Do you love God? Truly love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? If you answered yes, how do you know? Is it a feeling you have? Some sort of emotion? If it is, then you are in trouble.
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One of the shortcomings of the English language is we have one word for love, and that one word must describe our relationship with many people and many things (like friends, pets, and food). Rather than lump all these loves into one word, it would be helpful to dig into the nuances of love and its purpose in our life.
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There is no end to the study of God. He is Love and Mystery, and the depths of God will never be fully plumbed. However, we clutter our theology if we gather more and more non-essential theological minutiae and mistakenly either lose sight of the essential or elevate the non-essentials to the same level our essentials.
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What makes a person spiritually mature? Perhaps their number of years following Jesus? No. Maybe the amount of knowledge they have about spiritual topics? No. Perhaps the regularity with which they engage in spiritual practices? No.
All of the above are good, and they can lead to maturity when done regularly and relationally with God and others, but they are not the evidence of spiritual maturity.
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What comes to mind when you hear the word "deconstruction" as it applies to Christianity? Does it have positive or negative connotations for you? Sadly, in pop Christian culture, the term has been misused and misunderstood to mean, "I'm throwing away my faith and leaving God and the church!" This is not deconstruction.
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How does human free will integrate with divine will? For example, on a personal level, when you make a decision, how do you know if it's "God's plan" for you or not? What if you make the wrong decision? Does that mean Divine Plan A now becomes Divine Plan B because your free will messed up God's first plan?
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Chances are you do not see yourself as a fundamentalist.
Chances also are you might be one.
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When you pray, how do you imagine God's posture toward you? Is he busy and hardly paying attention? Is he leaning in and listening intently? Is he ignoring you unless you pester him again and again, like a toddler tugging on their parent's clothes? Jesus told a very strange parable about prayer to help answer these questions.
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What comes to mind when you hear the term spiritual warfare? For some, our thoughts go immediately to powerful encounters with demonic forces, like we see so frequently in the ministries of Jesus and Paul. For others, our thoughts go to all-night intercessory prayer meetings, or walking and claiming geographical territory for Jesus in order to tear down spiritual strongholds, etc.
However, the New Testament offers us a more complete picture.
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If someone were to call you "emotional," would you consider it to be a compliment or an insult? For many, it would be the latter. However, if we use the term in the strict definition of the word (relating to the emotions; having or expressing strong feelings), we are all emotional.
Or, we should be, including in our theology.
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Why do you go to church?
If you were to ask followers of Jesus this question today, many would say, "To worship God," or something similar. What's interesting about this response is they are completely missing the point of church.
The time, place, and socio-economics of our birth and upbringing highly influence the way we see the world. It even influences the way we see history. Most notably, our culture-glasses influence the way we see, read, understand, and apply Scripture.
How can we solve this problem?
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If you were ask followers of Jesus this question today, many would say, "In heaven." Ask the natural follow-up question of where heaven is, and you'll likely get a shrug of the shoulders or a finger pointing to the sky. This means, of course, when these same followers of Jesus begin to pray, they are directing their prayers to God who is "up there... somewhere" or "out there... somewhere."
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Spiritual maturity is measured in part by a high level of uncertainty tolerance. I know we sometimes think that the more mature follower of Jesus is the one who has the unshakeable certainty about God. Unshakeable faith in God (because we know his loving character) is good. Unshakeable certainty about God (because we have him all figured out) is not.
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