Last week, we heard about people returning to church after COVID had kept the doors closed for over a year.  This week, we hear about people returning to faith after doubts and too many questions kept them locked out for much longer.

In his latest book … Faith after doubt: why your beliefs stopped working and what to do about it … Brian McLaren describes to us a four-stage transition, beginning with the stage of simplicity, in which everything is black or white, good or bad, true or false, in or out.  Dualism. A worldview that’s easy to navigate.  

Until one begins to read one too many books, or listen to one too many podcasts, and realizes that there are actually shades of grey. Doubts creep in, and questions multiply.  Maybe the world isn’t six thousand years old … maybe parts of the Bible do have some inconsistencies … maybe women can play some role in church function. This is the second stage: complexity.  A worldview that’s much harder to navigate, but still possible if you can maintain a degree of flexibility and open-mindedness.

Until you’re trying to hold together so many incompatible statements, and things start slipping through your fingers.  There are just too many views on any given question.  One just doesn’t know what to believe anymore. This is the third stage: perplexity.

But what comes next?

Don’t immediately think it’s obviously stage four! 

Some who find themselves overwhelmed at the bottom of stage three turn to an authority figure and say: “OK, there are just too many interpretations and viewpoints here … just tell me which one is true. What’s the Biblical view on this?”  Or they throw up their hands and give up entirely, saying “none of these things are true … it’s all simply garbage”; these give up their faith or even become militant atheists.  All three outcomes would be reverting back to stage one: the simpler worldview in which there’s one and only one right answer. 

Others dive into fragmented and shape-shifting mysticism. Or cynicism.

Or they move on to stage four: harmony and integration. Seeing things as a whole, and starting to see ourselves and others as connected.

When I first encountered Brian’s idea, I thought stages one, two and three were simply what I had previously called deconstruction, and that stage four was reconstruction. But in hearing Brian explain where he got this new perspective … from scholars studying human development … I recognized that deconstruction doesn’t have to be seen as a downward journey of destruction, but instead is another word for growing up.  We all go through these four stages as we mature … as we learn about life … about politics … the world … sex … and the important things in life.  We start in the simple dualist world of childhood where there’s always one easy answer, then move on to the complex and perplexing worlds of adolescence and adulthood, and eventually mellow out into the more nuanced, big-picture worldview of the wise old sage.

I now see that I didn’t deconstruct my faith. I grew up … into my faith.

As always, tell us what you think.

You can find more about Brian McLaren at https://brianmclaren.net

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