March 23, 2003
By Jack Price

Series: Stages of Faith (Growing Up in Faith)

(synthetic-conventional faith)

            If you were asked to identify the creation story in Genesis, what would you say?  Probably you would say the Genesis 1 story with God speaking creation into existence in large and cosmic proportions.  There is a much older story of creation, however, in chapter two.  You might say it is the "up close and personal" version.

"In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,  ⁵ when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up-for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; ⁶ but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground--"

This story all happens in a day. The same Hebrew word can mean either a 24-hour cycle or an eon of time.  The focus is right here on the earth and a very personal God is personally involved in the creating.  And the first thing God makes is gardener.  Listen!

"⁷ Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.  ⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹ Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

This was paradise - the garden called Eden, meaning "delightful."  It is God's park, where God lives.  The Hebrew word for man is adam, so we call the gardener Adam.  There are lots of plants and trees in this garden.  Two of them are quite famous:  the Tree of Life, meaning eternal life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of God and Evil, meaning the tree of wisdom.  Back to the story.

"¹⁰ A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. ¹¹ The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; ¹² and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. ¹³ The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴ The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates."

No one knows just where the mythical Garden of Eden was located.  The four rivers flowing out of Eden probably represent the four corners of the earth.  We have certainly heard a lot about the Tigris and Euphrates recently.  Both flow into present day Iraq, though they do not have a common source.  As for the other two, no one has ever heard of the Pishon or the Gihon rivers.  Tradition and archeological research indicate they refer to the lands of Arabia and Ethiopia.

And so, "¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die."

            Eminent archeologist and action picture hero Indiana Jones stood at the brink of a yawning chasm, a big hole in the ground.  To save his dying father he had to step out onto a bridge span he could neither see nor feel, a walkway that would only be revealed when he stepped out onto it.  Indiana Jones was on his Last Crusade, in search of the Holy Grail.  His options were down to two:  step out and hopefully find the key to saving his father or stay put and let him die.  He made his choice and stepped into space.

            You and I step out onto "bridges of faith" everyday.  How we step out and grow up in faith is the subject of this current series of sermons.  How do you "faith?"  James Fowler literally wrote the book on faith development.  He defines the six distinct stages of faith that form the basis for these sermons.  Two weeks ago, I suggested that faith is both a verb and a universal human process, much deeper than any particular religious system or set of beliefs. Last Sunday, we examined how faith stages one and two correspond to early childhood developmental stages through about age eleven.  Faith develops in the trust or mistrust we learn in relationship to our primary caregivers.  Throughout childhood, faith develops in an emerging sense of "self" and our ability to find make meaning in life despite our fears.           

After childhood comes adolescence.  Today we look at that area of faith corresponding to those years of adolescence, stage three, and we'll do it in the context of a very famous story.   Stage three involves a search for mirrors, other significant people in whose reflection to see one's own emerging self.  A poem for this stage might be:  "I see you seeing me; I see the me I think you see."  Stage three is a time of needing to be known and accepted.  It is a time when concepts of God begin to change from a larger-than-life impersonal and parental figure into a God who is more personal and open to relationship.

            People whose faith is characterized by stage three find identity in peer groups and rarely challenge the nature and philosophy of their particular group.  Stage three is also called "synthetic-conventional" because there is a tendency to embrace conventional faith rather than questioning one's basis of faith too closely.  People find meaning in accepting what is generally accepted, what authority says, and the general widely held wisdom of their community.  Stage three, for adults who live there and youth who are passing through, is largely an unexamined stage of development.  Philosopher George Santayana must have been describing stage three faith when he wrote:  "We cannot know who first discovered water, but we can be sure that it was not a fish." 

