Volume 3, No. 2, May, 2003
DEVELOPING FAITH IN THE TRANSCENDENT:
Approaches and Stages of Development

You may quote from or reproduce these editorial clips if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 2003 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099 www.WholisticHealingResearch.com   DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com 

Most of us acquire our faith in the transcendent through our family traditions and through religious teachings.  This faith helps us to find our way through life, providing a code of personal and community conduct. Our faith in the rightness of these teachings creates community through common beliefs. These generate collective traditions, with ritual acknowledgments of major life events, such as births, marriages and deaths. Our faith invites us and binds us to communal celebration of seasons and holy days, and to a higher authority for moral and ethical behaviors.  It offers us rituals and practices for prayer and for healing of personal, interpersonal, and societal ills.

While faith can help us to develop and deepen our sense of spirituality, it may also hinder us from finding our own, personal beliefs and spirituality. At its worst, it may also lead to conflicts between people of differing faiths. Therefore, understanding how faith develops is of vital importance at this time when there are major conflicts between peoples of differing faiths in various geographic, cultural and religious communities - conflicts that threaten the continuation and perhaps even the survival of life as we know it on this planet.

Faith is based in logical truths and faith is based in the heart - known directly rather than deduced through reason. Our personal and collective challenge is to seek the healing balance between the two ways of experiencing an d practicing our faith..

How do we develop our faith? For many, this is simply an automatic part of growing up, one which we accept without question - just like we accept that we learn to crawl, to walk and to speak. For others, it is process of deliberate study, both intellectual and experiential.

Numerous components of can be identified within the broad contexts of faith:

A. There are three broad approaches for developing faith:

1. Accepting what we are told

2. Logical reasoning

3. Intuitive, experiential knowing

B. James Fowler identifies six stages in developing faith:  

1. Basic faith  (Fowler: "Intuitive-Projective Faith")

2. Mythic-Literal Faith

3. Faith based on popular idols  (Fowler:  "Synthetic-Conventional Faith")

4. Faith by personal choice (Fowler: "Individuative-Reflective Faith")

5. Faith through inner knowing  (Fowler: "Conjunctive Faith")

6. Faith anchored in transcendent awareness  (Fowler: Universalizing Faith)

C. Personality types and stages of faith

D. Societal stages of awareness parallel the stages of faith

Each approach and stage has its advantages and drawbacks. None can be proven as valid beyond question without prior assumptions or. Each of these five stages can be experienced  through any or all of the three broad approaches to experiencing faith. Each will be colored by our personality styles.

Our challenge, both personal and collective, is to choose wisely between these alternatives. Our choices will certainly influence, and may even be crucial in determining the future of life on this planet.

Terminology is a challenge in discussing spiritual issues. The IJHC is grateful to Rev. Cay Randall May, PhD, for providing many of the elements in the glossary appended at the end of this editorial.

A. There are three broad approaches to faith in our perception of the transcendent.

1. Accepting What We Are Told

Many of us grow up in families where we are taught spiritual beliefs. These may be presented as absolute and unquestionable truths, as revelations from God through His prophets and luminaries (often from many centuries ago, codified in holy traditions and writings, and reinterpreted by religious authorities through the ages), or as cultural traditions that enrich our existence and provide moral and ethical codes of conduct for our lives. I call these codified, traditional, revealed religious beliefs.

Many will read the above paragraph without pause or reflection. Our language tends to bind us to certain articles of faith, such as the use of masculine pronouns to identify the Divine presence. God as a masculine energy is associated with logic, structures and confining boundaries. On the one hand this helps us to abide by society's rules, with a sense of the disciplining father keeping us in line. On the other hand, creativity, tolerance and love are diminished through our investment in doing rather than being.

When we accept these beliefs as absolute truths, any questioning of these traditions becomes heretical. We are discouraged from even considering the possibility of questioning these truths.

