Why years of church attendance, biblical knowledge and strong convictions may tell us surprisingly little about spiritual growth
The most spiritually immature person I know has been faithfully sitting in a church pew every Sunday morning for many decades now. He reads the word, prays the prayers, and sings the songs.
And he’s a miserable man who makes everyone around him miserable as well.
How is that possible?
I’m going to suggest that spiritual maturity is not necessarily the result of faithful church attendance. It probably should be, but it definitely isn’t. In fact, sometimes, the church can stop people from maturing in a spiritual sense. When it comes to spiritual immaturity, there are five telltale signs that a person hasn’t yet grown up in their faith. Here they are:
- Indoctrinated Into Certainty
If you meet a Christian who is certain that they know all the answers due to the doctrine they were taught in their church, then you have certainly come across a spiritually immature person.
Why?
Because Doctrinal certainty is the enemy of faith. Think about it. The opposite of faith is not doubt because faith, by definition, is not required unless there is some reason to doubt. Or, to put it another way: If we had no doubts, we wouldn’t need any faith. Therefore, the opposite of faith is not doubt but doctrinal certainty.
Faith grows; this means it leaves room for improvement, adjustment, knowledge, accepting that what I believed before was now wrong and relearning many concepts and realities of Christianity through personal study of Scripture and real-life application (The doing) of the word. Many Christians just argue based on doctrine and seek points to argue with, but the application of their points of view when translated to real-life actions does not hold any water.
For example, you teach that someone in a polygamous relationship is going to hell in your church, but the same church has a fellowship for traditional rulers who have many wives and even conducts a convention for them and assures them of salvation and the leading of the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus. Does that mean that the traditional rulers have a special kind of salvation that those who are not traditional rulers have?
An immature Christian has neat and tidy black-and-white answers. But there comes a point where one must accept that there are some things — many things actually — for which there are no answers. In ‘Google Culture,’ we have become addicted to answers without realising that every answer only leads to the pain of more questions.
Someone writes that you cannot have the Holy Spirit and be depressed. You argue that a believer can have both, and you quote “Jesus wept”. Is weeping the same thing as depression? Do you know some kinds of depression are demonic in nature and can only be cured by the oil of gladness which the Holy Spirit gives? If your belief system is hooked on emotional responses and memorised verses of scripture and the doctrine of your church, you need to humble yourself and begin to learn Christ. Shockingly, nobody can ever finish learning Christ, and faith can never stop growing in the spiritually maturing believer.
Spiritually mature people enjoy knowing without needing to know, and, above all, they can accept where they cannot know. They can shrug their shoulders and say, “I don’t know the answer,” and be totally fine with that. They have become completely comfortable with mystery and paradox. They have surrendered their addiction to answers and can sit happily in the middle of confusion without being troubled by it. Now, that’s real faith.
On the other hand, doubtless Christianity is faithless Christianity.
- Self-Loathing
If you meet a Christian who is stuck in a guilt and shame cycle of sinning, feeling horrible about it, beating themselves up, and then repenting… over and over and over again, then you have certainly come across a spiritually immature person.
Why?
You might assume that I am suggesting that a spiritually immature person is one who has not conquered the sin in their life. But that is not the case. The real battle is not one of conquering sin. You’re always going to lose that battle, anyway.
The real battle is believing that you are loved, accepted, and cherished in spite of your sin. Try to think of it from a parent’s perspective. Would you be upset if your children were constantly beating themselves up because they didn’t think they were measuring up to your standards? Would you find it strange, if not disturbing, if they were always on their knees begging you for forgiveness?
Chances are, you’d want your kids to know they are loved. You would pick them up from the dust and say, “Enough of that! There is no need!”
Hey, don’t get me wrong… the giving and receiving of forgiveness is necessary for healthy relationships. But grovelling and self-loathing are not.
