Mastering the Old Testament – Job (written by David McKenna)

Dear God, okay, I am going to do things a little differently for a while. I am on vacation and I feel compelled to spend some time really digging into the book of Job. Frankly, it has always daunted me a little because its structure is too complicated to just journal through like I normally do. This is literature, and it is to be contemplated and studied as such.

So, much like I did in high school when I had to read something that I feared would overwhelm me, I am using a commentary to help me. It is from Word’s Communicator’s Commentary Series, and all I have read so far is the Introduction, but it is great. There was one part of the Introduction that I want to pray through this morning because I think it will lay the groundwork for the rest of the book.

I am just going to shamelessly quote about half of a page here:

Obviously, faith is not static. Compatible with other theories of human development, a person either grows, plateaus, or regresses in faith as the circumstances of age, experience, and events change. [James] Fowler [from his book The Stages of Faith] has also devised a helpful scale of faith development with six sequential stages:

1. Intuitive-projective faith is associated with a child’s faith, based upon fantasy and imagination.
2. Mythical-literal faith is the family faith of the early school years, which is sustained by moral rules and either/or thinking.
3. Synthetic-conventional faith is an adolescent faith that conforms to the tradition of the community and creates the “kind” of person of faith whom it models or rejects.
4. Individuative-reflective faith is the faith of the young adult who is capable of critical thinking, independent reflection, and dialectical reasoning.
5. Conjunctive faith is a mid-life and old-age faith that integrates self-identity with a comprehensive world view to see the order, coherence, and meaning of life in order to serve and be served.
6. Universalizing faith is the rare faith of a world citizen who incarnates a transcendent vision into a disciplined, active, and self-giving life.

Wow, there is a lot of meat here, and I feel like I need to dig into each one and be able to understand and recall each one frontwards and backwards in order to move through the rest of this book. So let me at least try to start by writing a definition for each one in my own words.

1. Intuitive-projective faith is something that you believe without facts or knowledge. Your intuition tells you it is true, whether it is nor not. Santa Claus is an example of this. So are the Bible stories like the burning bush, the walls ofJericho, etc. You hear it and no real explanation is necessary because you aren’t in to thinking about things critically yet.
2. Mythical-literal faith is what you pick up from your family’s structure. It includes your family’s values (what foods you eat, how much TV and what kinds of TV you watch. It’s pretty black and white. There is little room for grey area. There is always a right and a wrong answer, and your family structure helps to define those right and wrong answers.
3. Synthetic-conventional faith is a little more mature than Mythical-literal in that it takes into account the social norms of the surrounding community, but there still isn’t an independent interpretation of beliefs the group has. For example, is homosexuality a sin or not? One can let their community form this opinion for them instead of studying, contemplating, and putting together their own opinions and beliefs on the issue.
4. Individuative-reflective faith is the beginning of independent thought—hence, “individuative”. This person is starting to critically analyze some of their own long-held beliefs. For example, “Is scripture truly inerrant, or are there inconsistencies with which I must deal?”
5. Conjunctive faith involves having to know yourself and then adding life experience and knowledge of the world to that so that it can inform your faith. Individuative-reflective faith can still be idealistic because it is often ignorant of experience. Conjunctive faith is the coming together of all aspects of the human experience.
6. Universalizing faith is where it all comes together into a life that is, on the one had, at peace, and, on the other hand, driven by faith in God and hearing His call regardless of the personal circumstances.

So knowing those levels of faith, I will hopefully be a little more prepared to experience Job’s faith walk along with the faith walks of his wife and friends. Where are each of them at any given time? Where am I in my life right now? Have I reached #6. Am I still at #3? I guess that’s what the writer of Job wanted me to figure out.