Stepping up to Spiritual Maturity: The Stages of Faith Development

By Sara Hines Martin

If youve wondered how to become spiritually mature, this book explains whats needed to move forward on the path from being spiritual babes to having spiritual maturity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449752439

Sara Hines Martin

Sara Hines Martin, MS, holds a bachelor’s degree in English, a Master of Religious Education degree, and a Master of Science degree in counseling. She works as a therapist in private practice in Kennesaw, Georgia. She has been writing professionally for more than fifty years. Her books include: Healing for Adult Children of Alcoholics and Shame on You! Help for Adults from Alcoholic & Other Shame-Bound Families. She is currently writing Loving Yourself as You Truly Are: and Loving Others as They Are. She has been a pastor’s wife and was a missionary in the Caribbean for fifteen years.

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Copyright © 2012 Sara Hines Martin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-5242-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-5241-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-5243-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012908778

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WestBow Press rev. date: 6/13/2012

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter One How Faith Develops

Chapter Two Pre-Stage: Can I Trust My Caregivers?

Chapter Three Stage One: God’s Like My Mommy and Daddy

Chapter Four Stage Two: What’s Fair Is Fair!

Chapter Five Stage Three: I Believe What Others Believe

Chapter Six Stage Four: With This Ring, I Thee Wed

Chapter Seven Stage Five: Beloved, Let Us Love One Another

Chapter Eight Stage Six: If I Should Die Before I Wake

Chapter Nine Achieving Spiritual Maturity

Chapter Ten Aids to Spiritual Maturing

Chapter Eleven God Images and Self-Esteem

Chapter Twelve Helping Children Develop Faith

Epilogue

Appendix

Bibliography

Stepping Up to Spiritual Maturity may challenge—even startle—you. It provides an in-depth guide to spiritual growth. If you are desiring meat rather than milk, this book will be a valuable resource.

In addition to giving extensive research, Ms. Martin is willing to be transparent and shares her own faith walk. This book gives not only a better understanding of the steps involved, but describes behaviors that match each level of faith development.

However you respond to this book, it will definitely stimulate you to examine your own faith development, moving you to a deeper level.

Karen McDonald, Phd.

Licensed Christian Counselor

The reader of Ms. Martin’s book will receive inisghts into and instruction in developing a deeper, more mature faith.

No matter the denomination of the reader, faith is important to every believer. As a practicing Catholic woman, I can highly recommend this work as incredibly thought-provoking and as a real thirst-quencher for the soul.

It was, indeed, a gift to me and a road map to a more fulfilling spiritual life.

Patty Kincaid

Christian laywoman

Preface

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.

When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

1 Corinthians 13:11, Holy Bible, New International Version.

Introduction

I had a minor in Bible in college, I had graduated from seminary, and I had become a minister’s wife and a foreign missionary; yet I recognized that I did not have a mature faith. I really had no concept that God was a loving Being who would meet my needs. I did not feel God’s love. I felt guilty and called myself selfish if I ever prayed for myself. I knew I was supposed to work for Him, and that was the extent of my relationship with Him.

Why? This question started me on a search that has lasted for many years.

My research about the stages of faith development gave some answers to the question, revealing that faith development parallels emotional development (as outlined by Erik Erikson’s stages of development). For the first time, I had information about how to measure mature faith.

I invite others who—like me—long to have a more mature faith to use the information contained in this book toward stepping up in their own spiritual growth. You will receive guidance to help you gain greater insight into your own faith and how it continues to develop. I share some of my personal experiences, and I provide workbook materials at the close of each chapter. I wish you well on this exciting journey.

Names of nonprofessionals are fictitious. At times, I use the generic ‘he’ for simplicity. All Scripture quotations come from various versions of The Holy Bible.

Chapter One

How Faith Develops

Timmy, three months old, wakes at two a.m. He is hungry! He also has a wet, uncomfortable diaper. He does what God has created him to do at times like these: he yells. Loudly. He does not stop until an adult comes to feed him and change his diaper. When a loving parent takes immediate care of Timmy’s needs as they occur, he learns to trust and to depend upon someone who is stronger than he is. He bonds with that adult, and in time, responds to that love and care with his own love.

