Stage 4: The Journey Inward

If you’ve read The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, you are familiar with the Pevensie children and their many encounters with Aslan.  In Prince Caspian, there is a moment when Lucy Pevensie meets Aslan again after not seeing him for some time, and they have the following conversation. 

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.” 

“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.

“Not because you are?”

“I am not.  But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” 

Each time I read this book, I see the beauty of this dialogue.  To Lucy, Aslan appears bigger, as if he has grown, but he is the same as he has always been.  Her capacity for seeing him has simply grown as she has gotten older.  

This is similar to where we find ourselves as we move from Stage 3 to Stage 4 in our faith formation journey.  

Over the past several weeks, we have looked at Stages 1-3, as proposed in The Critical Journey.  These stages have a natural flow about them.  We recognize who God is, spend time with others learning more about God’s character and the story of God’s people, and find ways to engage in community and grow through service and friendship.  

The speed at which we move through these stages does vary depending on the person.  If someone encounters God as a child, their journey of discipleship and serving within the community may extend for decades - well into their twenties or beyond.  At the same time, a person encountering God later in life might move rapidly through these stages and face Stage 4 much sooner.  

Regardless of how much time passes, the move to Stage 4 can be a bit unsettling, as this stage, known as The Journey Inward, is a deep and very personal experience.  

Hagberg and Guelich have this to say about entering Stage 4:  “Gnawing questions become more and more unmanageable - questions about what we believe and have believed, and about how we live, and why we do and do not do certain things.  We are no longer able to ignore or repress them.  They haunt us continually.  So much so that we become aware of a larger gap in our lives of faith.”  

This journey inward is accompanied by what Hagberg and Guelich call The Wall. 

When you think of a wall, what comes to mind?  

Instinctively, I think of a castle wall.  They are not easily scalable.  They stand quite high, and they are quite thick.  They are not easily broken down; if you want to enter the castle, you must find the door in the wall.  

The goal in our formation journey is not to bypass the wall but to find a way through it.  Rather than imagining it as a barrier, we can think of it as more of a speed bump.  It slows us down.  It gets our attention.  It makes us notice what is happening and ask different questions.

The Wall and Stage 4 are a package deal.  

In the early stages of our faith journey, we absorb so much new information, replicating the ideas taught by our faith communities.  But, at some point, we will begin to ask different questions than we were asking upon first encountering God.  

The transition to Stage 4, and the accompanying Wall, happen as we begin to wrestle through what we believe about God when things in the narrative of our life do not go as planned and leave us unsure if we can trust his goodness.  

There is often some form of crisis that catapults us into this stage.  It might be the loss of a loved one.  It might be a divorce.  It might be some type of hurt within our faith community.  It might be that we suddenly seem far from God.  It might be that we are experiencing deep pain in our bodies.  It may be that a trauma has occurred.

The work done in the early stages - to root yourself in truth, to grow in your understanding of God, to establish yourself within a community - were bricks to build a foundation.  

Depending on what you learned in those early stages, that foundation might be rock solid and completely stable or unsteady and crumbling below your feet.  This journey into Stage 4, and your experience at the wall, will inevitably cause you to wrestle with what you believe about God and determine where your foundation needs work.

Unfortunately, this stage is complicated and messy.  Since we don’t often talk about this stage in our faith communities, people can feel isolated as they navigate the myriad of questions that arise.  They slam into an unexpected wall and don’t know how to get through it.  Their grief, anger, fear, uncertainty, brokenness - whatever it is, can cause them to throw up their hands and walk away, feeling no one else can understand what they are struggling to sort out.  

And though this is a stage of deep inner growth and healing, we still need a community around us.  To avoid walking away or getting stuck here, we need people who know us, who care about us, who love us, who will cry with us, who will wrestle with us, who won’t rush us, and who will keep showing up because they know that God is big enough, and loving enough for every single feeling, and question, we throw at him.  

Hagberg writes, “The church or organization that can understand this stage and does not think of those in it as personal failures or backsliders, or as evidence of ministry that has failed, can be of great service to people at this stage.”

This season of questioning can be safe and productive.  It is a natural extension of how we grow and develop over time.  We don’t have the same questions when we are 5 that we have at 35.  Our way of understanding the world is different at 10 than at 50.  

Stage 4 and our experience with the wall might last months or years, depending on the work that needs to happen in our mind, body, and Spirit.  And we will likely encounter more than one wall in our lifetime as we navigate the ups and downs of being human.  Though it does seem that after we’ve experienced one wall, subsequent wall encounters feel less scary.  I think this is because, like Lucy, we find God bigger and bigger the older we get, and the longer we know him.  

Moving out of Stage 4 is like exiting a cocoon.  A wrestling has taken place that has led to a profound transformation in our understanding of God and ourselves, and we find ourselves expectant for Stage 5: The Journey Outward.

More on that next time. 

~  Melissa