Wednesday, 03 September 2008

• Measuring Spiritual Maturity With the Wrong Yard Stick

  by mr pine

  

  Just about everyone knows that one of my favorite movies of all time is “Glory” starring one of my favorite actors, Morgan Freeman.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s about the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry – the first black regiment in the civil war.  The climax of the movie is the charge on Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina.  It’s a heavily defended fort with only one narrow possible point of attack from the north along the beach.  Any unit leading an assault would be sure to take heavy casualties.

  Under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the 54th volunteers to lead the assault.  In one of the final scenes in the movie, the soldiers are marching toward the beach in formation, flanked on either side by other white regiments who are watching them march to certain death.  They know it too.  As they pass, a white soldier, who previously guffawed at their lack of battle experience and made some racist comments, lets out a rousing, “Give ‘em Hell 54th!” as a show of respect, and then all the other white soldiers let out a cheer as the music crescendos.

  Leaving out the gory details, it suffices it to say that the following battle is hard-fought even though ultimately futile.  It may not be a happy ending, but I really like it.  I think the reason I like it is because it’s about noble men who die with honor.  They give no thought to themselves and yet give the ultimate sacrifice for a country which for the most part despises them.  Mind you this was a volunteer regiment.  They were told if they were taken as prisoners of war, they would be seen as promoting insurrection in slaves and would be summarily put to death by the South.

  Ever since seeing that movie, I think it colored my view of what it means to sacrifice of yourself.  I always thought that regardless of chance for self-benefit or reward or even effectiveness I should give and give until I couldn’t give any more.  It would be as if I were pushing at the base of some great mountain hoping it would move eventually or that the honor is not in the results but rather the effort.  It was even like this in my service to God… that in the absence of a true leading from Him that the sacrifice of my time and energy would be sufficient for the time being.  I equated the effort with obedience. 

  Eventually what it would lead to was burnout because I was depending on my own strength and ability, and I would be even less effective than before.  But I would think that what I was doing was at least better than what most others were doing – which was nothing.  I was wrong.  I made classic error in mistaking Christian-like activity for Christian living.  I measured my spiritual maturity with how many things I was involved in at church and not on my obedience to God’s leading.  I think this is a very common misconception.  I once had someone quit a bible study I was leading because he felt that he was “rushing his spiritual growth” because he was busy with too many things at church.  Do you see a problem with that last statement?  The two have nothing to do with each other.  It’s like saying that you think you’re driving too fast toward New York when you’re really on a slow boat to China.

  Another thing I would think was “if I don’t do it, no one else will.”  This may or may not be true, but it was entirely the wrong motivation.  My motivation should have been “if God wants me to do it, I will.”  So how do you know what God wants you to do?  I’m not sure, but I think it begins with stopping.  Stop what you are doing and seek out His will… in his word… in prayer… In 1 Samuel 15:22 it says: Does the Lord delight in burnt offering and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord?  To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.  This was said because Saul thought that he was being obedient by depending on his own logic on what was good.  So he gave a burnt offering, not bad in itself, but it was not what the Lord wanted.  The burnt offering was just a symbol.  Our work is the same.  God is omnipotent.  He does not need our hands to do His work, but it is a blessing when He uses us to carry out His plan.  Our works should be a result of obedience.  We can not claim obedience just based on our works.

  Now I’m not saying that this is an excuse to just sit idly by while others are sacrificing their time out of their obedience to His call.  This is not a license to slack off.  I would venture to say that most of the time we are neither sacrificing nor truly being obedient.  Oftentimes when people are asked if they can help out with something, the common response is “I need to pray about it.”  What they really mean a lot of the time is “I don’t want to look like I am less Christian because I want to say ‘no’.”  Ideally we should have already been in prayer and are already sensitive to God’s call.  But by all means, we should pray about it as well lest we make the same error as Saul and depend on our own logic to say which is better.  The real sacrifice here… the ultimate sacrifice on our part is letting go of our own self-reliance and become completely obedient to God.  What is noble is not always what is best.

  Do you ever mistake Christian-like activity for Christian living? How do you measure spiritual maturity?  
  

   

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