Faith Crisis, Recovery, and Stages of Faith

[Anonymous]

If we’re following Fowler’s Stages of Faith model, I’ve noticed that people don’t will themselves into the next stage or will themselves into staying in the stage they’re at. It seems that the Stages of Faith find you (instead of you finding them) and are outside of your conscious control. You don’t set a goal to move to the next stage and then get there. Transitioning from one stage to the next seems to happen in unexpected, mysterious, and even spiritual ways.

I never wanted a crisis of faith. When I was a TBM, I wanted to say in the Church and be happy there. I didn’t want to question and doubt and I didn’t want to have to tear it all apart intellectually. But I had questions that kept mounting and problems that I couldn’t solve, and though I tried to push the questions away, they wouldn’t go away. Then a certain event broke it all wide open for me, and I had to tear all my beliefs apart. I didn’t ask for it and I didn’t want it, but it happened. So I tore all my beliefs apart, and when I was more or less done, I seemed happy to stay in my atheistic state of being with little intention of changing it. I looked at the true-believing state of being as something that I could never go back to because it was such a “narrow” way of seeing the world.

By this last October, my cognitive dissonance was mostly gone. I’d accepted that the Church wasn’t what it claimed to be and it didn’t bother me anymore. I’d accepted my mortality and I wasn’t bothered by the seeming inevitability of the extinction of my consciousness at my death. I went to a session of General Conference and I didn’t feel compelled to point out why this or that thing the speaker said was irrational. The whole thing just became fascinating to observe, and I didn’t feel compelled to object to what was happening.

Recently, an unexpected event turned my world upside down again. I hadn’t asked for it and I hadn’t wanted it, but it came, and that’s when I opened my eyes to a new world. A universe of knowledge has opened up to me and I feel I could never go back to the “narrow” world of skepticism and atheism that seemed like it would be home for me for the rest of my life.

And so it feels like something of a spiritual journey that these events happened in my life that I didn’t want or ask for, but they opened me to new worlds of knowledge that I didn’t know existed. I have to stand in wonder at all of it. I used to think that my clever logical constructs could provide the right answers, but they could not have predicted either of these two life-changing transitions or the ways in which they happened.

Life is mysterious. No one knows what will happen tomorrow for you or me. No one knows for sure what happens after we die. So now I live with less certainty and am more comfortable with that uncertainty. My faith journey is something that I never would have guessed would happen to me. I don’t know if I’d trade it for another. But I can’t even if I wanted to. It’s mine, and I own it.

[Anonymous]

Nice piece. I agree that life circumstances are often the things that push towards a new phase of discovery or perspective.

I still think there is choice involved. I chose the interpretation I made of the evidence available because other people have read the exact same evidence and not had a faith crisis. There is always choice.

[Anonymous]

InquiringMind wrote:

I’d accepted that the Church wasn’t what it claimed to be and it didn’t bother me anymore. I’d accepted my mortality and I wasn’t bothered by the seeming inevitability of the extinction of my consciousness at my death.

I reached that mindset here in the last few months. It was a very real experience.

I don’t know much about the stages of faith but I think choice does play some role. I was tired of only seeing the faults in everything, I felt like the path I was on was destroying me; I was on a path of hopelessness and as more time passed even the path started to disappear. I recognized that I wouldn’t last in that state forever, I wanted change, I wanted out. I may not be able to will myself to any particular stage of faith, but I did want change. I don’t know that the choice to move on led to a specific action that allowed me to move on (if that makes any sense) or whether it just pointed me in the direction I needed to point to allow the change to happen. Who knows.

Maybe you’re right, I may be completely wrong here but I feel like the lines between stages are blurred. I don’t remember waking up one day and finding myself in stage 4. I probably fluttered between stage 3 and 4 for a while until the transition was complete. I think, I say think because I have no way of knowing, that I’ve had glimpses into stage 5 but I haven’t experienced anything that would indicate to me that I fully reside there. Maybe this isn’t possible, but I see myself as more of a mix. Maybe there’s so much nuance to traversing the stages it would be impossible to simply will yourself from stage to stage.

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

I don’t know much about the stages of faith but I think choice does play some role. I was tired of only seeing the faults in everything, I felt like the path I was on was destroying me; I was on a path of hopelessness and as more time passed even the path started to disappear. I recognized that I wouldn’t last in that state forever, I wanted change, I wanted out. I may not be able to will myself to any particular stage of faith, but I did want change. I don’t know that the choice to move on led to a specific action that allowed me to move on (if that makes any sense) or whether it just pointed me in the direction I needed to point to allow the change to happen. Who knows.

I think I was forced from Stage 3 to Stage 4 by my experiences, though the transition did take a little while. Stage 5 does seems to be a little more of a choice. I could continue to take the skeptical view, but I don’t want to. The wider view is much more interesting.

[Anonymous]

I agree that we can open ourselves up to new views and experiences, and thus place ourselves on the road to growth and stage “progression.” We can’t choose all of our experiences, but we can choose to be open to what life may be able to teach us.

[Anonymous]

InquiringMind wrote:

If we’re following Fowler’s Stages of Faith model, I’ve noticed that people don’t will themselves into the next stage or will themselves into staying in the stage they’re at. It seems that the Stages of Faith find you (instead of you finding them) and are outside of your conscious control. You don’t set a goal to move to the next stage and then get there. Transitioning from one stage to the next seems to happen in unexpected, mysterious, and even spiritual ways.

This was my experience. I had an assumptive world collapse. One major plank of my assumptive world was that I could control my destiny. Another major plank was that God would intervene in my life experiences to A) bless me for my good decisions and mitigate the bad stuff to the point that it would never be more than I could handle.

After my assumptive world fell, I was definately compelled to build a new assumptive world. At the time I remember questioning the word “assumptive” – why do I need an assumptive world? Why can’t I just live in the “real” world? It seems that people need an interface to understand/interpret what is happening around them. This interface includes many assumptions that might not be true but that may be very helpful…until they are not. Perhaps because I leaned so greatly on those two assumptions, that now that the rug has been pulled out from under me – I see limitations in choice everywhere. This is my understanding of the world based upon my experiences and assumptions.

I remember watching a speaker give a talk called “positive choices to make while moving through the stages of grief.” I believe that this is a very useful comparison to the subject at hand. Do people choose what stages of grief to take and which to skip? I don’t believe they do – although they may make positive choices that either hinder the process or assist the process of healing/acceptance. So too, I believe it goes with stages of faith. Compare the initial dissillusionment to the loss of a loved one. You didn’t choose the loss. Now that it is here – there is a process of healing/acceptance. In many ways the process is personal. It can be important to listen to your own feelings about what is needed rather than following a checklist. Progress will not always be linear. Some days you may find yourself in “acceptance” and the next day in “bargaining.” This doesn’t mean that you have retrogressed. Perhaps something inside of you needed expression through that form. To allow the expression of those emotions, even though they seem to represent an earlier stage, is still progress. It must be lived through.

So yes, there are choices to be made but the process that I am going through is in many ways out of my control and not of my choosing.

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