[This has somewhat of an abrupt ending; apparently, I didn't save the finished version, but this still has a lot to it. Also, part of the assignment was referencing an article we read in class, so don't worry about the little citations.]
The following is a paper I wrote for a Theology class, detailing my faith journey; I just shared this with my parents, and God willing it'll help them & all of you.
Theo 101: Baseline Reflection Paper
There are many different ways to map the course of one’s life. A very simple way to draw this map is by grade levels in school: I went to Pre-school, then I entered elementary school, middle school, high school, Trine University, and now University of St. Francis. After school, it’s equally common to chart out the journey of life by occupation; perhaps I’ll say that I worked at Amtrak for two years, then I was a campus minister, and then I became a teacher at a Catholic high school.
Such a method of charting the course of life has its merits, certainly; it gives a good view of the person’s age, experiences, and interests. These are all important factors when considering one’s progression through life. However, there is another factor that can be vitally important in one’s life: faith.
Faith, as with anything else that makes a person who they are, is something that develops over time. This happens regardless of what particular faith the person may have, or what culture surrounds their faith. Just like the body, just like the mind, faith will grow and develop. Guardini believes that the development of one’s faith happens largely because of doubts, and such doubts progress along with age.
“Doubts as to faith almost always signify inner shifts of position, and the man whose religious life is at stake must recognize this fact—as must also those who have the responsibility of helping him” (32). Guardini made the following point to explain part of how these doubts arise. With this in mind, it’s good to consider how Guardini saw age as marking out the stages of one’s development in faith.
Guardini admits that his method of mapping out the steps of faith development is very general, and very likely doesn’t exactly fit anyone at all. However, it still provides a useful metric when considering faith development, for even if someone doesn’t meet all the faith steps at the ages he listed, people still have general ideas about how people are at certain ages, and this helps us understand how our faith has aged, as well.
Personally, I’m a little unsure where to put myself on Guardini’s stages of life. To answer this question, I’m going to map out my own faith life, starting in the child phase, and hopefully by the time I’m done writing, I’ll figure out an answer.
In my family, I was raised Catholic, going to Mass every Sunday and going to CCD, too. However, I’ve grown up with mostly agnostic friends, so I’ve had to question my faith, and being a kid that was really into science, I couldn’t accept ideas like the notion of a 7-day creation at face value. I never let go of my faith, but I never did much about it. I really don’t remember much from my childhood, regarding my faith or anything else, but I don’t recall any major situations involving my faith. Although now that I think about it more, I always understood my faith fairly intellectually; I couldn’t figure out why people cried at funerals, because we know they’re going to a better place. I did well in CCD, knowing most of what we were talking about. I prayed nightly, I think, but I can’t remember about what I prayed.
As an adolescent, more questions arose, especially when I read a magazine article about a guy who created his own religion. I thought that sounded cool, but to do that, I’d need to leave Catholicism. I didn’t have any problems with Catholicism, so I scrapped the idea pretty quickly. Still, as Guardini mentions, this stage of my life was when “…self-will and the rights of [my] own personality assert themselves…” (35). I was independent, I didn’t like being oppressed, although my teenage moods were fairly mild; I wanted to break free, but I wasn’t too rash about it. I went through some questions, although faith still wasn’t an important part of my life; I still didn’t have any problems with Catholicism, but I wasn’t too worried about having a relationship with God.
My faith story isn’t much like what Guardini describes from this point on; the idea of teenage rebellion was never too prevalent in my life, and I was already getting to what Guardini describes as the elder stage of faith, where “The view of things widens out” (39). I spent a lot of time just thinking; I went on long bike rides alone, without music or any sort of distractions, as a hobby but also as a chance to get out and just think about things. I’d spend long periods of time in my bedroom, just staring at the ceiling and contemplating things. So, I had a broad view of everything, including the impermanence of everything.
