Discovering Who I Am

Archive for July, 2010

In his book Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist, David Schmelzer talks about a turning point in his life when he read a lecture by psychologist, M. Scott Peck, about the four stages of faith.

Peck talks about an odd thing he’d noticed in his practice. Some patients would begin therapy as deeply troubled, deeply religious people. He’d help them, and—to his mind—part of their clear growth would occur when they’d leave their religion behind. Other patients, just as troubled and then just as helped, would find faith as a result of their work together. What did that mean?

That question agitated Peck into proposing a four-stage theory of human spiritual and emotional development. He proposed that, in a perfect world, our spiritual development would exactly track with our emotional development. But, given our actual world, it rarely works that way. Traumas along the way can stop our growth in an earlier stage, which has implications not only on how we see the world but also in the way we regard other people and the purpose of life.

Schmelzer goes on to describe the four stages of faith as Peck saw them. He calls the first stage the criminal stage and corresponds it to the toddler years. Toddlers are completely focused on their felt needs and have no capacity to account for the needs of others or for how their behavior impacts others.

You could make the case that people who get stuck in the criminal stage are often best served by two institutions: jail and the boardroom. Jail for obvious reasons… but high-functioning stage 1 folks can often be quite effective businesspeople (or politicians or, God forbid, pastors), because they’re relentlessly focused on winning, on getting what they want, whatever it takes.

He describes stage two Christians as rule-based and corresponds them to age 6 or 7. During this stage, one realizes that there are a set of rules and behavioral expectations that, once embraced, offer a formula for life that works pretty well.

Two institutions might best serve stage 2: the military and the church. The military, again, for obvious reasons. It has famously been a transitional institution for people coming from chaotic backgrounds. It’s where they find discipline and boundaries. But it was the church part that grabbed my attention. Peck argues that most churches are stage 2. They exist to tell people the rules, to set the boundaries of life.

He takes great pains not to judge this. He emphasizes that whatever spiritual things happen at these churches are undoubtedly completely real and that, to his mind, the teachings there are effectively true. The heart and soul of America and most countries are right here in stage 2. These are the good people who get things done and raise strong families. The larger point rests, rather, in how this and other stages interact with each other. So let’s go on for a moment.

Stage three is described as rebellious and corresponds to the teen years. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been struggling through a difficult circumstance in my life lately, and it revealed some deeply established patterns of thinking. In the face of this ongoing struggle, I heard a little voice inside myself saying things like, “when I have learned what I need to learn from this, God will present a solution” or, “if it wasn’t for my failure to (fill in the blank) God would answer my prayers” or, “God is teaching me patience and humility.”

I was mulling over some of these thoughts as I was driving when I saw a bumper sticker on the car in front of me that had a skull and crossbones and said, “The beatings will continue until morale improves!” and it struck me… I am serving a pirateship captain God!

The beatings will continue until morale improves!

I thought to myself, Blimey, that explains a lot! No wonder I have been living my life in indentured servitude– never quite being able to do enough to earn God’s favor; seeing all the booty from the hard work I do seemingly benefit everyone else but me; living my life in the “brig” because I can’t quite live up to my captains demands; scrubbing the decks and swabbing the mainplanks.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that God is nothing like a pirateship captain. But somewhere along the way I have accepted a picture of God that looks a lot like a pirateship captain. I expect that when something bad happens to me it must be God disciplining me. I remain in a difficult or adverse circumstance, waiting for God to bail me out when He has already given me all I need to break free. I beg and grovel before God for a crust of bread. I accept my lot as an orphan who has been taken in by the ship’s crew when in reality, I am royalty.

It is kind of ironic when I turn to look at who is holding the Cat o’nine tails after a flogging and find that it is me.