John Scoble & Liz Jones
Introduction
In the Butterfly series, we seek to encourage everyone to understand themselves and the world better by asking questions and seeking answers. We named the series after the transition of a caterpillar into a butterfly as a helpful metaphor for the process of change that we are called to undertake spiritually. Part of that journey involves the shedding of childish beliefs and actions and replacing them with an adult faith. In this episode of the Butterfly series, we seek to put the spotlight on the difference between a childish faith and an adult faith.
The Process of Change
Let’s start with the key component of the process of change. Irish Catholic priest, Diarmuid O’Murchu writes:
“In the contemporary world of mass information, understandings change consistently. In most intellectual disciplines, updating and retraining have become not merely normal practice, but in many situations are now obligatory. In the public perception however, religion and the appropriation of faith do not yet seem to have caught up with this new hermeneutical moment. Lifelong learning, rather than a one-time only acquisition of key knowledge, has become the guiding criterion of this time.”[1]
So, this process of lifelong learning doesn’t just involve acquisition of new information; it also involves the need to re-examine existing information and either shed or amend it. In some cases, this involves long and deeply held beliefs or even systems of belief. In this respect we are reminded of the Gospel passage below:
“Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved”[2].
What is your understanding of this passage? How does it inform your spiritual development? In her book, “Field of Compassion”, Judy Cannato reflects on this process of spiritual development with reference to the work of Ken Wilber. She writes:
“Ken Wilber uses the principles “transcend and include” and “negate and preserve” to describe this part of the process. When something novel comes about, it is said to transcend the former expression, yet that former expression is included in what emerges. We have new insights about ourselves, for example, but the new insight evolved from the former way of being and knowing oneself. Even if the insight appears “from out of the blue,” it is our current ever-evolving experience that has enabled us to recognize and hold the new. We transcend the old, but it is still part of our experience, still included.”[3]
Some Aspects of an Adult Faith
In this paper, we have discerned that there are some important characteristics of an adult faith. These may not be comprehensive nor definitive. We simply offer them for consideration.
Firstly, a child is dependent on parents, teachers and priests and develops their belief systems from what they are told by these adult influencers. In contrast, an adult progresses from dependence, through independence to interdependence and develops their belief system through multiple sources and personal discernment. Those of you who participated in episode one of the Butterfly series will recall the tricycle model, where personal experience is the front wheel, and the back wheels are Scripture and tradition. Personal experience is the driver. With the help of Scripture and tradition, an adult believes not what they have been told to believe by others but what they have discerned from thoughtful and prayerful reflection, with an informed conscience.
Secondly, the primary driver of the child is the ego. While this often remains the primary driver of the adult, maturity often brings a shift in focus towards the other. For us, this is best described by Richard Rohr in his seminal book “Falling Upward”.[4] It was also covered in episode one of the Butterfly series. Rohr says it was Carl Jung who first popularized the phrase “the two halves of life” to describe the two major tangents and tasks of any human life. The first half of life is spent building our sense of identity, importance, and security—what Rohr calls the false self and Freud might call the ego self. In the second half of life, the ego still has a place, but now is in the service of the true self or soul, your inner and inherent identity. We discover that it is no longer sufficient to find meaning in being successful or healthy. We need a deeper source of purpose. During the second half of life, which Rohr concedes many adults never reach, a person develops a mindset of humility, detachment, sacrifice and selfless service of others. An adult faith is an ego-suppressing faith.
Thirdly, an adult faith is not static: it is evolving. It accumulates new knowledge, assesses it against experience, and as Wilber says, transcends and includes new wisdom. Jesus is our role model here. He had the courage and clarity to sort out what was perennial wisdom from what was unreal, passing, merely cultural, or even destructive. The former Anglican Bishop of Canberra, George Browning, wrote a letter to his children which included this sentence: “Be very wary of people who present you with too much certainty, it is most probable that they have long since stopped their personal journey of exploration.”[5]
As we mature and grow as adults, we develop an expanded worldview, leaving behind the egocentric and ethnocentric positions and moving into the worldcentric and cosmocentric positions. (This was dealt with in more detail in Butterfly series episode 7 on Growing Up). Illustrative of this evolutionary growth, Beverly Lanzetta says:
”A new revelation or universal story is necessary to guide our world today, one that respects the biodiversity of life, tapestry of human cultures, and wide expanse of the cosmos. We need to imagine our world in its sacred and prophetic dimensions, in the virtues of all religions and spiritual traditions that are part of our collective inheritance, and in the dignity of all species and life. We need to recover the ancient vision of wholeness and closeness to nature that sustained countless generations, and at the same time broaden and deepen this vision beyond local, tribal, or national boundaries to include the entire Earth community and the cosmos.”[6]
Fourth, an adult faith is inquisitive. It asks questions and seek answers. As Rainer Maria Rilke was once quoted as saying:
“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves … Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into answer”.
