08.07.07
How to Understand a Religious Person
I have said this before and I will say it again. I am not trying to put myself out as any type of expert on religion. It is just that by means of some little bits of information I ran across years ago, I have been allowed a type of understanding that has helped me immensely in getting through the ambiguities I see in the world. Wondering why others seem not to see the connections I do, I feel obliged to point out some of these for the sake of those who might be interested. If you don’t agree with what I write, that is totally ok. I am just offering an opinion, based on readings from solid experts, that might help some people.
So, if you will excuse my very great over simplification of some extremely complex topics (see my page “Religious Development for Dummies for a slightly more complete version) I will proceed to say that we could better understand the tremendous complexity of behaviors and beliefs we note in others if we could just divide all believers into two camps.
I am using the already greatly simplified stages promoted by M. Scott Peck here – just because they are easiest for the average person to understand. (See the above mentioned “Religious Development for Dummies” for further elaboration on his stages, and those of other researchers.) So going along with this great oversimplification, any given religious person will fall into either stage two – or stage four.
Those in stage two are involved in religion either because that is what was given to them in their upbringing and they have never questioned their beliefs enough to consider any other faith – or because they were moved to adopt a religion to escape the chaos of their original stage one behavior.
I think most of the theorists I am working off of are saying we all move through the stages in order and all start at stage one. But those who move past stage one at some time in their childhood may no longer remember it and so may not relate to anything said about it. But anyway, stage ones are unprincipled and motivated only by their own needs. They only interact with others in a manipulative fashion and so are called antisocial. They usually suffer great chaos in their existence. In order to escape the chaos, they need the structure of an organization with rules about behavior and they need to consult these rules to determine what is right and what is wrong. When a stage one finds religion and moves to stage two, it is indeed a very good thing. Then they learn to govern their choices in life according to rules imposed from the organization and indeed, their life improves.
Once in stage two the person then generally becomes very attached to the forms of his religion (or the rules of his organization.) Rather than consider the spirit of the laws, they want everything followed to the letter and become very upset when any little rule or format changes. Their image of God is exactly the type of God they need – someone who will punish them for any infraction of the rules – help them keep their behavior in line. He is judgmental, strict, punishing, and legalistic. Definitely these people’s God is a being totally external to themselves, and of course, usually at least in our culture, masculine. These people are generally in great need of certainty. They have to feel they can be sure they are on the right track. For this reason, they have to consider most all other religions as heresy. “Only those who believe as we do will be saved!” Stage two religion is all about reward and punishment, rules, and justice. What better platform to keep this type of person out of trouble and bring him peace?
Stage fours it seems are quite different – and many fewer of this type exist. (It is to point out this type of faith that I write at all.) From what I can gather, stage fours really have a totally different worldview, yet they talk almost the same talk as the stage twos – and this causes a lot of the confusion that exists about religion. When stage fours talk about God – or god - they might mean anything from consciousness, to the entire universe, to goodness itself, to a part of themselves or something they are a part of. The god they speak of is not external to them, but when they speak, they still sound like they are talking about a distinct being.* Their god however is not judgmental or legalistic, does not take on human traits like jealousy, is not interested in punishing offenders, and especially does not require proof of loyalty on the part of any humans. Stage fours are said to be mystic and communal. While stage twos who need certainty can be said to close the door on any mystery, stage fours engage in religion, or meditation, or whatever practice they use in order to approach the mystery. These people left behind the need for rules when they passed through stage three so the legalistic parts of religion do not appeal to them; they are not concerned with reward and punishment.
Now, what is it that gets a religious person past stage two and onto stage four? Well, it seems they must pass through stage three. Stage three is a stage where the person has internalized the rules that govern his behavior and hence has no need of an institution with laws to keep his life in order. It is a transition zone – apparently it can last only a few moments, or it can span many decades – where the person has outgrown the need for the structure of an organized religion, outgrown the need for certainty that he is right and the need to be saved. Instead the person is questioning the need for a belief system at all. In many cases, this means a stage of atheism or agnosticism. The person generally is said to be scientific in their evaluation of their being and is open to seeking other truths. While they do not set out to approach the mystery just yet, they are not inclined to run away entirely either. And sooner or later, the person may just glimpse the complexity of his existence, see that no matter how hard he tries, no set of compact answers takes everything into account and somehow this does not bother him. He begins to appreciate the mystery and begins to move on to stage four.
This is the dichotomy I wish more people could see. Even within the same traditional religion you will find people who are there for stage two reasons and those who are there for stage four reasons. Here I want to point out that it really does not matter which stage any given person is in. You can assume the religion is doing them good, no matter which stage they are in. It is just good to know that between the stage twos and the stage fours, who are all good people, there are also the much misunderstood stage threes – also good people, most – and they deserve the same respect for their beliefs as those on either side of them.
*to show how confusing this is, long ago I read the first three books by Neale Donald Walsh, (Conversations with God series) which he claims to have been dictated to him by God himself. He gives many complex explanations of just who God is and what he wants and doesn’t want. But it was only after I read a recent article in Ode Magazine in which Neale was sort of pinned down to specifically comment on Richard Dawkins atheistic book, The God Delusion, that I realized Neale was all the while speaking of a stage four type of god! In the article: http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/9/only_tomorrow_s_god_can_deliver_us_from_today_s_evil, he wrote: “These religions have taught us – and have insisted on continuing to teach us – of an entire system of separation and superiority, at the top of which sits God, and at the bottom of which rest those who do not accept God in the form of which God approves. These religions have told us, too, of an entire system of revenge that deals with those who do not respect God’s will in these matters. Virtually all of humanity’s exclusivist organised religions speak repeatedly of an angry, jealous, and punitive God…..I assert that unless and until we enlarge humanity’s most basic understanding about God, about life itself, and about living with each other, we will never see an end to the kinds of tragedies we are now seeing in Iraq. And it is today’s organised religions which must assist humanity in enlarging these understandings, for it is exclusivist organised religions from which we have received our limited understandings – and which continue to give them moral authority….We must create a freedom movement, a civil rights movement, for the soul, loosing humanity at last from the bonds of an oppressive God.