Such unconditional acceptance of social "truths" becomes a "cultural hypnosis" (Pearce 2002). We are so immersed in these worldviews that they appear to many to represent an absolute picture of reality, "the way it is" and/or "the way it is supposed to be."

Where codified revealed beliefs are exclusive, we are bound to a system that is defensive. Our beliefs are right, and therefore all other beliefs are wrong. It is our mission and privilege to bring our revealed light to the darkness of a world in which others have not seen THE light. We may do this by our living example, though more commonly we preach and teach the codified truths in our efforts to convert non-believers.

There is a wide spectrum of approaches for relating to non-believers, both within and between various religious communities. In Christian tradition, proselytizing and actively seeking to convert non-believers is a highly valued mission. Where Church and State are separated, members of other religions are tolerated and are extended equal rights under the law. In Muslim tradition (in many predominantly Muslim countries), non-believers are infidels, and they are not equal under the law to believers. Westernized Muslims are more tolerant of other religions. In Jewish tradition, proselytizing is not practiced, because being Jewish is considered a privilege of the Chosen People. Traditionally, anyone wanting to convert should be discouraged from doing so. In Hindu and other polytheistic religions, beliefs in many gods promote tolerance for other religions (Campbell 1989). Buddhists teach practices that help to overcome self-defeating beliefs and habits, recommending that personal experience and exploration should be the basis for faith (Smith 1965).  

Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules.
                                                               - Ashleigh Brilliant

Advantage of Accepting What We Are Told

Holding to unshakable religious beliefs can be a comfort to the believer. Life is simple and straightforward. Right is right and wrong is wrong. The world is the way it is because it was created thus by God in His omniscient wisdom. Our course in life is clear because there is no question about how it is all meant to be. If we live by the letter of the law, we will be rewarded by God, ultimately with an afterlife that is blissful.

Within some religious systems, if we have faith in our health, we expect to remain healthy and will be able to recover from all illness. Faith in our religious leaders and in prayer workers within our religious frameworks empowers them with the ability to extend healing for our ailments and absolution for our sins. This faith that we have in their power may facilitate our self-healing responses to their treatments.

Disadvantages of Accepting What We Are Told

If we stray from the prescribed paths of our religious teachings, we can anticipate Divine retribution, up to and including eternal damnation in Hell. Life may become focused on avoiding sins and penalties rather than on the good deeds and healings we can bring into the world. Fear of Hell or other punishments after death can be powerful motivation for behavior.

Particularly relevant to the IJHC, illness may be interpreted as a lack of faith or the result of negative thinking - adding spiritual guilt to our suffering rather than providing hope, nurturance and relief.

From the perspective of logical reasoning, accepting what wer are told appears to be unscientific. There is no room here to explore whether the Word as given by God, explained and interpreted by His ministers and priests, passes any tests of reason or explorations through methods of objective research outside of the canon of religious laws and traditions.

God gave us a curiosity to understand his creation. I don't think we need to worry that we will move into an exploration that will embarrass him.
                                        - Francis Collins, Geneticist (p. 38)

From the perspective of intuitive faith, accepting what we are told is based on the original inspired intuitive knowing of luminaries who lived long ago. However, we now rely on various interpretations and reinterpretations of their words over many centuries. This approach allows no room for personal intuitive awarenesses, particularly when these might deviate from or even contradict the established interpretations of teachings.

Accepting what we are told is based on faith in the intuitive perceptions of luminary people many centuries ago, and in the interpretations of their inspirations as they are taught by religious authorities today.

2. Logical Reasoning

Science tells us that there are fundamental laws in nature that determine how the physical world functions (including our bodies). With methodical, step-by-step research, we are discovering how the particles and energies of the universe behave. Ultimately, we are told we will at least comprehend everything there is to know about the visible, physical universe. Based on this knowledge, we will probably be able to control our existence to an ever-enhanced degree through manipulations of our environment and our physical world.  Science has become the religion of much of the Western world.

             Full editorial in IJHC Volume 3, No. 2