Resolutions: Our little stabs at self-control.

Speaking for myself, I’m not into new year’s resolutions.

Because I make resolutions the year round. Whenever I recognize changes I need to make in my life, I get to work on ’em right away. I don’t procrastinate till 1 January. (Though I admit I may procrastinate just the same. But not ’cause I’m saving up new changes for the new year.)

Here’s the problem with stockpiling all our lifestyle changes till the new year: Come 1 January, we wind up with a pile of changes to make. It’s hard enough to make one change; now you have five. Or 50, depending on how great of a trainwreck you are. Multiplying your resolutions, multiplies your difficulty level.

But hey, it’s an American custom. So at the year’s end a lot of folks, Christians included, begin to think about what we’d like to change about our lives.

Not that we want to change. Some of us don’t! But it’s New Year’s resolution time, and everyone’s asking what our resolutions are, and some of us might grudgingly try to come up with something. What should we change? Too many carbohydrates? Not enough exercise? Sloppy finances? Non-productive hobbies? Too many bucket list items not checked off?

Since our culture doesn’t really do self-control, you might notice a lot of Americans’ resolutions aren’t really about breaking bad habits, but adding new habits—good or bad. We’re not gonna eat less, but we are gonna work out more often. We’re not gonna cut back on video games at all, yet somehow find the time to pray more often. You know—unrealistic expectations.

True, a lot of us vow to diet and exercise. Just as many of us will choose to learn gourmet cooking, or resolve to eat at fancier restaurants more often. (Well, so long that the fancier restaurants provide American-size portions. If I only wanted a six-ounce piece of meat I’d go to In-N-Out Burger.)

True, a lot of us will vow to cut back on our screen time—whether on computers, tablets, phones, or televisions. Just as many will decide time isn’t the issue; quality is. They’ll vow to watch better movies and TV shows. Time to binge-watch the shows the critics rave about. Time to watch classic movies instead of whatever Adam Sandler’s production company farts out. (I used to say “poops out,” but that implies they’re making an effort.) Sometimes it’s a clever attempt to avoid cutting back on screen time—’cause they already know they won’t. And sometimes they honestly never think about it; screens are a fact of life.

As Christians, a lot of us will resolve to be better Christians. We’ll pray more. Meditate more. Go to church more consistently; maybe join one of the small groups. Perhaps read more bible—even all the way through. Put more into the collection plate. Share Jesus more often with strangers and acquaintances. Maybe do some missions work.

All good intentions. Yet here’s the problem: It takes self-control to make any resolution stick. It’s why, by mid-March, all these resolutions are likely abandoned. So if we’re ever gonna stick to them, we gotta begin by developing everybody’s least-favorite fruit of the Spirit: Self-control.

Prayer for spiritual maturity.

The fastest way to grow in spiritual fruit and spiritual maturity, is prayer.

I know; there are a number of works on fruit and maturity, and all of ’em recommend we grow that stuff by practicing it. You wanna be more loving, love people. You wanna be more gracious, work on your kindness. You wanna develop more self-control, practice self-control; start with small things and work your way up. Learn by doing. And that’s not bad advice, but it only gets us so far. If we wanna get farther, we gotta talk to the Holy Spirit who grants us the power to grow fruit. We gotta pray.

What do we tell the Spirit? The obvious: Grant me good fruit. Remind me to practice good fruit instead of my usual knee-jerk reactions. Show me where the opportunities lie to practice it. Show me where I’m missing those opportunities—places in my life where I should obviously recognize I can be more loving, gentle, peaceful, but for whatever reason I’m overlooking those things. Rebuke me if you gotta; snap me out of it.

Yep, we gotta pray for our own spiritual growth. Because we’re showing the Spirit we’re onboard. We want to grow. (And if we kinda don’t wanna grow—because we’re immature, of course—we need to ask him to change our attitudes about that.)

We can’t just presume the fruit will grow on its own, just because we’re Christian, just because we have the Holy Spirit. It can, but if we never take the initiative, it’ll either grow slowly… or, if we’re resistant to what the Spirit’s trying to do, we’ll stifle it from even growing at all. We gotta do more than simply permit the Spirit to do his thing, or generically tell him, “Lord, have your way in me,” like we sing in popular worship songs. He doesn’t want passive followers anyway. He wants us to tell him, “Lord, let’s do this! Make me more like you.”

