Beginners must get past beginning ASAP

Book 2, Chapter 2

-Part 1-

     Continued more …

Having established that it is fitting for beginners to begin, it must also be said that this starting phase of one’s spiritual life must be soon grown out of. Once the runner has taken his place at the starting blocks his feet are braced, his fingers pressed on the track, his body coiled, his mind cleared – but for what? When the starting gun is fired all of his finesse training and all of his pent up strength must be released. He will run, and perhaps win, only if he explodes out of the starting blocks.

In the blocks, there is a satisfying ache from the leg muscles as they await the opportunity to do what they do naturally. Likewise does the new believer have zeal to grow. If not this, there could be cause for concern. Young parents become alarmed when their child does not seem to be developing as quickly as the siblings did, or are not as advanced as the other kids at daycare. We rightly tend to see a lack of growth as a symptom of a possible health problem or of inadequate nurturing.

So also must the house of God ensure that its beginners are moving along in their walk with Christ. The new believer is to be immediately set upon a prayerful journey into maturity. Along this voyage we will find we have fallen in love with God, and with our crew.

Some Christian spiritual directors refer to this secondary stage that flows into the believer as the “intermediate” stage (e.g. John of the Cross) or they use a reference to “those making progress” (e.g. William of St. Thierry).

Another way to advance the idea of “making progress” in one’s spiritual life is to refer to the process of being transformed into the likeness of Christ. (See Romans 8:29.) Members of the churches first under the direction of the Apostles were pressed to allow God to thoroughly work this transformation upon them. For example:

“Brothers,” wrote the Apostle Paul, “do not remain children in your thinking; infants in wickedness – agreed, but in your thinking grown-ups” (First Corinthians 14:20).

As Abbott William of St. Thierry said, “The servant of God must always make progress or go back; either he struggles upwards or he is driven down into the depths” (The Golden Epistle, Part 38).

In the Bible, the young churches are sometimes chided by the apostles for their slow-going with regard to spiritual maturity.

Here is a brief wakeup call from Paul to the Christians at Corinth: “And so, brothers, I was not able to talk to you as spiritual people; I had to talk to you as people still living by your natural inclinations, still infants in Christ; I fed you with milk and not solid food, for you were not yet able to take it – and even now, you are still not able to, for you are still living by your natural inclinations. As long as there are jealousy and rivalry among you, that surely means that you are still living by your natural inclinations and by merely human principles” (First Corinthians 3:1-3).

In another place Christians are told “you have grown so slow at understanding.” And, a sentence later, “you have gone back to needing milk, and not solid food” (Hebrews 5:12).

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells seeking Christians that the purpose of the church as the Body of Christ is to bring its members to “unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God and form the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.” (Ephesians 4:13)

Then he goes on to briefly spell out the difference between immature and mature believers:

“Then we shall no longer be children, or tossed one way and another, and carried hither and thither by every new gust of teaching, at the mercy of all the tricks people play and their unscrupulousness in deliberate deception. If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow completely into Christ, who is the head by whom the whole Body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each individual part to work according to its function. So the body grows until it has built itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4:14-16)

In order to move from spiritual immaturity to maturity in Christ, the believer must undergo a steady, continuous transformation that ripens in the soul a wise, informed, willful love for God. Only a Christian with these heart markings may be allowed to be considered mature in Christ. Welcome, beloved, to a world filled with toddlers.