Prayer 21: Prayer and the Stages of Faith

Harvard professor James Fowler’s book Stages of Faith opened my eyes about matters spiritual in general. In relation to our discussions of prayer, it occurs to me that there must be a link between our prayer and our stage of faith. How we define ourselves in relation to god very much influences what we pray for and how we pray, and indeed, it influences our very concept of prayer.

We’ve all heard of Piaget and others’ theories of social development in individuals—how babies, toddlers, children, teens, young/middle/old adults view and deal with the society around them. They progress in stages. Fowler’s concept is that spiritual growth is similarly analyzable, definable, and “stageable.” A number of people have refined his work, including M. Scott Peck, whose book A Different Drum simplifies the analysis somewhat and consolidates some of Fowler’s stages, resulting in a smaller set.

Peck’s stage 1 faith is a chaotic, antisocial, pretending stage. Jonah seems to have been a person at this stage when he uttered his prayer. Stage 1 people are what Scott Peck calls “people of the lie.” They only, he says, pretend to love and care for others, and pretend to be good. Despite their pretensions, they lack moral principle and their relations with others are primarily manipulative and self-serving. Their relationships tend not to last, and many end up in gaol. But some remain functional and can even rise to leadership positions. Jonah, a preacher, is an example.

Stage 2 faith, says Peck, is formal, institutional, and “fundamental.” Its members have begun to commit themselves to the principle of law, which they view as a way out of the chaos and gross selfishness of stage 1 faith. Still, they tend to be legalistic, dogmatic, and parochial people who do not understand the spirit of law—they do not see that law is a means to an end and not an end in itself, that law has an underlying spirit and meaning and is not to be taken always at face value.

They see things in black and white, as either Truth (which they alone possess) or Untruth (which others—unbelievers—possess) and which threatens them and their Truth. It is therefore their logical responsibility to convert unbelievers to their beliefs. They seek and expect clear-cut answers from their religion, and they receive the same—whether it be based on biblical, Koranic, Buddhist, Hindu or other scripture or prophetic writing or authority.

For them, prescribed methods and doctrines in established liturgy spells out the constraints and the boundaries of their lives and their living, and allows them to escape from the fear of the unknown. Having a sense of certainty and an unwavering commitment to a way of thinking is central to stage 2 faith. They identify stage 1 people as obvious sinners in need of conversion and ripe for redemption, but tend not to grasp even the concept of higher of faith and spirituality. They don’t understand people in stage 3 and even less do they understand people in stage 4. Most people who attend religious services on a regular basis are in stage 2. They believe in “cause and effect,” which has a bearing on their prayer life.

(I am compelled here to clarify, first, that the stages of faith apply to all religions, not just Christianity; and second, that god loves everyone equally and provides salvation to all, no matter what their stage of faith. The stages of faith are a description, not a judgment. We often tend to fluctuate somewhat between stages.)

Peck describes stage 3 as the faith of the skeptic, the individual, the questioner, It is the stage of doubt. It includes agnostics and even atheists. Its members tend to be scientifically minded and to demand reasoned, logical explanation of phenomena. Stage 2 answers to their questions do not satisfy them. They may have been previously at stage 2 for many years, having perhaps been raised in a religious familial/social structure.

Despised as unbelievers and sinners by their former stage 2 brethren, they nevertheless tend to be more highly developed spiritually than them. And despite being individualistic, then tend to be unselfish and social, deeply committed to social justice, loving and devoted parents, good neighbors, compassionate towards the poor, concerned for the environment and animal welfare. People at an advanced level of stage 3 are active seekers of Truth, they are curious about things of the spirit.

People who have entered stage 3 are rarely found at church, which no longer meets their needs and cannot answer their questions. It is the wrong context for them. The greatest dilemma facing established religions is how to understand and deal with people who are transitioning to stage 3 and are therefore in the process of being lost to the religious establishment. Despite being agnostic or even atheist, their advanced spiritual nature will eventually lead them to stage 4, which is less inimical to stage 2 than stage 3 is.

Doubt, defined and expressed through a sense of willingness to ask (often disturbing) questions, is a responsibility of the individual seeker. The scriptural record is full of encounters between man and god in which man asks questions. Doubt is not a faith breaker in and of itself; indeed, it is paradoxically a key element of faith itself. In the absence of doubt, there is no need for faith. Certainty renders faith obsolete.