Richard Rohr highlights the example of Jesus towards openness and inquisitiveness:
“More than telling us exactly what to see in the Scriptures, Jesus taught us how to see, what to emphasize, and also what could be de-emphasized or ignored. Beyond fundamentalism or literalism, Jesus practiced a form that the Jewish people called midrash, consistently using questions to keep spiritual meanings open, often reflecting on a text or returning people’s questions with more questions.”[7]
Fifth, an adult faith is non-dualistic. We have many dualistic mental constructs which do not serve us well – black or white, right or wrong, conservative or liberal, clergy or laity and so on. These constructs do not allow for the various positions along a continuum. Dualistic mindsets abhor ambiguity and struggle with paradox. Most importantly they encourage fixed positions and total dismissal of alternative points of view. In contrast an adult faith is non-dualistic, accepts that both sides of an argument may contain some of the truth and seek answers in a third way, which is sometimes called the law of three.[8]
Sixth, an adult faith is communal. It is clear from reading the Old Testament that God called the Jewish people to a communal faith and not an individual faith. Jesus built on this reality by making a meal the centrepiece of his legacy: “Do this in memory of Me”. While we strive for a relationship with God, it is not a binary relationship because it must find expression in our treatment of others: “Love your neighbour as yourself”. This is highlighted by St Luke in the Acts of the Apostles: ”Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common….for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”[9]
The individualism in Western society is relatively new in history, the product of recent centuries, facilitated by the rationalism that emerged during the Enlightenment. In contrast, the pre-eminence of the community is retained in African and Asian cultures. In his book on the spiritual life of Desmond Tutu, Michael Battle writes:
“In short, the definition of Ubuntu is that personhood is always interdependent. A person is a person through other persons. For Christians this is congruent with how God is a Trinity of persons. Such a concept, that a community can be mystical, is strange to Western notions of self-contained spirituality.”[10]
Seventh, an adult faith is contemporary. Significant advances have been made in psychology, biology, physics, astronomy, artificial intelligence and climate science, to name but a few. We should not remain committed to peripheral teachings that were developed and passed on by cultures that were less informed than our own. We are constantly being challenged with issues that did not exist when the Scriptures were written. The climate crisis, in vitro fertilisation and gender transitioning are three examples. How do we navigate these issues?
Ilia Delio pulls no punches:
“The Catholic Church remains fixated on the theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a brilliant theologian who developed his ideas in the thirteenth century. Although science has undergone three major paradigm shifts since the Middle Ages, the church still relies on medieval theology to explain the mysteries of Christian faith. While Vatican II opened the doors of the church to the world, theology remains distant from science.”[11]
Richard Rohr makes this observation about faith development:
“It’s when our inherited beliefs collide with the messy circumstances of our lives that we go from a two-dimensional faith to one that is vibrant and textured.”[12]
Kevin Treston perhaps best sums up the challenge faced by a person pursuing a mature adult faith. He asks:
“How do we remain faithful to the core teachings of our Christian faith yet be open to how this faith might be understood and experienced in global consciousness and modern science?”[13]
it is our responsibility, as we peddle our tricycle on our faith journey, to discern where the truth lies and reconcile scientific discoveries with the core teachings of all faith denominations.
Summary
In summary then, a Child faith is co-dependent. static, dualistic, certain, unchallengeable, fear driven, striving for perfection and holding out for a future reward. In contrast, an Adult faith is inter-dependent, communal, evolving, non-dualistic, uncertain (embracing mystery), challengeable, compassion driven, accepting of imperfection, and present-oriented. It has love as its centre, is focussed on the other (suppressing ego), relational, respecting all creation (not humans on the top), accepting of diversity of beliefs (not arrogantly claiming the truth), embracing lifelong learning, acknowledging the inter-connectedness of all beings (universalist) and contemplative.
Let’s finish, as we started, with Diarmuid O’Murchu, who calls the process of faith development “adult empowerment”. He writes:
“Conventional inherited wisdom required adults to be robust, self-reliant individuals who could manage reality in a controlled way and teach others to do the same.
Embedded co-dependency resulted in the few – mainly males – attaining true adulthood and everybody else was consigned to passive dependency as in a conventional parent-child arrangement. Adult empowerment involves a shift of developmental focus from the child/adolescent to the adult, along with whole new ways of seeing and understanding what adulthood is about in these co-evolutionary times.”[14]
Questions for discussion
1. In Matthew 18:3-4, Jesus says “truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven, whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Is this a paradox? How is this to be understood alongside a mature adult faith?
2. In your faith journey, what incident or challenge or reading changed you?
3. We listed seven characteristics of an adult faith above. Are there any other characteristics that you think are important?
Further research (highly recommended)
O’Murchu’s “Adult faith development in the 21st century”, video (33 minutes) https://diarmuidomurchu.com/videos/6-adult-faith-development-in-the-21st-century
1 Diarmuid O’Murchu, “Adult Faith - Growing in Wisdom and Understanding", p112
2 Matthew 9:16-17
3 Judy Cannato, “Field of Compassion“, p 64
4 Richard Rohr, "Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life"
5 George Browning, "Not Helpful", p 85
6 Beverly Lanzetta, “The Monk Within: Embracing a Sacred Way of Life” 2018
7 Richard Rohr, CAC daily meditations, 7 Jan 2019
8 for further information on the law of 3, see CAC daily meditations, 5 June 2018
9 Acts 4:32-35
10 Michael Battle, "Desmond Tutu – A Spiritual Biography of South Africa's Confessor", p.54
7 Richard Rohr, CAC daily meditations, 7 Jan 2019
8 for further information on the law of 3, see CAC daily meditations, 5 June 2018
9 Acts 4:32-35
10 Michael Battle, "Desmond Tutu – A Spiritual Biography of South Africa's Confessor", p.54
11 Ilia Delio, “The Hours of the Universe: Reflections on God, Science, and the Human Journey”, p.xv
12 Richard Rohr, “Holy Bewilderment”, CAC daily meditations, 7 December 2022
13 Kevin Treston, "Telling our faith stories", p 27
14 Diarmuid O’Murchu, “Adult Faith” p.17.
February 2023
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