I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about conformity vs. maturity, how they are similar in churches, how they are different, and about how accountability has played into that in my life.
Mostly I’ve been thinking about this in the sense that I feel like people are telling me I’m “growing up” or becoming more mature primarily when I’m outwardly conforming to their ideas on what maturity is (i.e. acting more like them). And likewise I inflict that same ‘compliment’ on others based on my same internal criteria.
Enter Mark Driscoll, a pastor of a mega-church in Seattle called Mars Hill. I was interested when I read his blog on Tedd Haggard, and how to maintain accountability in leadership.
In this blog he says some great things about accountability. Between that blog and a couple of articles in Christianity Today, I feel like I have a lot more great ideas on how to deal with some particular accountability holes I’ve been finding lately. A lot of the things he says are biblically based in this article, and several of them are very mature experience-based ideas on how to approach accountability.
But, then he goes and says something like this:
Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.
Honestly, I don’t think that is a wise statement, at best it is a horrible blame-casting, woman deprecating excuse for un-Godly behavior.
I’ve listened to several hours worth of this guy’s preaching. Couldn’t stomach it because of ‘immature’ statements like this and other unnecessary condescending judgmental remarks he tends to make in his sermons.
But, he has a freaking huge multi-site church he pastors and helped start. God uses him to do great things. He spoke recently at the Desiring God conference in Minneapolis on postmodernism.
He doesn’t fit my idea of a mature speaker. I think a good speaker uses humor without judgement hiding behind it. And, I think a good speaker/writer can make points without comparing other disagreeing groups with silly negative labels (In my listening it seems he likes to call other groups stupid).
But does my criteria mean he isn’t a mature person, or a mature Christian?
What parts of my behavior are decidedly Biblical predictors of my spiritual and emotional maturity?
If I made a political rant rife with my preferred type of strongly stated language in front a bunch of people I don’t know well, is that immature because I’m automatically not thinking of their thoughts and feelings?
If I go out and give hot dogs away for free to drunk college kids is that immature because I’m not using my time, money, and energy in a way that yields immediate, or near-term returns.
If I carry around some emotional pain, inflicted by others, that I can’t seem to shake, and live my life with that cloud of pain floating around me causing me to occasionally outburst at times that are inconvenient for others, does that make me immature because I should be able to suck it up.
How do I decide if someone is mature enough to trust? Do I use the “do you look and act like me?” criteria that seems to be my as well as many other’s defaults. Is there a way to tell if people are maturing in the ways that God made them to, and not in the ways that I expect them to?
I assume if that the visible increase in the fruits of the spirit are a great judgment criteria, as well as the decrease in the sins listed in the section right before the fruits of the spirit in Galations. But, it is so hard to see that stuff directly. Sin can be hid so well, compassion, goodness, and a host of the other fruits can be faked, or can be ignored as selection criteria for things that require maturity.
Putting someone in my life that I allow to speak directly into the things that they see, as well as forcing myself to speak out my sins every morning is a big deal. Also, like Mark Driscoll pointed out in his blog, admitting problems to my wife and allowing her criticism to carry weight (sometimes it is much harder than it sounds single guys) can go a long way.
Those people tend to see the rough spots that you miss. I think I’m going to even go one step further than most advice I’ve heard from people in accountability stuff, which means instead of just asking “How did you sin yesterday”, I’m also going to have my accountability partner ask about how well I think I’m doing at being more compassionate, kind, gentle, and joyful (area’s I’m typically weak in). This is because it feels like often in accountability just in self-control issues, not in issues of compassion or patience….that is unless those cause us to loose self-control.
So, besides accountability, I’m at a loss as to how to measure how much I can trust a person…which I directly relate to how mature I think they are, which is my only interest for judging a persons maturity.