Maturity

How might we think about maturity?

First, I suggest that maturity is rather like a growing into something whereas immaturity is like a staying behind, a not being what one is supposed to be when one is supposed to be it. This implies that at every stage of life there is a maturity (a way we ought to be) relative to that stage.

For this reason we do not expect a five year old to wine or to ponder metaphysics; we do not expect a thirty year old to play with playdough or a seventy year old to be consumed with emotionalism.

In addition, we might see that God has so designed the stages of life in the fallen society that in each stage if we do not yet know Him as we ought then that stage will end in dissatisfaction and deliver us to a new stage of life which also will end in dissatisfaction until finally our desires relative to the stages of our life lead us to the highest desire for meaning and divine communion. Thus if the thirty year old does not know God or meaning he awakes to a mid-life crisis.

In this way the adolescent leaves off caring about peer groups alone but also begins to care about sacrificial love and communion (sex). This is appropriate because sex is about personhood and God uses this as a means for revealing His own person - see how God is educating our desires?

Second, we might say that maturity is relative to proper function. Every acorn becomes an oak and every baby an adult and every baby human male a man such that maturity is relative to design in general or in particular. A lion and a shark are both beautiful creatures but it would be absurd for a lion to try and be a shark and vice versa. So to0 a man must be a man and a woman a woman and neither be children. The glory of the others are not diminished by the fact that they are different either by nature or development.

Third, immaturity then is either staying behind in stage 1 when we should be in stage 2 and/or it is maturing out or proportion to our proper function (thus becoming an athiest is like a tiger trying to blow his snout!).

Fourth, it seems that God uses this pattern of maturity to prepare us but also to serve as a counter to original sin. Thus we are bent to sinning but God has so designed that another inclination is at work to lead us to Himself. I think we see this in our doctrin of original sin and in progressive revelation and in the presence of evil itself. He both educates our desires and brings us to the end of ourselves.