Prayer 23: Moving Through the Stages of Faith

Jay: Last week, we began to discuss the factors that influence transitions between stages of faith, including the factors of prayer, faith, free will vs. god’s will, community, teacher, grace and works, and time/maturity. To what extent can we direct and control these various influences?

The stages progress along a continuum from selfish (stage 1) to altruistic (stage 4). Can we consciously change our understanding of and our approach to prayer, for example by focusing on praying for the needs of others instead of on our own needs, and will this transition us to a higher stage? If so, is this one answer to “Why pray?” Or what if we change our works from selfish to altruistic? Will this move us into a higher stage of faith? Or if we just wait for the maturity that comes with age and experience, are we automatically advanced to higher stages?

Harry: I have transitioned, but I’m not sure why, and I had no control over the process. I recall I was somewhat afraid during the transition. When one is firmly ensconced in stage 2, and believes therefore that one possesses The Real and Tangible Truth, then even to think about moving away from it, to question it, understandably creates enormous tension and anxiety. Yet one can get past those anxieties, as I did, and move forward.

Don: How can the stage 2 institution (for Christians, the church) help people transition? After all, people who move from stage 2 to 3 often continue to seek enlightenment, which will eventually lead them to stage 4 and therefore (as we have discussed) back to a sort-of enlightened stage 2 in which they return to church but get a deeper, more mystical, meaning from it.

Most people whom I have observed to transition from any stage to the next do not seem to have any control over their transition. They tend to be frightened. But if they are made aware that they are in transition and what that means and what it involves, they can be helped to progress through their transition and more quickly resolve their anxieties and fear.

The conversion of stage 1 people to stage 2 is something that church does very well. Church needs to apply itself to figuring out how to help in the conversion from stage 2 to stage 3, how to respond to the person as s/he begins to doubt. That requires a recognition that stage 3 and its baggage of doubt is nevertheless a legitimate, necessary, and indeed god-given stage of faith. One can see this in the prayer of Job, who is full of uncertainty and doubt but he persists in questioning and eventually recognizes that he sees god differently than before.

Faith without doubt is not faith, it is certainty. It might help if we remind people going through a transition to take heart, to know that they are moving toward god in a more complete way. This is a great challenge for the church.

Jay: So instead of asking how we can drive ourselves through the transitions, perhaps we should be asking how we can reduce our anxieties as we transition. I can’t say what stage I am in, but I do know that I am not in stage 2 and that I have no anxieties about that. Perhaps that is because I already had an understanding of the transitions, and understanding preempts fear. If our church can help people in acquiring this understanding, might it not result in more people returning to the fold?

Harry: I think persons transitioning from 2 to 3 should leave church, otherwise they risk harming others who are secure in their stage 2 faith, or at least of causing great discomfort on both sides. The possibility for honest and free dialog would be constrained, even if mutual love were not lost. Stage 2 people might even mistake another’s advance to stage 3 as a regression to stage 1. Stage 2 is a necessary foundation for stage 3.

Don: Yes, the stages cannot be skipped.

Harry: So it seems to me, since people will tend to return to church when they reach stage 4, that church does not need to try to hold on to people, to keep them in stage 2 at all costs.

Pastor Ariel: A sentence on p. 133 of a book called Steps to Christ says: “God has never removed the possibility of doubt.” This is a spiritually healthy reminder, but it can cause some unease. Near the end of the book is an entire chapter about how to deal with doubt. This little book helped me center my faith. I might not label faith with “stages” but certainly being able to grapple with doubt is important.

What do we doubt? What are our doubts about? It seems to me important identify them, since it is hard to treat something if we do not diagnose it correctly. To acknowledge that one has doubts is not to negate one’s faith in Jesus. Doubt and faith are not mutually exclusive. The fact that one is on a faith journey would imply that one is growing, and that there are things one may not understand now but which will become clear later. My goal is to instill that perspective in people, because it took me years to figure it out. But I had to ask myself: What am I doubting, and why; and what am I going to do about it? I agree with Harry, that god’s unwillingness to remove every reason to doubt will cause stress and anxiety in some people.

Don: I would go a step further and frame it as “holy doubt,” something that has a “sincere seeking” component to it. I regard that not merely as a Christian virtue but as a Christian obligation. One can see throughout scripture that god honors doubt, in some cases by trying to answer questions as he did for Gideon and in others by answering questions with questions, as he did with Job. Jesus did not in any way condemn the doubting apostle Thomas; rather, he sought to work with and use that doubt.

Pastor Ariel: God does not reject us when we come to him with our doubts, and indeed it is a principle that we should teach believers to go to Jesus with their doubts. After all, where else can one go? John the Baptist grappled with dissonance in his heart about who Jesus was, and Jesus answered him in a very neat way. It gives comfort to know that god understands why we doubt and that if we go to him he will give us something we can understand.

Kiran: A relative who has been following this discussion through The Interface website, and who has had a similar journey to mine from Hinduism to Christianity, is struggling to work out what is her current stage of faith. Even so, she said she resonates with a remark Alice made, to the effect that knowing one’s stage of faith is less important than knowing that god’s love is always there. If one is on a journey through the stages, she feels, the key is to recognize that Jesus is one’s guide and the only thing one can do is to look to him for guidance.

We have discussed the inner light—the holy spirit, Jesus—as something that encourages but does not force us to journey through the stages. So to go through the stages quickly, if that is what one wants, one should look seriously to Jesus for guidance.