And telling him is, of course, prayer. Telling him often, is a good basis for a prayer life. Asking for his help regularly, is a good basis for a life dependent on the Spirit’s leading. If you were ever wondering how certain Christians always seem to have something to pray about, this is how: They’re actually doing the work, and they’re naturally asking for help. Join them!

“Elders” who ought not be elders.

ELDER 'ɛld.ər adjective. Of a greater or advanced age.

2. [noun] A person of greater or advanced age.

3. [noun] A spiritually mature Christian, usually consulted as part of a church’s leadership, often entrusted with ministerial or priestly responsibility.

[Eldership 'ɛl.dər.ʃɪp noun.]

I remind you of the definition of “elder” because you notice the word has three meanings: An adjective describing something old; an older person, and a mature Christian. Don’t mix up the definitions! But of course some do.

Years ago, at a previous church I attended, we had an older person whom I’m gonna call Salwa. She wanted everybody in the church to call her “Grandma,” and think of her as the go-to person whenever we wanted prayer, or spiritual advice.

One evening one of our prayer meetings, she told us the story of how she came to Jesus. She grew up Christian, but never took it seriously; she spent many years living as a pagan; she dabbled in “spiritual” stuff and “spiritual” authors, but found all that stuff unsatisfactory; her neighbor invited her to church and she responded to the altar call, said the sinner’s prayer, and now she’s Christian.

How long ago had Salwa said the sinner’s prayer? Oh, three years ago!

That, I figured, explained everything. The serious lapses in Salwa’s bible knowledge meant she really needed to read more bible, and her many misinterpretations meant she was out of practice with basic reading comprehension. Her inappropriately-intense reactions to anything she found offensive, meant she needed some work on gentleness. Her sheer terror of anything which might lead people astray, meant she needed to learn more about grace.

She had some growing up to do! Same with every newbie.

The problem—as you mighta deduced from how she wanted folks to call her “Grandma”—is Salwa was older than average. In her 70s, I think. And she’d been Christian for three whole years, and had a Christian childhood, and read lots of “spiritual” stuff; therefore she considered herself an elder. Really. One of our “church mothers”—or grandmas, to her way of thinking.

She was awfully fond of this passage:

1 Timothy 5.1-2 NIV

1Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, 2older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.

Paul’s advice to Timothy is about treating fellow Christians as family, not underlings. But Salwa didn’t care about its context, and insisted it made her a “church mother,” who should be honored, respected, obeyed, and treated as in charge of things—same as one’s actual mother.

Um… no. You don’t put newbies in charge of anything. Especially one who won’t listen to anybody. Our head pastor wisely never let Salwa take charge of anything… no matter how often she nominated herself. “No no; that’s okay; we got somebody for that.” Even when we didn’t, and he was gonna have to do it—but he knew Salwa wasn’t qualified to handle authority, so he never gave her any.

Eventually Salwa stopped attending. No doubt she went to another church, looking for the power she coveted, hoping that church would overlook her many red flags and consider her an elder simply because she was elder.

Still not ready for solid food.

1 Corinthians 3.1-9.

The Christians of ancient Corinth had divided themselves into factions which, it appears, weren’t getting along. There was the Apollos faction, emphasizing the teachings of the apostle who evangelized them; there was the Paul faction, emphasizing the teachings of the apostle who’d evangelized them. There was also a Simon Peter faction, and a Christ faction (or, likely, a “Christ only” faction; phooey on his apostles!). 1Co 1.12

This behavior, Paul and Sosthenes rebuked in 1 Corinthians. If these apostles are legitimately following Jesus—and from what we know, Apollos, Paul, and Peter certainly did—their teachings should harmonize. We might see minor discrepancies, ’cause the apostles weren’t infallible; only Jesus is. But these discrepancies should be irrelevant, ’cause all these guys are pointing beyond themselves, at Christ Jesus and his kingdom.

