Faith and Values: Spiritual maturity requires critical thinking

A few weeks ago, this paper’s Sunday comics section included an insightful “Luann.” In five panels, she “grows up” from preschool to college. In between are grade school, junior high and high school.

She begins and ends with this statement: “You find out there’s a huge, unknown world out there.” It’s too bad the cartoon ends at college. Luann’s questions are really just starting in preschool through college – or they should be.

Like all children, I was always in a hurry to grow up. Dreams of getting taller and older held me persuasively in the promise of maturity and wisdom. Here I am, closer to 73 than 72 years old. I’m still waiting to grow up. Hopefully, I may be a little closer to growing toward maturity.

I refer to what we commonly call “spiritual maturity,” but it encompasses so much more than what we usually define as spirituality. So walk a little while with me toward maturity as I describe one way to experience growing toward what God knows we can become.

As our guide, I refer to a foundational chapter in Richard Rohr’s 2011 book “A Lever and a Place to Stand.” The chapter is “Religion: A Transformation System?” In turn, he takes a clue from E. F. Schumacher’s little book “A Guide for the Perplexed.”

In that book, Schumacher identifies three stages of developing consciousness. They are based on the three major parts of the Hebrew scriptures – the books of the Law, Prophets, and Wisdom.

We begin with the Law, the Torah that focuses on structure, order, identity, boundaries, certitude, authority, etc. These are all necessary to the creation of a functioning society, and of a functioning person.

But there’s more. The Prophets are a collection of biblical books that are too often ignored because they offer an alternative view of “how life should be.” They are loyal critics of the status quo, societal and personal.

The third stage of consciousness is represented by the biblical Wisdom books. They always deal better with mystery and paradox than the other two stages. Wisdom literature, however, doesn’t dismiss the first two stages.

It integrates the Law and the Prophets to move us along toward deeper understandings of how God creates the world and fixes our place in that creation.

In psychological terms, stage 1 is “conformity,” stage 2 is “criticism” and stage 3 is “maturity.” Most of us are stuck in stage 1. We prefer to live status quo lives. We value “getting along” more than anything else. Some move toward stage 2, though much of our criticism is born of fear, not love.

Stage 3 is enjoyed by few of us. Those who live on the edge of stage 3 are less comfortable with certitude but embrace mystery, paradox and contradictions. Jesus definitely lived a stage 3 spiritual wisdom and maturity.

His numerous subversive ways were born out of – and I simplify greatly here – a serious control of his ego, a criticism of his Jewish religion motivated by a deep love for that very religion, and an unrelenting pursuit of the mystery we call “God.”

We cannot grow toward spiritual maturity when we settle for living only in a stage 1 consciousness of ego-control. There is growth when we can embrace stage 2 awareness that stage 1 is not all that perfect.

We resist being critical lovers of ourselves and our long-held belief systems. But such challenges are healthy for us, and often for others. Reaching for stage 3 wisdom helps us see there is much more to our very humanity and our place in God’s world.