“Adulting is hard. I just can’t today.” “Adulting. Horrible. Would not recommend.” These and other similar sentiments have been popular over the past ten to fifteen years. People don’t want to grow up. Growing up means more responsibility, and responsibility means work, and work means that I don’t get to have “me-time” and do all the fun things I want to do. Refusal to mature or mature with joy and dignity is evident throughout Western culture. Young men don’t want to take on the responsibility of a wife and children. They will use every excuse in the book not to try to find a wife. The red-pill masculinity gurus recite the numbers concerning the bias against men in family court, so men retreat to staying children the rest of their lives, afraid to take risks. Young women with the fantasy of having innumerable choices of men because of all the connections they have on social media refuse to “settle” for anything less than the top one percent of men and neglect to take on the responsibility of being a wife and mother. Men and women get on social media and give their sob stories about how having a job and paying bills is hard. They don’t know if they can take it. Adulting is hard.
Why should we care whether or not people grow up? Why should they “adult?” Because we were created with the purpose of maturing, growing up to be like God.
Writing to the Colossian saints, Paul says that the aim of his ministry for the church is to present every man mature in Christ (Col 1:28). Maturity in Christ involves being reconciled to Christ so that we are holy, spotless, and blameless before the Father. From one perspective, we are complete in Christ (Col 1:22; 2:10). But Jesus didn’t re-create us merely to be blank slates or give us a get-out-of-hell free card. Jesus reconciled us so that we could be truly and fully human. From the beginning, God intended that men grow from immaturity to maturity, from being babies to being fully functioning adults.
God’s intended maturity is not some “spiritual” aspect of life that is disconnected from “real life.” God is not “maturing our hearts” in such a way that we are unconcerned about being husbands, wives, children, friends, workers, and other things in the world. Maturity involves our relationship to creation, all these material things in the world.
From the beginning, we were created to be stewards of God’s creation, subduing it, ordering it, and making it more and better than it was originally. To do this, we must mature in our thinking and skills to be able to take on more and more responsibility. Maturity is growing in our skills and ability to self-govern so that we are able to take on responsibility of larger portions of creation.
When you are a baby, you can’t feed or dress yourself. You have no freedom. You must be cared for. As you grow older, you develop skills to feed yourself and dress yourself, and your parents say, “What a big boy!” or “What a big girl!” as acclamations of praise. This is what you are supposed to do. You must learn how to control your emotions and direct them toward what is healthy and productive. As you mature, you can handle more responsibility. You get a job. You learn to drive. You get married. You own a house. With each level of maturity comes privilege and greater responsibility. You are re-ordering the world, beginning with yourself and then the world around you, making creation productive. That’s what God created you to do. God wants to give you more responsibility, but you must be ready for it.
Why does God want to give you more responsibility? The more responsibility you take on, the greater your capacity for love and joy. Yes, there is also the equal and opposite capacity for greater pain. There is the pain of the loss of a spouse, friend, or child that hurts deeply. The potential for pain increases tremendously. But without taking that risk, you will never know the beauties of love and joy. You will never know God the way he wants you to know him without taking on the risks of mature responsibilities. The way we “enjoy God forever” is through maturity.
There are a lot of excuses out there about why you should not grow up. I’m not denying the challenges or the dangers. They are real. But maturity is your calling as a Christian. There is no excuse for you. God called you to fight the thorns and thistles of creation wherever they appear, whether in yourself or the world around you. Not pursuing maturity is sinful. Maturity will look different for each of us depending on a number of circumstances. Still, God’s call to develop yourself, your skills, and the world around you with all the attendant responsibilities is non-optional. Grow up.
