A Classic Case of Immaturity

You may have heard of “a classic case of insecurity,” but the other “i” word—immaturity—is one you would probably rather not hear about. However, there is nothing like a cold dose of reality served straight up. It would seem life has found me in one of those situations where I have some rather glaring—not just insecurities, though I have those as well—but “immaturities.” After expending so much energy in grappling with myself, I decided to share some of the personal insights I have gleaned from this trying time.

While we might well understand, there is not one of us who truly admires someone we deem as being immature, at least as long as they continue to persist in their actions. Face it. It’s ugly. If we are to take the quotation as axiomatic that “A woman’s charm is her strength, a man’s strength is his charm,” then immaturity is unsightly in a man because it strikes at the heart of his strength: in a woman because it ruins her charm. This is an oversimplification, of course, but it should provide a basic starting point.

Why is immaturity so ugly? What do we mean when we say that someone is acting “immature”? The second definition Encarta^® offers is: “childish: lacking the wisdom or emotional development normally associated with adults (disapproving).” Yet what is it that makes one childish? What is it about children when they are acting up that turns the cute little munchkins into holy terrors? I think you will find that the answer lies in the root of selfishness.

When we are acting immature, do we like to listen to reason? Don’t we tend to say (and believe) such things as, “It’s too hard. It’s not fair. You just don’t understand.” To hear it described here, it seems like a negative thing, but wait until it is you or I who is going through a trying time. And often immaturity strikes most in the area of relationships: with those we love the most. We feel slighted, hurt, wounded by the other. We feel like we aren’t getting our needs met, that the other person doesn’t understand us. For that matter, there may be some degree of truth to these sentiments. But is attempting to punish the other person with a display of our extreme displeasure going to accomplish any kind of reform on their part? Does pouting, whining, pleading, nagging, throwing tantrums: do these things engender growth? (For more information on immaturity in relationships, see the very practical examination found in Chapter 4: Grow Up! of the online book Marriage Is for Love by Richard L. Strauss, Th.D., or purchase the entire book from Amazon.)

I have a wonderful chance to observe human behavior in at least three different loci of life: the factory, the college, and the church. In the factory in particular, emotional outbursts and other manifestations of the sort tend to be more prominent, more unbridled displays exhibited and left unchecked. While in one way, such things are ugliest when they are so unashamedly displayed, they are, at least, more honest. What you see is what you get. No frills, no disguises: just a good, old-fashioned temper tantrum designed to make you realize how awesome is the fury of the one angered: When you see just how angry you have made me, you should tremble: my anger is awesome and I will be sure to show it to you. What I don’t realize, of course, is that I merely look like a hotheaded fool in your eyes—you are not the least impressed by my display—but you are either too polite to tell me or else you respond in turn: then my emotional outburst is warranted, because not only did you make me justifiably angry, but now you are being unreasonable. You’re wrong, I’m right and I’m going to get directly in your face and loudly tell you all about it. There ain’t gonna be nobody yankin’ my chain!

When I am at college, there aren’t many occasions where I see such unsightly displays because the atmosphere is not as conducive to it. However, from time to time I do see some rather ugly sides in people, though they usually are laminated with a thin veneer of sophistication. Here, it is more fashionable to cut someone down to size without visibly becoming agitated. Sharp comments can beautifully slice someone down to size: we can slash them, gash them, and serve them easy side over to our friends, who will laugh at our sarcasm and wit. Additionally, there are those amongst the faculty who have highly perfected the art of grinding axes. Sadly, these things often slip by unnoticed, because of their intellectualized trappings. But when you slice away all the pseudo-sophistication, you still find the same selfish root.

At the church I attend, I can thankfully say that I haven’t seen such displays. Of course, I have seen a few people get into their carnality more than they perhaps realize, but it has been done in an honest and open environment. However, in days gone by when I was more directly involved in the affairs of the church, such things were not uncommon. Strange how much of our own agenda can be hidden behind “God’s will.” I think of the three places, church is perhaps the most sickening place to see the immaturity of the saints, because it makes us seem so diabolical. At college, we intellectualize our immaturity, at church we spiritualize it: it would seem that for all of its ways, the factory has something to teach us of our yeses being yeses and our nos being nos.

Ideally, we grow from infants—who are forgivably immature and completely self-centered—into adults who, it is hoped, will have learned to become altruistic and caring somewhere along the way. Yet far too often John Powell’s words ring true: “Most adults never grow up.” Furthermore, have you ever noticed that when we begin seeing the immaturity of others and being bothered by it, it is often because we are looking at our reflections? When we are truly mature, we feel a sort of saddened compassion for the person who acts like this: our loving eyes see that they have much to learn and much to grow and we silently pray for them: for the pain that they cause both themselves and others by their foolishness. When we ourselves lack immaturity, however, we soon find ourselves sucked into the ugly world the other inhabits, for face responds to face in the mirror.

