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Spiritual Formation

It is commonplace to say humans develop physically and emotionally.  We all know this is true.  We know our own story and, if we are parents, we can narrate the birth of our kids and a few developmental stages they went through as the grew into the persons they became.  There is much less agreement there is any spiritual development.  Of course, that presupposes in the first place, a spiritual aspect to being human.  Since I believe that is a reality, I do claim there is also an element of spiritual development.

I think physical development seems automatic.  If you feed the kid enough, protect her, etc., invariably the baby grows, evolves into an adolescent and then a teenager.  The growth and development is not without its hitches and costs, but it happens.  Most of us do things to enhance that growth.  We vaccinate to protect them.  We try to offer nutritious diets, coerce them to bed for sufficient sleep and all the rest.  In most cases, it works.

Emotional development is a bit trickier.  While we grow up physically, emotional growth does not seem quite as automatic.  Having a loving family context certainly does wonders.  Parents who can set boundaries without becoming tyrants are wonderful helpers in a child’s emotional development.  Unlike disagreements on physical development, there are different schools of thought on emotional development.  Some parents believe in forms of punishment I never considered.  Different family contexts model different ways to cope with anger and the whole range of emotional experiences and expressions.  For example, in my growing up, I don’t think we did such a hot job with anger.

When it comes to spiritual development, the range of opinion is even broader.  Obviously, an atheist would scoff at the very notion.  At the other end, the religious fundamentalist is quite sure what needs to be learned and why it has to be believed.  Usually for the fundamentalist, it begins with the book---at least in the case of the Christian and the Muslim.  The problem is, it is not the same book!  But the book will tell you what to believe and how to act.  And that is exactly where I want to jump into the conversation.

I don’t jump in as a fundamentalist.  So I am sure I would frustrate both the Christian and the Muslim.  It is not that I don’t think the Christian Bible has nothing to teach; it does.  And I do appreciate much of what the Quran offers.  But I am not a literalist.  And I do think the Spirit is present today and one aspect of that presence is my belief that the Spirit forms us as human beings.

I think spiritual formation happens at many levels---too many to discuss here.  But I would like to deal with the first of those levels.  This most basic level of spiritual formation deals with knowing and trusting the Spirit itself---or God if you prefer.  Not surprisingly, this is connected with the most basic level of human formation.  Long ago in my early education, I became familiar with Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development.  He identifies eight stages he thinks characterizes the human journey from birth to death.  The first stage deals with trust.

The stage of trust (or mistrust) development occupies the first eighteen months or so of the young kid’s life.  During this period, the young person is learning whether their environment is basically trustworthy or not something he or she can trust at all.  This is where the loving, nurturing parents come into the picture.  If this care is present, the youngster assumes that is the way the world is.  You can trust it.  Obviously, if the young person is abused, deprived, or otherwise mistreated, he or she rightly concludes you better watch out!  The world is out to get you!  All this makes sense to me.

Some readers of this column would know that James Fowler offered his version of faith development, as he calls it.  It does not mimic Erikson, but there are good parallels.  I think the initial level of faith’s development does follow Erikson’s lead.  This seems even more the case if you think trust and faith are synonyms, as I do.  With this in mind, we can understand that our first developmental step in faith is trusting that the Spirit is present in our lives and that the Spirit wants the best for us.  In effect, this means we essentially have faith in our environment.

Of course, it is easy to begin imagining all the things that go wrong and all the ways thinking God is going to be on your side and help you out in situations---that’s nuts.  Countless folks will tell you the world is out to get you and that you better get yours while you can get it.  It is dog eat dog---and all the rest.  I am willing to say many things are not good.  Bad things do happen.  But underneath it all, I have faith in God and in the process of love that is unfolding in my life and in the world at large.

I can’t prove it.  I have faith in it.  And I have spiritually developed to live with this faith.  There is much more to be said here; probably a book!  I take one more step and say that I believe the Spirit forms our being.  And the way the Spirit forms our being influences our doing.  This is nothing more than spiritual formation language for hooking together faith and action.  Repeatedly, I tell students our actions reflect what we really think.  Of course, we might think we hold some lofty ideals, but our actions betray our real take on life.

Having said that and recognizing I am not perfect; I realize I continue to need more spiritual formation.  I pray that the Spirit forms me more and more into the person God desires me to be.



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