Learning is both passive and active, that is it happens without our effort, and it happens with effort. I think our children are great examples of the passive, as they "sponge" some Spanish phrase that takes us a week to figure out and a month to remember.
Lately, we have been challenged by various people in various ways to grow in our understanding of ourselves. Spiritual maturity is a worthy pursuit, and the book, The Emotionally Healthy Church, challenges us to consider the connection between emotional health/maturity and spiritual maturity. The two are connected and can't be separated says the author. After reading it halfway through, I see his point. In fact it seems very clear. If you have wondered why you have stopped growing spiritually, and why it seems so hard to leave old harmful habits behind, this book is for you. In fact I would suggest that all Christians could benefit from reading this book.
An interesting questionnaire rates your emotional maturity, and I was not too surprised to find myself in the "adolescent" range. I never considered myself to have issues that needed to be dealt with in the area of emotional health, but that is part of my problem. I never considered my emotional health, as I have always been fairly stable and even-keeled. But I do have the tendency to brush off and ignore things that I shouldn't. This is a problem area.
We are excited about combining our passions and skills with another family in the beginning of a new Ministry Initiative in La Paz, Mexico. It has been good to consider the importance of our backgrounds, personalities, paradigms and much more that we bring to the table when working with colleagues. So, we have looked at the importance of emotional maturity and discernment. When a group works together, they bring all of their background and the people in their lives that are impacting them at the moment to the table as well. The issue being discussed may be impacted by all sorts of things that you don't realize because of how complex humans are, and how we seldom reflect on why we are thinking what we think - Meta thinking some call it. A great way to dig deeper is to ask why questions.
Anyways, check out the book if this seems like something that would help you out. Also, there is a book by the same author on the same topic for individuals - The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero.
