Developmental Aspects to Sin and Grace

"In all its forms," writes John Sachs, "sin consists in turning away from God... At its root, sin is idolatry." In describing the inescapable and universal nature of sin, Sachs claims that "none of us... can escape the effects of sin, even those sins for which we are not personally responsible." Cornelius Plantinga adds a further dimension to the human act of turning way in referring to sin as "a parasite, an uninvited guest that keeps tapping its host [goodness] for sustenance... To be successful, evil needs what it hijacks from goodness."

If we accept the first premise, that sin is a core condition for humans, we must also consider that people are subject to time and, as such, tend to proceed through stages of life. If and as people mature through stages of life, that which they experience and acknowledge as "good" can change over time. Consequently, the "good" that becomes available for distortion into sin must also change. If we accept the second premise, that sin is not an "alternative to good," but is rather "fruitful just because, like a virus, it attaches the life force and dynamics of its host," we might expect to see specific manifestations of sin depending on what "good" it attached to. In other words, sin—its "content," its "shape," its manifesting appearance, that is—may shift and evolve along with each individual's personal maturity and with a group's collective development.

Setting a Framework
 

First, it will be helpful to make a distinction: if creation is inherently good, our various interpretations of "good" might be called "icons," or symbols of that which we hold before us as a signifier of a particular goodness or set of gifts given by God. The proper use of these icons should, among other things, help further the emergence of the "universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight" of God's intended shalom.

A working definition of Sachs' "idolatry" might be the act of putting any of these created gifts of God—people, places, actions or ideology—in a place that is rightfully God's... to allow the created icon to take our gaze away from the Creator. In this way, we should be able to follow some of the specific ways in which, according to Plantinga, "the smartest blows against shalom are struck be people and movements of impressive resourcefulness, strength, and intelligence—that is to say, by people and movements gifted by the very God and with the very goodness their sin attacks."

Secondly, a well-documented and researched framework for considering stages of life. Among the multiple options available, James Fowler's "Stages of Faith" may be most fruitful, acknowledging that any investigation into what is "good" will and should invariably also entertain that which is beautiful and that which is true. In keeping with the premise of sin's universal nature, Fowler's research has not been limited to religious framework, Christian or otherwise, but rather on the "dynamic systems of images, values and commitments" that guide each individual's meaning-making efforts.

Intuitive-Projective Imagination

Fowler's research encountered a phase of human experience from infancy to roughly seven years of age that he called Intuitive-Projective faith. At this early (perhaps earliest) stage of meaning-making, people are drawn to powerful symbols, especially of good and evil, and are deeply influenced by the examples, moods, actions and stories of other people and objects whom they perceive to be far more powerful than themselves.

One fruitful icon of this stage might be summed up as "religious imagination," or the increasing ability to make use, in a church setting, of simple scripturally based and "tangible models of courage and virtue... with conviction-awakening stories showing that goodness and resourcefulness triumph over evil and sloth." The powerful good of these stories... these "icons" of what it means to be a human... can be warped by even well-meaning adults into an over-emphasis on "the pervasive-ness and power of the devil, the sinfulness of all people without Christ and the hell of fiery torment that await the unrepentant."

But "to speak of sin by itself," as Plantinga rightly warns, "to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace, is to forget the resolve of God... to speak of sin without grace is to minimize the resurrection of Jesus Christ... " Consequently, we might expect to see some more expansive "icon" at each of these stages that might be understood as a grace-given signifier available for refocusing our attention back to God as the source and rightful emphasis of our love. In short, a gift of grace bestowed as new awareness and options from a somewhat larger perspective... a repeating pattern, perhaps, of psycho-spiritual death and resurrection.

Mythic-Literal Power

If such a pattern obtains, then we might posit one candidate as an icon to represent at least a part of the next larger pattern specifically for people making the shift from a Intuitive-Projective perspective into a new version of "that which is good, true and beautiful" that Fowler called Mythic-Literal faith. That transition could be made from either a somewhat more graceful state where God is still central or returning from a more sinful state, where the icon has been replaced with an idol.

Many people moving past an Intuitive-Projective perspective show a growing interest in distinctions between what is real and what only seems real. The Mythic-Literal stage is characterized by a desire to internalize a relationship with whatever image of God (or Buddha, Nature, Shakti, Adonai or Vishnu) that animated the stories of the previous stage. And if the person's imagination is nurtured and guided, they may discover that their words, especially in the form of prayers or meditations, have power. Consequently, one useful name for an "icon" of the next face of "that which is good" might be "Divine power." The process of internalizing this power is often through the use of story-telling as a path of understanding and the early adopting of the literal "stories, beliefs and observances that symbolize belonging to his or her community" along with the group's moral codes.

Exercised as an extension of God's goodness, this budding sense of personal power can lead to a healthy sense of a centered self and the ability to assert oneself. If it becomes over-privileged or grows unchecked, it can distort into narcissistic forms of self-centered behavior—sinfulness—in forms of greed, jealousy and especially pride.

Synthetic-Conventional Order

For people able to form a more conceptual sense of the literal stories, the next stage (Synthetic-Conventional faith) opens a path to icons of goodness that help the person make sense of a wider range of interpersonal involvements and interactions. The narratives become more alive to the person who is now able to see the Divine hand more intimately through interpersonal relationships, especially with those who share their values.

