Our spiritual
formation group meets every Sunday evening. We are currently working through Philip
Yancey’s book Reaching for the Invisible God. It is a terrific read and has stimulated our
thinking about what it means to be a person of faith.
Last Sunday we
discussed the idea of spiritual maturity as something akin to what life is like
when we become parents. We tossed around the differences between
living like children and what life is like when we become parents. The following comment made it to the floor
more than once: being “good
parents” demands that we think ultimately in terms of what love really means
and, mature love will often put us in situations in which we have to place the needs of others before our own needs.
On pp. 245-46
Yancey writes:
Christians best influence the world by
sacrificial love, the most effective way truly to change a world. Parents
express love by staying up all night with sick children, working two jobs to
pay school expenses, sacrificing their own desires for the sake of their
children’s. And every person who follows Jesus learns a similar
pattern. God’s kingdom gives itself away, in love, for that is precisely
what God did for us.
Some college students strike out for the wilderness or take up meditation
in order to “discover themselves.” Jesus suggests that we discover that
self not by staring inward but by gazing outward, not through introspection but
through acts of love. No one can grasp how to be a parent by reading
books before the birth of a child. You learn the role by doing a thousand
mundane acts; calling the doctor during illness, preparing for the first
day of school, playing catch in the backyard, consoling hurts and defusing
tantrums. A spiritual parent goes through the same process. In the
end, Jesus’ prediction –“Whoever loses his life will preserve it” – proves true
for downward surrender leads upward.
Parenting has its
share of joys. But, it has its
challenges, too. Someone remarked, ”Some
adults never become good parents because they can’t leave the “childhood”
(selfish!) stage.” Their point was
simply that there is still too much selfishness in
them to turn loose and focus on the needs of other people – even their own
children. What is true of biological
families and parenting in particular can be true of believers with respect to
our “stuckness” in faith growth.
Diana West in her
book The Death of the Grown-up: How America's Arrested Development is
Bringing Down Western Civilization (p. 2) says:
“One third of the fifty-six million Americans sitting down to watch Sponge
Bob Square Pants on Nickelodeon each month in 2002 were between the ages of
eighteen and forty-nine. (Nickelodeon's core demographic group is between
the ages of six and eleven!) These
are grown-ups who haven't left childhood. Then again, why should they?
As movie producer and former Universal marketing executive Kathy Jones
put it, "There isn't any clear demarcation of what's for parents and
what's for kids. We like the same music, we dress similarly."
Our comments
strike at the heart of not only what is happening in our culture but the
traffic circle of childish thinking that so many men and women are lost in. Our culture provides every kind of stimulation
for keeping us away from “parent-stage” spirituality.
We concluded our discussion
time by reflecting on Mark 10:32-45 and Matthew 5:1-16. Jesus’ discussion with the disciples and his
opening remarks in the Sermon on the Mount reminded us again that kingdom
living is about leaving childhood and moving into parent-stage spirituality. Jesus
said this is what “greatness” looks like in the kingdom of God
Father, help us
grow up in the Spirit. May we marry good
intentions to actions that will take us away from childishness in its many
forms and into a “grown-up” faith that looks more like you, our spiritual
parent. We are your offspring and we
know that you rejoice to see us grow up in your likeness. Amen.
Randy Daugherty
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