System #27: A Gauge of Spiritual Maturity

I've been obsessed with understanding life, and through that obsession, I've found my way through numerous religious texts, from The Bible, to the Bhagavad Gita, to the Quran, and more. I've talked to numerous people about spirituality and religion, and through all that searching, I've found the cleanest metric for gauging one's spiritual maturity.

It's not about how strictly we adhere to our religion. Or how much we give and serve others. Or how honest we are. The simplest gauge is how easily we get offended.

The simplest gauge is how easily we get offended.

This concept is best stated in the book The Bait of Satan by John Bevere (a book I cannot recommend enough). He describes a greek word, skándalon, that has been translated to mean "offense" in our Bibles/texts. However, that Greek word encompasses more than the simple concept of offense, it refers to the part of a trap that gets triggered once the bait is taken. It's the mechanism by which an animal gets imprisoned within the trap. Offense is that trap, since one who is offended acts out of revenge, defensiveness, anger, or hurt, etc., they, through their actions, attempt to trap others by creating more offense. In that moment, they no longer serve God (or any higher power) but are deeply in the grasp of Satan (or our selfish ego and pride).

Any servant of God (or any higher power) should practice the ability to walk through a world loaded with these traps of offense without taking the bait. Any offense fired towards them through their egolessness then gets purified. They through their presence purify the earth – like salt.