On Measuring My Spiritual Progress

Written some time back in response to a brother’s email observation that he ought to be a better person than he believes he is.

Dear Fellow Pilgrim,

Well, that’s all very dark and depressing to wake up to. To be honest, if I am thinking only about my own personal state, I might say something similar, though of course I would put it much more eloquently. J

However, that spiritual failure you have just described, bro, is not what I see when I look at you. Moreover, it’s not what you see when you look at your friends, or you would stay home, crack the first beer, and just keep cracking until your liver blew out like an overinflated spare tire. It might be what I would have seen if I looked at you with my jaded, knowing sixteen-year-old gaze (though probably not), but it wasn’t what I saw in you at twenty-three and it isn’t what I see in you now. It’s not that I don’t acknowledge that you don’t meet the standard you would like to meet — that’s absolutely certain. None of us does. But I also see that you have changed in some very definable and measurable ways throughout the period I have known you, and I believe you will continue to make progress in the realm of personal sanctification until the Lord takes you home. This is normal. Others always see the progress toward Christlikeness in us more clearly than we see the changes in ourselves.

The problem here is that we are not actually capable of judging ourselves at this point in the game, and Paul encourages us not to bother with those kind of “drone-level” Faithfulness Self-Assessments, only to worry about what we are actually doing and how we are living in the here and now. We have no idea how we will measure up in the Lord’s Final Performance Review because we don’t know the level at which we are “playing the game”, so to speak.

How many and how intense are my temptations? Am I languishing in the Temptation Minor Leagues or am I starting in the Spiritual Superbowl? How many diabolic attempts to shipwreck my life and testimony have I overcome, and how many touchdown dances are done in heaven on the seemingly-rare occasions when I do? I think of a God who called Lot “righteous” — please Lord, increase my faith! — who continued to show love to David even after he murdered Uriah, and who restored Peter after three denials without rubbing in what a total loser he had been.

Why? Because he is not judging me by the standards I might apply to myself, but with a level of grace and complete and perfect understanding of my needs, weaknesses, knowledge and limitations that I can’t even begin to accurately contemplate.

Above and beyond natural affection, we love our friends and family members not because we have no idea what spiritual wretches they really are (though we don’t with perfect intuition), but because we can see something of Christ in them already. The loyalty, the devotion, the service, the commitment, the will to encourage others, the arms that welcome without reservation, the spiritual intelligence, the willingness to sell out and be sold out for what matters, the levelheadedness in crazy times, and yes, the desire to be better, or else the process would not be happening at all. Christians are definitely all imperfect — I see that more today than I’ve ever seen it before — but they remain the finest and most desirable people in the world, a precious commodity despite all their flaws, you most definitely among them.

Love in Christ,

Tom