Spiritual Immaturity

I've been trying to figure out what's wrong with the Christian church these days. Some of my friends see the symptoms I don't see in my own small congregation, such as back-biting, infighting, inter-church animosity. Others see the lack of church growth as a serious problem, but I suspect they are mostly concerned with the lack of growth in numbers, which I agree is serious, but is mainly a result of the lack of inner growth, which is my main thesis.

What I see is kind of shallow, but indicative nonetheless of that deeper symptom. The thing that really gets me: Why do churches reject glorious old hymns, preferring anything written less than 1 year ago if it has drums and an inordinate amount of syncopation? Why are they so quick to jettison 2000 years of Christian culture and embrace the latest fashions and trends of the world?

Or why do Christian writers continuously re-write the great old books with less and less actual thought and content, instead of studying those? Is publishing a goal in and of itself?

Why is Christian TV and radio often so specious and shallow and melodramatic? Why do we make our services flashy and slick but muzzle the preachers, or restrict them to a secondary role, a quick half-time show?

Why do people not really DO the work of the church, but content themselves with talking about it and analyzing it and writing about it ad nauseum? (Perhaps I'm shooting myself in the foot here. But I am also learning that this problem we see from various angles is nothing new. It has a diagnosis. Bear with me.)

In short, "Where's the beef?" All we have is a deluge of milk, but no meat. Even in my own church—which I regard with very special fondness for its depth of Bible study—many sermons are written not to provide rich nourishment for hungry souls, but seemingly only to entertain them, i.e., to make them laugh.

I think what I discovered is that all of this is a simple problem of maturity. Instead of maturing, we are remaining as children. Here is what Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes in The Basis of Christian Unity. He is discussing Ephesians 4, as to what kinds of things lead to spiritual maturity (and thus to unity) within the church. He comes to vv.14-15, which read,

"Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him that is the Head, that is, Christ."

Lloyd-Jones' discussion of these verses is what I want to highlight. He writes:

"The apostle says that we must 'be no more children'. It is interesting to notice what he says about children. What are their characteristics? They are unstable, fickle, ignorant. They like novelty, dislike work, but like play. They dislike being made to think and to reason; they like entertainment and excitement. Children, unfortunately, are very susceptible to showmanship and to that which is plausible and meretricious. These are their obvious characteristics. But, above all, they are liable to be deceived by that which is false."

When I look at young (and some older) Christians, many of them are all about showmanship, not content. They want to play more than work. They want to rock and roll, not really worship or lead others to worship. Reasoning and study are as foreign to them as hard labor. In short, the church as a whole seems to be getting younger, not maturing. And why shouldn't this be so? It is, in fact, their expressed goal to draw the young and focus on the young, to supplant the old with the new and be "contemporary". They jettison anything that smacks of age or maturity. It reminds me of the angry mobs who devastated old churches during the Reformation, smashing anything that was carved or decorative, just because it was the trend.

In fact, Youth has almost become an idol in many churches. They kneel before the young people as "the next generation" and are even willing, it seems, to compromise the gospel itself to draw and hold the attention of the young. As a result, instead of maturing as a church and growing up, they "dumb down" both worship and sermons to the point of providing only what infant Christians can accept, milk, and in some churches, only "formula".

While growing the size of the youth group in a church is a noble goal, such over-emphasis—undue respect for what youths desire, and giving it to them—is, in my opinion, a common parental mistake which always results in promoting selfishness and narcissism. Not only so, but it causes the mature to regress as well, or seek another church. It's not surprising that so many Christian girls are following fashion trends that to many of us are exactly meretricious, a word that means "attracting attention" in the vulgar manner "of prostitutes". (Thanks ML-J for our Word of the Day.)

Now I'm not advocating that "the old wine is better" just because it's older. But in terms of Christian life, we need both old and new, a healthy respect for both. We need both milk and wine. Or do we want to remain as children? Peter says that pure spiritual milk helps us grow up in our salvation. [1Peter 2:2] But Jesus didn't serve milk. He offered them his flesh and his blood. [Jn 6], which are the bread and wine which symbolize our sanctification, worship and spiritual sustenance. And Paul made it clear that we need to introduce solid food into our spiritual diets. [1Cor 3:1-3]

"Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?"

This was the situation of the Christians in Corinth. And it seems to generally describe the Church in America. In short, we are worldly, not mature. That's what seems to be wrong with the Church today, speaking generally. We want to enjoy, to play, to compete with the next guy (or gal) and compete with other churches. We collect toys and spend our days in fantasisies, rather than in mature work. As someone told me once, "The church is so worldly and the world is so churchy that you can't tell the difference any more."

Growing up, like being born, is not easy or painless. For the mother, it is agony. And I believe it is somewhat a struggle for the one being born too. Some babies (especially boys) seem to almost resist being born. They want to stay where its warm and easy. Then after being born, some children resist being weaned from milk to solid food (again, we only noticed this in our boys). The entire gist of Peter Pan is the resistance of a group of boys to the discipline and self-denial of growing up.

So it seems our whole culture, including us Christians, are stuck in Neverland, trying to avoid the hard work and struggles of growing up. We idealize youth as pure, despite their obvious faults—selfishness, crass minds, impetuousness, clumsiness, greed, jealousy. We laugh and mock and refuse to be serious about anything, as if getting serious is tantamount to old age or senility.

What is the solution? Grow up. Not a popular answer. But that's what I Peter and Paul both said. And the job of parents is to assure that it happens for their own brood. And parents aren't exempt just because they made a baby. Spiritually, all of us are children of God, if indeed we have been born again. That means we have to grow up again.

Preachers, teachers, Christian leaders and parents: let's stop pretending it's OK to remain as children. We have to continue to grow up and mature. Jesus didn't condemn the Pharisees as "old wineskins" just because they were mature. It was because they thought they were spiritual when they were, in fact, unspiritual. They had status and education and training. But they were false.

Let us, therefore, forget what is behind and press on toward the goal—of course that we may become like Christ, and that we may finish the race, win the prize, and win our world for His kingdom. This isn't a matter of more education or sophistry; it IS a matter of hitting the streets in his Name. One doesn't become strong by reading muscle magazines, but by hitting the gym, exercising, sometimes getting really sore or even injured. One doesn't win a race by safely analyzing it from the sidelines, but by long hours of training and sweating and not giving up.

Spiritual maturity doesn't come to boys who live for themselves and the next adventure, refusing to grow up. It comes to men (and of course women) who will "deny themselves, take up the cross and follow" the Lord Jesus.