Among several candidates, one form of graceful gift available at this point could be called the icon of "religious order." As a guide for learning about "the good," order supports people at this stage to begin to establish a sense of right and wrong, of fairness and reciprocity in these newly forming relationship and skills required to maintain them. The icon of order teaches civility, good manners and an essential sense of belongingness. It can become sinfully idolatrous when the order taught by the community becomes paramount to the exclusion of other people with other narratives; those who are outsiders or strangers.

Similarly, the nourishing sense of larger community beyond family and immediate church can also be distorted when and if an individual or community begins to idolize earthly authority as though it were Godly authority.

Individuative-Reflective Rationale

The move toward the next new perspective, Fowler's Individuative-Reflective stage, tends to be facilitated by some form of critical reflection on the stories, personal narrative and interpretations that have come to form the person's system of meaning-making. The icon might be called "rational mind" as it involves the individual effort to reconsider those aspects of religious teaching that still hold meaning for the person, or that must be adjusted or set aside relative to the community's expressed doctrine. The examination may draw from sources outside the church's teaching, seeking insights from science, philosophy, history, psychology or other disciplines that seek to understand aspects of the human place in the natural world, culture and evolution.

The engagement of the rational mind in unbraiding previously unexamined symbols from each other into a conceptually coherent world-view is part of the remarkable gift of discovering one's unique identity that becomes "differentiated from those of others and become acknowledged factors in the reactions, interpretations and judgments one makes on the actions of the self and others." But when the rational mind and its astonishing capacity begin to take the place of a transcendent source of consciousness, the warping of an icon into an idol has begun.

Conjunctive Pluralism

Some people moving away from an Individuative-Reflective stage do so in response to a growing awareness of the limitations of the human mind to make sense of all of life's complexity. Non-rational experiences, especially of childhood images, "energies from a deeper self" and "paradoxes from one's own or other traditions may insist on breaking in upon the neatness of the previous faith" At Fowler's Conjunctive faith stage, the person is "ready for significant encounters with other traditions than [their] own, expecting that truth has disclosed and will disclose itself on those traditions in ways that may complement or correct [their] own." This "second naïveté" opens the person to a post-critical re-engagement of symbol, mythology and ritual that reunites them with more inclusive and expansive conceptual meanings held tentatively and provisionally.

The openness to other ways of knowing reality, especially to people who are not part of the dominant culture can lead to a curiosity about feminist or womanist perspectives, insights from Africa-American experiences, Eastern or First Nation philosophies, gay/lesbian/transgendered issues, and other religions and wisdom traditions. Consequently, a good candidate for one of the icons providing guidance into God's love for all creation is "pluralism." The strength of this iconic perspective is the "capacity to see and be in one's or one's group's most powerful meanings, while simultaneously recognizing that they are relative, partial and inevitably distorting apprehensions of transcendent reality."

But if the icon of pluralism becomes the primary focal point in the place of God, people can warp the hard-won goodness and more nuanced truth of an inclusive and dialectical perspective into an idol of passive, paralyzing relativism in which, because no perspectives have any greater claim to validity than any others, there is no reason to act on behalf of creation, perhaps just a complex version of sloth.

Conclusion

Looking at parasitical sin through Fowler's developmental schema reveals a consistent pattern of newly encountered goodness becoming available for further growth or for distortion. The human susceptibility for over-focusing on the gift and losing sight of the Giver only to be met by greater good seems to support Plantinga's claim that "evil rolls across the ages, but so does good. Good has its own momentum. Corruption never wholly succeeds." Fowler's research implies that this is the case not only for human history collectively, but to some extent for each person's individual history.

To propose the possibility of developmental aspects of interpreting and participating in that which is good is not to preclude other aspects of how people come to understand what is good, true and beautiful, nor does it bar other expressions of sin and grace, but the consistency with Sach's and Plantinga's premises and conclusions is notable.

A developmental pattern provides insights into each person's potential for participating in the dialogue about that which is good as well as for specific distortions and redemptions throughout the course of a lifetime. A person who is not nurtured into a healthy sense of self-hood will be less likely to pridefully mistake their own power for the power of God. A person who has never experienced the faces of the Divine One expressed pluralistically in multiple manifestations may not be capable of the sin of relativistic sloth.

And while it seems difficult to imagine how people will warp the icon of good at the stage where Fowler's research ended—Universalizing—there also seems to be no evidence of a source for sin and evil beyond the human proclivity to twist the good that we encounter. This opens the tension present in all religious/philosophical systems that propose a complete remedy for what ails us when they are proposed as a final answer but end up looking more and more like asymptotic goals always strived for, never fully achieved.

How we will distort "strategies of non-violent suffering and ultimate respect for being" remains to be seen, but it would appear that we may be confident that some aspect of God, however we come to apprehend that first-, second- and third-person engagement of the Divine, will meet us there as well, for "creation is stronger than sin," Plantinga says, "and grace stronger still."

Works cited

Fowler, James W. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers, 1981.

Plantinga, Cornelius, Jr. Not the Way it's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995.

Sachs, John R. The Christian Vision of Humanity. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991.