Tonight I started a 10 week class at my church called “The Measure of a Man”. It’s a small class of about 10 men and I decided to take it so that I could get to know a few of the men of the church in a more intimate setting. I’m not sure what I expected exactly but I quickly noticed that it was different than my undefined expectations. Now some may assume when I say ‘different’ that I intend some negative connotation, however I assure you I mean no such thing.
I spent the evening with this small group of men learning about Spiritual Maturity. The course work itself seems to be sufficient to accomplish the task, and the teacher did a wonderful job facilitating conversation, interaction, and participation. We learned about “Paul’s Maturity Profile”, taken from 1 Tim 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-10.
From those text, the course extrapolates twenty points to which a mature Christian would adhere. These maturity traits range from Not Given to Wine and Husband of One Wife to Prudent and Not contentious. Of the list of twenty, I found that I match exactly three traits – I am not given to wine, I am a husband of one wife, and I am not a new convert. I should like to take some bit of pride in having three of these traits however in doing so I violate several others, not to mention the fact that although I am not given to wine, I consider myself a gluten and by not being a new convert, I would think I should have by now obtained more than simply three traits from this list, leaving me with only the one left to be proud – I am still the husband of one wife. My wife considers this a virtue to her credit and not mine.