I’ve said more than once Paul isn’t infallible, and I’m fully aware there are gonna be Christians who balk at this idea. I mean yeah, they’re gonna acknowledge Paul’s various screw-ups which Luke recorded in the Acts of the Apostles; they’re right there in the bible; we can’t deny ’em. But they’re also gonna emphasize Paul wrote scripture, and his New Testament letters are fully trustworthy doctrine which Christians have followed for millennia. Arguably every Christian, with the exception of a few heretics, puts ourselves in the Paul faction. Apollos doesn’t have any letters in the New Testament… unless he’s the unknown author of Hebrews, and likely he’s not.

Still, Christians breaking ourselves into sects and flinging around the word “heresy” as if anything we don’t like qualifies as heresy: Yep, it started happening in the ancient church. Still happens. And shouldn’t. We need to overcome our differences and work together, and stop giving ammunition to antichrists who’d rather see all of us gone, and are as happy in a pig in poo whenever we fight one another.

In today’s passage, the apostles emphasize how Apollos and Paul are on the same team. Same Jesus. Same Holy Spirit empowering both of ’em.

1 Corinthians 3.1-9 KWL

1Fellow Christians, I can’t speak to you as Spiritual people,

but as fleshly people,

as “infants in Christ.”

2I give you milk, not solid food,

for you’re not ready.

You’re not able to feed yourselves even now,

3for you’re still fleshly people.

Why is there zeal and strife among you?

Aren’t you fleshly people?

Do you walk like pagan humans?

4For when someone might say, “I’m of Paul,”

and another, “I’m of Apollos,”

aren’t you pagan humans?

5So who is Apollos? Who is Paul? Servants!

You believe because of them,

however the Master gives faith to each person.

6I plant and Apollos waters,

but God is making you grow,

7so neither the planter nor waterer is someone vital,

but God is the grower.

8And the planter and waterer are one!

Each of us receives our own paycheck

for our own labor.

9For God is our coworker;

it’s God’s farm, God’s building.

How elders must encourage fellow Christians to behave.

Titus 2.1-10.

Throughout ancient literature, sages would put together a list of rules for how every person’s meant to fulfill their role in a family. Husbands act like this, wives act like that. Sons do this, daughters do that. Male slaves do this, female slaves do that. Scholars call them household codes. We find a few of them in the bible too. Like today’s passage.

The list in Titus likewise includes slaves, because slavery was legal in the Roman Empire. But God forbade people from treating slaves like animals instead of people, and Greco-Romans generally shared that attitude about their slaves: They’d become slaves because they lost a war, or were dirt poor and sold themselves (or were sold by family members) into it, or they were criminals and slavery was the punishment. American slavery was entirely different, regularly ignored scripture (as Americans do, ’cause we love to imagine we’re exceptions to the rules), and was rightly abolished. But if we were to port these household codes into the present day, the instructions to slaves would sorta apply to household employees—housekeepers, groundskeepers, nannies, maids, butlers, contractors. With the obvious caveat that employees can quit or be fired. Slaves didn’t have those freedoms.

Popular American culture has their own household codes. Most of ’em have to do with authoritarian men trying to establish their own little despotic patriarchies—they want their wives and children to submit to them, instead of mutually loving one another as is taught in the scriptures. A lot of toxic masculinity is mixed into today’s household codes, as men try to insist “only real men” behave certain ways. (And men who reject these ideas somehow aren’t real men. Yet this doesn’t mean they get to identify as women!) There’s a lot of sexism, vulgarity, and inconsistency in the way they teach it. It’s all very fleshly and graceless. Denounce it wherever you see it, and stick with the bible.

Titus 2.1-10 KWL

1 Speak out, Titus, about whatever comes up,

with healthy teaching.

2 Elders ought to be in their right minds.

Well respected. Self-controlled.

They should have healthy faith,

healthy love, healthy consistency.

3 Women elders likewise with devout behavior.

Not backstabbing.

Not enslaved to heavy drinking.

Teachers of good things,

4 so they might train the new Christians

to love their men, to love their children.

5 Self-disciplined. Clean.

Good at running a household.

Submitting to their own men,

so God’s word won’t be slandered.

6 Teenagers likewise:

Help them in self-discipline.

7 In everything present yourself,

as an example of good works.

