Maturity

We live in a world that despises maturity in many ways. Certainly, the secular world around us seems to fight maturity of any kind more and more vehemently as each year passes. But, often, the Christian community also raises obstacles to maturity however unintentional.

In the secular realm, the adult guides have abdicated their responsibilities to nurture and bring children and youth into maturity either from lack of maturity in their own lives or because of a misguided notion that, because the maturing process is so often very painful and difficult, the most loving thing to do is protect children and youth from it altogether.

While the Christian community has not entirely abdicated its responsibilities to nurture and bring children and youth into maturity, it has become sidetracked in one of two ways 1) fighting amongst itself on the proper means of accomplishing the task of instilling maturity in others (especially spiritual or sexual maturity) or 2) by buying into the idea that complete maturity is unnecessary. This is the false belief that true love means protecting self and others from the pain of maturity; instead, advocating for a spirituality that celebrates immaturity in that it teaches no real change is needed in a person’s life.

In the secular realm, the way this is playing out is that the world has made the immaturity of children and youth THE standard for achievement and is highly critical of anyone who dares to advocate for something higher. Those who should be the wise guides (and who consider themselves to be the wise guides) have instead become fools (Romans 1:22), by telling our children and youth that whatever they want for themselves in areas of spirituality and sexuality is what they should have. Instead of walking with children and youth through the difficult and painful maturation process of helping them learn that what they want for themselves in their spiritual and sexual lives based on their current feelings, hormones, and emotions is not the best thing for them, the “wise guides” of the world are telling them that whatever feels good in the moment is what is right for them and that they should never let anyone, not even God, tell them otherwise. This message is extremely attractive to children and youth precisely because of their immaturity. The part of the message that is being left out is the truth about the lifelong emptiness and sense of meaninglessness that results from remaining in immaturity. By avoiding the pain of rejecting things that aren’t good for them now, they are set up for an even deeper pain in the future but, by the time they awaken to that reality, it is often too late in terms of the damage that has been done to their psyche and, more tragically, to their spiritual wellbeing.

While unintentional in many instances, the Christian community also harms individuals in the maturing process by either placing children and youth under a strict standard that requires immediate and unquestioning acquiescence with no patience for the process of maturation or, like the secular “guides”, by an unwillingness to require of them a path to maturity because it involves the pain of dying to self and surrendering the self-will to God. This may be either the result of immaturity on the part of the guides to understand that sometimes love means making painful choices (“God wants us to be happy so surely anything that makes us unhappy in the moment could not be His will.”) or the result of a lack of willingness on the part of the guides to do the hard, often messy, and always lengthy process of walking alongside the immature to mentor and disciple them into a life of maturity. Regardless, the harm done to individuals is no less significant than the harm done by the methods employed by the secular guides.

Case in point: as a Christian man who is attracted to persons of the same sex, I’ve felt the implications of these things in a very personal way. Over the years, as I’ve strived to figure out what it looks like to walk with God in a body that experiences same-sex attractions, I’ve found that criticism of my efforts come in different forms.

First, and most obvious, the secular world tells me that any attempt to suppress or reject the “natural” inclinations of my flesh is to harm myself and to harm others. Any road I choose that does not fully embrace a sexual identity now celebrated by most of the world is, at best, to deny who I really am and, at worst, a means of spreading hate for others by implying that they too should consider a road other than that of complete surrender to what feels right and good in the moment. They basically say that I do not have the right to choose for myself if my choice doesn’t line up with what they claim is truth. The truth that is avoided in the secular realm is whether what feels natural truly is natural according to God’s original design. There are many things that feel “natural” to a fallen humanity living in a fallen and broken world, but the standard cannot be based on feelings alone. Anyone who has lived more than 20 years understands that feelings by themselves will often lead us to false perceptions of reality. There must be a higher standard. As a Christian, I believe that higher standard is God and His Word.

Secondly, the criticism of my efforts that come from within the Christian community are two-fold. One the one hand, there are those who would tell me that I’m too liberal if I refuse to give testimony to a complete deliverance from all homosexual temptations and tell the world that God has made me completely heterosexual in every way (or at least removed all traces of homosexual desire). On the other hand, there are those who would tell me that I’m too conservative because I won’t simply embrace a theology that says no change is needed except perhaps in behavior. The latter criticism comes from those who, while they agree God’s Word requires abstinence from homosexual behavior, would tell me that I should embrace every other aspect of my sexuality and proudly embrace a gay (but celibate) identity. As with so many things in life, reality falls somewhere in the middle.