Many people stay in stage three indefinitely.  Large and institutionally successful church organizations often reflect stage three faith, never questioning basic suppositions, seeking only to articulate their views more clearly and persuasively.  James Fowler says, "Persons in stage three [definitely has] values and normative images.  [They] articulate them, defend them, and feel deep emotional investment in them, but typically [they] never make the value system, as a system, the object of reflection."  Symbols of faith become themselves sacred - "the symbols are expressive of their deepest meanings and loyalties are not separable from the what they symbolize."  Cherished theological perspectives are not questioned.  Every bit of energy goes into defending them.  Symbols of faith becomes themselves sacred.  A visitor from the east, the east coast that is, came to Crossroads Church and was very complementary of the spirit and energy of the congregation, particularly its worship.  When speaking to me later, however, this person felt compelled to ask, "When are you going to get those people some hymnals?"  No, please don't misunderstand me.  I really like hymnals, but the symbols of church (for some - hymnals) are not the essence of church.  You can be church with or without hymnals, can't you?

      Stage three is conventional.  It is all about "learning the ropes."  And that is exactly what was going on in the Garden of Eden.  Let's return to Adam the gardener and see how our biblical story illustrates stage-three faith development. 

¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner." ¹⁹ So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name."

Within the context of his garden world, the man trusted that God knew him personally and was trying everything to make him happy.  With the same process of shaping dust, and by kind of a trial and error process, God starts making animals.  One after another, God sends them to Adam to be named and classified.  Finally, it dawns on God what Adam needs.

"²⁰ The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. ²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh."  [No longer creating out of dust, some say this ultimate act of the creation required a different process.]

"²² And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man."

The man was pleased.  You might say he was thrilled.  Here was a friend for him, a peer, a mirror to help him see himself. 

²³ Then the man said, 'This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;

this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken."

            God finally got it right.  All the animals were fine, but..  And this part of the story concludes--  ²⁴ Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. ²⁵ And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed." 

Adam and Eve were innocent in the Garden of Eden.  Stage three is a time of relative innocence and idealism.  You have faith in your environment, in your family, in your God.  And God is personal and available.  The statement about a man leaving father and mother and clinging to his wife is clearly a addition of text about marriage that does not really fit in this story.  Here the energy between the man and the woman was not primarily sexual.  It was stage three energy.  They were dear friends, peers.  Adam began to know who he was in relationship with Eve and she with him.  There was no need to reexamine their theology.  God was right there.  The environment was set.  It was known with no need to question, no need to rock the boat.  They were like fish in water.

Patriotic fervor is largely stage three energy.  There is tremendous pressure to silence criticism of political leadership and policies in the name of solidarity or national unity.  We can see this happening now in many parts of our society.  Within the church, stage three energy exerts strong pressure to avoid questioning policies or raising theological questions.  Stage three church rarely question their pastor's authority!?!

Stage three is a crucial stage of faith development.  If you're a teenager or young adult, I hope that's where you are.  In this community of faith, I hope you are finding some mirrors among friends of your own age and among some adults, mirrors to help you see yourself.  I hope the environment here and in your families supports you in finding meaning for your lives.  Stage three is the appropriate stage to follow childhood faith. 

I was a teenager once upon a time.  During those years, I used to volunteer to work in the nursery so I wouldn't have to sit through the sermon.  Then, around the age of fifteen, I began reading, of all things, Hal Lindsay's eschatological fantasy The Late, Great Planet Earth.  A contemporary equivalent might be Tim LeHaye's Left Behind series.  I finally decided that the Lindsay and LeHaye perspectives were theological untenable and, in the process, discovered a renewed energy and interest in my own faith.  At the age of sixteen, I made a public rededication of my life in discipleship and found a group of friends with whom to explore my religious beliefs.  This was all stage three energy and has laid the groundwork for my subsequent faith development (such as it is).

Stage three faith is appropriate for teenagers and young adults, but as we grow, stage three may not be the place to stay.  As life challenges us, through the natural process of growing as well as through life crises that produce crises of faith, it can be appropriate to re-examine big-picture questions.  When familiar images of God no longer adequately address our experiences in life, stage three energy can tend to repress our questions.  Questioning and honest exploration can lead to stage four faith.  Beware then, questioning orthodoxy usually assures that you will not make friends of those invested in orthodoxy.  If you value the support and affirmation of your peer group, or desire just to live in peace and comfort, maybe you don't want to push the boundaries or question faith too much.  Remember what happens to Adam and Eve.  They did not get to stay in the Garden.  But that's a story for next week.