In teaching, integrity and honesty,

8 a healthy, irrefutable word,

so those from the opposition might respect it,

having nothing evil to say about us.

9 Slaves are to obey their own wardens

in every acceptable way.

Not to argue.

10 Not to embezzle.

Instead demonstrate all good faith

so God our Savior’s teaching will decorate everything.

Now y’notice Paul’s list began with instructions to Titus about the sort of traits we oughta see in as church elders. The men are to behave thisaway; the women are to behave thataway. But then, in 2.4, as Paul’s explaining what the women elders oughta be teaching the newbies… it mutates into a household code. Verse 5 arguably applies to either the elders or the newbies; I would say both. Verses 6-8 are obviously about Christian teenagers; verses 9-10 are obviously about Christian slaves.

So yeah, this passage didn’t begin as a household code. But it became one. Because every Christian oughta become an elder. All of us should aspire to Christian maturity. Therefore every man and woman should become an elder in our churches, and contribute to its leadership and upkeep.

How the “elders” of Crete 𝘥𝘪𝘥 behave.

Titus 1.10-16.

Epimenides of Cnossos was a shepherd, living on Crete. He claimed one day he took a nap in a cave that’d been dedicated to Zeus, and woke up 57 years later with the gift of prophecy. Meh; I figure he was just an old guy who decided to finally publish his youthful poetry. Next to none of it has survived to our present day, but in Paul and Titus’s time it was still pretty famous. Paul even quotes a line from his ode to Zeus, called the Cretica:

…having built you [Zeus] a tomb, holy one, great one.

Cretans always lie, the evil beasts. Lazy stomachs.

But you aren’t dead! For you live, and live forever!

For in you we live, move, and have our being.

Yep, Paul also quoted it in Acts 17.28. Epimenides meant Zeus, but Paul repurposed it to mean the LORD. It more accurately describes the LORD anyway.

I don’t know whether the Cretica prejudiced Paul against the people of Crete when he finally met them in person. Acts doesn’t tell of him spending a lot of time there; at most a week, ’cause his ship was anchored there due to foul weather. Ac 27.7-13 Likely he visited again at another time. In any case he encountered many people among the Christians who were just awful, and the very last thing he wanted Titus to do was put such people in positions of authority. It’d ruin the church.

Titus 1.10-16 KWL

10 For many people do refuse to submit to others.

They’re all talk, and misleading.

Particularly those of the circumcision faction.

11 It’s necessary to muzzle them—

whatever teachings knock down whole houses,

which they ought not teach,

but do to gain an immoral advantage.

12 A certain one of their own—a prophet!—says,

“Cretans always lie, the evil beasts. Lazy stomachs.”

13 This witness is true.

For this reason rebuke them quickly,

so they might have a healthy faith,

14 paying no attention to Jewish myths,

and human commands which turn away from truth.

15 Everything is ritually clean to clean people.

To contaminated people, and unbelievers,

nothing is clean—

instead it contaminated them, the mind, and the conscience.

16 They claim they know God,

and their works deny it—

being disgusting and disobedient,

and worthless in every good work.

Don’t mince words Paul; how d’you really feel about Cretans?

Elders: The grownups in the church.

ELDER 'ɛld.ər adjective. Of a greater or advanced age.

2. [noun] A person of greater or advanced age.

3. [noun] A spiritually mature Christian, usually consulted as part of a church’s leadership, often entrusted with ministerial or priestly responsibility.

[Eldership 'ɛl.dər.ʃɪp noun.]

After Jesus was raptured, his church had to continue without him physically here. Which is fine! He’d already trained apprentices, and designated 12 of them as apostles. One was dead, so the other 11 picked a replacement Ac 1.26 and went back to 12. (It’s God’s favorite number, y’see.)

Running the church with only 12 leaders quickly became unsustainable, because the church immediately surged by 3,000 people, Ac 2.41 and soon after another 2,000 or 5,000; it’s debatable. Ac 4.4 In any event that’s a lot of people to train to follow Jesus. The food ministry alone was chaos, with accusations of prejudice against Greek-speakers. Ac 6.1 The apostles recognized they needed more leaders, and told the people to select their ministers based on their honesty, wisdom, and spirituality. Ac 6.3 In other words their spiritual maturity.

