What does it mean to be an adult?

True adulthood is defined by independence in thinking, self-sufficiency, contributing to the community, marriage, and raising children to stand on their own feet.  If you read that carefully, then you realize adulthood is in a serious state of fragmentation today.

The Church, being the bride of Christ, and the one in whom the Spirit of God dwells, has a role to further the kingdom of Christ, which includes what our Lord Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Christ came to redeem humanity, and He redeemed everything in it except for sin alone.  This means of necessity, there must be a Christian form of adulthood, and an initiation into this form of adulthood by the Church.

Independence in Thinking

With that said, when we consider adulthood, its main characteristic is having the ability to make correct judgments independently.  This requires an understanding of principles on which to base decisions and to make judgments about certain thoughts.  Our faith is immersed in stories from the Bible to the saints and martyrs to even our own congregations.  We are regularly immersed in these stories, BUT stories don’t comprise principles (they surely can lead us to comprehend principles when we reflect on them (and probably more than anything other form of writing or speaking), but such comprehension requires modeling.

This is where the Church comes in.  The pastoral ministry of the Church should model for us what it looks like to reflect upon the stories we receive in the Church whether from the Bible, or the saints and martyrs, or our own modern congregations, and thus the Church can lead us to grasp the principles on which our faith is built.

Sadly, the tendency is to continually go to others (read clergy) for ‘advice.’  But what often happens is that it really becomes going to the priests and having them make the decisions for us.  When the clergy do this regularly, it disables people from not having independence of thinking, and brings them to a state of perpetual childhood.  Such a state is spiritually harmful as I showed in the previous article “The Juvenilization of the Faith.”

Word cloud generated based on the words in this article.

The O-word: Obedience

Perpetual childhood leads the faith to be experienced as in the scheme of obedience/disobedience.  And thus, it will be unfulfilling.

A heavy emphasis on obedience is unhealthy because it puts people into a perpetual state of childishness. It is the characteristic of a child to respond to a command and to obey, but it is the characteristic of a mature person to do things out of principle and a conviction in order to live according to a specific way of life.  To your surprise, the word obedience is not mentioned that often in the Old and New Testaments compared to some other words such as “love” or “repent” or “turn.”  If you notice, those terms are about principle and conviction, not simple obedience.

Some will counter what I am saying by arguing that our Lord Jesus says, “become as little children” (Matthew 18:3).  Yes, indeed He said this, but it was referring to their innocence, their inquisitiveness especially to understand the world for the sake of the understanding itself, for seeking things for themselves versus what you can get out of them, in their gentleness, in their forgiveness, and in their fresh outlook on the world.

Certainly, He did not want us to be cripplingly dependent on others and overwhelm our clergy by not being able to make decisions on our own and going to them to make decisions for us, or not developing our discernment or judgment (as entire books of the Bible such as Proverbs and the Psalms exhort us to do), or to be self-centered like children.  He also said, “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

When He said to “become as little children,” He said that to show that there is something redeemable in children which is also preferable to the toxic ways in which grown-ups think and act.

Self-Sufficiency

The next defining trait of adulthood is self-sufficiency.  That is, adults don’t depend on others for their material needs.  I actually heard a story from a married couple, when they were early on in their marriage, they were looking for furniture, and the wife said to her husband that she wanted her father’s opinion on the matter (price, color, design).  It created tension between the husband and the wife, and between the husband and her father.  It was resolved, but needless to say, this goes back to judgment and discernment.  The wife was not raised to be independent in thinking.

Contributing to the Community

Another essential trait of adulthood is contributing to the community.  Increasingly, there is this misconception that education is work and is similar to working.  It is extremely annoying to see this thought in conversations between those still going through college and those in their mid to late 20s who are already in their careers or are being trained directly for work.  The two experiences are not comparable.  It usually comes to a discussion of ease and difficulty; but it is not whether something is easier or something is harder, or whether something is more stressful or less stressful, but the reality is the quality of the experiences is totally different.

In a career, others depend on your contribution.  But in education, you depend on yourself.  In a career, problems arise that have no textbook answer (such as how to teach elementary and middle school students using online instruction in the midst of a pandemic) that require creativity, discernment, and judgment to effectively execute.  On the other hand, while you are going to school, you can ask the teacher for help or be directed to sources to read if you come across a problem.  And ultimately, when you are in a career, if you are lazy, someone other than you will suffer whether your clients or your colleagues.  In school, if you are lazy, usually only you will suffer if you even care.

