Like a Weaned Child

One of the things we all instinctively seek is something that brings us comfort. For some it's shopping, for others, it is food; perhaps it is music or exercise, isolation or mixing with the crowd. It differs with each person but each of us has that go-to thing; it's only natural. Indeed, this is not only an adult trait, it happens for the majority of us soon after we are born. For many of us this first "comfort bringer" was either a bottle, our mothers breast, or thumb-sucking.

I have a son who we are trying to wean off of his fingers right now. Whenever he is in public and someone he doesn't know tries to speak to him, in goes the finger. When he is being corrected, in goes the finger. When it's time to go to sleep, in goes the finger. His finger is his ultimate source of comfort right now, and he goes to it whenever life gets a little too uncomfortable for him.

This is fine for children, but any dentist will tell you, as one did at my church, that prolonged thumb or finger sucking will push the child's palate forward and probably cause them to need braces in the future. This doesn't mean that a parent should rip thumbs out of their 2 month old kids mouth. That would be overreacting and kind of sadistic. But it does mean that as the infant reaches toddler years, and continues forward, it would be in the best interest of both parent and child to begin the weaning process.

This weaning process, for the child, is a time of suffering. Think about it for a moment. The parent is removing the child's main source of comfort. So when they feel uneasy they know not what to do. When they are in trouble they have nowhere to turn. What happens during the weaning process is that a relationship the child had with a particular object (whether a thumb, a mother's breast, or pacifier) is radically changed. They are now being told that you cannot only identify with this object as a means to an end, but you must learn to know it in a new way.

As I watch my son struggle to stop going to his finger I am reminded that many many of us need to go through such a process with God. Many of our relationships with God look just like that of a child with its thumb. When trouble comes up we quickly God  as a means of alleviation. We are totally dependent upon him.

"But aren't we supposed to be totally dependent upon God?"

Yes, but not in the unweaned-child way, not in a neurotic and fearful way. The dependence God desires of us is one in which we do not only run to him in trouble, but one in which we find our satisfaction in him regardless of the external circumstances. It is a relationship characterized by love, not fear of loss.

The difference is that the unweaned wants comfort, or something else, more than the divine. The spiritually weaned person wants God above anything else. God is their end, not just a means. Therefore, like Paul, when our lives are characterized by an ever present suffering we can be content because we have God; and God is greater than our suffering (2 Corinthians 12:9). 

Therefore some of need to be weaned from God so that we might know God in a knew and better way. That may mean suffering, it may mean that God will seem distant, it might mean any number of uncomfortable things. But the end result is that you will know God. Not just as a means to an end, but the end thereof.

"But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me." - Psalm 131:2 ESV