Maturity

To choose a value that is questioned and doubted is to place oneself in the position of being doubted.

- Thomas Merton, Contemplation In A World Of Action

Maturity comes with learning to be able to assume a position of risk. Voicing an unpopular position. Willingness to assume the consequences of questioning. Secure in the knowledge that you may become scandalous to others. It takes maturity to do this with sensitivity.

Institutional Christianity of the 21st century does not promote this. It does not encourage this. It discourages this. It is a closed system. Nothing enters. Nothing leaks out. I am certain that God is not impressed.

The Word is filled with objections. Questions. Questioning. Awe. Engagement.

Christianity today rests on the laurels of infallible authority in one form or another, even when it is trying to be creative...in fact perhaps especially when it is trying to be creative.

Some would definitely consider any questioning to be an attack on regularity and observances and rules and customs, but it isn't. Even a genuine contemplative keeps regular hours.

You see, if I am the kind of person who cannot accept that my actual contemplative experience of God has authentic value unless it is validated by an entire range of both formal and informal legislative acts on the part of the church, then I prove that I do not experience my self as real unless I am certified beforehand by external and official approval.