Marriage

All of these traits of adulthood converge in marriage.  Marriage integrates the other three traits into a meaningful relationship.  It is nothing less than how a man and a woman are to live with each other as an icon of our relationship with God.  In marriage, we live with an “Other” who will not easily conform to the images we might have created about marriage or a spouse, and thus we become transformed in learning how to accept certain things and transforming to become a better spouse.  This deepens our relationship with God because it becomes acceptable to us that certain things don’t go our way, and thus we don’t fall into despair over this, and we transform spiritually in the process.

Such a life develops a form of love called agape, which was closely associated in the early Church with apatheia, which is a trait of not being shaken or upset by things that happen to us; in short, of not becoming emotional.  This not becoming emotional allows us to truly love the Other.  We learn how to love and to be loved and that life of love transforms us, and this love inculcated into our children.  So agape and apatheiaare modeled from an early age to our children.  This begins their spiritual development early on.

But when all adults today (who are really children in grown up bodies because they were never initiated into adulthood) do is model emotional outbursts and angry reactions (whether in shouting or in crying), they model for their children how to be crybabies.  I unfortunately have been acquainted with many teenagers, young adults, and even older adults who are crybabies.  This is not a developmental phase, but rather it is the result of socialization (who you are around and what type of values you were taught (or not)).  It is so pathetic to watch and to hear about.  It is like a child who has missed the school bus and is told to walk home and cries about it (even though home is one mile away: a 15 minute walk).  I actually saw this at my school.

Such a state of being comes about by sheltering young ones from opportunities to make decisions.  It is easier not to let them, but then taking it easy while they are young makes it hard when they grow up.  Working hard while their young makes it a delight to watch them when they grow up.  What do you want to see?

Raising Children

There is nothing more terrifying than the thought of children raising children, but that is exactly what is happening today.  Self-centered crybaby grown-ups think they are adults, but they are not doing their children any service by being so because crybabies either spoil their children or abandon them.  Interestingly enough, the result is the same: destruction of the child.

Yet early Christianity had an orientation toward telos.  Telos is a Greek word that can be translated as purpose, end, or goal which guides current action to make that end a reality.  A telos is usually an end that takes a long time to achieve.

Modernity has no sense of telos except for a college education culminating in a career.  Everything else in life is guided by short-term impulses for gratification such as drinking alcohol to forget one’s life, eating for pleasure, and pursuing sexual relations solely for bodily gratification.  And for quite a large number of adults in the West, this is the cycle of life.  Nothing more is necessary; nothing less is acceptable.

But early Christianity applied a telos to every aspect of human life.  There is a telos for marriage; there is a telos for parenthood.  There is also a telos for friendship.

Years ago, I was at a retreat with my church, and I heard a father of three children refer to children as “the biggest curse in life.”  I was about 19 when I heard him make that comment, and it bothered me even though I had still not deeply delved into Christian spirituality.  I felt something was off in such a statement.  Needless to say, his children are some of the most polite, no nonsense, considerate people I’ve ever come across.  When they were young, they were not ill-behaved either.

Children are sent to give humans an opportunity to practice agape and to renew the world. Agape is love that is goal-oriented in seeking the good of another person.  Naturally, spouses and children are the best candidates for cultivating that type of love.  By cultivating it in a family, it is easier cultivated toward neighbors and society and thus fulfills the second great commandment of God.

The State of Adulthood Today

But wait?  There are a lot of “adults” in the population who don’t meet the criteria described above.  What do we call them?  Children?  Yes.  They are children in adult bodies, and I am not talking about those 20-somethings living in their mother’s basements playing competitive video games for most of the day.  I am also talking about successful CEOs, politicians, doctors, engineers, and even teachers who do well at work, and when they arrive at home they don’t know how to deal with their spouses, or inculcate values in their children, or even get a word in the familial discussion.  They are nothing more than agents to the bank account for spouses and children to squander.  That is not an adult.

Adulthood is not automatic; it requires initiation.  For centuries this was done through cultural rituals of initiation or through religious instruction or apprenticeship, but that began to fade when people adopted secularism as their way of life and the rate of this fading is increasing proportionally with the level of secularization.

