when I was a child
an addiction to childhood
September 18, 2007
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. (I Corinthians 13)
What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. (Galatians 4)
When I first set out to Europe, I knew I was leaving behind a spiritual family, a place where I had been loved and given much. Every day had spiritual food in it. There was always music happening around me, prayer, deep spiritual people, who fed me in every way possible, emotionally, spiritually and bodily. I had many great wonderful meals around the large table of community, where late-night talks were common. I was seen.
But something in me wouldn't go away--a desire for something I hadn't yet seen. It was a desire to see something new. My whole reason for moving to Europe was to find this mysterious 'next' that I knew existed somewhere. Even if the 'next' was right in front of me, I had to change geographies to find out.
I never knew how hard it would be. When I arrived in Prague, I immediately went looking for the next mentor. I was living with a family who are now my dear friends the Jones, and they gave me things to do, but they never told me WHAT to do. There was no regular meetings, or prayer times, or even meals. Life happened spontaneously. I've written about this experience before, and shared it with many friends. My first six months of living in Prague were an amazing time, but they were also one of the most confusing and difficult times.
The main reason it felt so difficult is that I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I kept looking for someone or something to mentor me. I brought books along. I read lots of books on spirituality and how to pray. Otherwise great books by Leanne Payne, Thomas Merton, Benny Hinn even... all guidance counselors on the path to seeking God and learning how to pray. I even started writing an email to well-known prophetic man in Europe who was heading up a school of the prophets. Maybe I need to get some training, I thought.
I traveled to Switzerland, England, France in about 3 months--I went exploring, but all along I was still looking for something to give me a clue. Give me guidance. I felt alone in it, too. I didn't feel close to God either, the way I used to when I was living in Ohio, and I was seeking relentlessly for this feeling everywhere I went and in every book I read. When I got married, I suddenly felt like marriage had taken away my intimacy with God. I wanted to get back to that deep and singular relationship I felt with Him before all this happened.
Thankfully, no one told me what to do--not the Jones, not my husband. In retrospect, there was no book, no relationship, no church, no program, no mentorship that would give me my feeling of closeness or tell me who I was or what my mission in life was. The last straw came when i started reading a book on how to do contemplative prayer by a well-known Christian teacher who teaches a method of prayer that involves a Buddhist-like emptying of the mind and then grasping singular words about God and meditating on them. I would sit down every morning and commit to spend 30 minutes doing this prayer.
Each day it got harder and harder (and that is what the book said would happen too). But it was not hard to pray, it was hard to pray that way. Every time I would go about it my head would start hurting and I would feel this weird shame come over me that I hadn't done it correctly. (Note to self: something is spiritually off with a "method of prayer" when you feel shame every time you do it.)
Finally, something broke through one of those mornings. I felt like throwing away all the 'structure'. I stopped thinking about what I should be doing and decided I was just going to live. I had been so dependent on others giving me direction that my relationship with God was completely dependent on community. I realized my life with God was so much deeper than all of this self-conscious spiritual activity. And I felt God saying, when was the last time I went shopping with you?
So for about a year or more I fasted--from all religious literature and music. I stopped reading books by Big Prophetic Guys. And by "Contemplative Prayer" guys. i stopped reading books about "how to do church" and all of that business. I stopped reading some of my favorite authors. I stopped listening to Worship Music. I stopped reading the Bible. Oh, gasp!
There was nothing left except all my novels and poetry books. So be it. In short, I stopped worshiping others' direction and went in search of something deeper. Instead, I went and looked at cool shoes with God. Something happened that year that I will forever be thankful for: I became an adult. I stopped being a child.
The obvious benefit of this, in my case, was that my spirituality became a lot more natural and lot more integrated with who I am. It took some time to grow in this direction, and for a while i had to resist looking to others to help define me and tell me how to be a friend and daughter of God. I came back to some of those authors years later with fresh eyes, and a new appreciation for who they were and what He gave them to teach, but without feeling like I needed to be anything like them. I began to have this intense relationship with the Bible. It became this living force. It made more sense. And it made sense to who I am because I love words so much, and especially when they are the smartest things that anyone has ever written.
And honestly, life without all that once rich community was hard at times too. I found a new community but it was also a new way of relating to others as an adult. While your experience may not be like mine, where throwing off the extremes of self-imposed religion needs to take place, many of us still struggle with staying children. I have many friends who don't think they hear God very well, and go looking for direction in how to do that. They don't feel close to God unless they're doing something spiritually important, so they go look for something to join.
All of this stuff is, at rock bottom, borne out of our deep fear that God requires us to meet him in a certain way instead of our own way, wherever we are, and feeling that we have the right to be who we are and that He enjoys us just like that. We are so afraid of him, and not in the good fear-of-god way. Unfortunately, these patterns prevent us from becoming adults. I must admit from my own experience that staying a child also becomes addictive. It's comfortable.
