Why? What changes? How do we get past this so we can feel like we’re growing again?
I’ve taken the concept of the RPG as my model for understanding spiritual growth. No, not a rocket-propelled grenade. I wish that could serve as a metaphor for spiritual growth. You fire it at someone, it explodes, and spiritual growth splashes around everywhere. That would be awesome!
I mean a role playing game, usually a tabletop or video game where players improve their characters over time by doing things that gain them “experience points” (XP). In video games especially, at the beginning characters advance quickly. It may only take 10 XP to “level up” from level 1 to level 2, something that only takes one or two simple tasks. From level 2 to level 3 will take 20 XP, which are also acquired pretty easily. In a video game, it may only take a few minutes of play to reach level 4. Then it takes a couple of hours to reach level 5. Why so much longer? Because the number of XP required to level up doubles at each level. Getting 10 XP took minutes; getting 200 takes a while. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that getting to level 50 takes a good while.
It would take a very long time to reach level 50 doing tasks that only gain you 5 or 10 XP, so as the game progresses, tasks become increasingly challenging, but also increasingly profitable. Instead of killing angry fire-badgers for 5 XP a pop, you move up to invading hordes of angry fire-badgers or trolls or something that brings in 100 XP at a time. Increasing the difficulty increases the payoff which allows you to level up much faster than you otherwise would.
In case my nerd speak is unclear, let me change the metaphor for a moment: it doesn’t take long to walk around the block; it takes a little longer to walk a mile. It takes a long time to walk 1000 miles. However, you can run that mile in the time it takes to walk around the block. To go a thousand miles, you might want to employ a bicycle. Or a car.
Can we apply this to spiritual growth? I believe we can. First, I think it helps us understand why we go from feeling like our hair is on fire to being bored. After an initial period of rapid growth, it just takes longer to really improve. Moreover, it takes a really long time to improve just doing the same old thing.
So, secondly, I think we can speed up the process. We can gain more “XP” by changing the things we do. Increasingly challenging tasks are increasingly profitable. How do we do that in the spiritual realm? Here the metaphor becomes a little dangerous. Instead of looking for novelty, we need to look for depth. We don’t want to go looking for danger but for discomfort.
We will never get past the traditional spiritual disciplines. But we can let them take us to uncomfortable places, we can dig down deep, we can look for new ways to approach them.
Reading the scriptures will always be our daily bread. But for someone whose daily bread is literally Our Daily Bread, learning to read the scriptures for themselves will be uncomfortable and hard, which will make them grow. Those who already read the scriptures daily can still learn to dig deeper. And then put what you learn into practice.
I think the parts of the bible we like to skip hold the most treasure for us. In his essay "Christian Apologetics," CS Lewis said, "[T]he doctrines which one finds easy are the doctrines which give Christian sanction to truths you already knew. The new truth which you do not know and which you need must, in the very nature of things, be hidden precisely in the doctrines you least like and least understand." I believe the same applies to the books of the Bible. As I mentally scan the NT, Hebrews is the book I like the least. Which means Hebrews is probably the book I need to dig down on the most. It will be uncomfortable and hard, so it will probably benefit me more than studying Ephesians yet again.
Using the principle of “hard, uncomfortable things promise more XP”, let’s think about the traditional spiritual disciplines. We can all pray more than we do. We can pray longer. We can pray for people we don’t like. We can pray with people. We can meditate on the scriptures in prayer.
We should all be serving our brothers and sisters and neighbors. But there are easier and harder ways. We can always help more. We can do things that are more inconvenient. We can find ways to serve anonymously, because doing hard things anonymously seriously wounds our pride, which carries a lot of XP!
We should all give to the ministry of the gospel. Then we can give a little more. And a little more. Giving more than you’re quite comfortable with will offer more XP. Giving enough that you have to skip some luxury will gain you more still.
Of course, as Rankin Wilbourne points out in his excellent Union With Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God, suffering is the shortcut to spiritual growth none of us wants. It hurts, but it does carry massive amounts of XP. We won’t go looking for suffering, but it will find us all at some point.
In the meantime, we can focus on the spiritual disciplines. Any spiritual discipline offers a multitude of ways to dig down, to put yourself out there, or to go to uncomfortable places with Jesus. Look for them. If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments.
Obviously this could all be a gateway to terrible Pharisaism. Don’t do hard things so you can feel superior to other people. Do hard things to beat your flesh into submission. Do the thing that makes you uncomfortable because you want to be more like Christ. Go to the last place you want to go because you know you’ll find Jesus there.
And hopefully you’ll look back in five years and see that you’ve leveled up quite a bit.
You may also enjoy:
30 Years to a Better You
Going Deep
Resolving to be Holy
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