Why Are We All So Immature?

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Somewhere in a 4^th century desert around the Near East, a Christian monk named Abba Lot approached Abba Joseph and said,

“Abba, as far as I can, I keep my little rule [of life]. I fast, I pray, I keep silence, and I strive to purify my thoughts. What else should I do?”

And Abba Joseph stood up and stretched out his hands toward the heavens and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire.

“If you will, you can become all flame.”1

Now, I’m not about to get all wonky on you. I’m aware this story is in the legend (or “true myth”) category. But ever since reading it, I haven’t been able to get that last line out of my head:

“Why not become all flame?”2

Essentially: why settle for spiritual infancy when you can become a full-grown adult?

Which feels very relevant for nowadays: it seems like almost everyone, everywhere, is becoming more and more comfortable with languishing in immaturity—even though the option to become fully alive is staring us down from across the table.

You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.

In general, I’m a next-gen optimist; but even other next-gen optimists like Harvard’s Nancy Hill and Alexis Redding are conceding on this point: today’s youth are drastically delaying landmarks of maturity—such as

• getting a driver’s license,

• moving out of their parents’ home,

• securing steady employment,

• getting married,

• starting a family,

• and feeling confident about who they are.3

Apparently, 15% of Gen Z and 13% of Millennials say they’ve intentionally put off four or more major life milestones.4

This doesn’t include those who want to get married or have kids but can’t for myriad reasons. It’s about those who are fully capable of achieving those milestones, but don’t.

Adulthood has become so deferrable that some suggest adding a new developmental stage between childhood and adulthood called “emerging adulthood.”5

More eerily, many aren’t just deferring growing up—they’re rejecting it all together. Worst-case scenarios include social withdrawal phenomena like hikikomori (when someone locks themselves indoors indefinitely to protest participating in society) and gooning (ya, just read the article if you want more details).

Immaturity is trending upward in the larger culture, but similar problems exist in the church. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard someone who feels called to marriage say they won’t even consider dating someone until after landing a picturesque job or “getting past their 20s.”

What’s even more common, though, is seeing people who know their calling (i.e., becoming a missionary, going back to school to become a data analyst, starting a lawn care business, etc.) but can’t seem to take the necessary steps to move closer to that calling.

Now, this is a crucial nexus where I could go all fire and brimstone Driscoll and scold everyone to grow up. But that’s not really my modus operandi.

However, this next bit might sort of break that modus: society’s common good isn’t really enhanced by adult adolescents running around doing whatever the flesh pleases. There’s no biblical category for “emerging adulthood.”6

But to clarify, we don’t need maturity because it’s annoying that lots of dudes are sitting around playing video games; we need it because we need mature imago Deis who have the confidence to do what God designed them to do (Eph. 2:9-10).

So, TL;DR: Christian maturity is becoming “all flame”—fully alive—but we can’t mature unless we’re painted a compelling vision of what we can mature into.

Lots of factors prevent us from becoming all flame—most of which, I think, have surprisingly straightforward solutions.

In a paper by the scholar Bruce Hindmarsh, he asks: why is it that so many Christians never actually grow up?

He comes up with plenty suggestions, all of them gems, but his first is most convincing: without painting people a clear destination, they won’t get anywhere.7

Essentially, the Christian faith—and humans in general—are inherently teleological. Which basically means that we’re designed to move toward an end.

We’re supposed to go from conversion toward consummation; and yet, many Christian communities make conversion, what the author of Hebrews equates with “infancy” (5:12), the entirety of the picture.

Essentially: we call it good after getting people through the Alpha course.

Though normal today, this is kinda weird, historically speaking. For early and medieval Christians, “it would have been hard to design an Alpha Course without having in mind also an Omega Course.”8 The infant must become an adult; there was no “just enjoy stumbling in a listless entropy for awhile.”

Ephesians is probably where this is most explicit: urging Jesus followers to stop being “children” (νήπιοι) and “grow up” (αὐξήσωμεν) into Christ. And the metric for whether one has become a “mature people” (ἄνδρα τέλειον) is through comparing themselves with the “measure” (μέτρον) of Christ’s character (Eph. 4:13–15).