Jay: We originally asked whether one could muscle one’s way through the stages, then we asked whether (if the answer was no) there was any way to reduce the anxiety of the transitions. The anxiety stems from doubt. Doubt is of two kinds: The “holy doubt,” the “sincere seeking” of which Don spoke; and fearful doubt, the fear of becoming lost if one changes. This is why it is important to stress that moving through the stages of faith has nothing directly to do with judgment or salvation. God’s love and grace is there to save us at any time, at any stage of faith.

In transitioning from stage 1 to 2, one is seeking spiritual guidelines, but one may still have to grapple with doubt, such as which guidelines, which church/sect etc., is the right one?  How can that doubt be eased? In transitioning from 2 to 3, the doubt may be about one’s faith itself, or about the guidelines (the religion’s/the church’s rules and regulations) and what that means in terms of salvation. How can that be managed?

I personally seem to have transitioned to stage 3 but if so the transition was uneventful. What factors might have alleviated the pains of transition for me, and are they replicable? Can the church—or, perhaps it’s better to say, can one’s community—help to create the environment for a painless transition?

Chris: The stage 1-2 and 2-3 transitional fear seems to me to be based upon a loss of trust in what one has formerly taken to be gospel, as it were; while trust is regained in the final transition to stage 4. Is there some rock of trust to which one can remain moored during the turbulence of transition? Even to lifelong Adventists such as myself, with a powerful affinity for stage 2 beliefs, comes a time when we may ask: Is this all there is? Could there be more? I have always had the SDA community around me, that I have trusted even during these bouts of doubt.

Pastor Ariel: What role does scripture play in the transitions? Is that a place to go with our doubts? Job and others interacted with god, John the Baptist interacted with Jesus. They had a community, but their real fulcrum, their point of reference, their rock of trust, their security, was Jesus, or the holy spirit. What have been this group’s thoughts about the relationship between scripture and doubt?

David: For me and evidently many others, it is precisely inconsistent and at times nonsensical scripture that has driven us out of stage 2. But indeed, the matter of where to find help to resolve one’s doubts is critical. In biblical times, there was no Christian scripture. All anyone had to turn to was either the eminently doubtable scriptures of the old testament or one’s inner light, the holy spirit, which was there long before Jesus came on the scene. Some strong stage 2 believers (for example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses) argue that one should take one’s doubts to church elders who can resolve them with specific reference to scriptural chapter and verse. Indeed, the JWs go to extraordinary lengths to prevent their members from transitioning out of stage 2. They are infamous for it, as the number and vehemence of many an anti-JW blog attest. If those efforts fail, and a member moves into stage 3, then that member is “disfellowshipped,” which is the very opposite of what I think is the Christian thing to do.

So there is an example of how one sect handles doubt: It is to appeal solely to scripture and to fight tooth and nail for the soul of the would-be transitioner. And it often succeeds. I am sure that in any church, people take their doubts to their community and their pastor and have their doubts resolved. And there is nothing wrong with that, insofar as it really does resolve the person’s doubts and leaves them secure and comfortable again.

Michael: I was born and raised a Catholic, so became a solid stage 2 citizen, secure in my Catholic belief that god was by my side to help with my every need. But I tried to keep an open mind, and started doubting when I went to college. I doubted everything: God, Jesus, the bible, etc. I have been in stage 3 for several years. Somehow, I retained my belief in god, but it did not stem from my stage 2 experience. Rather, it stemmed from my feeling of his presence in me, and in the world through his works. I still had the uneasy thought, though, that I ought to go back to stage 2, that it was somehow the proper place to be, that it was what was missing from my life. But this group’s discussion of the stages of faith has liberated me from that uneasiness and enables me to focus on reaching a higher stage of faith.

In my experience, prayer can help drive us through the stages, but it may not always help resolve doubt, especially in the stage 2 person who by definition believes in a fictional god of cause and effect—in “Ask and thou shalt receive.” In stage 3, prayer is more meditative; it is more listening than talking. In stage 4, which we have described as the “community” stage, it seems that one may make requests to god but one does so in the 1st person plural, as Jesus did In the Lord’s Prayer. It’s “Give us…,” not “Give me….”

Kiran: If each higher stage has the power to help people in the stage(s) below it, the (stage 2) church would seem to benefit from the presence of stage 3 and 4 people. But to stage 2ers, stage 3ers are heretics and not to be listened to, so the job must fall to stage 4ers. It is the love of a Christian that brings a doubter back to the church. It is not a procedure written down in some dusty church manual.

Don: Next week we’ll examine the theology of doubt in more depth.

Harry: I look forward to it, because it seems to me of critical importance. Doubt is not necessarily a bad thing, even it feels bad to one experiencing it. I think most doubt is about scripture itself.

David: I agree. I would like to note by the bye that Peck’s four stages of faith are somewhat arbitrary. They are helpful in providing a structure for discussion and analysis, but as Alice mentioned last week, maybe there is a stage 5. Maybe there is even a stage 0, a stage of total innocence into which one is born. Scripture, and Jesus in particular, make many references to the purity, innocence, and lack of doubt of the child. We have not discussed this important stage, or how we transition out of it and into what stage we then transition: If we are born to a stage 2 family then we probably avoid stage 1 altogether, but what if we are born into a community that has no religion? We cannot transition from stage 0 to stage 2 because stage 2 does not exist. So does one transition straight to stage 3?

Jay: Over the years, certain themes seem to keep reappearing in our discussions. The theme of the innocence of the child—to be as a little child—is one of them. It certainly seems to be intertwined with our impending discussion of doubt, since the child initially at least has none.

My lack of anxiety in transition I think had to do with my rich understanding of grace and its role, which easily overcame my doubts about doctrinal validity.

* * *