THE WOMAN AT THE WELL , AND OUR OWN JOURNEY THROUGH THE STAGES OF FAITH
There is so much that can be written and has already been written about this remarkable encounter that Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well. The part of the story that stood out for me the most upon hearing and proclaiming it this past weekend is the conclusion of the story.
‘Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him. When the Samaritans came to him, they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. Many more began to believe in him because of his word, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”’ (New American Bible)
It is this final statement of the Samaritan villagers to the Samaritan woman that is so very profound. In their statement they are saying to her, we no longer believe because you tell us to believe, we have come to believe through our own initiative. The Samaritan villagers arrived at a very advanced level of faith development. To develop this a little more I first need to address first the stages of faith development.
When I was in graduate school at the St. Paul Seminary, part of my study consisted on the stages of faith. The one I remember the most is the 6 stages of faith development proposed by James Fowler. These stages of faith are: 1) Intuitive-Projective; 2) Mythic-Literal; 3) Synthetic-Conventional; 4) Individuative-Reflective; 5) Conjunctive Faith; and, 6) Universalizing Faith.
I know that all the fancy terms used for faith development sound like a bunch of psychological babble. However, allow me to break it all down in understandable terms.
Stage 1: The Intuitive-Projective stage is one in which pre-school children receive most of their ideas of God from their parents and society. It is a magical time in which fantasy and reality get mixed up. Children will believe that Superman is real and can actually fly. Fire breathing dragons are real, and witches and wizards can actually cast spells. All of this pertains to the mythical stories of the Bible as well.
Stage 2: The Mythic-Literal stage is that time in which children reach school age. The magic begins to disappear and they interpret reality more logically. There is no actual Superman who can fly faster than a speeding bullet, but is understood to be a character in a story. They will accept the stories told them by their parents and their religious faith community but understand them in literal terms. For example, God actually created the universe in six 24 hour earth days, and rested on the seventh day. Or, Moses and the Israelites actually passed on dry land through the immensity of the Red Sea. Noah actually got 1 female and 1 male of every species on the Ark (though why on earth would he insisted on saving wood ticks or mosquitoes is still beyond me).
Stage 3: The Synthetic-Conventional stage occurs around the age of 12 and 13 years, when the adolescent begins to think abstractly. It is the time when we seek to discover who we are in light of those we know. We seek to belong. We look for God in our interpersonal relationships. We want a God who knows us and values us. It is at this stage we begin to adopt the belief system of a faith community and may look at all others outside our system of belief as flawed. We will get upset when someone questions our beliefs. There are many adults who will never venture beyond this stage of faith development.
Stage 4: The Individuative-Reflective stage begins to occur around 19, 20, 21 years of age. We begin to question the beliefs we have been taught. Is what we have been taught really true? Fowler says that Stage 3 is like a fish in water, who doesn’t question the water. Stage 4 is the fish out of the water reflecting on the water. We wonder about the authenticity of our beliefs. Needless to say, this is a very traumatic and uneasy time in life. We don’t believe because someone outside of ourselves tells us to believe. We have got to see it for ourselves. Fowler says that this is the period in life when people become non-religious. Some people will remain at this stage the rest of their lives.
Stage 5: The Conjunctive Faith stage is when people believe not because some religious authority or faith community has told them to believe. Rather, people, after questioning their faith through Stage 4 accept and make a serious personal decision to own their faith on their own terms. Fowler says that this is when one’s faith is open to paradox. It is when we become comfortable with God as mystery, strange, and unavailable at the same time we are equally aware of God’s closeness and clarity. We advance beyond the myths and taboos we were taught and are ready to embrace truths outside our narrow understanding of truth.
Stage 6: The Universalizing Faith stage is reached only by a very few people. People at this stage advance beyond themselves realizing that they are already living in the Reign of God. The self is no longer the center of the universe. Fowler states that they find their center in the participation of God. Their lives are far simpler and, as Fowler observes, more intensely liberating, subversively so. Examples of people whom Fowler believes would be at this Stage would be Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton, Dag Hammerskjold, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
‘Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.”’ (NAB)
In the Gospel, the woman at the well is well into developing her stages of faith. She is seeking to deepen her relationship to and understanding of God. Jesus acknowledges this in his conversation with her. He also points out to her that she and all of us clearly have a long way to go before we reach that elusive stage 6.
The Samaritans in the Gospel believed in Jesus at first because of what the Samaritan woman told them. They questioned Jesus and their belief in him during the few days he stayed with them. It was then that they told the Samaritan woman that they now owned their belief in Jesus not because of what she had said, but by what they heard for themselves.
Throughout my life, I have found my faith journey in all five of these stages. I questioned my faith long before my 19th birthday, actually 12 years of age, when in looking at a consecrated host I asked myself, “Is what they say really true? Is this really the Body and Blood of Christ?” I didn’t leave my faith all the while I was questioning it, but continued to ask the questions about the validity of my faith.
There have been two instances in my life that awakened me to that which was beyond myself. My journey beyond Stage 4 occurred at the birth of my first son, Andy, when I encountered God in that delivery room. The second occurred when I encountered my mortality at the age of 25 years during the first of many tacycardias. To feel my heart suddenly racing along at 240 beats a minute, I realized how fragile life truly is. When the 18 mg of Adenosine that was administered to me in the E.R. hit my heart slowing it immediately from 240 beats a minute to 70 beats a minute, I wondered if my life was about ready to end, and wondered what lay beyond death. (Fortunately 20 years after the first episode my problem was resolved by the then experimental procedure in the 1990’s known as Radio Ablation.)
These two instances, when I was very young broke the stagnation that had become my faith life. At first, I migrated back to Stage 3 to rediscover the teaching and myths of the Catholic Church. Then, I began to reenter Stage 4 and then quickly moved into Stage 5 as I entered the Masters in Pastoral Arts degree program at the Seminary. Since that time, I continue to move between Stage 4 and Stage 5. I find myself in the present at Stage 5 of my faith development. I am comfortable with knowing God as an unknown Transcendent Mystery who is immanently present to me, or, as Benedictine Sister Joan Chittester defines God, “Changing Changelessness.”
Where do we find ourselves in our faith development? Are we stuck at Stage 3 in which we believe in Jesus because others tell us to believe? Do we find ourselves in Stage 4 in which we find ourselves skeptical of what others have told us, and question everything the Church has proclaimed about Jesus? Or, do we find ourselves like the Samaritans in the village at Stage 5, where we have come to believe not because we are forced to believe, but believe because we have chosen to believe and make the story of who Jesus is part of our own story?
I believe in God not because the Church has told me to believe in God, though the Church has been the fertile ground into which my belief in God has grown. It is the very fallibility of the Church, with all its goodness and faults as a human institution, that has led me beyond the structure of the Church to the God who knew me before my parents conceived me. This is not to mean that somehow I am over and above the rest of our Church. On the contrary, I am in communion as a very fallible human being with all the rest of my very fallible human brothers and sisters in search of eternal communion with the God who created us.
This is so very well expressed in Marty Haugen’s hymn masterpiece, “Eye Has Not Seen.”* While all the verses are very movingly composed, it is the fourth verse that is so utterly stunning. Marty writes in that verse, “We sing a mystery from the past, in halls that saints have trod, yet ever new the music rings to Jesus, Living Song of God.” It is a comfort to know that perhaps at the time of our death we will finally reach that ever elusive Stage 6 of Universalizing Faith and become one with the One who is the center of all life.
*”Eye Has Not Seen”, music and text by Marty Haugen. © 1982, G.I.A. Publications, Inc.
