Years ago---indeed decades now---there was quite a buzz about the theme of faith development. James Fowler was one of the more prolific, as well as earlier, thinkers in this field. Maybe his most famous book was called, Stages of Faith. It was published in 1981. The subtitle of his book is revealing: The Psychology of Human Development and Quest for Meaning. I knew Jim fairly well. When I first started graduate school, he was finishing his doctoral work and was a teaching assistant and became a professor for a little bit. He later moved on and became famous while at Emory in Atlanta.
Basically what Fowler did was become immersed in the psychology of human development. He read people like Erik Erikson, Piaget and others. Fowler rightly concluded that even people of faith are human. Therefore, religious people go through stages of human development like all other folks. But Fowler became creative. He suspected there was a comparable development of faith for people. It was out of this musing that his theory developed and influenced a whole host of scholars and church folks.
It has been a while since I thought about this stuff. Perhaps it is because I spend most of my time with traditional age college students. Of course, they are right in the middle of some significant human development. They are negotiating the passage from being adolescents to young adulthood. And I certainly deal with that, although not necessarily in a psychological context. What I know, but haven’t thought about it in faith development terms is how many of them are also going through some faith development. I am sure taking a class like the ones I teach precipitates some of this development.
But I was not thinking about my college-aged friends when the theme of faith development came into my thinking. It was provoked by watching my young grandson. He is pure energy and curiosity. All his waking hours are spent testing, tempting and sometimes tantrums! He is fun and funny. I tell students if they don’t believe in sin, wait till you have your first kid. It is true I have to deal with him, but no longer than I want to do it. Then I go home and my daughter has to deal with him; she had him!
He is just learning how to talk. He only has a few words. Most of them are basic: momma, dada and the special names for my wife and me. He can say “up.” In fact, about 5:00am in the morning it is “momma, up.” If she does not respond, he raises his voice. It simply gets louder and more insistent until he wins. It is true to say he talked her into getting him up. Mission accomplished.
I wonder when he will first learn the word, “God?” I don’t remember when my own kids learned that word. I am sure he will learn it. I wonder if he will learn it at a church or will he hear someone swearing? In some families I am confident the kids will learn that “God damn it” is exactly the job some guy has. I am sure there will be nothing magical or special about that God-word---probably not in the beginning anyway. It is just a word. If he were growing up in a different family, the word might well be “Allah.” I am sure he will learn English; that is what he hears.
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced he is probably gaining some content for the word “God,” whenever he learns that word. Now I am not pretending he already has experience the Holy One nor had some kind of divine experience. But in saying that, I cannot guarantee he hasn’t. I say he is gaining some “God experience,” because that earliest experience is likely to be enmeshed with his experience of his parents. Fowler taught us that our early God experience is mixed up with our early experience with parents and other special folks.
We know from Erikson’s work in human development that the first stage of human development is learning whether the world (and people in it) are basically trustworthy or not. Humans develop a basic attitude of trust or mistrust. This follows us through life. My little guy is pretty lucky. Essentially, his early experience is wrapped up with two parents who really care about him and care for it. He “knows” it, even if he cannot articulate it yet. In fact, I am sure he “counts” on it. He may be pre-verbal, but he has learned to trust---his parents, sister, me and a few others.
At some point when he does learn the word “God,” he will also---perhaps unconsciously or subconsciously---associate God with his experience of parents. More than likely, God will turn out to be someone he can trust. The religious word for trust is “faith.” He will somehow begin to develop his faith. It clearly will be a stage one faith. God will be very human-like. God might well be “up there” and probably be white. Only with some growth and human development will he begin to become sophisticated enough to know that God is not white or up there.
When he develops enough, I hope he realizes God is spirit or energy or love. God can be personal, but not necessarily a person. But at the bottom of it, he will likely continue to be influenced by the parents he luckily had when he was a baby. Maybe they are stand-ins for God right now. Of course, the opposite is doubtlessly true and that makes me wince. I feel so sorry for those kids out there who are learning you cannot trust people or the world. Their faith development is going to be trickier.
God be with you, little guy. And in the meantime, go with your parents.
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