Mature! Oh, Also, Repent!

When we are born our initial maturity is physical: our breathing, our capacity to focus. Then signs of cognitive and emotional maturity show up, and on we go, maturing throughout our days. A great part of maturity is the growing recognition of the broader picture, the reality of things, the reasoning that rings true. Let me describe a stubborn streak I had as a child, and recognized only in maturity, which, you remember, for a male is in the fourth or fifth decade of life. I remember being asked to do chores that I knew were mine to do. I have said before one of these was to put out the trash.

My mother would point out the kitchen trash receptacle was full and needed to be emptied. What was it in me that stubbornly moved to a mode of protecting my ease and avoiding my task? The selective hearing was handy. I could hear the TV but not my parents’ reminders and instructions even though they were at about the same volume. Rebellion kicked in, which started with ignoring the order. Then bargaining, I would say, “When the show’s over, please” or “Next commercial, okay?” Sometimes I would pull these delays until my parents were really adamant with me and I was in trouble and would lose privileges, or suffer some other kind of punishment. I hate looking back at that. Only much later did I realize how foolish it was.

With maturity, I recognized there is a good reason to empty the trash. The reason for it is that it is full. To empty it allows the convenient, continued use of the receptacle for the rest of the day. The reason is I live in a family system which is a blessing, and all of us have roles and contributions. The reason is that no one in the family likes an overflowing trash can in the house: we do not want to live among the garbage. See there?  See how reasonable? I knew all of that. It was only my rebellious streak that caused the back-and-forth with my mom like some kind of irresistible sport of resistance. The mature and responsible one does the work that needs to be done. The surly child is the one who works harder at avoiding work than doing it.

I have lumped all of this into the topic “maturity,” but really there is more to it. Humans often need more than the mature use of reason to do what is good for all. Humans often need conversion. Sometimes a full change happens when the shift promises an obvious good. Sometimes change only happens when not changing is convincingly more painful than conversion would be. This can come in the mild dynamics of growth and life, or it might be in cases of very destructive dynamics. For example, when a person dependent on a mood-altering chemical such as alcohol is resisting recovery it is a powerful resistance. Addicts forcefully protect the status quo, to continue their use of the substance or other addictive behavior. After a time, a shift might come, a pivot toward recovery. Such a pivot might not come until the one who is chemically dependent is in such pain that it is clear: continuing in addiction will be steadily more agonizing and hopeless than getting help out of the cycle.

I don’t know why the human being is so resistant to the reasonably good, to healing and wholeness. I am acquainted with such resistance. Have you found this to be so for you? With this in mind, we can better understand the harshness we find in the books of the Hebrew prophets in our Scriptures. This Sunday’s lesson from Zephaniah is a good example. The kingdom of Judah has long been ignoring its own destructive behavior. The nation has been deaf to the fate of the northern kingdom. Samaria had fallen to the Assyrian Empire in BC 722. Their prophets voiced warnings about spiritual unfaithfulness, worshiping foreign gods, and indifference to matters of justice and compassion. They fell. In the decades that followed, the tribes of the southern kingdom, Judah, went on with similar tendencies and their own prophets warned them. But Judah stayed blind to their own decay and diminishment, rationalizing that their brothers in the north did not have the right stuff. They told themselves the north did not have Jerusalem, they did not have the Temple and all the ritual securities. “We’ve got this!” they boasted when all they really had was denial. They stayed clinging to their present sloppiness even though Babylon was coming for them.

Zephaniah had some clout, a fourth-generation offspring of King Hezekiah, but he still could not get through the stubborn streak. Listen to how direct he is, delivering God’s warning, pointing out that they are sitting on the final leftovers of what they once were, acting like they still had it all:

Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is at hand;
the Lord has prepared a sacrifice, he has consecrated his guests.
At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people
who rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts,
“The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.”  —Zephaniah 1:7, 12

Can you see how deadly complacency is? We use rationalization to blind us to signs pointing to the need to convert. Laughing it off blurs the need to change, Like the fun message on the cocktail napkin says, “I’d rather be a good liver than have one.” We’re okay: the status quo is the way to go, right? Or is it? Zephaniah blasts away at denial:

The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast;
the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter, the warrior cries aloud there.
That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish,
a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry
against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements.
I will bring such distress upon people that they shall walk like the blind;
because they have sinned against the Lord. —Zephaniah 1:14-17

When the messenger brings bad news, it is not the messenger that is bad, and really, not even the message. It is not the sender. It is the recipient that clings to the maladies. The regrettable tendencies that accompany refusal to correct are bad. Immaturity, stubborn rebelliousness, blindness, and denial: we drop these, and we move on to metanoia, transformation, conversion, and healing.