We often use the term “spiritual immaturity” to describe Christians who don’t know enough yet. They need to expand their knowledge of Scripture. They need their doctrine corrected. But for the Apostle Paul the mark of spiritual immaturity within a community is not a lack of theological knowledge or biblical literacy. In 1 Corinthians 3:1-5 he is clear that the primary marks of spiritual immaturity are quarreling and rivalry.

The Corinthians have plenty of theological opinions on many different spiritual matters, and most of their opinions are completely wrong. But it isn’t the fact that their opinions are wrong that makes them spiritually immature (or “fleshly”). Rather, it is that they quarrel over them.

Having opinions and making judgments on things in life is a necessary part of what it means to be human. Paul is not asking them to stop making judgments and having opinions. What he expects them to do is to hold their opinions/judgments loosely. Paul wants them to realize that human judgments are always only provisional and secondary.

There is only one who has the final judgment and the last word: Jesus. This is the “secret ingredient” to spiritual maturity, to peace and unity within communities: all of our judgments have to be held with an open hand to the final word of judgment of Jesus. (Especially, for us, political opinions/judgments!)

One of our issues, though, is that we confuse our judgments with God’s judgment. Often, we act as if our opinion is simply God’s opinion.

That’s precisely how you create rivalry, quarreling, self-absorption, fundamentalism, and splits within the community.

Paul reminds us that we have “the mind/Spirit of Christ,” which is a mind/Spirit of humility, service, and love.

Here’s the extended quote I shared from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison in which he diagnosis the problem he faces in Nazi Germany as “stupidity.” We should hear Bonhoeffer using the term “stupidity” in its more technical sense: to be in a stupor, to be insensible, nearly unconscious.

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it makes people, at the least, uncomfortable. Against stupidity we have no defence. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved…

[Stupidity] is a moral rather than an intellectual defect. There are people who are mentally agile but stupid, and people who are mentally slow but very far from stupid…

…In certain circumstances people are made stupid or… allow this to happen to them… 

The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not mislead us into thinking that he is independent. One feels in fact, when talking to him, that one is dealing, not with the man himself [a person], but with slogans, catchwords, and the like, which have taken hold of him. He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very nature is being misused and exploited. Having thus become a passive instrument, the stupid person will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. Here lies the danger of a diabolical exploitation that can do irreparable damage to human beings.

But at this very point it is quite clear, too, that stupidity can be overcome, not by instruction, but only by an act of liberation.

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