By Pastor Pete Bertolero

The Cause of Childhood Immaturity: Low Expectations

One of the biggest obstacles in bringing our children to early maturity is our ignorance about their capabilities at each stage of development. I heard someone once state that our children can be more handicapped by our low expectations than they are by their particular stage of development. Many times we limit our expectations based off of our acceptance of what pop psychology and pediatric communities tell us about our children. Their categories are usually revised annually, are unbiblical, and have succeeded in “dumbing down” the early maturity kids used to attain to less than 100 years ago. For example, were you aware that – · John Quincy Adams served in an Ambassadorial Post in the court of Catherine the Great in Russia, at the ripe old age of 14!
· In 1813, US Naval officer James Faragate assumed command of a captured British vessel. He was only 12 years old! He began his naval career at 9.

What is more, these are not examples of exceptions to the rule, but are typical examples of young adults of their day. Toddlers and pre-schooler’s were years beyond the youth of today. Willful two year olds and rebellious teens are more the creations of our modern secular approach to child training than to anything inherent in them. I know what Proverbs says about foolishness being bound up in the heart of a child. But that same verse tells us that the remedy isn’t to just remain passive and tolerant of their behavior because “they’re just children.” The rest of the verse says “but the rod of chastisement drives it away.”  Did you know that just a few generations ago, 5 year olds were holding down jobs?

When Does a Child Become an Adult?

Physiologically, our society recognizes that teens become adults at 12 years of age. Prescriptions are filled out with adult dosages beginning at 12 years, affirming that their physical makeup is entering into adulthood. Ask a buffet or restaurant if they believe 12 year olds are adults. Their menus show that the cutoff point for kids meals is at 12-13 years of age. They know if they don’t make this the cut off point, they will start losing money (the way my kids ate at 12 years of age, the restaurant lost money even though they gave them adult portions; they even put buffets into bankruptcy!). At 12 years of age, their breath starts smelling bad, they get B.O. and their socks need to be burned. Intellectually, researchers have found that their minds have reached maximum capabilities in regard to abstract thinking. Piaget documented in great detail that 12 year olds are able to think on the intellectual plane of an adult (they are capable of learning the same things adults learn). Following this model, algebra and chemistry begin in the 9th grade because the minds of 9th graders have developed to the place where it can comprehend the abstract concepts advanced by this particular math. Adolescence, as a stage of development, was not recognized or validated in world history until over 90 years ago. Art work from the 1800’s never show 12 year olds playing. Only small children were depicted as being at play. During Jesus’ day, when a young son became 12 or 13 years of age, he became a Bar Mitzvah, and a young lady a Bat Mitzvah. These terms meant that they became adults. Bar Mitzvah was a term that meant “Son of the Law.” From that period onward, the young man was looked upon as a joint partner with his father in the family business. He was brought to the front of the synagogue on the Sabbath and was called upon to read from the Torah. This was the signal to the community to expect adult behavior from the young man and for the young man to assume his rightful place a s a responsible member of the community. This is not so today. Because of the myth of adolescence, teens today are far below their created potential, and are affirmed in their prolonged immaturity by the secular fields of psychological, sociological and cultural theories. The west lacks the contributing factors of a century ago that brought about early maturity in the youth of that day. The transitional period advanced by the myth of adolescence is largely responsible for creating a culture that has lowered its expectations concerning the maturity levels of children and youth. As a result, children and youth are living below their potential and maturity level. The Apostle Paul did not recognize the transitional period of adolescence. In 1 Corinthians 13:11 he addressed only two stages of development: childhood and adulthood. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” Notice that Paul does not address any supposed intermediary period in this scripture. He saw the maturity process traveling along a continuum from childhood to adulthood. He also saw that the three areas of difference between childhood and adulthood: speech, thinking, and reasoning. This agrees with some recent findings along the lines of child researchers. 150 years ago there were contributing factors in society that supported the early maturity of children to adulthood. They were considered to be adults, were treated as adults, and expected to behave like adults. As a result, they rose to the level of these expectations in behavior and maturity. If a twelve year old was seen acting like a child, they were rebuked for acting childishly. This is proved true in almost every possible area of life, even today. Most people have a tendency to rise to the level of expectations of those over them. Performance improves when one is surrounded by people who believe in them and their capacity to rise to the next level of maturity or skill. Kids a century ago were better equipped to face life and be successful in navigating through the difficulties of life. They were taught from an early age that life was about work, not play. Play was not an expectation, nor was entertainment. A child was taught to be productive. Only a very small fragment of time was spent in play, because there wasn’t a lot of time left over after their chores and other responsibilities were done. Children learned about suffering and how to suffer. Most cultures, even today, are very limited in terms of the luxuries we Americans enjoy. It was like that a hundred years ago. Children understood what it was like to be hungry, in discomfort, and in pain. They were taught that life was hard. They expected hardship, and they were equipped to deal with it much more successfully than the youth (and some adults) are today. Children and youth today have an extremely low tolerance for frustration and inconvenience. This another by-product of the myth of adolescence, which has so pandered to the needs of 12-17 year old “children” that our whole culture is influenced by and imitates adolescent behavior, tastes, styles, and yes maturity levels. Too many of the men I know in the 30-40-age bracket exhibit the maturity level of a 15-year-old boy (according to today’s standards).

