It was an incredibly frustrating and exhausting place.
I was truly growing – learning to hear God clearly, stepping out to follow him fully, seeking the whole time to honor others, including and especially those who objected to my chosen path. More than ever before, I was thinking and acting like an adult. Yet important people in my life didn’t see me or treat me as an adult.
Even when I appealed to them, even when I looked in their eyes and tried to explain the truth, they could not hear me. From their perspective, my appeal sounded as foolish as if I were a six-year-old, pleading to take the car out for a spin. Why?
All of us were caught up in a system that does not count me an adult.
Prolonged infancies
God created us to grow to adulthood – spirit, soul and body. Scripture calls us to do just that. The role of leaders, like the role of parents, is to encourage and affirm this process, not to ensure that everyone except the leaders remains perpetually one-down.
Paul modeled the type of fathering that raises up adults – and releases people into adulthood. He wrote to the believers in Corinth, still young in the Lord:
I’m writing as a father to you, my children. I love you and want you to grow up well, not spoiled. There are a lot of people around who can’t wait to tell you what you’ve done wrong, but there aren’t many fathers willing to take the time and effort to help you grow up. (1 Cor. 4:14–15 MSG)
Paul instructed the Ephesian leaders to:
Train Christians in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all … fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. No prolonged infancies among us, please. We’ll not tolerate babes in the woods, small children who are an easy mark for impostors. God wants us to grow up. (Eph. 4:12–15 MSG)
Paul told the Colossian church:
We teach … so that we can bring each person to maturity. (Col. 1:28 MSG)
Sadly, our church cultures often do the opposite of what Paul modeled – even as we convince ourselves we’re doing it the biblical way. We may point to all the sermons, programs and conferences whereby leaders teach their followers to do what God says.
Yet how often are people actually being trained to trust and obey a system and its leaders, rather than to hear and follow God?
And how often do our systems enforce one-up/one-down relationships as the norm among Christian adults? That is, some adults are expected to look up to other adults (as small children look up to their parents) to know what to think, what to believe, how to live.
In many such systems, “clergy” are one-up to “laity.” Men are one-up to women. One race is one-up to other races. People who appear to have it all together are one-up to anyone who admits to having problems, crises, needs. The one-down are taught to seek wisdom and permission from the one-up. Only the one-up are counted as adult enough to hear God for themselves on important stuff.
Truth is: “Fully mature adults” take responsibility for their own thoughts and feelings, beliefs and dreams, words and acts. They seek the good of others by encouraging them to do the same. Yet how often do our church systems applaud and promote those who delight in using “power over” to dodge their own responsibility and to keep others “down”?
Such leaders demonstrate the opposite of maturity, even as they deny the adulthood of everyone else. Such tactics invert God’s intent and create a host of problems that ravage all involved. Such systems perpetuate spiritual infancy indefinitely, and punish those who try to mature.
Thus, in the name of biblical submission, whole groups of adults agree to being treated like perennial babes.
Embracing adulthood
Frustrated, exhausted, and not understanding what was happening, I asked, “Lord, why are certain people able to batter my boundaries relentlessly, no matter what I do?” (See: Case of the battered boundaries.)
When God showed me what was holding me in such an abusive pattern, I asked, “How do I change that dynamic? How do any of us get counted as adults?”
As I continued to cry out to the Lord, he made clear: “Coming out from under” one-down relationships is something I do by his grace. It’s part of cooperating with him, Spirit-to-spirit, in the maturing process he’s tailor-made for each of us.
It’s good and right for others to affirm maturity in me. But it’s not something I should look to others to grant me.
Yes, adults may refuse to give me that affirmation. Indeed, adults may deny to other adults rights and freedoms God designed us all to enjoy. Still today, people in power may utterly degrade and enslave both women and men. Yet:
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Heb. 4:13)
Our Lord is not blind, or impotent, or unjust. He knows that having power and being mature are two very different things. He never wields power abusively, and he sees it and hates it when people do.
He will hold those accountable who use whatever power they have, to try to keep other people “down.” At the same time, he himself will help all who are willing to grow up.
When I’m in Christ and he is in me, other people may not treat me like an adult. Yet they cannot prevent me from becoming one.
The moment I recognized that, I began to see how I was hindering myself, and how to change.
Accept what is your responsibility, refuse what is not
In my distress over the demeaning ways others were treating me, I took false responsibility.
I was caught up in a system that plays by its own skewed rules. In that system, I had never been treated like an adult, nor had the other women around me. We had been taught that “biblical womanhood” meant agreeing to be demeaned.