Occasionally this contemplation came to matters of my faith, but most of what I thought when it was God-related largely consisted of fighting the question of “Why am I here?”. This drove me nuts, then drove me into depression; I couldn’t figure out what my purpose was. Something in me always knew that there was a purpose, and I suppose I knew this purpose came from God, but I didn’t pray over the question so much as I tried to figure it out on my own. I knew there was a meaning, but as the years went on, the question I couldn’t find an answer to just drove me into depression. No one else knew about my depression; it only ever manifested when I was alone. It was very real, though, and I ended up shifting my focus from “Why am I here?” to my longing for a girlfriend.
My prayer life deepened when I was about 15, when I prayed every day for God to bring Audrey and I together; and He did. Then my prayer life deepened a little more, because my dad had made sure that his kids gave credit where credit is due, gave thanks when something was received that didn’t have to be given. I prayed out of gratitude for Audrey, and I occasionally asked for advice on how to handle the situations that inevitably arise in a relationship.
Perhaps the most dramatic event in my faith life happened after Audrey dumped me. I found out later that she did this because she thought I was dependent on her for happiness; in retrospect, I realize this was true. My depression from feeling like I was leading a life without a meaning hadn’t been resolved, and even though I loved Audrey, and tried to be a good boyfriend for her, she was my only source of lasting happiness. In more spiritual terms, I put Audrey where I should’ve put God; I idolized her.
I was texting her at night, using a stylus pen on my tablet. I didn’t have a phone, so we texted online, and I just preferred using the stylus end of a pen instead of using my fingers on the touch screen. We had hit some turmoil in our relationship, but that’s happened before, and I liked to think of the cyclical nature of relationships; things were going down, but texting her that night, I was expecting things to get better. I didn’t know what exactly I did, but I figured we’d talk about it, get it resolved, and I’d have a happy girlfriend tomorrow.
She began the conversation: “Do you know what I’m about to say?”
I replied, saying something along the lines of, “I did something you didn’t like, you’re about to bring it up, and we’ll talk it through?”
I don’t remember a single other word from that conversation, but at some point, she told me she was breaking up with me. I was hit with such emotional pain, more than I’ve ever experienced, and I just needed some sort of distraction away from this incredible mental pain. I suppose I thought physical pain would be the distraction, so I clicked out the pen from my stylus, and went to swing it down into my arm.
Something threw the pen out of my hand. I remember swinging it towards my arm, then seeing it fly across the room. I just broke down and cried; what else could I do?
At that time, or maybe the next day, I’m not sure, I realized that I somehow didn’t remember the past; the hurt was too much. (To this day, February 2016 is largely a gap in my memory.) I was in a strange state of mind; I realized that I couldn’t remember the past, I had no clue about the future, and all that was in the present was daze and confusion and more pain that I knew how to deal with. I remember thinking of it initially as kind of a cool plot line for those old science fiction books I love; a man who suddenly lost memories of the past and ideas of the future, figuring out how to start a new life. So that’s what I did; I looked at my situation, I realized I was hopeless, and I thought, “Well, I don’t know what to do. I’ve heard a lot about that God thing, let’s give that a try.”
Giving that “God thing” a try helped immensely. While I don’t remember any details, I know that I started walking down a different path, walking with God. I suppose this was where I hit Guardini’s adult phase of faith, seeing idealisms as pretty well useless, and applying my faith to the tasks set before me. In any case, this was the first time in my life I actually thought of myself as religious; I had finally established it as part of my life, not just something I happen to go to on Sundays.
