By Jeff Scoggins

I was 14 years old and was gearing up to go away to boarding school. That was the only choice we had in Africa, and I wasn’t complaining. I had arrived at the age where I knew everything, so I was raring to get out on my own. Not that boarding school would give me much independence, but it had to be better than being home where I was convinced that life was much too restricted.

We had moved to Rwanda only a month or so earlier and were heavily involved in learning Kinyarwanda, the local language. I found it much more interesting, however, to play with my new friends who were the kids of the mission faculty at the Adventist university in Mudende. There were only a couple of boys my age but a whole passel of them slightly younger than me. I found that I enjoyed the company of the younger boys more because the older ones were into music and clothes and stuff that I found uninteresting. I much preferred climbing trees, getting dirty, learning to do handsprings, digging caves, and so on.

When the big day came for me to fly Kenya for boarding school all my friends saw me off. We said our good byes and promised to pick up our activities in December during Christmas vacation, a promise which I had every intention of keeping.

Boarding school was a new and different life to me. I had to learn the school culture much like I had to learn the culture every time I moved to a new country. Adept at the process by now I changed quickly to fit in. But I wasn’t conscious of the changes because they were not major. I didn’t think my way through the process, I simply felt my way through without understanding. The consciousness came several months later.

December arrived and the school emptied as all the kids flew off to various countries where their parents were serving as missionaries. I flew to Rwanda, my mind filled with the anticipation of meeting my friends when I would impress them with my new grown up life. By this time my parents had moved from the university to Kigali where my dad was working, so I wouldn’t see my friends until the weekend when we would drive to Mudende.

I prepared all week for the reunion. I carefully chose what I would wear. I consciously parted my hair in the new way I had picked up at high school. I thought about the music I would listen to with my friends. When we finally arrived at Mudende our truck was mobbed just as I had pictured would happen. I leaped out and my friends began talking excitedly. “Jeff, do you want to go climb trees? Want to practice handsprings? Our cave has filled in and we need to dig it out again!”

I looked at them like they were aliens. They hadn’t changed at all, but I became suddenly aware that I had changed. It had happened gradually over the course of many months so I hadn’t noticed the difference in myself and probably never would have but for the abrupt contrast of my friends. They revealed to my consciousness what had taken place in me ever so slowly and unconsciously. By the end of the weekend I was hanging out with the older boys listening to music and wearing cool clothes.

Thankfully I eventually outgrew that stage of maturity (or immaturity) also, but that childhood memory has never left me. It has taught me that the ways in which I continue to grow and change are not completely outside of my control. The minute-to-minute decisions I make, as mundane and ordinary as they may seem, actually profoundly influence how I grow and change not just in character maturity, but in spiritual maturity. (Is there a difference?)

I long convinced myself of the existence of a neutral category—choices I could make that would not impact my spirituality positively or negatively. But as much as I may wish for such a category it simply doesn’t exist. Like it or not we are captive to the relentless process of spiritual formation. We are either being formed into the likeness of Jesus or into the likeness of his enemy. And the fact of the matter is that whatever does not draw me toward Christ actually drags me away him, even if I don’t realize it.

This is one reason Paul gives us the list in Philippians 4:8. “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

In other words, positive spiritual formation comes only by making intentional choices toward that end. Negative spiritual formation comes through everything else. Negative spiritual formation is like gravity; anything that does not deliberately fight it inevitably succumbs to it.

If the movie or book that I choose to dump into my mind does not contain the Philippians 4:8 qualities, which will form me more into the likeness of Christ, then I must understand that it is going to form me in the opposite way.

Taken one at a time he changes worked in me by my choices will probably be imperceptible, but they will be changes nonetheless. The music and words I listen to, the purchases I make, my conversations, the things I wear, the friends I choose, the entertainment I participate in, every single decision works a change in me toward Christ or away from him.

Eventually an eye-opening moment will arrive when we will see clearly and suddenly the accumulated result of what we thought were neutral choices. And at that moment we will realize that those choices are what formed us into the likeness of what we have become.