Organized religion has not thought enough about doubt and questioning and skepticism, and about how to provide a safe haven within its community of faith for people transitioning to stage 3.

Stage 4, says Peck, is the mystical or communal faith of people who have actively sought Truth and now, out of love and commitment to something bigger than themselves and bigger than what they have been part of before, have developed the ability to transcend the constraints of their religious and social backgrounds and upbringing and acculturation and indoctrination, and have turned instead to a more global view of who god is and what he is interested in.

They no longer see themselves as the center of the universe but as a participant in a larger community of faith consisting of all people who see a transcendent god, who are not looking for clear-cut answers, who find questions far more interesting and compelling and rewarding than answers. They are the opposite of people in stage 2. They enjoy meditation, contemplation, study of things of the spirit, and prayer. They achieve communion with their Inner Light.

The ironic thing about this individual, internal reconnection with god is that it often leads them back to the stage 2 establishments they had to transition out of. They have come to view god, church, liturgy, and ritual as the language of faith but they do not ascribe to these entities the same kind of importance and necessity as people in stage 2 do. But they often find comfort in their community of faith, and thus find themselves seeking freedom and mystical transcendence and enlightenment about the greatness and universality of god in the very same pew as the stage 2 person seeking certainty and clarity and sectarian rules, dogma and doctrine by which to govern their lives.

This creates tensions in the church as stage 2 people cling ferociously to minute points of liturgy and doctrine and what hymns to sing and so on, fearful of contamination and ultimate destruction. Stage 2 people feel under threat from stage 4 people who don’t care one whit for these things.

To stage 2ers, god is so great and distant as to be almost unapproachable. To them, he is a god who measures us carefully by our behavior. Stage 4ers see the opposite: A god who is immanent, in-dwelling, the god of the holy spirit, of the inner light.

The best biblical example of the transitions from phase 2 to 3 to 4 is in the life of Job. Job 42:2-5 encapsulates it:

“I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.

“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.”

Recall that Job went back and forth between his friends, who were arguing for cause and effect, and his own uneasy feeling that he and they were missing something of fundamental importance. This was his period of doubt—his transition from stage 2 to stage 3—until he got it, until he “saw” the spirit behind the Word rather than just “heard” the Word, the law, itself; in other words, until he transitioned to stage 4.

Jonah was a stage 1 individual. He pretended to be loving, to be interested in the Ninehvites, to be a prophet of god; but at heart he was antisocial, selfish to the core, and expected everyone to accept his views.

Gideon’s prayer shows him to be firmly in stage 2: There is either dew on the fleece or no dew on the fleece. It is black or white.

But god responds even to prayers such as these. It matters not what stage of faith one is in: God will respond to prayer. He tried to move Jonah out of stage 1. Jesus’ relinquishment of his will in the Gethsemane prayer defined him as being in stage 4, mortally speaking.

It is not a given that everybody goes through all these stages of faith. One can be arrested at any stage, and stay there. We all know people  arrested in stages 1 and 2. And one can move back to a previous stage. We all waver in our faith, and sometimes seek more certainty, or seek to avoid our fears.

People at lower stages are threatened by people at higher stages, but not vice versa. Stage 2 people view stage 1 people not as threats but as opportunities for conversion. But phase 3 people have rejected them, and—maybe worse—stage 4 people have infiltrated their church and are undermining its very foundations right under their noses. And just to rub it in, the stage 4ers seem to be more joyful people, with none of these fears and concerns about the destruction of their faith.

Stage 3 people are afraid of stage 4 people because the latter, who are otherwise just as skeptical as the former, have evidently found something the former still must seek.

It is difficult to minister to people more than one stage below oneself. A stage 3 person, who has rejected the rule of law, can hardly make a difference to a stage 1 person who has little concept of law anyway.

Do the stages of faith help inform our consideration of prayer and of god’s responses?

David: A comment: There is a great controversy in Israel right now because one of Netanyahu’s sons is dating a “shikse,” a non-Jewish woman. The Jewish religious right argue that inter-religious relationships weaken their faith—a stage 2 argument. Thankfully, there are some stage 4 commentators in Israel who argue the exact opposite.

