On Having a Growth Mindset

My parents did a great job of instilling the importance of a growth mindset. I do not always live up to it, or remember to maintain it, but in my better moments I am able to sit and journal and strategize how to grow from particular events of my life and what autonomy I may have that I have forgotten about.

This all means that the phrase “Arrested Development” is more than a hilarious TV show. It was a phrase that has come to mean much to me, and is one I now recognize also applies to faith. But more on that later below.

“Arrested Development” literally breaks down as “to have stopped” (arrest) and “to unfold or blossom” (develop). Have you ever felt as though you have “stopped unfolding or blossoming”? It is a part of human experience to have some hiccups or holdups in our own personal “unfolding or blossoming.” The trick to have the internal resources or drive to overcome those plateaus. So let’s break down the process of overcoming those plateaus…

Recognize Arrested Development

Notice, acknowledge, own the fact that you have stopped growing, unfolding, blossoming.

Arrest the Envelopment

Set boundaries to the thing or person or group that is diminishing you, folding you up, withering you.

Restlessly Fight the Envelopment

Reject, push back, fight against what is keeping you from growing. This does not always have to be forceful, it can be as simple as making a decision to change your own habits or environment.

Seek Endless Development

Growth only happens by change, and change only happens through growth. This means that if you have stopped growing, it is likely that your life has not had any changes in it for quite some time and vice versa. So, instead of routinizing maintaining yourself exactly as you are now, why not routinize healthy growth or change?

Also, note that your conscious or unconscious decision to not change or grow will also affect your environment, your family, your workplace, your friends. As best as you are able, do not get in the way of other people changing or growing while also surrounding yourself with people that encourage you to change or grow.

Alrighty.

So we just talked about “Arrested Development.”

But what about Spirituality?

Is it possible to have “Spiritual Arrested Development”?

Of course it is.

Here Might Be Some of the Reasons You Feel Stuck in Your Faith

Have You Moved on to “High School” Yet?

¹¹ We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. ¹² In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! ¹³ Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. ¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (6:1) Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, ² instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. ³ And God permitting, we will do so.

Hebrews 5:11-6:3

The author of Hebrews, in 6:1, talks about moving on from “the elementary teachings about Christ” and then lists some of those basic teachings. If you are constantly hearing the same teachings over and over and over, then of course you aren’t growing! It is difficult to grow into healthy adulthood when still eating baby food! Perhaps it is time to branch out and study some of the other parts of the faith that you have not explored. Perhaps it is time to check out: contemplation, activism, the Christian mystics, the restoration of all things, emotionally healthy spirituality, interfaith dialogue, etc.

Have You Outgrown Your Mentor?

It is hard to admit, but sometimes it happens. Rarely will a community be more mature than its leaders, but sometimes people actually do outgrow their mentors. But here is the good news… Mentors do not need to be in our lives forever. You can be grateful for them and what they have done, but if you are becoming angry or bitter for them not being what you need now… then it is time to move on. Sometimes, mentors are in our lives just for a season, and that season is to help us get over a particular plateau that is their speciality, but it is not possible for someone to be a specialist in everything.

Healthy mentors are happy when you do not need them anymore because you can do what they do or when you are able to go beyond what they did. Unhealthy mentors will want you to be codependent on them for your whole life long. Jesus himself, was modeling a healthy mentor when he said,

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

John 14:12

That being said, I think Jesus was such a healthy mentor that we could never exhaust learning from him. It is for this reason that I own a small ikon of Jesus called, “Christ, the Teacher.” Let Christ alone be your ultimate teacher that stays in your life, the others are okay to admit help you just for a season or two and then it was time to lovingly move on.

Don’t Know Where to Look for What to Learn Next?

I probably cannot overstate how important it was for my senior pastor growing up to encourage me to go look at the primary sources themselves. When he did not know a potential answer, I remember him saying, “You know, Person X wrote about that, why don’t you check out what they had to say?” Rather than shutting down my curiosity or having me simply take his word for being God’s word, he encouraged me to go back to the tradition for myself. If you feel stuck, I would highly encourage checking out figures from church history that have already stood the test of time, get to know them well, let them become your mentors and refer to them as such. (One summer, I read as much CS Lewis as I could handle, then I chose to look up who he read and found my way to Athanasius and George MacDonald. Perhaps you could look up your favorite author’s favorite author?)

Are You Feeling an Obligation to be Faithfully Committed to a Stage, but Not Being Faithfully Committed to Growth?

Some systems are designed in their infrastructure and grammar to keep you at a particular level or kind of engagement. Think of a megachurch or a large organization. They may need someone to vacuum the carpet, but you know it is time for you to grow and move on into other responsibilities. However, they still need someone to vacuum the carpet. This may lead them to avoid talking about your growth, avoid creating opportunities for you, avoid talking about the ceiling with you because you deal with the carpets.

The same can happen in faith. A church may want you to keep coming for a particular reason because the church may not know what to do with you if you did not come in the role they previously had for you. A church that needs attendees will likely not be a church that sends people. A church that wants its rooms full of students will likely not train people to become teachers.

Faith is not about being “faithful” to the role expected of you by yourself or mentors or leadership, faith is about being “faithful” to the Ruach (that’s the Hebrew word for Holy Spirit) and in which ways the Ruach is inviting you to “unfold or blossom.” What keeps the institution open may not be what helps you to grow… and you have to choose growth.

Don’t Know What is Supposed to Come Next

It is entirely possible that your spiritual development is held back by other personal development.

Perhaps it is time for your morality to grow. (Read Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development or Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.)

Perhaps it is time for you to grow in your season of life. (Read about Erikson’s Stages of Development.)

Perhaps it is time for you to grow in your worldview. (Read about Graves’ Spiral Dynamics.)

Perhaps it is time for you to grow in your self-awareness and figure out what core needs motivate you. (Read Riso and Hudson’s book on the Enneagram.)

Should You Stay in Your Faith Community or Should You Go?

It’s likely that you already know your answer to this, in your head, heart or gut. Just listen to your internal compass. However, if they shame you for wanting to leave, then that tells you something is already off.

That being said… You may need to re-evaluate your reason for staying. “Why” you joined a community at the start may not be what keeps you there long term. And that is okay. I actually think it is possible to outgrow not just a mentor, but even a community. Perhaps at first it facilitated your growth as a person but no longer. This may mean that now you choose to stay for another reason, but at least now you consciously choose to stay while also consciously choosing to get better connected to the tradition for yourself and with other likeminded people. Perhaps this means that is time for you to change roles within the community, to change from being a student to a teacher, from mentee to mentor, if they will have you. However, not all communities have a growth mindset themselves and are simply content in their current arrested development. And so…

Perhaps it does mean that you leave. And this is not a bad thing (although some may see it as a “death” rather than a “launch”). But we should not expect to stay in preschool our whole lives, nor elementary, or middle school, or high school, or college… that would be odd and that would be rather painfully awkward. (In reality, this is exactly what happens when someone leaves a cult. They left because they outgrew it! They kept unfolding or blossoming, and chose to not be bound to their community’s form of arrested development!)

Listen to Your Own Internal Compass

Don’t necessarily listen to me unless when and where helpful.

As said above, just listen to your own head, heart and gut. Even if it disagrees with others. You must stay true to your own journey, your own path, your own faith experience and not live out someone else’s journey, path or faith experience that they have planned for you.

It’s okay. God is in all things and all things are in God. All God wants is for you to do the thing that helps you to blossom and that you help others to blossom.