Modern discipleship tends to begin with the shallows: here are the basics, here’s where you can serve, we’ll inch you deeper over time. Conversely Jesus, Paul, and many early theologians started by laying out the deep end. I.e., “Take up your cross daily” (Luke 9:23; cf. John 6:53) or “Until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19);9 even the beginning of Augustine’s Confessions lays out the end of Christian formation: your heart remains restless until it rests in God.

Similarly, the 5^th century theologian John Cassian begins his Conferences, a series of interviews about the heart of spirituality, by asking bluntly: what is the goal of the spiritual life? The answers he uncovers—namely, the kingdom of God, eternal life, love—are the ends that shape the means of every increment of life with God.

Cassian realized it was crucial to start with the telos because it breathes life into everything else we do—“until all our living and all our wishing become one unending prayer.”10

Real growth requires some kind of eschatological catechesis.11 Without sketching a tangible telos that displays the compelling beauty of maturity, we’re left without a target to aim toward—along with the incentives to start aiming.

The family systems theorist Edwin Friedman once shared a statement from a football coach that has squatter’s rights in my head:

When I coach, if receivers complain that the quarterback throws the ball too hard, I don’t go to the quarterback and tell him to let up. I tell him to throw it as hard as he can, and I then tell the receivers they had better hang on to his passes if they want to hang on to the team.12

Point being: if you lower the bar, it obviously puts a cap on your star players; but, more subtly, it also ruins the whole team’s capacity to grow.

Friedman argues that we should apply this whole mentality to every field we can think of: corporations, therapy offices, court systems, tech enterprises, and churches.

Even from my minor teaching experience, I can attest that lowering the bar doesn’t do much more than raise a few grades. But prioritizing grades (or pining for positive course evals due to handing out easy As) over challenging students is a perfect example of a failure of nerve.

If you don’t stretch them to read Plato or Chesterton or Augustine or write an AI-free paper, you limit their opportunity to become the kind of people who can pull those things off.

This isn’t to say we should just toss people into the deep end and say “Catch up!” Meeting people where they’re at is crucial (1 Cor. 9:1-23).

But simultaneously, if we lower the bar for everyone, it puts a speed limiter on everyone’s pace for pursuing radiance.

There’s also the problem of “confessionalization”—the minimizing of Christian practices to doctrinal affiliation.

We saw this a bunch in the early post-reformation era: “People were resting content in their doctrinal correctness and confessional identity, but they were not showing any signs of real change in their spiritual lives.”13

But it continues strong today, evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers flocking around voices publicly wrestling through denominational dynamics.14

I’m always impressed by the quality and quantity of angry comments I get online because something I said didn’t fit within the parameters of someone’s denomination. I’m all for friendly denominational debates, but I bow out whenever it gets heated. In my un-peer-reviewed opinion, we only have a limited amount of righteous anger that we can healthily channel per day—and denominational fighting just doesn’t top my list of deserving channels.

Doctrine is necessary—we can’t do without it. But doctrine that’s stuck in cerebral musings and a Freudian tyranny of minor differences just feels a bit un-conducive to righteousness.15

Sure, they’re usually intertwined; but correct doctrine doesn’t equate to—or necessarily lead to (James 2:19)—spiritual maturity.16

Recently, the Harvard Professor Arthur Brooks did a series of interviews with several young, rich, and restless professionals to try and figure out why they were so enormously unfulfilled.

Surprisingly, a shared fear that lots of these rational, intelligent, and by all accounts normal people had is that they felt like they were living in a simulation—like Neo in the Matrix.

Which boggled me. I skipped the simulation theory lecture in my Intro to Philosophy course this year because I thought it was boring; but maybe I did them a disservice.

But as Brooks point out, when we spend too much time scrolling, living life through screens, it’s not all that surprising if we start feeling like our daily life is profoundly unmeaningful.17

In terms of maturing, overstimulation—or just chronic online-ness—removes us from the reality of having to face our reality.

Freya India recently argued that social media tends to make us more immature since it rewards traits like passivity, performativity, and reputation management.

