Not The Religious Type

Thinking in Stages/ Chip Decker

From Dave: Chip has fun further reflections on stage theory.  We've been on kind of a stage-theory binge recently, so I think we'll make this our last post on the topic for at least a little while.  But I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts!

My wife Laura and I were discussing stage theory the other day and she was expressing concern that stage theory itself may be too simplistic, and that it could also be employed to label and judge others.  "Wow, my friend Margaret is so stage 2!"  "Can you believe how stage 3 Frank is?"  These seemed like good concerns to me as I myself am no fan of simplistic thinking (or judging others for that matter). 

Finally she asked me directly: "Well what stage do you think you are primarily in?" 

Remembering how Peck says we usually have a hand or foot in each of the stages, that none of us are purely in only one, I began thinking about how this might play out within me in real life.  (Plus this line of thinking was a good stalling tactic to help avoid answering the question with the ever-humble "I'm obviously and squarely stage 4 all-the-way sweetheart.")  

So if we really do have different "stages" at work within us at any given time how does that play out in our actual daily lives?  Do we perhaps respond to different situations in ways that could be identified?  Is my thinking in regard to my work stage 2, my church stage 3, while my thinking toward my family is mostly stage 1? 

Or let's take for example any situation I am faced with during my day, perhaps something that elicits a response of some kind from me.  Here is a rough draft of different possible responses aligned with the possible stage they may be closely identified with:

"How to Fight the Man" Some Thoughts/ DB Beem

 

Not sure if you saw David Brooks commentary in the Times.

He writes about the Jefferson Bethke video "Why I hate Religion but love Jesus", which you guys discussed a few weeks ago. His commentary is in followup to some more recent developments where Bethke has apparently retreated from some of his positions in the video.

I thought it was interesting. I particularly liked the line "'[R]ebellion without a rigorous alternative vision is just a feeble spasm."

If I were producing this as a movie I might call it, "Stage 2 Strikes Back!"

David Brooks article is good insofar as it laments how Stage 3 rebellious youth have not risen to the occasion by exacting change and "replacing one set of authorities and institutions with a better set of authorities and institutions." In other words, Stage 3 ain't easy.

If I could opine, and without knowing more of the backstory and conversation between Bethke and DeYoung, that part of the problem we find here is that when Stage 3 still wants to be part of Stage 2, there can be no real Stage 4. Stage 3 gets angry, throws a tantrum, and comes back to Stage 2 feeling better for having expressed its ideas, but resigned to the reality that Stage 2 is more stable and offers structure.