Calling All Carnivores
* This one is directed to my fellow leaders in ministry. The observations I lay out in this post are for the ones who have stepped into ministry leadership and the responsibility this carries. I was having a rare conversation with Jonathan the other night, one that included just the two of us and not my lovely-but-far-too-loud-and-chatty children. We were discussing our season of life and what God has been drilling into our heads and hearts. Sometimes we get impassioned when it’s just the two of us because we get to dream about our future and what we hope to see shift in our culture as a result of the work we do, both personally and with/for others.
In one of the soapbox moments, I told him what I had been noticing among some of our peers in leadership and how, by God’s leading, I hoped we might be champions for another way. Here’s my observation:
A lot of us are seeking comfort. We want our faith to stay in suspended childhood. We’re not just comfortable with apathy… we’re actively seeking it.
I’ve seen him. I’ve seen her.
I’ve probably been her.
You know the one. She doesn’t ask questions; he doesn’t rock the boat; everything’s cool as-is, no need to dig and prod. No reason for hard days, much less hard seasons. Who really needs that anyway?
I was sharing my concern over this idea, all emotional and verbose. That’s when Jonathan did what he does and just casually whipped out some RC Sproul that left me “Mmmm-hmmm”-ing and “YES!”-ing like I was in an Assembly of God Church from my youth. So that I don’t get it wrong, here is the excerpt that Jonathan was referencing from RC Sproul’s book Essential Truths Of The Christian Faith:
“In some Christian circles the biblical call to a childlike faith has been elevated to a spiritual ideal that radically distorts the biblical meaning of faith…
There is a vast difference, however, between a childlike faith and a childish faith, though the two are often confused. A childish faith balks at learning the things of God in depth. It refuses the meat of the gospel while clinging to a diet of milk…
The call of the New Testament is to maturity.”
Childish faith. That’s it! That’s what drives us to stay forever young in the things that matter. And boy, is there a veritable buffet available to us for keeping maturity at bay. Social media records it all for us, too, so all we have to do is scroll through the digital buffet line and fill our plates. A little FOMO (for those who’ve been under a rock, this means Fear Of Missing Out) here, a side of overused #hashtags there, topped with a filtered picture of dinner and sprinkled with a misinformed political jibe. And we get our fill. We are completely intoxicated with the minors and mostly uninterested in the majors.
We’ve all done it. We’ve all subscribed to childish faith somewhere along the way.
But I don’t want to be that person. I don’t see how any of us in various places of leadership have the luxury of being that person, not if we’re taking the gospel seriously. If what I read is correct, then we are to explore, expand, and expose others to the way of the Kingdom, and the way of the Kingdom is backwards. It’s like Wonderland; forget everything you know. In the Kingdom of God, the way up is down. The smaller you get, the bigger you’ll be. Simplicity and discipline means wealth and reward.
Some of you will read this and be tempted to roll your eyes and dismiss it as the ranting of someone who forgot how to have fun, someone who takes herself too seriously. This isn’t true. Just ask my kids, or my friends Ryan & Sarah, or anyone else who has ever seen me be a complete idiot and joined in with me on occasion. This isn’t about fun. This is about maturity where it counts. And I, for one, still have some growing up to do.
I suspect you do, too, and in this matter we have a pretty good admonition from the letter to the Hebrew community of faith:
“About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
- Hebrews 5:11-14
I think the key for all of us, the challenge to take up, is the phrase “constant practice.” There’s no magic formula to any of this. It’s just good old-fashioned discipline and daily surrender to the work of the Spirit in our lives. We as leaders in our faith communities have to remain diligent in the midst of childishness.
Let’s put away the childish.
Calling all carnivores… spiritually speaking. ;)
Talk to me…
Have you seen some areas in your life that are rooted in a childish faith?
Do you think our culture perpetuates childishness? Why or why not?