A Jewish woman shared this recently on a religious forum I use now and I found it helpful. If you haven’t already encountered Brian McLaren’s work perhaps you’d find interesting too.
“I have long had this vague idea of stages of spirituality, similar to the cognitive stages presented by Piaget, or the moral stages presented by Kohlberg. Recently, I found an author, Brian McLaren, who did a stupendous job of taking my vague idea and bringing it into clarity. The four stages he presents are:
Simplicity – the black and white, true or false, right or wrong religious orientation that young children actually need at their level of maturity.
Complexity – the stage most adolescents go through in order to adjust their beliefs to the more complex realities they are becoming conscious of.
Perplexity – the stage many adults enter into where they realize the significant shortcomings of their religion (contradictions, moral shortcomings, scandals, skewed values, contradictions with known facts). During this stage, they often encounter pushback from those in their faith who perceive their questions and doubts as threatening, and they feel pushed out. It is in this stage that some people opt for agnosticism, atheism, secularism, or simply converting to a more tolerant religion.
Serenity/Harmonization – in this stage people embrace their doubts as part of their faith. They become less focused on right belief, and more focused on loving others.”
I find it helpful in understanding why people of the same faith can vary so much in the way they hold it. I’ve wondered why some are moved by their faith to profound insight into our human condition and cherish life while others seem to hold it in a superficial way that seems to infantilize them. If there really are natural stages to spiritual development that would explain a lot. But you’d still hope that those who get stuck would help to progress.
I think you will find many variations on what constitutes spiritual growth. Within the URC in England they have been talking of a scale from minus 10 (Depraved and ignorant) to plus ten (Sainthood and secure). The idea being that we are all somewhere between the two, and should be aiming for the plus 10. I have my reservations about whether it is both fasable or hepful/
I think thre is a tendency to talk about growth in therms of wheening from milk to more substantial theology., but always there is a emhasis of growth and a fear of stagnation (encouraged by Sripture)
The question that underpins all this is whether there is actually a goad of uniformity that all will fit into. It almost reverts back to the “Black & white” starting point of McLaren.
Perhaps levels of faith are part of God’s creation? Paul would certainly suggest that we have different gfts and levels of faith, but how they are either achoeved of given would depend on your understanding of God’s grace and sovereignty. I get the impression that Paul looked on it as “You have what you have” and to make the best of what you have rather than filogging the dead horse of change.
Its not so much whether we can, or should grow as to what level is right for each individulal rather than suggesting a goal for all. There have always been “saints” and “sinners” with an imaginary line betwen the two, but I am less convinced that sainthood is a viable goal for everyone. (Ignoring the view that we cannot do anything at all without God, for now)
IOW there is a level that might fit one person, but be untennable for the next,
God wolud seem to have levelled the playng field with the Passion of Christ. If perfection is actually impossible, perhaps it is not a sensible goal?
It seems to me that what motivates this guy is what I see motivating a lot of you, a desire to be inclusive and service centered albeit without watering down your own tradition.
I wonder how many here are already familiar with Brian McLaren? In addition to being an author he had also been a pastor. Here is the blurb about him on his website:
ABOUT BRIAN
Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for “a new kind of Christianity” - just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. He is an Auburn Senior Fellow, a contributor to We Stand With Love, and a leader in the Convergence Network, through which he is developing an innovative training/mentoring program for pastors and church planters.
Obviously he has been a prolific write (also taken from his website):
Ok - after glancing through all McLaren’s books you put there, I now realize that not only have I heard of him, I’ve actually read one of his books! (“Do I Stay Christian”). So I feel a bit silly after posting my “Ever heard of this guy?” query over in the private political thread. I remember now it was a really good book too.
I wrote to the guy through his website and asked for a recommendation from among his titles. I steered him to where I read about it elsewhere as well as to where I shared it here. So with some massive luck maybe he’ll pay us a visit.
And if I’d had your childhood I’m pretty sure I’d have stayed Christian too. The crux move for nons and borderline nons is the move from level 3 to level 4. I’m glad to finally have gotten past the place.
This came about from his observation that helping people in psychiatric counseling often resulted in either joining religion or abandoning religion. The first and third stages being non-religious and the second and fourth stages being more religious, means that progression to a higher stage would give results in agreement with the changes he observed.
And yet this forum exists almost entirely to promote scientific darwinian theories that contradict tue bible theme, history, and family lineages…where is the faith there?
Just to comment on this part of your post, while I think evolution was a huge part of the purpose at the beginning, I think the emphasis has morphed more into the issue of climate change and skepticism of science, and perhaps (this is just conjecture) will evolve further into the role of science in society and how best to cope with the attacks on science from the political far right. That is a fairly US centric problem at present, though has some international relevance as well. It is getting tougher being a scientist these days, and evolution is becoming a minor issue in the mix. What do you guys think?
I would have said the emphasis on evolution had been motivated to help Christian families get past conflicts caused by a too literal reading of the Bible. There is no reason to assume the Bible is a compendium of empirical data and every reason to see it as the kind of narrative which can enliven what we feel about the world, ourselves and God.
I wrote to Brian McLaren to see if he’d recommend one of his books for me in my situation as a jumping off point for exploring his writing. Not sure I’ll hear back but over at Religious Forums the Jewish woman who started the thread I shared had also written him and he told her he was currently working on book that applies his stages of spiritual development across the world’s traditions. I think that would work best for me.
