Episode 124: SIMPLICITY, Stages of Faith Part 1

In one of her letters, Mother Teresa writes, “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss—of God not wanting me—of God not being God—of God not really existing.” https://www.franciscanmedia.org/st-anthony-messenger/mother-teresa-a-saint-who-conquered-darkness/ I find it encouraging that even Mother Teresa has experienced moments of uncertainty, of questioning, even having doubts. In Faith After Doubt, Brian McLaren describes doubt as an “upward fall” The title is perfect bec it simultaneously tells a painful truth and raises a hopeful possibility: the experience of doubt feels like falling, but could it actually be and upward fall?” Pg XIV Why is this important to consider? There comes a point when one can no longer negate the intense feelings that come with the cognitive dissonance that often accompanies the discovery of two seemingly dichotomous truths. I’m not saying they are absolute truth; I’m saying what you were taught or grew up learning is in direct contradiction to what your experiencing in the now, the present and you aren’t quite sure what to do with it at least in the beginning. Ignoring, denying or repressing this reality has it’s own fallout. I agree w/ Brian when he says “Hypocrisy and self-deception proved to be far greater dangers than uncertainty.” Page 28 This resonated 1000% with me when I read it. One must be in congruence with their personal integrity. It will literally make you ill if you do not. And so, leaning into one’s integrity, or one’s truth we go on with this journey of faith. Brian breaks this concept of faith development down into stages much like psychologists have broken down human development into stages. In fact that was his inspiration. He stresses the importance of refraining from using these four stages as a means to compare or judge those who may be in a different stage as you. That is not their purpose. The metaphor of a tree is used to describe these stages. At the Restore 2022 conference, he shared: “Trees grow taller by growing fatter. At some point in my life, I stopped growing taller, but I’ve kept growing. …At the tip of a branch, the new growth comes out, and the way this shows when you do a cross section of a tree is what is the green growth at a tip of the branch is this flush of new development that’s happening all over the tree, a new layer. So… you start with a tree that just has one little ring, and then a new ring grows out from that, and a new ring grows out from that. The new ring does not replace the old ring. It depends on the old ring. It builds on the old ring. It includes it and transcends it. It includes it and grows beyond it.” So each of these stages builds on the next one. And the first stage is SIMPLICITY. He calls it that because as he says starting on pg 45 his book FAD, “it revolves around a simple mental function of sorting nearly everything into one of 2 categories.” It’s the all or nothing idea, that something is either/or, in/out, up/down, friend/foe, true/false, right/wrong and so on. Continuing on…paraphrasing from the same page 45 in FAD at this stage the world is viewed in duality and it is learned from the adults in our lives—parents, grandparents, teachers, aunts/uncles, pastors, religious leaders, etc. For a child/youth the goal then becomes to figure out what these folks want, what they will reward and conversely what they will punish and avoid that. You view them as authorities who know all. You are dependent upon them, trust them and hope to be as certain and all knowing as them one day. When interview by Pete Ends of BFNP podcast, Brian said this about the authority figures “…we ask them questions. They give us answers. We believe them. And that’s how simplicity works. And in a sense, very little doubt happens at this stage, especially early on, because we have every reason to believe those authority figures. He continues… a really important thing to understand…, I think, is that for a lot of people, this is what religion is. Religion is a stage one simplicity phenomenon. …In fact,…this is what I think fundamentalism is really. Religious leaders in fundamentalist settings, they say, we’re giving you the answers. This is it. Your only job is to understand it, believe it, accept it, defend it, and that’s the story. So that’s stage one. That’s where a whole lot of us begin. …It’s the same if you’re Muslim or Jewish or atheist or Buddhist or whatever. A lot of us are introduced to a stage one faith.” Again from the Restore conference address Brian shared: “A lot of people stay in stage one their whole lives. Nothing ever disrupts them from it. …In this stage, we are dependent on authority figures who tell us what the rules are,… who’s in, who’s out, what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s clean, what’s dirty, what’s safe, what’s dangerous, what’s acceptable, what’s condemned. …Those authority figures give us easy answers and we believe in this stage that everything is either known or knowable and in a certain sense, life is a war because it’s the good guys versus the bad guys, the right authorities versus the wrong authorities, and life is very, very simple. [He continues] And when you learn Christianity, when you learn Mormonism, when you learn to be a Roman Catholic, when you learn to be Pentecostal, when you learn to be Buddhist or Jewish or Hindu, in a certain sense, almost everybody starts at stage one, and there’s this sense that we’re the good guys and those other people are a little bit dangerous. And that’s why this sort of warfare mentality spreads. He concludes with while in simplicity ‘I’m looking for meaning in belonging to the group and belonging to the group who has it right.” …. He then goes on to talk about the idea that for some of us, something happens to us and we’re kicked out of simplicity…..and into the next stage of faith which is COMPLEXITY. We will start with stage 2 faith, COMPLEXITY in a future episode so make sure to like, subscribe, follow to be notified first when it publishes. And while you’re at it, it would mean the world to me if you would take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for joining, until next time!