A Word about the Holy Order of Godly Men

The Holy Order of Godly Men was influenced by the early Christian revival amongst the Irish in the 4th and 5th centuries. These Christians desired an intensely holy relationship with Jesus, and were extremely repulsed by worldliness and compromise. More than anything they desired to live simple lives of faith and dependency on God. Many of these Christians separated themselves from the worldly influences around them by sojourning into the wilderness, which on the Emerald Isle, is mostly filled with greenery. Hence the name “Green Martyrs.” Like the Order of White Martyr (self-denial & pilgrimage) that eventually replaced it, the ordeal of the green martyrdom basically defined a lifestyle of self imposed isolation, spiritual discipline, and solitude. It was not the kind of martyrdom that shed a person’s blood (red martyrdom), but, nevertheless, was a renouncing of all worldly and material things, in order to live simple, slower paced lives. Soon missionaries were sent out from the Order of the Green Martyrs, and even the way they did missions spoke to their unwillingness to do anything outside a militant dependency on the leading of the Holy Spirit. They would get into a small boat, and after a word of prayer for God to guide them where He wanted them to go, they would shove off with out the benefit of paddles or rudder. Wherever the boat ended up, there they would engage in ministry to the people there assuming it was God’s will they do so. In this way Christianity spread amongst the Celtic peoples of Ireland and Britain.
The values of the green martyrs – spiritual discipline, pilgrimage, living separated and simple lives, solitude, quietude, and dependency on God, trial by ordeal, among other things, are the things that have gone into the forming of The Holy Order of Godly Men. The other colors of red and white in the knightly array also convey a symbolic representation of the other forms of martyrdom as well. These have been chosen as an antitheses and antidote for the worldly philosophies around us. They represent the directional process by which an entirely different kind of young Christian man and young Christian woman are shaped and formed amongst us than what we have seen in the last 50 years. Green martyrdom, like the white and red martyrdom, serves as a good example of what things need to be accomplished during each stage of life celebrated and marked by a rite of passage. Green martyrdom, symbolized by the Green cross, points to our sons and daughters need to be purified from the noise making, chasing after the wind culture they are being raised in. A young person needs to be led to make a break with the noisiness of the chaotic world around them so they can hear those things that are the makings of true wisdom. Set times for meditating on God’s word, and listening to God’s voice as they spend time in prayer out in the rough, alone, provide the necessary preparation for a young person to begin learning about who they are in Christ, what God’s will is for their life, who their people are and where their home really is.

Sons of thunder and daughters of lightning need to go through a series of transitional experiences in which they are tested and tried by hardship and ordeal to see where their limits are, and to see if they can break those limitations.  They need to be stretched and stretch out for something beyond their accepted limitations. That means that we, as parents must allow them to suffer the “ordeal” in order for them to grow, and in order for the heroic to be summoned out of them. They must be prepared for life, and life will hand them many ordeals for which they need to be prepared to face. This is how character is developed. Life is an engraving tool in the hand of God, who will use whatever is thrown at us to etch character deeply within our nature. Green martyrdom shuns the superficiality of our persona driven culture. May God, who is rich in mercy, give us wisdom and vision as we implement the imagery of knighthood and use it to provide directional process amongst our families, and may it bear fruit in the years ahead.

You are in our prayers and we ask you to keep us in yours.