It makes sense; keyboards allow us to bypass the growth that comes from difficult, in-person talks. Calling people out online is easy; living is harder.18

Avoiding quiet and calm forfeits time that we could’ve spent processing our lives in a way that allows us to move beyond immature reflexivity.

So encouraging strategic breaks from stimulation is just a solid idea in general—those moments act like checkpoints toward maturation.

There’s a saying in Christian tradition that states: “As the leader goes, so goes the church.”

But troublingly, at present, the models we elevate are typically either someone who has good social media skills or an uncontroversial Ned Flanders who does what they’re supposed to do.

The commodification of Christianity via social media—as well as the modern Christian celebrity industrial complex—sadly camaflouges the paradoxical reality of what real righteousness looks like.

Putting less than emulation-worthy talking heads up front makes us more likely to imitate traits that aren’t worth imitation, since we’re shockingly susceptible to imitate those who seem popular.19

The best models usually aren’t putting themselves in the spotlight; they’re usually off to the side, beating their chest saying “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

We need saints, not celebrities; we need models who care more about theosis, union with Christ, than building platform.

As older generations continue to live longer, they naturally hold onto leadership roles longer. As such, younger people have fewer opportunities to step into genuine responsibility.

And, of course, becoming mature can’t happen in a lab. You don’t become a good husband or leader by sitting in a room and thinking hard about doing those things—it requires real world stakes.

Institutions that hoard authority in the hopes of retaining stability can accidentally create the exact immaturity they lament.

Growth requires trusting someone with responsibilities that they can, and often will, fail within. Stakes don’t just incentivize maturity—they create maturity.

My wife and I didn’t have any money when we met. We still don’t have much. I’m still working on a degree in a field that notoriously doesn’t pay a lot. We still have loans. We still don’t know what the future looks like. Sometimes, we know what life will look like two months from now, other times we don’t.

Given all that, should we have just waited to get married?

Absolutely not. These past five years have been the best five years of my life. Wouldn’t change anything for all the money a Fortune 500 company generates in a year.

Same thing goes for all my friends who got married too young, had kids too young, or started a full-time job way before they were ready. Sometimes it’s the very fact of a change in your life that forces you to rise to the challenge.

If we keep waiting for everything to fall perfectly into place before settling down, going back to school, starting a family, or even nesting, then we give up so many precious moments for the sake of things that we can’t take beyond our graves.

The opportunity costs of putting off growing up simply aren’t worth putting off—we’ll spend way too long waiting for an imaginary ideal moment that’ll never arrive.

And to clarify, this isn’t to say that God’s called us all into grandpa mode. Like the Proverb goes, “The glory of young men is their strength, And the honor of old men is their gray hair” (20:29).

Skipping over youth for the sake of becoming a serious adult is silly. We should enjoy and glory in whichever age we’re at in the time we’re in it. So if you’re older, glory in the wisdom God’s given you; if you’re young, glory in having little back pain and the capacity to stay awake past 9pm.

Now, back to the start:

Both Abba Joseph’s initial question and Abba Lot’s response are scathingly relatable. Like the rich young ruler, we approach our mentors, spiritual directors, trusted compadres, or even God Himself by asking “Why am I not fulfilled?”

And the response is the same as it was for the rich young ruler: “Come follow me.”

Or, ya know, something adjacent of: “Trust Jesus fully,” or “Surender all your attachments to Him.” Etcetera.

But for whatever reason, it’s wildly difficult to actualize these bits of wisdom beyond momentary mental assent.

Personally, I’m not necessarily an exemplar; compared to some friends, I’m a late bloomer. But I did eventually get on track (I think). And it feels genuinely wonderful. I’m more alive than I’ve ever been—at home in my own skin and calling and place.

The flame is always worth the risk, the vulnerability, the sacrifice of the “good ole days.”

In reality “all flame” simply means to become more like Jesus. In that sense, the truest mark of becoming flame, becoming mature, is just becoming a person of love—someone who loves their family and kids and community enough to give themselves over to the labor God’s called them toward.

In that sense, the question is really asking: why settle for less than the abundant life that God intends for you?

Framed that way, the response to the question feels more obvious.

Why not become all flame?