My friend who shared the table said it was in an appendix at the end of McClaren’s Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working And What To Do About It which he had read. He had been a Christian but I think you would say he deconstructed. It seems to me that those who go through that often become the most bitter of atheists, and almost irrational in their devotion to rationality.
This is interesting to me as I have observed that most Christians seem to regard the mystical with suspicion bordering on revulsion. And yet you say Peck regards his fourth along with the second stage as being more religious. I think you and I share some caution toward the church because of its being subject to all the same bad qualities of any large institution. Of course one can delude himself in introspection but then so too can one delude himself thinking that everything will be equally certain that one can build to using logic and reason starting from doctrine that carries the instiutional stamp of approval.
But I think it helps to see all these stages as on the same road.
Youseem to have fallen under Adam’s propoganda. Just because we do not take Genesis 1 litterally does not mean we have to throw everything else out as well. In fact i am more bemused by the fact that most people here seem to take the Garden story litterally when there is as much contradiction of science, if not more so within it.
Where is faith?
Faith defires all logice, despite certain protetations to the contrary. It picks and chooss which data to accept and how/ Those with a scientific bent just ignore anything that they percieve contradicts science. But, how a magical tree, or two, talking snakes and a visible God fit into this view I have no idea. Of course, sin has no scientific opposition so ithere is no conflict.
Edit.
But when you start questioning the existence of death, or the reason for it science might have a few words to say.
That does seem true in the U.S. here anyway! After having read lots of Rohr’s books, I seem to be cured of that - if I ever had the disease. Now my personal challenge is to try to not hold all their detractors with suspicion as the ones who don’t get Christ and not even the Bible.
Except they don’t. People here are open enough to trust people who have actually studied the Bible and can apply the historical-grammatical method (with some critical aspects) and can see that the things that YEC picks out to justify holding to a young Earth and just that: things picked to take literally while ignoring other things, making a pick-and-choose theology rather than a consistent theology.
They also prefer to look at what the text actually is and rather than say, “God had to do it this way!” they are open to asking “Why did God do it this way?” – which allows seeing the richness of the text. I think I’ve used this example before, but if you recognize that Genesis 1 started with the general Egyptian story of creation and heavily edited it and read it as an ancient Israelite would have then there’s enough theology in the first three (Hebrew) words for a fifteen-minute sermon . . . but if you insist on reading it out of its context and as something composed in modern English most of the real and deep theology is lost. That last is one reason that many good Christians reject YEC: it throws out most of the message contained in those scriptures!
Just a few notes on what is lost doing it the YEC way in Genesis 1:1
the ancient Israelite audience would have expected that a battle is coming and God would need helpers
there is just one God, not gods
God is the focal point of the story
The account as Moses wrote it set up expectations, then turns those expectations on their heads, and that’s where the real theology of the first Genesis Creation account comes from. It is also a literary masterpiece – something the YEC view tosses in the trash – utilizing two different literary forms at the same time while using them for a purpose I don’t think they’d ever been used for before.
Besides that, there’s at least one of us here who isn’t interested in promoting anything “Darwinian”; my “science” is the study of ancient texts, which has come to focus pretty much solely on the ancient Hebrew literature – which is why when you go at it with people about Darwin, what I really want to say is, “So what? The text doesn’t care about Darwin; it doesn’t care about science at all because science was not part of the ancient Hebrew/ANE worldview!” You and others insist that the text not only cares about but is intended to teach science, and I find that ridiculous, on par with the people who insist that the song Puff the Magic Dragon is meant to lead people into using drugs!
Where is the faith in reading them literally as though they came from the journal of the grandfather of a friend, who was an objective observer? Where is the faith in ignoring what the context and grammar and vocabulary all really say?
Of course not – “empirical data” was not part of the ancient Hebrew/ANE worldview because it wasn’t involved in their definition of “truth”. Truth didn’t lie in details, especially not every little detail, it rested in the message of the story; authority didn’t come from being historically accurate (they didn’t even have that concept) but from the source – an idea we run up against in the New Testament where people are amazed that Jesus taught with/on/from His own authority [BTW, when in Matthew we find Jesus saying, “But I say to you…” He just claimed to be God: He asserted that He could make pronouncements from the same authority held by YHWH-Elohim].
The irony being that a lot of the practical, grass-roots approach to scripture in the context of worship is mystical or borders on it; a lot of it depends on feelings spiced by a touch of rational thought. That’s what turns a lot of scholars to saying, “Well it can’t really mean that…” about some text and so our modern translations try to force Hebrew and Greek words to fit Enlightenment dictates.
As an example, the radical reformers reduced Baptism to a ceremony done by humans that had only human results. One insisted “It’s only water!” – to which Martin Luther said, "Not at all – it’s water plus the Word and explained that it fits the Incarnation that God uses earthly things to accomplish heavenly tasks. That’s mystical, really, that what looks like merely getting drenched in water is far, far more.
I think ritual helps unlock our very human potential to experience the something greater which is in all of us and which we are all a part of. Mysticism as Evelyn Underhill speaks of it is something like the way we all experience nature when we’re out in it, by entering into it empathetically. The mystic knows reality the same way. It is in us and we are in it. It isn’t a way to practice science but it is a way to encounter reality.