Some Christians maintain that you’re not fit for salvation until you realise how worthless you are. “Even your best is nothing more than filthy rags before God,” I was told. Again and again and again. Yes, many of the church’s doctrines instil in people over time a kind of self-loathing that makes them feel that they’ll never measure up to God and anyone else, for that matter.
And they give people a big stick to help them carry out these self-inflicted beatings — they nitpick some scriptures that would make people feel terrible, and they quote these scriptures over and over even though these scriptures, when read in context, say the opposite of what they were saying. For example, you would have heard the phrase “The wages of sin is death”
So many Christians quote it over and over again even though that was not the complete scripture, and Jesus said THE SCRIPTURE CANNOT BE BROKEN! Which means it is wise to read the scripture in full and not just quote some part of it to justify your claim or guilt trip people.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (This is the full scripture in context; it describes the wages of sin and then offers us the remedy, which is Salvation. A saved person does not need to pay the wages of sin because he or she has received eternal life in Jesus!
Now, please don’t misunderstand me here. I love the Bible. I think it is the Word of God But, but giving a doctrine and a Bible to an immature person is about as safe as giving a razor blade to a baby. If you leave the doctrine out and give the person the Bible to read for himself or herself, especially the New Testament first before the Old Testament, you will have a very good Christian in your hands
In the wrong hands, the Old Testament is nothing more than a book of rules designed to enforce a kind of moralism that is largely dependent on one’s ability to constantly measure oneself against those rules. It is both exhausting and impossible.
Sure, a good Christian will assert that Jesus came to free us from the obligation of the law, which is nice in theory. It’s just that most churches don’t actually operate out of this principle. There are most certainly clear boundaries in churches defining who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ based largely on a person’s patterns of behaviour. You are expected to think a certain way, act a certain way, and believe certain things.
This system requires you to deny, repress and keep at bay those parts of yourself that doubt, that don’t measure up, and that you perceive as a threat to your sense of belonging to the group. We chase away our doubts, our fears, and our dark side as if it were our enemy. The reality is that each of these things offers us an invitation to grow.
Immature people spend 90% of their time suppressing, denying, and loathing some part of themselves, and the other 10% repenting for failing to suppress and deny.
Spiritually mature people are different. They rest in the fact that they are beloved sons or daughters of God, and his approval of them is not based on their performance. In fact, the mature person recognises the ugly, doubting, insecure, and fearful parts of themselves, and rather than scalding them when they show up on the scene, they have learned to welcome each one and show them grace. They all belong. They all deserve to be loved and accepted.
- Defensiveness
If you meet a Christian who is always defending God, the church, the Bible, and their own interpretation of it, you certainly come across a spiritually immature person.
Why?
Defensiveness is a form of self-protection used to ward off a perceived attack. Becoming defensive is a sure sign that you either don’t know how to answer objections to your faith or you have no confidence in those answers.
More than that, a mature Christian recognises that belief in Christ is not a matter of fact but a matter of faith. We do not believe in Christ because it is entirely logical and makes sense. If it were logical, everyone would believe it. Faith is the leap between logic and belief, and if people can’t make that leap, who am I to judge?
It takes humility to say, “I don’t know the answer,” and some Christians can’t do it. At the end of the day, though, if God is God, then God doesn’t need a person to defend him or convince others that he is real. Let God do God’s job.
- Scapegoating
Often, the things that we loathe and attack in other people are linked to the things that we loathe about ourselves. Mature people understand this. But spiritually immature people are always looking for a scapegoat on which they can cast their own sin.
Often, when we lash out at someone else, it is related to some emotional injury that we are carrying that may or may not have anything to do with the person we are lashing out at. For example, I might have a bad day at work and then come home and be grumpy at my family. My family has nothing to do with why I am grumpy, but they cope with it nonetheless. In effect, this is no better than how a child deals with their distress.
They act out.
Here’s a simple truth that mature people live by: Whatever we don’t process, we project. If we do not own our own emotional baggage, we will pass it on to others. Usually, it’s the people who are closest to us who bear the brunt of our inability to deal with our own pain, sadness, anger, anxiety, or fear.