Think of the most recent newborn baby you saw: squalling, squirming, red faced and wrinkled. You probably didn’t think that that infant was already beginning to develop notions about God and faith. Let’s follow our baby, Timmy, and see how his faith develops.

Many people may be surprised to learn that faith development has its foundations in early infancy, as we just illustrated in Timmy’s early experiences. Ana-Maria Rizzuto, psychoanalyst, concluded that within a few months of life, a child shows an ability to have some idea of a God. (italics added)

The emotional life of the infant determines the kind of religion which he can respond to and make his own, wrote Lewis Sherrill. "The day of his birth, then, is the day of his first, and greatest, religious crisis. On that day, and following it, he encounters as much of love, or such kind of love, as his parents are adequate to give." (italics added)

James Fowler, Ph.D., whose staff interviewed 400 male and female adults and children, agrees that all human beings are capable of developing faith from birth. Those capacities are activated and grow depending largely upon their homes. The child senses, on an emotional level, whether his caretakers are dependable and caring or neglectful and hurtful.

If a child can attach himself to his parents, he can develop an attachment to God. When Mommy and Daddy hold Timmy, feed him, stroke him and cuddle him, he is bonding with his parents. On the other hand, if a baby does not get enough holding, rocking, or stimulation from adults, the baby’s ability to develop relationships and loving attachments can be severely retarded or not activated at all.

The child then transfers to God what he first felt toward his parents. Upon this subjective perception of God, a concept of God forms which becomes the nucleus for the maturing of faith.

The home is like a skylight through which we glimpse our first pictures of God, David Seamands wrote. "We get our earliest feltness (how we feel about God rather than what we have been taught to believe) of God through relating to our parents.

A great many of these characteristics are woven into our ideas of His character from what is caught as well as what is taught…. I spend hours and hours with adults, some of them in later life, helping to reconstruct their concept/feelings of God. Many of them have God and their parents tangled up together.

The God to whom an infant is first responding…is distorted by the human prism as God reaches the infant, Sherrill says. He is coming to know love which is only a ‘shadow,’ or only a remote likeness, to eternal, perfect love.

Infants cannot know God in terms other than those in which they first know us, Lawrence Losoncy wrote. When our children hear that God loves them, they will know what that means because they have learned it from us. If we love the children, they will be able to believe that God loves them, and they will know that they are lovable.

If the adult, for any reason, neglects or abuses a child, the child learns that he cannot trust others. William DeArteaga, a specialist in the field of Inner Healing of Memories says:

When a person is injured by the father, his ability to relate to God is impaired. If his primal image of the father is one that is hurtful, his ability to view God in a healthy way is fractured. No matter how much he reads the Bible and wants to follow God, if his image of the father is a drunk person, the child has a severe impediment to prayer, growth, and holiness.

Rizzuto’s Study and Conclusions

Rizzuto studied the subject of how a child develops an image of God, especially in comparison to Sigmund Freud’s viewpoint. Freud thought that a boy developed his idea of God based on his relation with his father, primarily in the area of resolving the Oedipus complex.

The Oedipal stage (according to Freud) means that when a boy reaches about age five, he falls in love with his mother and wants her for himself. Freud believed that a boy resolves that issue by coming to identify with the parent of his own sex—the father—in order to mature. Freud said that the father image is finally elevated to the status of deity, thus a concept of a God comes out of resolving the Oedipal stage.

Freud left out any other influence on the God image of a child, such as the mother, and he did not deal with a female’s formation of a God image.

Rizzuto developed a questionnaire and obtained thorough life histories from 10 men and 10 women patients in a mental hospital. Questions on the form related to the subject’s view of God. Each person also wrote a biography. The study included a summary of the patient’s religious experiences and development from childhood to the present. The information revealed a clear profile of each person’s god.

Rizzuto concluded that no person forms an image of God from the father only, challenging Freud’s conclusion that the formation of a God image depends upon the Oedipal conflict. Rizzuto further believed that the formation can take place at any time during the developmental stage. She also disagreed with Freud’s view of religion as an illusion, meaning things yet-to-be-proven. "I disagree with Freud who believes that man lives on the bread of knowledge alone," Rizzuto said. (Italics added)

Rizzuto concluded that the type of God image each individual develops results from several contributing factors, including the following: the infant’s early experiences; the personalities and behaviors of the parents; the situations of the child with each of his parents and siblings; and the general religious, social, and intellectual background of the household.

