Stages of Life and Faith Development (Part 1)
“In a Single Breath”
by Elaine T
In this blog and the next, Elaine T, a 2HC participant, picks up one of our 2HC themes — how faith develops over a life time. She enriches concepts we looked at from the book The Critical Journey with the writings of Richard Rohr in his book Falling Upwards: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. Elaine weaves in her story of a profound loss that shifted her faith at a very young age.
In the next blog (Part 2), Elaine, with powerful prose and poetic language, will describe her experiences at The Wall.
The stages of human development are easy to trace through childhood—we observe and recognize milestones as maturity unfolds. Spiritual development likewise involves change. Just as a sapling develops a core and then adds rings around it over time, we also grow from our foundations. Human layers reflect cognitive, physical, social, spiritual and emotional development—all working to support growth into maturity over a lifespan.
As I came to understand the inner rings as a foundation, with added rings of growth—in a cycle, not a straight line—I found myself shedding a heavy cloak of expectation. This image and paradigm offered me relief and hope.
My childhood years were nurtured in a cocoon of theological confidence—a world of Biblical absolutism that fueled pragmatic faith.
My parents joined a community of missionaries in a nation that had just 50 years previous been completely unreached with the “truth of the gospel.” As a group, they were unblinking in their conviction of right and wrong, good versus evil, salvation of the eternally damned. It sharpened the point of every pencil they held, every policy they wrote.
Their communal confidence gave me a sense of safety, security, and the terrible gift of superiority. It surrounded my life with a sureness as brittle as the first ice on a winter lake. The fragility of this illusion was changed in a single breath—my mother’s last breath.
At the tender age of 11, without warning, I was motherless. Lost. My dad likewise was absent, having taken her to Canada for medical care. I sat in the familiar Mission House “sala” (large meeting room), surrounded by this self-assured community. They sang and preached their way through a triumphalist memorial service, while I shivered under shards of that broken layer of ice. Their confidence in “God’s perfect will” was comfort for themselves. But it was meaningless to me.
I made up my mind: this was not how God—whom I would follow and serve—controlled life and death.
I embraced one essential thing—if God was anything, he was a mystery. I did not understand why mom died, but with childish, yet mature logic, I knew that if God was divine, perhaps I would never fully understand. I would not pretend that God—who must be loving and gracious—could be this cruel. I entered a new era of faith.
Who was I to make this decision? But I did.
You might say I entered the second half of my faith journey early—but that is not the case. I shifted in my faith, but the idea of the two halves of a faith journey are about much more than making a change. Every spiritual journey begins with sureness. For my community, there was absolute confidence that my mom’s death was God’s will and therefore acceptable. I was equally sure it was not a matter of God’s will: I embraced mystery, not looking for logic, but I was sure.
Either way you lean—toward a strong devotion to truth in logic, explanation and systems, or toward a commitment to the mystery of the unknown—the early stages of spiritual formation begin with a strength in certitude.
Like the stages of childhood development described by theorists (Eriksen, Kohlberg and Piaget), elements of faith develop sequentially as humans grow in spiritual maturity [1]. The strong core of the sapling allows layers to be added—gradually and continually supporting new growth through the seasons.
Richard Rohr, in his book Falling Upwards, [2] describes the early stages in spiritual development as “the first half.” His paradigm, very simply, is composed of two halves. The first half is foundational to the second half, which is where the richness lies. The first half, albeit not the better part, is an important and necessary stepping stone.
For Rohr, in the first half we are building the “container” as a place for our identity to thrive (or survive). We need that “stock” of sureness, of believing we are “getting it right” in order for the container to be sturdy. In this stage of faith we develop the understanding, character and self-discipline of what Rohr calls “the inner soldier.” This work is essential for the second half, where we fill the container with meaning.
In their book, The Critical Journey, Hagberg and Guelich describe this journey, also in two halves, adding detail by defining three stages within each of the halves. In the first half we come to recognize God, live out discipleship, and become productive in service. Here in the first half “our faith takes its expression most frequently in ways that are prescribed by external standards, whether by the Church, a specific spiritual leader, a book, or a set of principles .” [3]
The second half is composed of another three stages where we deepen our intimacy with God, learn to live that out, then move to a final stage of growth: the meaning of being loved and loving others. The second half stages “represent a difficult personal transformation and reemerging that require a rediscovery on a different level of what faith and spirituality are all about.” [4]
Part way through the fourth stage there is a defining point called the “Wall” which could easily be considered a stage in its own right. For Hagberg and Guelich, the Wall is the essential encounter that has the potential to catapult us into the second half of faith.
This description of the Wall is compatible with Rohr’s paradigm, but Hagberg and Geulich add detail and nuance. Both paradigms see the first half of the journey as more secure and “black and white” than the second half. They also agree that we all hit the Wall sooner or later in the form of loss, suffering, or failure—unexpected, perplexing and outside of our choosing.
As we encounter the Wall, we have an opportunity to turn to reflective thought and begin the journey inward. We cannot decide to put ourselves at the Wall and “change gears.” Our encounter with the wall is by definition, a challenge beyond our sense of control. But we do choose either to begin a “second half” with a journey inward, or to cycle around and continue in our pursuit of action-based faith, repeating the pattern of the first half. The second half is optional.
Encountering the Wall through failure to achieve spiritual goals through hard work, commitment, prayer and determination is not unusual in the world of missional fervour. When goals are not achieved despite sincere effort, a person has the option to step back and consider questions that lead to a deeper trust and intimacy with God. Until now, most believers have felt comfort in being able to predict and define God. We’ve had a sense of control—though it is often hard to admit that.
(Elaine continues her post in the next blog where she will talk about her encounters at The Wall as both heartache and gift.)
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Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash
[1] Philosophical theologians who write about stages of spirituality such as James Fowler, Dallas Willard, St John of the Cross, Evelyn Underhill, Hagberg and Guelich, all work with the premise that like other areas of human development, faith grows in stages.
[2] Richard Rohr, Falling Upward, Jossey-Bass, 2013.
[3] Janet O. Hagberg and Robert A. Guelich, The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith, 2nd ed., Sheffield Publishing Company, 2005, p 11.
[4] Hagberg and Guelich, The Critical Journey, p 11. Stage theory uses models to describe how people develop. Models are conceptual, not prescriptive, and they defy generalities since stages are unique to each person. Models such as the critical journey are “loose guides, a globe rather than a road map,” Hagberg and Guelich, The Critical Journey, p xxv.