It is not fun for anyone involved when immaturity is at stake. And yet, recently I have found myself acting like a spoiled, selfish child. I see the faults in others with blinding clarity and am haunted by my own all the more. Yet there are several things that immaturity can show us. For one, it can reveal our true values at that moment. If we are truly trusting God and His goodness, this self-abandonment will produce its own kind of maturity. However, when we begin to take our focus off Him and shift it onto ourselves and our own unfilled desires, wants, and wishes, we can become very ugly very fast.

A friend recently suggested to me that Satan often uses time against us. There are many times that God says, “Wait. Be still. Know that I am God.” But when our desires are not fulfilled right at this very moment, the sound of silence begins to grow deafening. “How long, oh Lord, must I wait?” we cry. If we don’t rein ourselves in, we will soon find ourselves shaking our fist in the face of God: “You never give me what I want.” Or maybe we say, “Oh dear Lord, please, please, please, please.” Tell me: haven’t we all been there? There is not one of us who doesn’t feel this way and a lot more often than we would care to admit. However, these are warning signs signaling that we are not walking in as close of fellowship as we could be. Of course, when we start feeling slighted, we feel a sense of disgust by this fact: “Of course! It is always me when there is a gap in our fellowship. I’m always the selfish one!” as we angrily feel like venting our rage on the nearest object at hand. But as my friend suggested, if we can’t trust God when our desires aren’t met right now, we certainly aren’t going to trust Him with our future, believing that He knows best.

What is the secret? Well, we certainly know that whether we trust God or whether we don’t, life isn’t always fair, at least moment by moment. (Not to mention that fair is often in the eye of the beholder: it all depends on which end of the stick I am on as to whether a given situation is fair or not.) We also know that Scripture promises us that all things work out together for the good of those that love God. We know that He is a good God, and that He always has our best interests in mind—always!

As Pastor Kevin points out, the problem is often that I make my happiness contingent upon life’s circumstances: if only I could win him to the Lord, if only she would recognize how deeply I care for her, if only he would consider how I feel . . . then I would be happy. But joy is not found in our circumstances, but upon trusting in the Lord. He knows the deepest longings and the desires of our hearts and He will fill them in His time and His own way. Good things do indeed come to those who wait upon the Lord: His ways are always wisest and best and will lead to the deepest fulfillment we could ever know. He knows how to put the lonely into families, how to care for the widow and the orphan . . . He always knows best and His best is worth waiting for. In the meanwhile, we are called upon to wait—and to trust. We will not ultimately be frustrated when we do: with a little patience, we will see that things have worked out beyond our wildest dreams: joy comes in the morning after the dark night of the soul. If God says no, it is only because He has something better in mind.

As I have been facing my own immaturity, I have come to realizations about myself. First, apparently I don’t really trust God: simple, plain, harsh, but true. I don’t really believe that He will satisfy the desires of my heart. Instead, I feel I am fated to forever be stuck in my ways, unable to move past the frustrated longings and desires that I feel so passionately; I believe that fulfilling these longings is the only way I shall ever be happy. I feel that He alone is not enough to satisfy me: if He is, why has He not done so? I feel like I have to be there at His side, pointing out to Him how everything should turn out, dictating how He should work in my life to shape my happiness, for I do not trust that He knows best for me. It seems shameful to admit these realizations, but it is nonetheless the cold, hard reality. In fact, I even wonder what real business I have in writing this newsletter: ultimately, of course, I believe the Scriptural words I write or else I wouldn’t be writing them, but on the other hand, I fear that despite my passionate desire to the contrary, I don’t always live up to my own commentary. This is to my shame, a token of my own fallen humanity and prideful will. I am human, He is God. There is a world of difference between the two.

In my better moments, when my immature emotions aren’t thinking for me, I can actually thank God for showing me this area in my life. Evidently it has been there all along and I have simply failed to notice it before. Perhaps it was simply hidden, lying dormant? It would seem to me that just as I despise it in myself, so too it must look despicable not only in the eyes of those around me, but in God’s eyes as well. Perhaps, for the first time, I am seeing my sinfulness as God sees it: a deformity so repulsive it deserves death: the death that has been vicariously applied to my account. Intellectually, at least, I know that I have taken the first step by admitting that I am immature and out of control. At any rate, I shall never have any hope of getting better as long as I am unaware or continue to live in denial of this ugly truth about myself.