A question: It’s easy to declare neutrality; it’s difficult not to be judgmental! So here’s my judgmental question, phrased as neutrally as I can make it: If, as seems implicit here, the early stages of faith are in some sense not as “right” or as “good” or as “mature” as the later stages, then should we not seek to get rid of them? That would mean abolishing religion, which then would leave everybody in stage 3, with a shot even at stage 4. Isn’t that what the atheists would argue?

Don: Your question implies that we can, by our own will, move through these stages of faith. But is it more mystical, requiring the work of the holy spirit, the inner light, god? Jehovah’s Witnesses have great certainty about what is Truth. Many of my friends in this SDA church feel exactly the same way. How can one influence them to join stage 3?

David: It seems not without causing a great deal of conflict! The Jesus I think I know would turn the other cheek to Charles Manson as he butchered his wife in front of him by saying “Why don’t you butcher my kids, too? They’re hiding in the closet.” The Jesus of many a stage 2 Christian, however, would campaign against vivisection on animals and instead promote vivisection on the likes of Charles Manson. The gulf seems unbridgeable.

Don: That is the general observation among scholars who have studied this. It seems we can’t transition through our own efforts, nor through the efforts of others. The transition can only be led by the spirit, by the inner light. Is there a way in which the ideas of different stages of faith can coexist, in a way that propels us forward? Do people at higher stages of faith have any responsibility towards people at less mature stages? If so, what?

Alice: What is transcendent prayer? And what if the four stages could become just one stage, united through the common factor of love?

Kiran: Church itself can progress. One may observe progressiveness in other churches. I have definitely been in stage 2, and I think I am now in stage 3, but with a greater awe of god, which I actually find comforting! So maybe I am still transitioning, and not fully in either camp!

Don: It is comforting, especially to one with some scientific background, just to know that the transitioning is a process that has been observed and analyzed. One observation is that it is not possible to skip over stages. You can’t get to stage 3 from stage 1, or stage 4 from stage 2. You have to continue to seek, to pray, and it is these that lead to the invocation of the inner light and move one forward. I work with hundreds of stage 3 people, with all the good traits I listed earlier. To me, they are evidences of spirituality. Not of religion, but of spirituality. Helping them find ways to grow in their spirituality is something I seek to know how.

David: To answer Alice’s question: To me, transcendent prayer is a means to exit the worldly and enter the spiritual; to exit the physical and enter the metaphysical. To me, the spiritual/metaphysical realms are probably (here’s my faith) truer representations of ultimate reality—they are The Truth, they are What Is Right, if you like—than the physical. (In fact, this is not just an article of faith for me: It is what I gather from my scientific understanding of quantum mechanics, which underlie all of physics, including Newtonian and relativistic physics.) To achieve transcendence involves an embrace of quantum uncertainly rather than a quest for Newtonian—clockwork—certainty or Truth, and one way to achieve this is through emptying the mind of all the certain little facts it contains and opening it to reception of the vibrating strings that make up the quanta. Those groaning strings are the word of god.

Don: Yes, we see Jesus essentially emptying himself in the Garden of Gethsemane so he could be receptive to god’s will.

The stages of faith to some extent parallel the stages of community we have discussed: “Pseudo community” (faith stage 1), the Chaotic phase (faith stage 2), the Emptying phase (faith stage 3), and finally True Community (faith stage 4.) Perhaps we can develop something along those lines.

Alice: This is all very deep.

Don: Yes, and it can be very disturbing to some. Just remember that god loves the doubter, as he loves everyone at whatever stage of faith they are in, and seeks to help him or her transition if that is what they seek. Stage 2 is a wonderful place to be after the chaos of stage 1.

Alice: Maybe there is a stage 5! I see myself in all four stages, and yet in none of them! I feel I have no control, no understanding, and yet: I am happy! I am not fearful!

David: As so often before, Alice gives us something deeply insightful. Her comment about the unifying factor—love—that joins the stages together is the one thing that defines faith. The stages are in a sense human inventions; god doesn’t care about them. He cares about love.

Don: Our discussion today might set the stage for Jason to tell us about stages of growth in educational theory.

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