Signs of Spiritual Maturity Part 3: Transforming Responses

""Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse."

-- Romans 12:14

How to NOT respond in kind

This week we continue our Maturity Series with Father Ron Rolheiser's third sign of maturity or Christlikeness:

"Transform jealousy, anger, bitterness, and hatred rather than give them back in kind."

REASONS

The reason I am using this list is because we so easily get lost in Bible language. If I say turn to the other cheek or love your enemy or be generous or be humble or be sober-minded, we nod our heads and move on as if I said it may rain next week. Unfortunately, familiarity has bred complacency in most of us in these things. We have found an equilibrium in our lives and will continue as is until we are jolted out of it. This is where new ways of saying things are a gift to us.

In addition, and maybe because of the familiarity, most of us can't define maturity in more than vague terms. Ask about ways to continue growing in maturity, and we are even more at a loss. I feel this which is why I am writing about it. This is my attempt to reflect on these ideas. I pray it brings you benefit as well.

TRANSFORMING...A PROCESS

With this third invitation or sign, Rolheiser captures a profound concept and one that signifies full maturity. I do not need to convince anyone that achieving this kind of transformation on a regular basis is a sign of maturity, so the question is how do we become the kind of persons who does this?

Dallas Willard speaks of the kind of change that happens as we become like Jesus. We become different people in kind. Our natural responses change. This is what abiding does. Even a new believer when full of the Spirit will exhibit Christlike behaviors. The change that happens as we mature is that we more consistently and continuously maintain an abiding posture. We never achieve perfection, but we continue growing. The goal isn't perfection; the goal is to be with Jesus. As Moses' face glowed after being with God, but he didn't know it, so we shine the light of Christ when we encounter Him, and the goal isn't to shine but to be with Him.

Now when it comes to anger and bitterness let's start with what is easy and normal, responding in kind. It takes no effort for me to receive someone's anger or bitterness and give it back in spades. The natural man, humans walking in the flesh, just give it back as the default response. Nobody needs to teach us how. This is obvious and a sign of the fall (Genesis 3). The challenge is to respond in a different spirit. Rolheiser highlights here that getting there requires a process. I appreciate the picture his words elicit.

ORGANIC, NOT MECHANISTIC

My first thought is of a factory - natural resources go in and are changed into a finished product, - but I've been working on avoiding mechanistic metaphors, so let's be more organic here. I prefer this because the reality is that we are not factories, and the transformation process doesn't work mechanically. In fact, thinking about it in this way forces us to have unrealistic expectations and be disappointed.

Thus, a more helpful illustration is a garden. We compost, which means we take the trash from our kitchen, put it in a hot, dark box, stir it up regularly, wait as long as it takes, and finally have beautiful, fertile soil to add to our garden. This soil then helps our plants grow and produce beautiful flowers and delicious vegetables. This is what we can do with jealousy, anger, bitterness, and hatred when we encounter it.

HOW TO BECOME

That sounds so wonderful. I want to be the kind of person who does that. At this point I am not that person, at least not consistently. This was clear last week when someone flaked out and messed up my schedule, and I responded anxiously in anger and frustration. How about you? Where are you in this process?

Grace abounds to all of us. The issue is not where we are but what direction we are moving. God's promises are all yes in Jesus which means He is doing a work in each of us. He is responsible. At root, He invites us to be with him. In Focustsoul, our mantra is a call to make space for encountering God. This is where transformation happens. Thus, this is always the foundational step. Be with Jesus. We see this in Acts 4:13, "When they observed the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and recognized that they had been with Jesus." The only explanation for Peter and John's uncharacteristic presence was that they had been with Jesus. Of course, this is still true for us today, so it is where we start. Becoming the kind of person who doesn't respond in kind to whatever vitriol is coming at us happens as we spend time with Jesus.

FULLER PICTURE

Yet we all know people who have been believers for many years, have attended church, and read their Bibles, and are far from mature Christlikeness. What do we do with that?

As I mentioned in the first post in this series, having a framework or mental model that captures a fuller picture of maturity will help us. As described last week, growing to maturity is a complex process which means the practices for getting there will emerge as we grow. We will do and adapt and become and do more and adapt based on what happens and add and subtract and grow and become and continue in this cycle all our lives.

The framework I mentioned before was Andrew Richey's Triple Axis Spiritual Development model which includes Waking Up, in which we deepen our intimacy and union with God, Growing Up, in which we grow in self-awareness learning to inspect the lenses, mental models, and assumptions that guide the way we see and engage the world, and Cleaning Up, in which we deal with our deep emotional and psychological wounds, traumas, and issues from our family of origin and formational events. Consistently developing in all three of these areas is necessary to become a fully mature human. This adds meat to the bones of spending time with Jesus. The work He does in us in these areas is what growth looks like.

