Emotional Maturity Is Not Spiritual Maturity

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Back when I taught in a Christian high school, there was a question that puzzled me then and has continued to puzzle me for years. What does spiritual maturity look like in an adolescent? After all, a teen is likely to be immature in nearly every aspect of life. Is it even possible for an emotionally immature person to be spiritually mature?

There was a time when I thought we could discern a teen’s spiritual maturity by the way they talk about their spiritual life, but I have since discarded that metric. We can’t discern a young person’s spiritual maturity by their spiritual talk. They may well be sincere, but they might only be parroting spiritual sentiments they had heard from adults, expressing truths they can’t yet understand.

I was talking to a friend recently about this question. She suggested self-reflection as a measure of spiritual maturity. She was right in one regard: a spiritually mature person should certainly be capable of self-reflection and self-critique. But I pushed back at her definition: the capacity for self-reflection is the mark of an emotionally mature person, but there are many emotionally mature people who have no interest in Jesus. In fact, such a person might have special difficulty responding to the call of the Gospel. Such a well-adjusted person may think of himself as a good person in no need of a Savior.

As I thought about it, I realized that my friend’s suggestion had helped sharpen my question, and it pointed me to the answer I had been looking for.

Emotional maturity shares many characteristics with spiritual maturity: as a person matures spiritually, he or she will grow in self-reflection, empathy, and other traits of emotional maturity, but these are not the only – and certainly not the essential – marks of spiritual maturity.

Spiritual maturity is a deepening love for and trust in Jesus.
 
Can an emotionally immature person be spiritually mature?

Yes. In fact, we all have a friend or family member whose love for God and love for people is radiantly attractive, but he or she is emotionally immature. Because of that combination of emotional immaturity and spiritual maturity, that friend is both exasperating and endearing. With such a person, the indicators of emotional maturity are noticeably absent: there isn’t much self-awareness or self-control or social skill. But to be around him or her is to be in the presence of deep and godly joy and great delight. Anyone who spends any time with such a person will know instantly that he or she loves Jesus and loves people.

You would hope that over time your friend will grow in emotional maturity, that he or she will become more reliable, exercise better self-control, be more aware of the perspectives of others, be more self-reflective. But you also know that your emotionally immature friend is spiritually advanced: he or she trusts and loves Jesus implicitly. Maybe your emotionally immature friend is onto something that we all need to understand: It is love – love for God, love for other people – that is the one essential trait. Everything else is details.

Understanding this distinction between emotional maturity and spiritual maturity is rewriting the playbook for me as a pastor and as a father and grandfather.
 
Our fellowship serves families of children with special needs. As I’ve been thinking about this question, some of those brothers and sisters with special needs have come to mind. What if God has placed them among us to remind us of what is most important? What if their deep, instinctive love for Jesus and their love for others is a reminder that all our other skills are of secondary importance?

As I pray for my adult children, their spouses, and their families, my prayers have begun to focus on this singular matter: that they love and trust Jesus more deeply. Of course I care about their marriages, their parenting, their finances, their physical well-being; but all those are secondary concerns. Regardless of how they are doing in every other respect, what matter most is their interior life with God.
My prayer – for myself, for our four adult children and their spouses and children, for our fellowship – is that our love for Jesus and our trust in Him would grow ever deeper.
Persevere.