The questions arise: Who will initiate?  And who will train?  Are the schools are doing it?  No.  Most schools in the United States can’t even educate students in the subjects they teach.  It is not only the United States, but other countries for that matter although it is not readily apparent.  Countries like Japan, who appear to be so advanced in education, are actually not so because they don’t take students who are disabled at all.  This skews their scores upward.  Japan also has some other serious societal problems such as karoshi (work related death due to over-exhaustion) and hiring companions to have conversations with (or even having robots fulfill this role).  If these three examples of not accepting disabled students, karoshi, and hiring companions (including robots) are not evidence of dehumanization, then I don’t know what is.

Initiation into adulthood has to be the role of the parents and must be supported and empowered by the Church, which has always provided instruction/apprenticeship in life and initiated people into the principles of our faith.  Whether this is done in the context of parish life or in a classical Christian school, it is the role of the Church community.

Mature Christianity

At the center of Orthodox Christian spirituality is the development of envisioning things a different way, that is, in the light of our Lord Jesus Christ’s Incarnation and its revelations about what it means to be the human creature made in the Image of God.

Christ did not come to save only boys and girls, or to even make good little boys and good little girls, but to save humanity as a whole.  The word salvation in Greek (unlike in English) has both the meaning of to save and to heal.  It is a rescuing by healing.  Such rescue means that there is a transformation of understanding and living out adulthood.

The West views adulthood mainly as the permission to consent for sexual activity, to gratifying all sorts of sexual and gustatory impulses (whether eating or drinking).  It is all self-centered and centered on the most animalian of impulses because of all the desires that humans have, eating and sexual appetites are the most widely shared with all of the lower animals.

Christ redeemed adulthood by revealing what it means to be an adult according to the purpose for which He created us in the first place.  It is to be centered on God rather than on oneself.  This centering on God causes us to change our vision and it leads us to consider others rather than ourselves; adulthood in Christianity is thus self-sacrificial, and it is defined by a rational agape.  But isn’t agape love?  Yes, but it is a rational type of love because it is oriented toward a goal rather driven by a feeling.  That goal is to seek the best for others and for them to grow in that goodness by the actions we take.  Such a love is demonstrated in such things as conversation, guidance, lending a helping hand, teaching, picking others up when they fall, or even calling to check up on them from time to time.  That type of love is purposeful (as in goal-oriented).  But it also transforms our character.

But that is not what you thought was love.  Love has something of desire in it, doesn’t it?  Yes, but that is another type of love, eros.  Eros is the type of love that moves something toward something else.  It is often defined as “desire,” but it can be a desire of the body (that is the impulses of the body) or a desire of the soul.  Desires of the soul are exemplified in things such as listening to poetry or classical music or being drawn to a person as person.  Eros can be bound up with agape in which case it is a perfect love.  Or, as is often the case, it may not be bound to agape, in which case it becomes an engine for self-gratification taking other people and things as objects of self-centered desire.

For more on that, you can read or listen to my article “Eros and Agape.”

What does all this mean?

Clergy often don’t know how to approach adulthood, but they know that the definition of adulthood currently lived out in the West is not acceptable.  This causes them to revert to a kid-centered version of Christianity, which may seem all nice and well, especially to parents who now realize the responsibility of raising their children in a “family-friendly environment,” but what happens when their children grow up?  They will be left with a very weak foundation, one that cannot support them.

Such kid-centeredness leads to stagnation and destabilizes generations of Christians.  It is no wonder, Christianity has ceased to be an intellectual and cultural force because for most churches, none of their activities are concerned with the things that make for a mature Christian adult.  Yet the early Christians were.

Some of the heaviest intellectual writings I have ever read that address such topics as the nature of truth and whether we can know truth, the nature of humanity, society, right and wrong actions, reality, time, the happy life, and how to reflect properly are early Christian writings.  If I were to mention these topics in church without saying where they came from, people would say that they are hearing new things, but the reality is that they are very ancient Christian things.

Such a tradition, one that is drawn from and centered on the reality of the Incarnate Christ is one that can answer the deepest longings, wonderings, and searches for meaning that the world is so hungry for today.  And had they never been abandoned for a “simple spirituality,” we would not have so many Christians and former Christians who are so dissatisfied with life.  They would be fulfilled, solid, satisfied, and wise in conducting their lives, contributing to the community, and raising the next generation.

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