I really have no choice but to fall on my knees before Him, pleading for His grace and mercy. What other options do I have? Do I plunge to my death from the side of a bridge? What would that solve? I don’t really want to die, I just want to rid myself of my own petty selfishness. Do I go out and get wasted, drinking myself under the table? Do I smoke a joint to chill out? Do I lay out a line or drop a blotter or two? Fire up a glass bowl? Scroll through the medicine cabinet looking for OTC narcotics? No. I’ve been there before. These are not solutions. There is no way I can get away from me no matter where I go; not only that, but my “if only” will still not be realized by these steps, even if this “if only” would make me happy. The only real choice I have is to fall on my face before God and weep: “Lord God, I am such a child. I feel hopelessly immature. I am hurting inside. Lord, will you save me from myself? I need your touch in my life. Oh God, help me: I feel so cold and alone right now: the sun has gone out and blackness has settled over my soul.”

A Classical Case of Immaturity

Beyond all these things, there is even a possibility that in His time and in His way, He might very well grant me my ardent “if only.” At the least, I certainly have more hope of this event happening through seeking to surrender myself fully to Him than with my other so-called “options.” And should He never give me my “if only,” I know deep within my being that I will be far better off without it: in fact, if He gave it to me, it might be my self-inflicted punishment rather than the blessing He would rather bestow. Only He can see the future: things are not always as they seem on the surface. Oh God, grant me the grace to live up to my own words!

Perhaps my problem is exactly as an excerpt from “Chapter 16: Help” of Principles of Spiritual Growth by Miles J. Stanford states: “Immaturity considers the Lord Jesus a helper. Maturity knows Him to be life itself. Dr. J.E. Conant wrote: ‘Christian living is not our living with Christ’s help, it is Christ living His life in us.’”

Two other quotations cited in the self-same are worthy of note:

“In our private prayers and in our public services,” Dr. A. W. Tozer writes, “we are forever asking God to do things that He either has already done or cannot do because of our unbelief. We plead for Him to speak when He has already spoken and is at that very moment speaking. We ask Him to come when He is already present and waiting for us to recognize Him. We beg the Holy Spirit to fill us while all the time we are preventing Him by our doubts.”

And finally:

Watchman Nee startles many by saying, “God’s way of deliverance is altogether different from man’s way. Man’s way is to try to suppress sin by seeking to overcome it; God’s way is to remove the sinner. Many Christians mourn over their weakness, thinking that if only they were stronger all would be well. The idea that, because failure to lead a holy life is due to our impotence, something more is therefore demanded of us, leads naturally to this false conception of the way of deliverance. If we are preoccupied with the power of sin and with our inability to meet it, then we naturally conclude that to gain the victory over sin we must have more power. ‘If only I were stronger,’ we say, ‘I could overcome my violent outbursts of temper,’ and so we plead with the Lord to strengthen us that we may exercise more self-control.

“But this is altogether wrong; this is not Christianity. God’s means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. This is surely a peculiar way of victory, you say; but it is the Divine way. God sets us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old man but by crucifying him; not by helping him to do anything but by removing him from the scene of action.”

These are some stout words and difficult to face. They go against the grain of our very culture, against our every instinct. However, I think we could essentially look at it like this: a man who is going through a time of weakness—we’ll say his house burns to the ground leaving him at the mercy of the elements and the creditors—is in a very dependent condition, regardless if He serves God or not. If he does serve God, he is fortunate in the fact that he is relying on the sole power source of the universe—the other man does not recognize this simple truth. It is not that God wants us to be weaklings, but simply that He not only creates all things, but that He sustains all things: all that is emanates from Him. Therefore, the man who is weak is blessed, because he is merely facing the truth about himself: that the only strength to be found in the universe comes from God, for all comes from God. There simply is no other power source.

Any sense of autonomy the proud man maintains was given Him by a gracious God, allowing him to deny Him all the way to hell: it is still God who sustains this man even as He respects that man’s ultimate wish and withdraws the conscious awareness of His presence from him. We are strong when we are weak, for in these moments we recognize the reality that exists regardless of ourselves anyway: and, unlike the proud man, we allow it to flow through our being and sustain us.

There are times that God, in His infinite wisdom, will appear to be very unkind to us, because He is temporarily kicking the support out from under our feet. What He is ultimately doing, however, is freeing us from our unhealthy attachments so that we can truly grow up into grace and maturity. For most of us, this harsh approach is the only way God can blast the wax out of our ears. As to the support He has kicked out from beneath us? Not to fear: it turns out that it is only an illusion, a lie that we have believed, for He has never stopped supporting us with the only support the universe offers: Himself. And as to the other good things in the universe, such as family, friends, and the beauty of nature? These are merely His gifts and He is reminding us not to forget their Giver in our healthy enjoyment and adoration of them, for when we do, we will have ceased to gain any true joy or satisfaction from them. As we mentioned in Eternal Portraits in Everlasting Fellowship: “On earth as it is in heaven: the temporal frames will be transformed into perfected vessels to house the eternal portrait—the imago Dei—that will forever enjoy, as creature to creature in all of creation, fellowship with the Creator for all eternity.”

