritual progress. Saying that someone is a Baby Christian is rarely used in the contexts of the scriptures you offered. And its usually used to just say whatever you want about someone else’s spiritual life. And to be fair, we do not know what faithfulness lives in the hearts of others.
I also get a little nervous about us using Pauline terminology because Paul did. He was Paul. We are not.
And even Paul is clear that we are still not ready, because we are still of the flesh. Which, last time I checked, me too. Thanks for your comments. Sincerely. It needs to be hashed out.
There’s “growth in grace,” 2Pet.3:18. Amen. “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;” etc. 2Pet.1:5ff.
And there’s also Mt.18:1-3, where Jesus is talking to the “best and brightest,” you know, the foundation stones of the church and all that… “At that time the Disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.'”
Peter figured it out, eventually: “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby,” 1Pet.2:2. The old man, I’m pretty sure, knew he was still a CHILD of God.
II Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
We were “babes in Christ” when we first became Christians because we were just learning about God and Salvation, as we studied our Bibles, attended Church, talked with fellow Christians, it was expected that we would grow in knowledge and wisdom. It is no way meant to be condescending to new Christians.
Thanks Sarah! My experience with this kind of label is that it fits into the same context as things I’ve heard and been told such as… ’You haven’t arrived yet’, a phrase that is saturated with measurement/judgment concerning which rung on the ladder of Christian living/commitment/performance someone has ‘achieved’…more than a little bit reflecting the kind of Pharisaical perspective on what ‘growth’ looks like and ‘who’ brings that about.
Thank you! I loved this read, and not just because I love this episode! I’m a “southern belle” myself and while all the scriptures mentioned in these comments are right on, I have never heard the term “baby Christian” used in accordance with these passages. A baby Christian where I come from is someone that just got saved and doesn’t understand that you can’t mess up in front of people. “Don’t worry though, you’ll get there. I’ll help you.” I don’t care for the term bc it is associated with someone saying another person isn’t quite ready to join the choir.
Whether in the form of Calvin’s whip or a feather boa of agape love, we all tend to utilize a 3rd use of the Law and our particular use is generally structured to capitalize on our own given set of gifts. Thus, both the whip and boa can sting mightily and cause others (and ourselves) to doubt both justification and sanctification. Inherently, the 3rd use of the Law is good. The problem lies with how I, a sinful man, use that 3rd use.
As to Paul, it is quite evident from his writings that he considered himself both blameless and the chief of sinners. Both an aged mature adult (by God’s grace alone) and a mere child. Pass the milk.
That clip, Sarah! Woof.
Just beautiful. I agree with your take on it completely, despite those who wish to smack you down with a verse out of context. And also, it is one thing to recognize in ourselves (through the HS alone) that we need to move on and mature in our faith, and quite another to refer to another pilgrim as a “baby” whatever.
I know nothing about Dr Who (except whatever all my geeky friends quote) but this clip was amazing.
Thank you for posting this!