Transforming faith is an adult task! | By the Rev. Paul Graves
“When I was a child, my speech, feelings, and thinking were all those of a child; now that I am a man/woman, I have no more use for childish ways.” (Paul’s affirmation in I Cor. 13:11)
How do people over 50-60 years old deal with their spiritual health IF they want to grow beyond where they are currently? We see the word “transformation” used a great deal in our denomination literature and in meetings in our churches.
While I’m all for this focus, I must admit to some skepticism about the depth of transformation we really want to endure. Are we looking mainly at changing the procedural ways we do ministry as United Methodists? Might we also consider changing who we are – deep inside – as United Methodists?
The second task is much harder than the first. It’s certainly the longer task. It will take our whole lives long!
In a powerful and sometimes disturbing book, “A Lever and a Place to Stand: The Contemplative Stance, the Active Prayer”, Richard Rohr says some very important things about this transformational task in a chapter called “Religion: A Transformational System?” (pp. 29-44). Here is a bare-bones description of what he says about faith transformation.
The three parts of Hebrew Scriptures – Law, Prophets, Wisdom – represent the three stages of faith development. We begin Stage 1 right where Jewish self-awareness begins, “and that is Torah: Law, structure, identify, boundaries, certitude, order, authority, and clarity.”
It is here we hopefully develop a healthy, happy, secure ego structure. But if we stay with this first life-task too long (trying to “get it right”?), we tend to focus more on the “container” and less the “contents” of life to put into the container.
Rohr says it this way: “After a while one gets so invested in doing the task of Law and (trying to maintain) social and personal order that we almost always think that is what religion is for!” We can easily get stuck here and yet think we have a mature faith.
But wait! There are two more stages before we reach maturity.
The second life task we need to engage is represented biblically by the Prophets. They criticize “normal religion” and offer alternatives.
In stage 1, we rely almost exclusively on outside authority (parents, teachers, church, etc.) to bring meaning and order to our lives. Then we move into a time (teen rebellion is a great example) where we seek a more inside authority – ourselves.
We won’t “trust anyone over 30”, or anyone who doesn’t agree with our life views. Of course, those life views are based on our limited life experiences as teenagers or young adults. (Even now, we do well to consider that our life experiences at 70, 80, 90 years old may actually be only one lived year…but repeated 70, 80, 90 times!)
But Rohr suggests that to move toward spiritual maturity, we need to experience a third life stage as symbolized by Biblical Wisdom Literature. It presents us – both subtly and directly – with life’s paradoxes and mysteries. These wisdom books are not “conventional”, either/or wisdom, but alternative wisdom (contemplative, non-dualistic).
Rohr sees this alternative wisdom particularly in the book of Job, “where the psyche is finally mature enough to have faith in the form of darkness instead of light, whereas stage one insists upon total light and explanation.” We can see this in many of our own liturgies, hymns, attitudes and ingrained perceptions.
The third task of dealing with paradox “cannot be tackled until one has walked through the first two. It is a sequential journey (There are no short-cuts to wisdom!). If you stay just in stage one conformity or stage 2 criticism, you are in no way ready for mystery, paradox, the collision of opposites that is the cross, or quite simply, adult faith.
You are really not capable of anything except dualistic, either/or thinking. That is the best explanation I have found for why most religion remains so immature.”
Wow! Rohr certainly calls as he sees it, doesn’t he. His insights may not always set well, but they are certainly worth our wrestling with.
Next month, February, is “heart month”. I will expand on his reflections as we consider how our hearts reach out to – or pull away from – God’s heart.
The Rev. Paul Graves is the chair for the Conference Commission on Older Adult Ministries for the PNWUMC.
This article will appear in the upcoming January issue of Channels. Visit www.pnwumc.org/channels.
