What is spiritual growth and spiritual maturity?
Problem
I had come to a point where I was unclear on how to continue to grow spiritually. I grew up in a Christian environment and had received good teaching through my life. I had thought I understood Christianity pretty well, but even so it had some mystical things for me. However, I am not a mystic and this was becoming a huge disappointment to me. How did I know if I was growing as a Christian?
- Was it reading the Bible more? No.
- Was it more time praying? No.
- Was it better living of the Ten Commandments? No. (Jesus' explicit point!)
- "What Would Jesus Do" anyway? I can read some things he did, but to be honest, he wasn't easy to predict, so how would I know?
I could recognize some people as being mature Christians because of the evidence of their life (but I couldn't measure why). I wanted to be a person like them, but I didn't know how. There were lots of good things in Christianity, but it could start to get so complicated that I couldn't keep all those balls in the air all the time.
Answer
The measure of spiritual growth is the degree to which we live the value system of God - sacrificial love for the benefit of others. By it, I now have a guidance, a direction for how to go about growing.
(It also helps to know that our native value system and our value system of choice is selfish love for the benefit of me - the value system of the world. This comes out in one of three ways: doing something to bring pleasure to my body, doing something to make people like me, doing something to make my own little empire of control.)
We become Christians when we come to God asking him to change us to have his values (because we realize that his value system is better than ours). He always answers this request with a "yes"! It is important to continue asking him to transform us, to help us live this love. Again, he always answers these prayers "yes".
The result of the value system of God in us is good relationships - first with God, but significantly also with those around us. At the end of life, ultimately what we will treasure the most is our good relationships. Our own (natural) wisdom always fails us here. But God's wisdom (his value system) never fails for good relationships.
Spirituality (generically speaking) is learning about and becoming involved with the Divine. Real spirituality, then, is learning, adopting and doing the value system of God because that is what best describes God's character and that is what he has asked us to do. When we do, we are growing spiritually and becoming spiritually mature.
See also Doctrine and Maturity and How to recognize a Christian
The value system perspective used here is based on ideas from the work of Darren Twa.