Spiritual Immaturity in Marital disorders

Another form of immaturity may be described as spiritual immaturity, and it may also show itself in various ways. There may be a kind of spiritual overdependency, which looks on God as a kind of over-indulgent “father figure,” and prayer as a sort of spiritual Aladdin’s lamp. This kind of attitude may get by while things are going well, but it will not sustain anyone in times of great strain and trouble because it is unreal. If it is present in a husband it may encourage him to be quite irresponsible and to take no thought at all for the morrow instead of the “no anxious thought” suggested in the Sermon on the Mount. The more mature spiritual attitude is surely what has been described as “the higher carelessness,” doing all that one can, with all the help available, and then being content to leave the results-or apparent lack of result-in the “better hand than ours.”

In addition to this “magic and superstition” kind of spiritual immaturity, there is often a kind that shows itself in very rigid spiritual attitudes, which tries to insulate those who have it from “the world, the flesh and the devil,” and to keep them in an ivory tower of exclusiveness, completely out of harmony with the Founder of Christianity, who could dine with publicans and sinners, and deliberately make His way among all kinds of people. The most common difficulty that such attitudes produce in marriage is that many such rigid people are not content to apply their ideas to their own lives (which of course they have every right to do if they see fit), but also try to impose them upon other people, particularly upon their marriage partners, and upon the children, irrespective of the feelings of the others.

Some difficulties of this kind are brought about “when, some time after marriage, one of the partners undergoes a “conversion” to a rigid religious sect; and in tremendous religious zeal, and considerable blindness to the implications of what he is doing, makes it his most important life-work to “convert” his partner and the family. The inner blindness is generally so great, and the inner conviction so strong, that even the most skillful and patient counseling may find no point of entry into his rigid formulations. The other partner may well be helped to carry on with patience and tolerance, quietly standing firm on her own convictions and being willing to “agree to differ.”

There seems to be a rich field of specialized counseling on this spiritual level, so that marriage counselors can have some really competent spiritually equipped authorities to whom they may refer people with such problems, if they are willing to be referred. But this is by no means likely to happen in the rigid cases, and those in which an unreal religion happens to act as the opium of spiritually immature people.

Tags: Counseling