When Paul of Tarsus wrote to Timothy of Lystra about 20 years later, the apostle reminded the youngish bishop that spiritual maturity is still a requirement for leadership. Y’don’t pick leaders because they’re friendly, popular, magnetic, and entertaining. (Or even because they’re family!) You pick them because they’re fruity. Because they’ve been letting the Holy Spirit develop them into people of good character: He’s making them resemble Jesus, and only christlike people should lead and run Christ Jesus’s churches. Nobody else is appropriate.

And arguably only christlike people should run anything. No, I’m not at all talking about Christian nationalism; I’m not saying the only people who should ever run things in this country must be Christian. I’m saying they oughta have good character. “Christian,” sad to say, does not automatically mean good character, spiritual maturity, or even any kind of maturity; some Christians are the whiniest snowflakes you ever did see, throwing tantrums and claiming “persecution!” about the smallest of hurdles—especially the ones generated by their own dickishness. Nope; I’m saying non-Christians can often be as patient, thoughtful, gracious, kind, and self-controlled as any Christian, and any pagan who has these traits is much preferred to any Christian or pagan who doesn’t.

My point is the grownups need to be in charge. That’s especially true in Christ’s churches, but oughta be true everywhere.

The Christianese term for grownup is elder, which comes from the New Testament’s word πρεσβύτερος/presvýteros, “elder.” It’s also where we also get our Christianese word presbyterian, “elder-run,” meaning a church run by elders, instead of by voting members or solely by the head pastor. Yeah, “elder” makes it sound like the church is being run by its old people (and yeah, such churches totally exist). But whenever the apostles who wrote the New Testament discussed a presvýteros, they meant the longtime, devout, spiritually senior Christians. These are the folks they could legitimately trust to give sound advice about following Jesus. The folks we oughta be able to trust.

Spiritual morons: Christians who won’t grow up.

MORON 'mɔr.ɑn noun. A stupid person.

[Moronic mə'rɑn.ɪk adjective.]

The word moron comes from an ancient Greek word we actually have in our bibles, μωρόν/morón, which means the same thing. Scientists began to use it to describe “an adult with the mental age of about 8 to 12 years old”—someone of limited intelligence. Problem is, people love to use such words to insult one another, and now many people consider “moron” a bad word. So they’re gonna take offense at my using the word “moron.” Doesn’t matter that Jesus used it. Mt 5.22, 7.26, 23.17, 25.2, 25.8 And the apostles. 1Co 1.25, 1.27, 3.18, 4.10, 2Ti 2.23, Tt 3.9

Thing is, whenever the authors of scripture write of morons, they don’t mean people who can’t help it; who are of limited intelligence or are incapable of wisdom. They always mean people who are wholly capable of growth—and choose not to grow.

(I mean, if they did mean people who can’t help their condition, it’d be mighty cruel of them to condemn foolishness so often. And kinda psycho to suggest caning them for it. Pr 26.3 But cruel and thoughtless people regularly take such verses out of their grammatical context.)

So whenever I write about spiritual morons, I don’t mean people who can’t grow in spiritual maturity. Because maturity is tied to the Spirit’s fruit, and everybody can grow the Spirit’s fruit. Absolutely everybody. No exceptions; the Spirit can work on anyone. Even humans with profound mental limitations can grow in love, peace, joy, and grace; in fact many such people clearly exhibit more such fruit than “smart people.” Whether it’s because these smarty-pants folks are overthinking things (or, more likely, looking for loopholes), I leave it to you to determine. There are plenty of reasons why Christians don’t grow as fast as we should.

But again: When I write about spiritual morons, I never mean people who can’t grow. For that matter I don’t even mean people who are growing slowly. I only mean people who won’t grow. Who refuse to grow. ’Cause they figure they’re good as-is. Or they presume they have grown… and have all sorts of excuses why all the “fruit” they supposedly have, can’t be seen, never affects anyone in positive ways, doesn’t grow God’s kingdom any, and continues to make ’em indistinguishable from nice pagans.

Spiritual disciplines: Gotta develop the Christian lifestyle.

If we’re gonna become better Christians, we have to get religious.