In my own understanding, there is no such thing as a person without a view of God, Rizzuto said. Most Western people believe in, or have at least heard of, a personal God. The belief may be conscious or unconscious, and once a person develops an idea of God, nothing can make it disappear. The person may repress it, may change it, and/or use it, but never lose it.

The circumstances of a moment in which the question of God comes up may color the God image a child develops, even though the circumstance may be trivial. A child may see an impressive summer storm after he has had his first conversation with his mother about God. The child may think the storm is God’s personal show of frightening power or anger.

For example, whenever a storm came up when I was a child, my mother always said, My mother always said we need to be quiet during a storm because God is at work.

By the time I became a teenager, I wondered, Isn’t God at work when the sun is shining as well?

A child may also develop a view of being under God’s protection depending sometimes on a trivial incident. A child who prays for sunshine for a picnic, and the sun does shine, for instance, may see God as benevolent.

Rizzuto’s study adds a burden to the already complex task of being a parent. If the God that parents present clashes with the experiences they offer children, the parents’ words will confuse or even frighten children or even make them stop listening.

The intimate bond that develops between the parent and the child, which helps the child learn to trust, is the basis of all religious nurture. God is a living God at work in our lives. He is not an idea to be talked about so much as a God to be experienced, wrote Randolph Miller. If God is nothing but an idea, then we are a long way from what the Christian church means to God. Miller hopes that even before children can use the word God, they will be aware of the work of God within the home.

God Images and Religious Instruction

Timmy’s parents will take him to church so he can learn about God. How do Sunday School and other formal religious instruction experiences affect a child’s image of God? What he feels comes first and has a greater hold on him than the later intellectual input he receives.

Children who receive positive God images in early life will have those images confirmed by church teachings. Those positive images can help a child withstand negative images about God later (if such are received). A person might hear hell-fire damnation preaching, and think, No, God is not like that.

On the other hand, a child may hear that God is a God of love, but that teaching may not push aside a negative image of God that came from negligent or abusive parents. A child who has this type of home experience can feel confused by church teachings, such as God loves you, and can wonder why God doesn’t rescue him from abuse. Teachings about obeying your parents can also confuse children of abusive parents.

Karen, now in her 40s, reports having confusion about being taught that parents love their children and that the children must obey parents since her alcoholic father sexually abused her. She felt guilty about resenting and resisting him.

Terry, in his 50s, who had been abused by both parents, started attending Sunday School at the age of 11. When he heard teachings there about obeying parents, he felt confused and distrustful of the church. When he heard the Bible verse, And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, (Romans 8:28 KJV), he thought, These people have really lost it! because little good was happening in his life. The man did become a Christian, but he had many emotional scars from his early experiences.

In a third scenario, theologian Carol Saussy wrote, If a negative God representation is compounded by negative teachings about a judging God, so much greater is the person’s self-contempt and self-rejection.

These effects of negative messages received early in childhood convey all too strongly how much more powerful actions and attitudes have in influencing children’s views of God than does conscious instruction. Religious education—whether formal or informal—needs to be backed up by positive, nurturing behavior in the home if it is to have the desired effect.

One example of children who possibly receive early negative images about God is a child of an alcoholic parent(s).

Psychologist Sandra Wilson graphically illustrated the impact of negative parenting on the grown-up child’s view of God. She studied two groups of mostly white evangelical Christians: 67 adult children of alcoholics and 62 adult children of nonalcoholics. Wilson examined personality characteristics and religious perceptions and reached the following conclusions:

As compared with evangelical Christian adult children of nonalcoholics, evangelical Christian adult children of alcoholics:

• had habits of personal devotional practices of prayer and/or Bible study almost identical to those of the evangelical adult children of nonalcoholics; yet

• appeared to be significantly more depressed, more self-blaming;

• appeared less able to experience comfort and encouragement from their religious faith;

• reported being more suspicious and less able to trust others;

• identified problems experiencing God’s love and forgiveness, trusting in God’s will, believing biblical promises regarding God’s care, and extending forgiveness to others;

• had Christian spouses significantly less often.

Feeling Versus Belief About God