I cannot testify to 100% deliverance from all homosexual temptations, but that does not mean my testimony of God’s grace is any less valid or significant. The fact is, I can testify to God’s sustaining grace that allows for me to live in victory over sin and in relationship with Him despite of, or perhaps because of, the temptations I face. I say “perhaps because of” for the reason that, the older I get, the more I recognize the truth that these temptations have given me an urgency to seek after God in a way that I don’t believe I would have experienced otherwise. So, in that sense, the temptations that for so long in my life seemed to be only a cross to bear have instead become merely a thorn in my side that have allowed me to see the sufficiency of God’s grace in powerful ways. It has been a long, slow, painful journey of maturation to arrive at this place. Often along the way I responded in anger, depression, frustration, and a desire to just quit the process altogether. But thankfully, by God’s grace, I have had guides throughout my life who have been willing to mentor me and walk with me through it all. Some have only been a direct part of my journey for a short season of my life and others have been a part of my journey for many years now, but all have been willing to contribute true wisdom to me along the way. Wisdom that showed me the folly of believing that the easy way, the way that felt most desirable in the moment, was the best way for me to go.

With that said, one of the greatest temptations I face from within the Christian community is the temptation to think that I only have to go so far in my surrender to God. That God doesn’t really expect a complete surrender. There are those who would find my testimony to be too restrictive or unrealistic; those who would say God created me to be gay and that to deny that part of myself is, in fact, to deny the wisdom of God in making me as He has. The problem with this logic is that it simply doesn’t line up with what Scripture teaches about God’s design for male and female. So, I don’t believe that I’m denying the real me at all by refusing to be defined by my sexual temptations.

The real me is the person God originally intended me to be outside of the fallen and broken world into which I was born. Because the world is broken, people are born into it with many different forms of imperfection whether it be physical, emotional, or sexual. The answer to wholeness isn’t to surrender myself to my broken condition. The answer is to surrender myself to the God who made me and allow Him to heal the broken places in me and restore me to His original design for me. This is the process of maturity. In Christian terminology, this is the sanctifying process; a process all Christians must go through if they would be completely surrendered to God. Surrendering is not easy. Surrender is humiliating and hard. The natural me wants to resist surrender of any kind. But maturity has brought me to a place where I can now understand that only through surrender can I finally be truly and forever free.

My point in writing all of this is not to criticize any individual or organization that has been a part of my journey in some way. I grow weary of Christian organizations and ministries whose sole mission it seems is to find fault with every organization or ministry that doesn’t whole-heartedly agree with their stance on every issue. My point in writing this is to say, life is a journey. For most, there are periods of the journey that are extremely difficult and painful; periods we all wish we could simply avoid. But avoidance will never lead to healing and maturity in any area of our lives. We must walk through the pain and difficulties if we are to find the freedom on the other side. In other words, we must grow up!

But we don’t have to do it alone. Jesus has promised that He will never leave us or forsake us. God also provides other believers to walk with us along the way. And, by His grace, we not only find freedom for ourselves, but also become truly wise guides who are willing to walk with those who have not yet experienced the maturity and freedom we have found. It’s not easy to walk with someone else. Often, their journey brings a stark remembrance of our own painful journey. I suppose this is why there is such a lack of true discipleship among so much of the Christian community in our day.

But that is a topic for another day. For today, I just want to say that I’m thankful for the maturity and freedom that the pain and discomfort of making difficult and unpopular choices can bring if we will choose complete surrender to God and base every decision upon that surrender. Yes, surrender is hard and humiliating in so many ways, but it is also beautiful because God has taken the pain and humiliation of our lives upon Himself through Jesus on the cross. Jesus was subjected to intense pain and humiliation beyond anything we can even imagine so that our pain and humiliation could be redeemed and turned into joy and freedom forever with Him. This is why maturity is important. This is why making hard and painful choices is worth it in the end. Nothing will seem to have been too difficult or painful on that day when we finally enter eternal rest with Him. On that day, we’ll understand that God’s design for us was perfect in every way and there will be no regrets for the difficult decisions we make and painful roads we may walk today. Maturity always requires pain, but maturity also always brings more freedom and more joy into our lives. Let’s choose maturity for ourselves and dedicate our lives to helping bring others into maturity as well. Eternal futures are counting on it.