Mature people are profoundly self-aware. They know when they are carrying negative emotions and have learned to process them without acting out against others. But when they do — since none of us is perfect — they are the quickest to apologise. In fact, they find apologising easy to do because they have learned to be compassionate with themselves and others.
You won’t find mature people in lynch mobs. You won’t find mature people involved in scapegoating. Mature people have a way of disagreeing with others that doesn’t require them to tear the person to shreds.
When we can welcome, love, and accept the parts of ourselves that we used to despise, we can also accept the parts of others that the world says should be despised. As a result, mature people can look at pretty much anyone — even the vilest person — and find some cause for compassion. No one is irredeemable. No one is beyond hope. Everyone is deserving of love. Everyone has some intrinsic value. Mature people can even look at the worst villains in our society and see them also as victims. As Maya Angelou said, “If people knew better, they’d do better.”
- Self-Justification
In the movie Chariots of Fire, one of the main characters, Harold M. Abrahams, an athlete who is training to race in the 100m sprint at the 1924 Olympics, is asked, “Hey! Why are you working so hard? What is it that gets you up at the crack of dawn training for hours and hours on end?” Harry Abrahams replies by saying, “When that gun goes off, I have just ten lonely seconds to justify my existence…”
Think about that.
What is he really saying? He’s saying, “I want to know that I am justified in being here, that my life is worth something. That my life counts, that I am a person who is worthy to be known and accepted. And the way I’m going to do that is to become a runner.”
So, for Harry Abrahams, it’s not just a gold medal… It’s his justification. It makes him feel worthy, accepted, and validated.
Some of you may have heard of Sydney Pollack — a famous movie director. He created movies like Sense and Sensibility, The Firm, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and a whole stack more. He died in 2007. A newspaper article written about him shortly before he died said that although he was getting old and was unwell, he couldn’t stop working. Even though his family was saying, “Please stop working… you’re killing yourself,” He couldn’t stop working. The newspaper article written before his death revealed why.
It read: “Movie mogul Sydney Pollack says that although the gruelling filmmaking process is wearing him down, he can’t justify his existence if he stops.” Pollock said, “Every time I finish a picture, I feel I’ve earned my stay for another year or so.”
What is he really saying? Well, it’s kind of the same thing as the runner in Chariots of Fire. Everyone needs to feel that they are doing something that justifies their being here. The need to justify ourselves seems to be a universal struggle. Many of us strive to achieve things so that we can convince ourselves that we’re ok, we’re acceptable, and we’re worthy.
Sydney Pollack had to keep making movies. One gold medal was not enough for Harry Abrahams. John D. Rockefeller said, “One more million dollars and then I’ll feel I’m ok.”
Many Christians take it a step further by trying to justify themselves not only to the world but also to God. They do it through morality and performance-based religion. Whether they perceive it or not, many Christians have reduced their faith to a sin management program, believing that if they are “good enough,” God will accept them. They can even impose this moral struggle on others, policing the behaviours of those around them as if God would somehow find this pleasing.
Immature Christians are always trying to justify themselves.
However, mature Christians aren’t particularly troubled by sin because they understand that there is no need to justify themselves to God. In fact, Romans 3:24 says we are freely justified by his grace through Christ Jesus. Sure, if our sin hurts other people, then we must confront it, but the belief that our goodness and effort somehow make us more acceptable to God is a baby Christian belief. Grow up!
The last word
Let me boil it down for you. A spiritually mature person is comfortable with mystery and not having all the answers. They do not need to defend God, their tribe, or their turf. They love others because they first experienced their own belovedness. They do not project their anger or look for someone else to blame. And they do not need to justify themselves to God or anyone else.
And because of all this, they are radically secure in who they are, radically able to love others, and radically free to live.
I am Eternally Saved Forever in Christ Jesus
-GSW-