But when the chronic dishonor in my life erupted into outright abuse, I began to see what I hadn’t seen before, to question what I hadn’t questioned, to confront what I hadn’t confronted, to grow in Christ as I hadn’t grown.
Ah, but the rules said, to anyone really, but especially and emphatically to women: “You. Cannot. Do. That.”
And thus, many parental voices in unison cried, “Stop!” Some of the most parental voices belonged to Christian women who were loyal to the system and now counted themselves more adult than me. Nothing would convince them that I was following God.
And yet I kept trying to convince them. Why? Because something in me still didn’t think my adulthood “counted” until they counted me an adult.
The irony is: I wasn’t treating them like adults either. Remember, adults answer directly to God. Yet I kept trying to find something I could say or do to get them to see and affirm what was true. In other words, I believed it was up to me to get them to fulfill their responsibility. It is not.
Love one another
Eager to know and be known as an adult, I went about it entirely the wrong way.
In a nutshell: I kept trying to find some way to fit into the world of one-up, one-down.
But that world is not the church our Lord is building. Just before his death and resurrection, Jesus gave us the key for relating as his church.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)
This key is so vital and so “lost” in much of Western church culture that I explore loving one anothering in another post.
Relating adult-to-adult
As I sat before the Lord, undone by what he had shown me, he began to instruct me what to do in response. Here’s what he said to me. See if he says anything similar to you.
Keep cooperating with ME in the maturing process. That process is ongoing as long as you live. Yet, you can reach a place of adulthood in this process. In fact, something’s wrong if you don’t. I designed you to grow up spiritually, as surely as I designed you to grow up physically.
Stop agreeing to act as if other adults are your parents and you are still a child. Listening to wise counsel is vastly different from seeking parental approval. Honoring your leaders does not mean looking to them for permission to think, feel or act. Repent for agreeing with a sinful, hierarchical system that categorizes adults as one-up/one-down.
Do not agree that you must live your life one-down. Renounce the lie that says a seminary degree qualifies you for adulthood. Renounce the lie that women are too emotional and too easily deceived to be able to hear the Lord for themselves. Know in the depths of your being: Womanhood does not disqualify a person from adulthood. Refuse to live as if it does.
But also, do not agree to the lie that you’re to be one-up. Repent for every attempt you’ve made to live toward other adults as parent-toward-perennial-child. Beware of relying on a title or position to make you feel grown up. Beware of counting either gender “less than” the other. Refuse the lie that your adulthood hinges on other adults being one-down to you.
Instead, actively affirm the adulthood of others. Ask ME to teach you moment-by-moment, from your heart, to see other people eye-to-eye.
As I’ve begun to walk out what God showed me, I’ve seen a remarkable thing. Wherever people treat one another with eye-to-eye equality, we’re all affirmed in our adulthood. We all become more adult.
People caught in a one-up/one-down system may still pressure me to obey what they say. They may still treat me like a rebellious child if I do not. But I’ve renounced agreement with such systems.
As I relinquish all need for permission from anyone other than God, I no longer feel battered by others’ attempts to pressure me. When nothing in me is pleading for their approval, nothing in them has anything to push against.
Adapted from What About Women? A Spirit-to-spirit Exposé, updated 2021.
Image from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Volume 104, December 1901 to May 1902.
What about women – and the church?
- Waylaid by God
- This girl is a woman now
- Case of the battered boundaries
- The forgotten key: Loving one-anothering
- Women, prophecy and the church
- Leah no more
I really love this. It fits with some pondering I’ve been doing about adulthood as well.
Thank you, Rebecca! It puts so much that we were taught in a whole different perspective, doesn’t it?
This whole website is helpful, but this post is one of the most helpful. I’m single and disabled, which caused my old (Lutheran) church to disrespect my boundaries more than simply being a “woman.” The clergy at that church were flying monkeys on behalf of my relatives, who think I should obey them in all things.
Strangely enough, I now go to a church that is very strict, and many people think it’s more “abusive,” but the Catholic priests I have dealt with do not simply side with my gossipping relatives. I’m not so familiar with the Baptists, but strict churches aren’t necessarily more abusive than more liberal ones.
(I’m independent and have worked as a lab technician for more than 19 years, so I’m a very “able” disabled person.)
“Strict churches aren’t necessarily more abusive than more liberal ones.” I agree, Steph. And thank you for pointing out that disability can add a whole other layer to the dilemma of finding adult-to-adult relationships in the church.