[Part 4] Healthy Adulting 101

Kid Logic says, “Revisiting my spiritual beliefs is betrayal.”

Welcome back to the Primal Question Newsletter, and Happy Thanksgiving :).

My name is Mike Foster. If you’re new around here, I’m an Executive Coach who works with all sorts of world changers, from Navy SEALs to reality stars to nonprofit founders to executives of billion-dollar companies.

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Last week, we talked about Healthy Adulting as it relates to your heart and emotions.

Today, we’re diving into the next domain…

What Healthy Adults Know About Spiritual Maturity

Quick Disclaimer: I want to tread lightly here.

I’m not here to pick theological camps or tell you what to believe. I believe in the teachings of Jesus, and my faith is incredibly important to me. I respect wherever you’re at in your faith. Even if you believe something entirely different than me, I think you will get value out of the shift I’m exploring in today’s newsletter.

In this Healthy Adulting 101 series, we’re talking about a fundamental problem that undermines our lives: we all carry uninvestigated beliefs from childhood that keep us stuck.

Nowhere is this more common than with our spirituality.

Here’s the primary Kid Logic I see in this domain:

Kid Logic says, “Revisiting my spiritual beliefs is betrayal.”

In other words, “If I go back and question what I learned as a kid about God, faith, or spirituality, I’m being disloyal to my family and to my faith.”

Again, it doesn’t matter what domain we’re talking about. A crucial piece of growing into a healthy, mature adult is going back to our childhood beliefs and asking: “Is this true? Is this serving my life? Is this helping me solve problems or perpetuating them?”

Spirituality is the domain where we are most terrified to pull on that thread.

We’re afraid that, with one little tug, the whole sweater could unravel.

Sometimes, our faith communities reinforce this. They may tell us that doubt is dangerous. That questions are a slippery slope. That we should just stick with the status quo (often because they are operating under the same Kid Logic).

This leaves us stuck trying to use Sunday-school-level theology to solve adult-sized problems.

The real issue is we don’t allow our faith to grow up with us.

The truth is, little kids need simplistic answers.

Their brains aren’t developed enough to handle nuance. They often need things to be black and white. “This is good. This is bad. Do this. Don’t do this.”

That’s not a bad thing. Those guardrails serve kids well.

But here’s what happens: We never take the training wheels off.

As adults, our brains have grown and developed. We can hold nuance. We can wrestle with complexity. We can handle the reality that God is mysterious. But instead of letting our faith mature with us, we often remain loyal to the same beliefs we had at 8 years old, even if they aren’t true, and even if they are causing us harm.

Here’s how this showed up in my life.

I grew up in a pretty theologically conservative environment. The Kid Logic I absorbed was that I had to be perfect. That was my operating system: “God’s love is conditional. I need to get everything right to earn it.”

I spent decades white-knuckling my way through faith.

When I inevitably failed, I felt this crushing shame—like I’d disappointed God. Like I wasn’t worthy of love. And even into adulthood, that belief was causing me stress, anxiety, shame, and harm. It wasn’t serving my life at all.

I’m so glad that, instead of abandoning the faith that is so important to me, I stepped out of Kid Logic and into Adult Wisdom.

Adult Wisdom says, “Getting curious about my beliefs is maturity, not betrayal.”

Healthy adults know that investigating your faith doesn’t mean you’re abandoning it.

Reexamining your beliefs means you’re honoring them by allowing them to mature with you. For example, I took that belief about perfectionism, and I got curious about it, asking questions like: “Is that true? Is that even what my faith tradition says?”

I’m so glad I explored this because, as a Christian, it was vital for me to recognize that’s not what the Bible says at all.

The gospel—the good news—hinges on God’s grace.

It doesn’t say I need to be perfect and get it all together in order to earn God’s love or be good enough. It says that we are saved by grace so that no one can boast. That investigation didn’t destroy my faith. It liberated it.

Through this curiosity, I got a lot of heavy stuff off of me. The performance anxiety. The perfectionism. The constant fear that I wasn’t measuring up.

It was all lifted off of me because I got curious about the beliefs I adopted as a kid.

Now, please hear me loud and clear.

I’m saying: Get curious.

I’m not saying: Get cynical.

Healthy Adulting doesn’t need to be an angsty journey of blame.

Instead, it can be filled with joy, curiosity, fun, and community. These are all principles of Healthy Adulting. You don’t have to be beholden to these words and phrases society gives us. Meaning, you can get curious about beliefs without entering into some explicit, spiteful phase of “deconstruction.”

I’m not angry at my upbringing for the pitfall of perfectionism.

I find no value in critiquing the church to pull everything apart.

It’s obvious. The church has problems. There are a thousand things you could find wrong with it because the church is made of people, and people have problems.

The Healthy Adult, posture is to say, “All those things may be true of an institution, but what am I doing with it?”

I understand where people are coming from when they feel angry, bitter, and cynical. I really do. Many people have been deeply hurt by the church, and that pain is real. I empathize with that.

But here’s my question:

Is dwelling on that for decades actually helping you?

Spending all your time critiquing what other people are doing wrong doesn’t create a flourishing faith. It doesn’t help you thrive in life. It just keeps you stuck in anger and bitterness. Is that who you want to be?

Healthy Adulting shifts the focus from others to you.

It asks, “What am I doing with my faith? What are the pieces of my faith that I can apply to my day-to-day life that would be beneficial to others and myself?”

That’s the difference between curiosity and cynicism.

Kids need simple answers.

Healthy adults let their faith mature with them.

It’s okay to question. It’s okay to explore. Your faith is big enough for your curiosity.

Warmly,

Mike Foster

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