09.20.07
They All are Right!
Finally! I have had this in draft for weeks - just could not get it down in final form ’til now…
In the discussion of stages of religious belief, it is important to point out that this should not be about who is “right” versus who is “wrong.”
Stage twos (see Religious Development for Dummies for explanation of the stages) tend to need the certainty of knowing their religion is right. Their worldview is threatened if someone comes along with a convincing argument showing something different. For this reason, when society seems to be moving in a different direction, growing away from their closely held strictures, stage twos can rebel by holding ever more tightly to their values, becoming literal in their interpretations, clinging ever more tightly to the values they have built their world around. This leads to a fundamentalist stance and these people are absolutely correct. To them, the world is a fearsome place. Evil is threatening all around. And who is it threatening??? Them! They are not afraid of the evil YOU might commit – though they would not admit it, they are afraid of being temped themselves – and that is one reason these people fight so hard for rules about human behavior. (gay marriage, abortion, you name it.) Because they are not self-regulating, they cannot imagine how a person could behave correctly if their behavior were not limited by rules.
As the stage two person sees it, all these other people (those who are not bound by the same rules – read that: not a member of the same religion) are threatening to dismantle the very concepts the stage two person desperately needs to hold his worldview together. Stand in the shoes of a fundamentalist for a while and you see that there is no other way for them. The world has to be as they see it. There is no way they are wrong.
Stage threes have a different need. While they don’t need the absolute certainty stage twos do, and they pride themselves on being truth seekers, they do need a different type of certainty. They know they have reasoned themselves beyond the simplistic worldview of the stage twos (even if they don’t know what stage twos are!) They feel they have scientific proof that much of what passes as religion in their society could not possibly be true. And probably somewhere in the back of their mind, they harbor confusion as to what all the religious fuss that others seem so devoted to is about! But stage threes do have a need to feel somehow superior, somewhat removed from the masses who harbor lower levels of understanding. They need to know that the type of religious stance held by the stage twos, and that stage threes for the most part have left behind, is not valid. And for stage threes, indeed that worldview was not valid – they are absolutely correct.
At this point I want to bring in a concept from Ken Wilber. He says that people in lower stages of all lines of development – not just religion - cannot understand or see any of the concepts of the higher stages. You might as well say, they cannot understand even that there could exist stages that would be above them. (This is interesting to me personally. I consider myself as a sort of stage three/four. While I am very interested in these stages, I have to say that some of the fully blown stage four stuff, mystical union with god for example, I truly do not see the appeal of.)
Take the example of the stage twos. They are fully aware that there are people below them on the development scale. They know they themselves were once stage ones – unprincipled, selfish, chaotic. The stage twos then assume that everyone who does not believe as they do must be at stage one. Hence their preachiness – they want to save everyone from the terribly unfulfilling life they themselves had before they were saved. What they absolutely cannot see – or their worldview then makes no sense – is that there are stages above theirs that they themselves could grow to. Of course, if they could understand that, they would already be at the next stage. So it begs the question.
Another way to look at the same issue of whether those in lower stages can understand upper stages is to study what is called Relational and Contextual Reasoning. A nice professor in Australia who somehow heard about my work tipped me off to the work of a certain K. Helmut Reich. In his book, Developing Horizons of the Mind*, Reich describes research that showed reasoning itself develops in stages! Earlier reasoners (Reich calls them “intra”) insist that only one explanation or answer can be right and therefore all others must be wrong. (Stage twos!) The next stage of reasoners (which Reich calls “inter”) can see that there may be some validity to several possible explanations. (such as those saying “maybe the strict tenets of some of the churches have no validity but there may be some underlying truth to the god they put forth” or “ maybe the god of this church does not exist but there may be some higher being of some sort.”) Above the “inter” reasoners, there are the “trans-intra” reasoners who feel that many explanations are needed to account for the phenomenon under study. (e.g. “Maybe there is some validity to the religions of others and maybe there are some commonalities among them. The atheists have a point that there is no scientific proof that god exists but yet there are some phenomena that defy explanation in strictly scientific terms.”) After the “trans-intra” reasoners there are the “trans-inter” reasoners who take into account the relationship among all the theories and can see that all the concepts are necessary to explain the whole (such as those seeing the atheists as being in the middle of a developmental process that may later lead them to a different type of religious belief than the simple type they feel they are currently rejecting.) And the highest level of reasoner, called “trans-trans,” can give the overarching synopsis of the whole phenomenon.
Now, I don’t imagine anyone currently alive, that I have ever read anyway, can give us the overarching synopsis of the whole phenomenon of religion! And I don’t know what happened to the stage threes in this scale. At the trans-intra stage of reasoning I believe you have the religious people who are trying to find the commonalities in all faiths, bringing members of different churches together to celebrate together. But surely you can see that by the time we reach Reich’s third stage of reasoning (trans-intra) we are talking about stage four on the religious development scale.
