Back in 2021, I was hard at work entirely revamping this website. Revamping it is actually understating it: I was rebuilding it from the ground up. During that process, I spent a great deal of time revisiting my blog. There were thousands of articles going back over a decade. As you can imagine, more than a few articles were pretty cringe-worthy. I was still a fairly new Christian back when this began. As a new Christian, I didn’t have the benefits of time and experience sitting with and pondering ideas. I had youthful exuberance and delight in discovering ideas that were new to me—even if many were very old ideas indeed.
I was still fairly immature.
As tempted as I was to delete these old articles, I didn’t. I kept most of them. Why? Because they encourage me to see how God has been at work in my life since all this began. I’ve become a better writer, without question. But more importantly, I’ve grown in my thinking and experience. I’ve had time to wrestle and live out truths and concepts I only knew in a theoretical way, as my youthful zeal has been somewhat tempered by wisdom and experience.
Cage stages, immaturity, and whiplash
I know I’m not alone in this. Many of us, when discovering and embracing new-to-us ideas, fall into what some have called the cage stage. We read a few books, listen to a couple of sermons, or watch a bunch of videos online, and fall in love with an idea. We are excited. So, in our zeal, we turn every conversation into a passionate defense of a belief or concept we don’t fully understand because we haven’t had time to live it out.
The same is true when we become disenchanted with an idea. And this happens when the cracks in its foundation begin to show, or those we saw as heroes of the faith are revealed to be frauds. In our disenchantment, we begin reacting against what we may have once advocated for, sometimes whiplashing toward an opposite extreme.
We’ve all been guilty of this at one time or another. (And if you’ve not yet experienced it, just wait a little longer.) It’s part of our (sinful) nature as human beings. It’s what utilitarian mindsets and social media algorithms reward. Fast, loud, and angry wins every time, especially when it shouldn’t.
But it also leaves us with regrets. The Internet is mostly forever, and our immature choices will always be available for anyone to see.
Remember and embrace the uncomfortable for what it is
I was tempted to delete many old articles because they were a bit embarrassing. Some weren’t necessarily wrong, but they don’t reflect how I would communicate today. They have all the marks of a younger me wielding my mighty theological hammer of justice and sometimes getting in the way of God’s grace. Some are outright failures, where I could have benefited from someone smacking me on the back of the head.
But something as silly and relatively inconsequential as a bunch of old articles is also a gift to me. They are a reminder that I am, in fact, maturing. I’m a better writer, yes, but it’s more than that. It’s in every area of my life: in my marriage, my relationship with my kids, and the way I work. Lots of time has passed, and with it has come lots of failure and lots of work—Spirit-empowered, faith-fueled work, but work nonetheless. While I’m far from perfect, there is some tangible progress.
That’s why I kept them. In a sense, they’re not unlike the stones the Israelites carried out of the Jordan and used to build a memorial—a tangible reminder of God’s faithfulness to them (Joshua 4). And I need that reminder, even if it’s not about something that God did on so grand a scale. We all do.
While whatever points to our past immaturity will look different to each of us, we all have it. And we need it because, in the moment, it’s impossible for us to see how God is maturing us. We need time and distance to see it. We need reminders of where we’ve been to see where we’ve come as we seek to follow Jesus. So what comes to mind for you? Whatever that thing is, you don’t need to linger over it, but don’t ignore it either. Just remember it for what it is, and thank God for how far he’s taken you.
Thanks for a wonderful look at what we all have to face. It’s so tempting to want to erase the past, but we need the reminders of where we have come from and how far God has taken us. As I approach my 64th birthday I can rejoice that God has used my past failures and immaturity to grow me in so many ways. Thanks for the great writing and encouragement. You are much appreciated.