Most Christians I know keep looking to spiritual authorities, teachers and mentors rather than claim their own priestliness, and take the long, sometimes lonely, difficult road of staking out his or her own territory with God.
Many people get trapped following or listening to the same leaders their whole lives without ever becoming leaders themselves. This happens not just in Christianity but other religions as well, especially Buddhism. People wander from one mentor to the next looking for someone to get them more enlightened, more close to God, more close to whatever it is we feel we cannot reach by ourselves.
The truth is, we can't reach it. 'Born again' means we are born into a new life that can't be reached by methods. It is a complete and total mystery that He is a spirit who guides us into all truth, who can't be found by methods, or osmosis from others, but by trusting.
As long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate.
Meaning, we are all given an inheritance, as children. A domain that we personally are made to tend and which no one else can. But as long as we remain children we are still dependent on the food of the mentors, the fathers, the overseers. As children we are surrounded by our inheritance and yet we don't have the strength or the vision or the maturity to steward it.
I watch some cases where people whose experiences have left them somewhat angry at leaders and so stay within close range and in reaction to the church in order that they can shout, "I am an adult, dammit!" In these cases, there is a time when some people have to have the courage to be an adult without the father's blessing. It is a sorry thing to do but Abraham did it (with the Father's blessing).
Some people stake out for the unknown by leaving structures but then they go searching for another series of teachers who will give them guidance in their structureless-ness. I've seen other cases where people aren't angry but so unsure of who they are that they stay within someone else's property so that they can continue to live off of the spiritual lives of others.
I'm not judging any of these things; I understand them and have lived them. But who would you be if you never had another "name" to sit under? What is your name?
At some point, all of us have to risk the unknown and stop being dependent on others' spirituality to tell us how to live our lives before God. So many Christians live their lives in relationship to what the Big Leader or what the Pastor or what the Mentor or what the Authority in Spiritual Matters is doing. Those people are good authorities and they were given that authority, but any man or women worth the label of true spiritual father and mother knows when it is time to release, painfully, their children to become heirs and adults.
The prodigal son at least had the courage to try and find out what his inheritance was on his own, even if it required flailing around in pig dung. By the end he knew what belonged to him, and how glorious it was. The 'faithful' son got angry at his father for apparently not giving him his due inheritance, to which his father responded, "All of this already belongs to you!" You see, the faithful son was still thinking like a child, even though he "owned the whole estate".
The issue is not just with individuals, it is with the body as a whole. The body does not know who she is, does not stand in all her regal inheritance, and still feels inferior to the rest of the world. She still interprets like a child; and as a result has difficulty really releasing individuals to become full adults with divine rights.
There are so many spiritual children around us--adults who have been Christians for years and still depend on the food of children. They never learn to interpret for themselves, become their own expression of God. One of the 'fruits of the flesh" in Galations is called "carousing"--which I believe has something to do with cycling around and around the same thing your whole life. Sometimes the church reinforces perpetual cycling of childhood. Such cycles may keep us perpetually in the same type of teachings, the same type of community, the same type of spirituality, the same type of healing, the same stage of maturity.
Most authorities and leaders have a specific commission. Denominations are different for a reason; they all have different commissions. But keep in mind that one of the reasons the church gets so stale is that people stay in the same church or spiritual family their whole lives and adopt the commission of that authority rather than discover their own. They only experience one part of God's personality. Keep in mind, as well, that YOU are not your denomination. Denominations are also collective spiritualities in the church--baptist, catholic, vineyard, anglican, emergent. Your way of expressing him spiritually and relating to him may occur through those things but if any of them were too completely disappear from the earth, who would you be? Catholic or Baptist or Vineyard? I don't think so.
You may accept that ideologically, but who are you outside of those groups? Do you know? Many of us live in relationship to the collective spirituality rather than find our own. We only feel close to God if we're worshiping vineyard style, reading the bible Baptist-style, having communion Catholic-style. All of these are things that father us and teach us, but who you are goes way beyond these collective expressions. We belong to the body, and are meant to share in the same blood. We need each other, but in order to be able to give freely we also need to know who we are individually.
Ironically, one of the ways in which the body will become one is when it becomes a FULL expression of God, when every wrinkle, toe, thought, personality, and color is expressed dynamically. Oneness is not about homogeneity but about dynamism and fullness. His oneness will come when we are becoming more like Him in our own unique expressions and when we see each other not through our own self-referential lens but through His dynamic lens. This is dependent on ALL of his children becoming heirs and not staying children.
Striking out is hard, and yes lonely, and yes unsure. This is why Abraham became the father of many. Because he struck out into the unknown. He chose to become a father instead of staying back in Haran. He chose to feel alone. And by that choosing he birthed an entire nation and community.
There is a time when we all have to be children, and start out as children. But there comes a time when we have to stop thinking and reasoning like a child, who thinks, "when will my dinner come?" There are times 'set by the Father' when you are released from the trustees and authorities, to become an adult.