This happens in community and through varied means including prayer and counseling and spiritual direction and reading and reflection and confession and repentance and suffering and conflict and failure and worship and gratitude and other disciplines and practices and the grace of God through invisible means we neither notice nor understand.

And lest I give a false impression, this process is full of mystery. It is chock full of contradictions. It involves definite actions but is not formulaic; certain practices or disciplines have proven fruitful over the centuries, but no two people go about it the same way; we can't do it apart from community, but community often hinders our growth; we have agency and act, yet what we do has no power on its own to transform; we can become mature and respond as described, yet we will always be vulnerable to falling.

PRACTICAL

We could spend many solitary moments reflecting on that list, but I want to close with a few words on the practical aspects of transforming jealousy, anger, bitterness, and hatred.

Let's consider actual times when we experience such interactions. Sometimes I act in such a way that people respond in these ways to me. I do something either on purpose or accidentally to trigger strong emotions in another person, and he comes at me angrily by yelling at me and bad-mouthing me to others or is full of bitterness and tries to draw me into his misery or hates me which shows itself in attempting to harm me or jealously undermines whatever I try to do. On the other hand, I could receive this kind of hostility out of the blue coming from nothing I have initiated. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I will receive these situations differently (feel guilt/shame versus feeling innocent and unjustly treated), but for our purposes here they are the same. Someone has attacked me in some way, and I can continue the cycle or do the work and change the nature of the interaction, i.e. end the cycle and respond with love. To do this something has to happen, what came at me must be changed.

Picture a tennis match. Player One serves the tennis ball, and player two hits it back. What if player two caught the ball and gave a flower to player one instead? The match would be over. How do we turn a tennis ball into a flower? In this case, how do we turn bitterness into kindness? You may be thinking of Proverbs 15:1, "A gentle answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath."

I didn't open with this verse because knowing the verse doesn't tell us how to become the kind of people who live the verse. This is an error that so many Christians make and what I am trying to come against in almost all my writing. As John Mark Comer says, we are not just brains. Our bodies are not just carrying cases for our brains. We are children of God, and our brains are just a part of us. Just knowing a Bible verse or quoting a verse doesn't transform us. We don't need less than that, but we do need more. Moving from knowing the Bible to embodying it is what we are pursuing here.

The common response focuses on obedience instead of formation. Someone comes at me wrathfully. It is wrong and unhelpful for me to respond in kind. I should respond with a gentle answer. I'll will myself to do that. If I can't achieve that, then I'll pray more and memorize the verse and ask someone to hold me accountable and... Sound familiar? What a burdensome impossibility!

FORMATION MINDSET

But a formation mindset asks how I become someone who responds with a gentle answer. (I hope this isn't too tedious. I need to spell it out.) Of course, I need to be with Jesus, but truly becoming this kind of person is much more involved as we get into ourselves, and God allows us to see our shadows. I realize that I am making certain assumptions about this person. I have set expectations. I become aware of my learned behaviors. [Growing Up] I am trapped in the ways I learned to deal with these situations in my family of origin. I feel fear and shame and anxiety and disgust and anger and sorrow and despair. I begin to understand that parts of me seem to take over in certain situations. As Paul says in Romans 7, I do what I don't want to do. [Cleaning Up] Thus, I am invited by God to step into all these aspects (trauma and brokenness and sin and flesh and history and more). [Waking Up] The composting process is slow and can be smelly and is hard to look at but eventually produces something wonderful (and often still messy).

As mentioned, this doesn’t happen by pretending or suppressing or avoiding or ignoring our emotions. We feel what we feel. Recognizing this and growing in our awareness of what we are feeling is a major point of growth for most of us. The point is not to change the feelings but to be transformed (Growing, Cleaning, & Waking Up) and experience different feelings. In these situations, we do not have to outwardly respond, but we do have to feel. As we feel we need to be held and allow the change process to happen. These emotions are real, but they may not be true or based on truth. As I change and grow my emotions are more and more based on truth and trustworthy. For many of us, experiencing our emotions is too painful to bear. We were never held in painful times as children and so learned other coping mechanisms. For us, hard work is required. Healing and change are possible; Jesus wants to do it, but it usually doesn’t come easily or quickly. If this is you or someone you know, be kind and curious and push in and allow God to bring the fruit in His time. As we are changed, we respond with the new, with what we have become. This is the beautiful fruit of the Gospel.

Over time we start to notice changes; we see growth, stunted, inconsistent growth. Every now and then we respond with genuine love and care. We become more curious and kinder. Some people have no power over us anymore while others still effortlessly push all our buttons. We just don't like that guy, but that other guy who we formerly held in deep contempt is now a friend. God does this work. Day to day we can't see it but over time (years and years) the composting process happens.

But this is important to remember, when we see a list like Rolheiser's we may notice growth, but those things weren't the goal. When we reflect on it, we realize we just spent a lot of time with Jesus and the people He put in our lives and that is what life is all about.

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”

— Sir Winston Churchill