The Wall
The six stages of spiritual growth from The Critical Journey, by J. Hagberg and R. Guelich describes a wall that must be overcome to move from the active stage 3 to the inward stage 4. I have spent a lot of time thinking about my walls. There seems to have been a series of them.
The active stage of spiritual development is a stage of activity and involvement. It is typically a stage that focuses on performance and achievement. Churches love people who reach this stage because they dive in and get stuff done. The next stage of inward growth internalizes knowledge of God and slows the frenetic activity of Martha into Mary’s focus on Jesus (Luke 10:38-42). Let’s not get distracted with an argument about Mary and Martha.
The point is that there is a wall that separates these spiritual stages. We often experienced this wall in unexpected tragedy or suffering. It’s a place where what we have learned so far in our spiritual development meets a challenge, and our faith needs to deepen.
A classmate related the wall to a swamp in his life. I place that sucks you in and keeps you from moving forward until you deal with the muck that is holding on to you. It reminds me of Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress, where Christian gets stuck in the slough of despondency. I wonder how these two systems of spiritual development match up and if there are any other similarities.
For me, the process of growing out of a performance and achievement-focused spiritual mentality has been hard. It has been rewarded and reinforced in my church ministry experience. As a result, I have found myself slammed against the walls that God has used to get my attention. Or if I use the swamp metaphor, I have been stuck and often sucked back into the mire so many times.
I can say that there is freedom on the horizon. God doesn’t leave us on the wrong side of the wall or stuck in the swamp. I am so thankful that God has a plan that will get us through. He is patient and never wastes the pain. Pain has a purpose, and it is so effective in getting our attention.
As a side note: I think it is so easy to think of myself farther on the path than I actually am. It is a gift when God says, “you are here” with an arrow point to a spot on the journey. If I don’t know where I am, I can’t get to where I need to go. Not seeing myself acurately is one of the ways I make my spiritual growth more complicated than it has to be.