Have you ever heard of James Fowler?
He is a psychologist who looked at things like the way
children grow up and go through different stages and decided to take that
research and look at faith.
What he found was that there are six stages, or ways of being
faithful. There are technical terms for them all, but let me try to say it in a
common sense way for him.
Stage Zero is the primal faith. Think our ancient ancestors,
who thought in black and white. You are either safe or not, it is either
raining or not; and it is God’s fault.
Stage One is the intuitive projective; which simply means we
think God is a little more imaginative, but we mostly think God is just like
us.
These are the two learning stages, the ones that kids have
when they think about God.
Then we move into what he calls the Mythic Literal stage.
This is when we start to apply rules of right and wrong. But they are still
very black and white. We take everything literally though and we expect that if
we pray to God, God will answer.
Stage Three is the Synthetic –Conventional stage. This is
where we put things together, and start to believe what everyone else believes.
We go to church, and generally adapt our beliefs to the majority we find around
us. This is where most people stay.
Stage Four is the dangerous one… this is the Individual
Reflective stage. What that means is that something happens to make us question
everything, maybe a death, or divorce, and we stop believing what we have been
taught. It makes us look inward and be critical.
Stage Five is Conjunctive Faith. It means that you start
putting the pieces back together. You look at spirituality and other faiths and
read the Bible and decide for yourself what you believe.
Finally, Stage Six brings us to Universal Faith. Which
Fowler claims is only reached by the very few; Ghandi, or Mother Theresa, for
example, where nothing matters except love.
Let’s put all this a different way… when we are a child we
think like a child, when we grow up, we ask too many questions.
The thing about these stages is that they are fluid, they
can happen anytime, and to anyone, anywhere. We all have those moments where we
blindly trust, and we all have those moments where the trust is broken.
The problem comes when people do not realize that each thing
is a stage. It is a place we are when life has put us in that place. And it can
change. This works either way; one can be totally convinced they believe
everything just the way it is, and something can happen to shake that belief.
Or one can be totally convinced there is no God, and then something goes and
makes you think you might be wrong.
Life is like that, faith is like that.
What Fowler does is to reassure us that each of us responds
to God a little differently for a variety of reasons. What we believe at any
given time is a reflection of what has happened in our lives so far.
I am glad for this, because it means I am not necessarily
stuck. It also means that when I am older, I will probably be wiser. I had a
friend tell me that what I worried about at 30 would not even bother me at 40;
and he was totally right. My understanding of who I am in the world and how I
relate to the divine spirit which is all around us has grown deeper and easier
with age.
I also believe this information to be helpful because it allows
us to see that not everyone has to be in the same place. Having preached
sermons and immediately after asked people what I said, I know that each person
thinks differently, each person hears differently, and each person believes
differently. And that is ok.
The trick is accepting people where they are, and helping
them grow in their own way.