Now so, back to how each of the religious stages is correct: I already explained why stage twos are correct in their worldview – for them. And stage threes are correct in their worldview – for them. What about the stage fours? Well, this is a bit hard for me because as I have said, I do not see myself as a real stage four – so maybe I can’t understand things as they see them, or experience faith as they do. (whereas I have been in the past a stage two and a stage three so I can speak about those from experience.) But, you can assume if the stage fours have attained the highest level of faith that we can describe in simple terms (if you want more info about the higher stages in less simple terms, read Fowler or Wilber – and perhaps there are stages beyond what they were even able to describe!) then you can assume that they are right too. The type of faith they experience must be real for them. So we can say they are right too to believe what they do.
Way back in college a philosophy professor won an argument with me when he made the point that moral decisions are not a matter of opinion. Though what is right for you may be different from what is right for me, we are each obliged to act on what we know is right – for us. I believe we can apply this same concept to belief. Though what I believe may be different from what you believe, I am not wrong and neither are you. Our beliefs are the result of what we see in this world as we experience it. This being the case, we have no right to condemn others for what they believe or don’t believe. We all are right!
* Reich, Helmut. Developing Horizons of the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Joel Weberg said,
February 5, 2008 at 10:25 am
I wonder if you’ll come to realize that you, yourself hold tightly to a religious dogma. With your firm belief in spiritual stages, it becomes easy to lump people into a category and then categorically dismiss anything they have to say that goes against your “closely held structures.” Some of the greatest thinkers and most open people I’ve ever known would be nothing more than a stage ii to you, making them no threat to dismantle the very concepts you desperately need to hold your world view together.
There is absolute truth in this world for any who are open-minded enough to find it.
MPJ said,
February 5, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Thank you for your comment. In fact, I have not posted a content article in a few weeks, partly because some new evidence came in that maybe stages is not the right word. Some current researchers are now using the term “styles” to differentiate views held by different types of believers. And, to my shock, someone else pointed out to me that there seems to be a correlation between the temperament styles outlined by David Keirsey (Please Understand Me II) and the four stages I have been writing about (based on the research of others) So - while I look into this further, I am withholding further comment about the stages. I would be more than happy to learn that it is all a question of style of belief, rather than stage. But then….how is it that people seem to move in a certain direction? And not the other way? And if it is a matter of temperament, then how could these people change? Anyway, once I figure out how to present this dilemma, there will be further posts about it.
Thanks for your interest.
Margaret
Steve Pugh said,
February 29, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I came to your site after reading your comment at Amazon about Stephen Baldwin’s book, “The Unusual Suspect.” While I have not read Mr. Baldwin’s book, it is not he that says Jesus is the only way, it is Jesus. After looking over your site, it is clear that you really do not have a grasp of logic. All religiosu beliefs cannot possibly be true, because Truth cannot contradict truth. Clearly you are under th delusion that Truth is relative. It is not. Truth is absolute and objective and anything that contradicts truth is, by definition, false.
MPJ said,
March 3, 2008 at 12:23 am
Thank you for your comment. But I still maintain that the “Truth” is not nearly as absolute as you maintain. Human understanding of what is “truth” tends to evolve over time.
At one time it was considered a “Truth” that the world was flat. Now that more information has come in that the whole world is not flat, it remains true that the world, as viewed by any human eye, remains a flat surface. The world and its truth have not changed, but our understanding has deepened. We must incorporate the new information into our concept of the “Truth” or else hide from what is obvious to science.
At this time some other concepts once considered absolute, especially in the world of physics, are being called into question. It would not be wise to bury our head in the sand and not allow the new findings to become part of our human “Truth” just because we don’t like to see our favorite concepts altered.
In the same vein, as more information comes in, or as human understanding of religious “truth” deepens, there is no reason to discard the original beliefs but they do need to be incorporated into the larger picture. What Jesus might have said is only one part of the truth, not all of it. Why? Because Jesus’ truth could only apply to the segment of the population that has had opportunity to be exposed to his teachings. There is truth being held by people in other religions and by atheists, agnostics, and humanists.
What needs to happen before various segements in our world blow each other up over differences of belief is that we need to make a mature effort to incorporate other people’s truths into our total understanding - work together to find a deeper, more comprehensive Truth, one that includes everyone, not just a chosen few. Of course we will most likely never know the enitre Truth, for surely it is too vast for any human to understand. But once we are tipped off to the opportunity, to the possibility of a belief system that excludes no one, how can we possibly refuse to rise to this challenge?