I know; it’s popular among conservative Evangelicals circles to insist, “It’s a relationship, not a religion.” For much the same reason pagans insist they’re spiritual, not religious: They have no interest in getting methodical, disciplined, or systematic about God. They want their heavenly Father to be a Disneyland dad, with all the fun and none of the obedience. They wanna do as they please, take advantage of God’s grace, and get into God’s kingdom despite being wholly unfit for it.

True Christians can’t sit back on our salvation: We follow Jesus. We do stuff. We act saved. We stop behaving like we can’t help our sinful behavior; we know the Holy Spirit’s empowered us so we totally can. We stop acting like pagans do, as if we’re not a holy people, and behave as if we really are filled with the Holy Spirit. We stop being jerks and start producing fruit.

I know; it’s way easier said than done. But acting Christian doesn’t happen overnight; doesn’t happen as if by magic. Wouldn’t that be nice.

I realize certain Christians’ testimonies make it sound like that’s precisely what happened to them: They didn’t wanna sin anymore, so they just didn’t. Bluntly, they’re exaggerating, if not straight-up lying. If they made a quick break of sin, it’s because they weren’t all that into those particular sins anyway. Real easy to quit drinking when you’re only doing it to fit in. But real alcoholics are tempted the rest of their lives—and learn to resist. And they really did have to learn to resist. It took time and effort.

Most habits take a while to break, and happen as the result of practice. Effort. Disciplined behavior. Patient consistency. Sticking to it religiously—yep, there’s that word again.

Some Christians insist there are no shortcuts to self-control: You just gotta give it time, and slowly you’ll bear fruit. Well, I beg to differ, and I’m pretty sure the scriptures back me up. There are many shortcuts. Christians discovered ’em throughout the centuries. They’re called spiritual disciplines. They’re techniques we use to become like Jesus—faster.

But of course, irreligious Christians look at these disciplines and balk. They don’t wanna do any of that. They’re still hoping growth will happen by magic. Or wanna know if there are any shortcuts to the shortcuts! You know how our culture is with instant gratification. Spiritual disciplines take a bit of work, and people would prefer no work at all.

Or they falsely believe since God does the entire work of saving us, he’ll also do the entire work of making us become like Jesus. So what’s the point of self-discipline? All they gotta do is wish really hard, and God’ll transform them. And after this doesn’t happen, they’ll pretend it did happen, so as not to look like fools. They’ll reinterpret all their bad behavior as if they’re redeemed behaviors, and claim their actions are fruitful when they’re totally not. They’ll turn into hypocrites.

Let’s not follow them. Let’s follow Jesus.

Spiritual maturity: It’s based on fruit, not knowledge.

Years ago I had a boss who was seriously immature. Same age as me; we were both in our thirties. But he was completely unreliable. Couldn’t be trusted with private matters. Lied to cover up even minor mistakes. Had serious lapses in judgment. Regularly did inappropriate things, or told inappropriate jokes, so he could impress the teenagers we worked with.

How’d this guy get put into any position of authority? He was a pastor’s kid.

A whole lot of nepotism takes place in churches. Our word nepotism even comes from the practice: Various popes regularly gave important jobs to their “nephews” (really, their illegitimate kids), and the Italian for “nephew” is nipote. But lemme first say I’m not saying we should never hire family members. Most of the time they’re just as talented, gifted, and qualified as their relatives, if not more so. Being a pastor’s kid is a plus, not a minus.

Of course sometimes the apple didn’t fall near the tree. Sometimes it fell into a whole other yard, rolled down a hill, fell off a cliff, landed in the pigpen, and is working its way through a pig’s large intestine. Some pastor’s kids are not at all qualified to take any position of leadership whatsoever. But they got the job anyway, ’cause Dad or Mom gave it to them, or pulled strings. That’d be my boss. He got his job because Dad knew some people. He had connections… so he didn’t need to be a person of good character.

And character is Paul’s one requirement for leadership: You only put mature Christians in charge. Do otherwise and you get disaster. Which is exactly what happened to this boss. I don’t know the details (and they’re none of my business anyway) but he pooched something so huge his dad couldn’t bail him out. So the board fired him, and I wound up with a much better boss. Happy ending.