If we are ever to “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight,” as Proverbs 9:6 admonishes, we are going to have to plead with God to do this work for us. Immaturity will never be cured through our own self-effort, through trying harder or seeking to do more. It can only be taken care of by an “inside job,” and there is only One qualified to render such a work of grace.

In Resting in God’s Sovereignty: Link Your Life to God’s Purposes by the late J. Hampton Keathley III, he quotes J.I. Packer on six ways that we quench the Holy Spirit, six ways we demonstrate our own immaturity. Of those six, I will focus only on the forth and the sixth points, though I would encourage you to read the entire entry at your leisure. Packer writes:

Fourth, unwillingness to suspect oneself. We dislike being realistic with ourselves, and we do not know ourselves at all well; we can recognize rationalizations in others and quite overlook them in ourselves. “Feelings” with an ego-boosting, or escapist, or self-indulging, or self-aggrandizing base, must be detected and discredited, not mistaken for guidance. This is particularly true of sexual, or sexually conditioned, feelings . . .

Sixth, unwillingness to wait. “Wait on the Lord” is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting . . .

We don’t like to wait, or course, but we must realize that God is always on time in everything He does. If He makes us wait, it is to grow us up and help us reach maturity. As the Scriptures say, He disciplines those He loves, and growing up into maturity is all a part of what discipline is about. Discipline is never fun, but it is necessary if ever we are to be mature, responsible disciples of Christ.

Whenever I get overwhelmed emotionally—and particularly when it manifests as such unsightly immaturity—I wear my soles down to the quick from walking so much. Today was no exception; as I was stewing over all the things addressed in this newsletter, I was walking along the lakeshore under the dark, cloud-covered canopy of the skies. I was grappling with the emotional hell of being trapped in my own body and knowing that I was not where I needed or wanted to be with the Lord: and feeling powerless to surrender as I knew (know) I must. In fact, I have been walking along this particular area for several days now in a sort of boomerang shaped circuit. There is no one else there: it is just me, my thoughts, and my God. I suppose partly because of the natural endorphins walking releases, it is a great gift God has given us, which can help calm our minds and our nerves long enough we can focus on the things that matter most: namely our relationship with Him and the perspective it gives to the things that trouble us in life and weight us down. Are we not all, at times, one giant mass of walking cares and concerns?

I walked the circuit back and forth, back and forth, finally deciding it was time to walk the path back to where I had parked, nearly a half mile away. The wind was whipping at my hair and my shirt and I could feel an occasional droplet of rain land on my skin. The sky was gloomy and overcast, a perfect metaphor for how I felt inside. But as I turned to go back to my car, suddenly the sun broke out from behind the clouds. The birds may have been singing all along, but if so, I only just noticed their songs. The mood of the day had lifted, buoying my spirits somewhat. While the clouds had not left nor had the darkness in my spirit totally dissipated, I could not help but think that God was speaking to me, that there was a lesson in all of this.

If I were to summarize it in a well-worn phrase: this too shall pass. The sun will again shine. In fact, the sun always shines, it is the clouds that come and go. I am not fated to remain in my infantile immaturity forever, no matter how much I may believe such may be the case at this moment. Furthermore, there will come a day when I will once again feel content, when I will not be so focused on my circumstances that I fail to feel the rays of heavenly sunlight. Within me I find the hope that a day will come when all tears shall be wiped from my eyes: where there will be no more suffering, no more sickness, no more dying there, and the radiance of the Son is the only light that is needful.

God is not the god of instant gratification: you will need to seek out the god of this world if you wish for that. He is, however, a just and righteous God, a God who cares deeply enough to make us walk through the fire of refinement so that we will emerge pure, unsullied and unspotted: we serve a good God! Never give up. Never give in. Never lose hope. God will reward those who are faithful; you will not suffer long: only repent and remember: He is God and you are man: His home is in the heavens and yours is here on the earth. Yet this great God will stoop down and gently sweep you up into the realms of His glory if only you have a little patience. There is a link between the instant gratification of our culture and our level of (im)maturity; but there is also a link between those who patiently wait on the Lord and the ripe, golden ears of the spiritual harvest. One is the wisdom of the world; the other is wisdom from above: the tangible manifestation that I am a citizen of that Heavenly Kingdom that ne’er shall pass away. See you there?

Courtesy of http://www.mrrena.com/2003/immat.shtml