Four stages of spiritual and moral transformation help to deepen faith

In my spiritual journey, I find that different writers have spoken to me powerfully at different junctures of my life.

Early on after my conversion, it was C. S. Lewis, who helped me see Christianity in a larger context and understand why it’s important.

Other mentors who’ve followed in their turn include Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, biblical commentator William Barclay and Kentucky’s Wendell Berry.

These days, it’s N. T. Wright, the prolific Anglican scholar of the New Testament, and Richard Rohr, a Roman Catholic contemplative.

To say a writer has touched me isn’t to say I agree with everything he or she has ever said (or that I’ve read everything they’ve ever said).

It means that at some point they wrote something that helped me progress beyond a juncture at which I was stuck. Or they helped me understand God’s kingdom in a new light. Or they enlarged my worldview.

There’s nobody I agree with 100 percent. Frequently, between the time I write a column and it comes out in the Herald-Leader days later, I discover I don’t even agree with myself anymore.

Anyway, in his daily online meditations, Rohr recently said something that led me to breathe a quiet “amen.” I thought it might speak to you as well.

He wrote about what he called the four shapes of transformation.

His premise was that faith evolves and reshapes itself over time. Our faith today may not manifest itself as it did 10 or 20 years ago, and it may look different still 10 or 20 years from now. In spirituality, change is natural and productive.

“The universe unfolds, our understanding of God evolves and deepens, and our moral development surely evolves as well,” Rohr said.

Borrowing from the vocabulary of another writer, Ken Wilber, Rohr pointed out four stages of spiritual and moral development: cleaning up, growing up, waking up and showing up.

In Rohr’s view, clergy talk most about cleaning up—and don’t do it well.

“We largely (reflect) the moral preoccupations of the dominant culture in every age and every denomination,” he said. “Our mostly external understanding of morality (is) very superficial and (reflects) our not-so-grown-up culture’s values of various ‘purity codes.’ ”

Cleaning up focuses on the external. It seldom reflects “the brilliance of Jesus’ moral ideals, which have to do, first of all, with our inner attitudes,” Rohr said.

A preoccupation with rules confuses acts of physical self-denial with holiness. It’s you-must-do-this, or you-cannot-do-that.

This stage has its place, but it also creates problems:

“Any preoccupation with our private moral perfection keeps our eyes on ourselves and not on God or grace or love. Cleaning up is mostly about the need for early impulse control and creating necessary ego boundaries—so you can actually show up in the real and much bigger world.”

Growing up, the next stage, involves moving toward psychological and emotional maturity.

“We all grow up, even if inside our own bubbles,” Rohr said.

That is, the norms of our social structures, such as our community, subculture, denomination, politics and so on, may limit how much of our “shadow self” we’ll be able to confront, he said. But reaching emotional maturity is an improvement.

Waking up occurs when we undergo paradigm-shifting spiritual experiences that lead us to recognize there’s no separation between us and what Rohr refers to as Being (and I would call the Spirit). We’re in God and God is operating in and through us. As Jesus said, we’re one with the Father and the Son.

Such awakening “should be the goal of all spiritual work, including prayer, sacraments, Bible study, and religious services of any type,” Rohr said. “The purpose of waking up is not personal or private perfection, but surrender, love, and union with God. This is the Christian meaning of salvation or enlightenment.”

Finally, we may begin to show up. Showing up means what the term implies: bringing our faith into the real-life suffering and problems of the world.

“It means engagement, social presence, and a sincere concern for justice and peace for others beyond ourselves,” Rohr said. “Showing up is the full and final result of the prior three stages—God’s fully transformed ‘work of art.’”

Ideally, though, we’ll show up in a spiritually healthy way. Anyone can rush out and volunteer in a soup kitchen or join a peaceful protest.

But unless we’ve progressed through the other stages, showing up can become just another means of checking the right box on a religious list or signaling our piety to our friends or gratifying our ego.

We shouldn’t view any of these four spiritual stages as milestones we must work relentlessly to achieve or move upward from. They’re organic. They happen when they happen, in God’s timing. The process may take decades. Or a lifetime.

So relax. That’s my takeaway.

We’re on a universal journey. We don’t have to have all the answers today. In time, we’ll learn, we’ll grow, we’ll evolve.

Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.