But during that time I worked for that immature man, my coworkers and I had more than one discussion about maturity and leadership, ’cause our boss was such a poor example of Christian maturity. One of those talks went kinda like this.

SHE. “I mean he’s qualified and all that; the board wouldn’t’ve hired him if he weren’t qualified. But he’s so immature.”

ME. “Sure. And the spiritual immaturity is undermining the job…”

SHE. “Hold up. I didn’t say he was spiritually immature. He’s just immature.”

ME. “They’re the same thing.”

SHE. “No they’re not.”

ME. “Mature people exhibit self-control, emotional control, patience, kindness, gentleness, and peace, right? Those are all spiritual things.”

SHE. “Mature people know stuff.”

ME. “When the smartest person in the world sticks her tongue out at you, would you say she’s being mature?”

SHE. “No.”

ME. “Smartest person gets bad customer service, so she throws a massive hissy fit in the middle of the supermarket. Still being mature?”

SHE. “No.”

ME. “Because it’s not about knowledge or ability. Betcha the oldest, wisest people in your church don’t know squat about computers.”

(Like I said, this happened years ago. I’m old now. We old people grew up with computers. But our parents, not so much.)

ME. [continuing] “But here’s the thing. When an old person’s spiritually mature, and you tell them, ‘You need to go on the internet for that,’ they’re not gonna freak out—‘Oh I don’t know anything about computers, and I’m too old to learn. What do you need a computer for? You young people and your computers. In my day we didn’t use computers for anything.’ They’re not gonna have a mini-meltdown; they’re gonna be patient. ‘I don’t know how to do that. Can you show me?’ Because maturity isn’t about knowledge or ability. It’s all behavior.”

Faith crisis: When our core beliefs get shaken. (And yours is coming.)

Hopefully the main reason, or at least one of the reasons, you’re reading this blog is you’re interested in growing your relationship with Christ Jesus.

Sad to say, a lot of Christians aren’t interested in any such thing. Not that they aren’t interested in Jesus! It’s because they assume they’re doing just fine. Life is good, so God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. Heck, some of you might think this, and you’re just reading this blog ’cause I amuse you, or you generally agree with me… or you’re looking for evidence I’m some heretic. Whatever.

Such people will continue to believe they’re doing just fine. That is, till they slam into a faith crisis. Or as Christians prefer to call it, a “crisis of faith.” It’s when we discover we’re wrong about God. Hopefully we already knew this—we get that nobody understands him 100 percent except Jesus; we’re certainly not claiming we have Jesus-level knowledge. (Well I’m certainly not. I don’t know about some preachers.) What turns our error into a full-on crisis, is intentionally or not, we turned these wrong ideas into our core beliefs. We made ’em vital to our entire understanding of God. And once we found out we’re wrong, of course we’re rocked to our core. Now we gotta reexamine everything.

Unless your life is short (which’ll no doubt trigger someone else’s crisis of faith), faith crises are inevitable. Everybody has one. Everybody. You’re gonna have one someday. Brace yourself.

The only exception is of course Jesus. ’Cause like I said, a faith crisis is when we discover we’re wrong—and Jesus isn’t wrong. He fully, absolutely does know God. Jn 1.18 The rest of us aren’t quite so omniscient, much as we’d like to imagine we’re God-experts by now. Even longtime Christians have faith crises. Sometimes big huge ones, if we’ve invested a lot of effort, time, and our own reputation, into promoting beliefs which turn out to be wrong. If you spent all your life promoting cessationism, but Jesus appears to you one night and tells you to cut that out, you’ve gotta humble yourself so much. If you’re not used to humility, it’s gonna be rough.

So when the crisis comes, Christians either

1. Grab Jesus’s hand tight, and let him lead us through it.
2. Quit Jesus altogether.
3. Go into serious denial, shut off our doubts, shut down our faith, and only pretend to be growing Christians from then on.

Yep. It’s either follow Jesus, quit Jesus, or lobotomize your Christianity. Like those cessationists whom Jesus ordered to repent… who haven’t. If you don’t wanna go their route, work on that humility! This way when the Spirit shows us we’re wrong, no matter how much it shakes us up, we’ll know better than to insist, “No I’m not wrong,” and stop following Jesus—one way or another