To skip a few more details, I came to Trine University, signed up for a degree in Design Engineering Technology, to hopefully become a product designer in Switzerland. Regarding my faith, I remember a moment when I was packing to leave; I had most of my stuff ready to go, and I saw my Bible I got for graduation sitting by my bed. I almost left it, but I remembered that God did save my life that night that Audrey dumped me, so as a bit of reciprocity I brought it. I didn’t plan on using it, but I thought I should bring it because of the God who saved me from killing myself in a heat of the moment. I suppose my faith was fading; I still hadn’t answered the persistent question of “Why am I here?”. The crisis was more than a year behind me, and I was about to go to college, be independent, create my own life, much like the adolescent stage that Guardini charted out; I had “Awareness of the infinite, boundless longings, vague hopes, measureless dreams…”. Although my hopes were very specific, I still met Guardini’s profile of the adolescent, not because of rebellion but because of the call to independence. I didn’t have much issue with authority, but I still wanted to be my own person.
Coming to college, I didn’t do anything with the Christian Campus House, and I only kept going to Mass because I thought I should; again, out of reciprocity for God saving my life.
However, the question of “Why am I here?” hadn’t been solved, and the loneliness from Audrey leaving me never went away. In fact, I was lonely enough that I would be laying on my bed in my dorm, unable to move; I could literally say I was cripplingly lonely.
I remember lying there, staring at the very nice dorm I had, realizing that I was a successful student at a good university, enough financial aid to do so debt-free, being given such incredible opportunities, and I literally couldn’t move because I wanted a girlfriend too badly. I knew I had a problem, and I knew that the last time I tried to girlfriend thing didn’t go too well. So I prayed, saying “I clearly can’t do this on my own. God, I’m putting you in charge.” I joined the Christian Campus House and the Newman Catholic Fellowship to meet girls, because if I was going to get a girlfriend, I knew it had to be under God’s supervision, and these seemed like good places to carry that out.
I still wasn’t doing the best, until I found a CD in the back of church, “How to Find Your Soulmate Without Losing Your Soul.” It was a big step for me to pick up a CD like that, but I grabbed it, listened to it, and it was a pretty good talk. Along the way, the speaker (Jason Evert) made mention of something called Theology of the Body. I looked it up, got hooked on watching Jason Evert talks, because the dating advice was so good, and along the way discovered my love for theology.
I don’t know how to pinpoint this on Guardini’s list of steps in faith, but it was huge in my own life. I fully welcomed God into the deepest desire of my heart, and He did an incredible transformation of me, inside out. There’s a separate story for how I came to USF, but this was where that decision began. This is also how I know so confidently that I’m not called to the priesthood; every big step in my spiritual life, including some that I didn’t write here, were centered around love for a girl. This is clearly how God is reaching me, and now it’s how I’m reaching Him.
Overall, I’d say that I’m not at the child stage of faith, because I’m too aware of reality and daily work; I’m not at the adolescent stage, because I’m not interested in rebellion, and more focused on being the person God wants me to be (although that still fits remarkably well with my quest for independence); I’m not at the adult stage, although the idea of “steadfastness in the face of reality” (37) is a very big factor in my faith life. Honestly, I see myself at the elder stage, where I’m more interested in what I’m leaving behind than much else. Part of this is because of how transitory my life is right now; I left all my friends at high school to go to Trine University, I left all my friends from Trine to come here, and over the past two summers, I had a separate set of friends when I worked at Camp Chief Little Turtle, and last year I left all of them to work somewhere else. I’m very aware that I’m only here at USF for two years, and then I’m leaving everyone here for somewhere else. Leaving something behind has become the only logical thing to focus on; working at summer camp, where I saw the kids for only one week at a time, really showed me the stupidity of selfishness. There’s so much reward in leaving something good behind, and selfishness is never fulfilled!
I don’t know where I expect my faith life to go from here; while I mostly feel at the elder stage of faith, I also feel somewhat as an adult, having to power through trials with a very realist idea of faith, as well.
The following is a paper I wrote for a Theology class, detailing my faith journey; I just shared this with my parents, and God willing it'll help them & all of you.
Theo 101: Baseline Reflection Paper
There are many different ways to map the course of one’s life. A very simple way to draw this map is by grade levels in school: I went to Pre-school, then I entered elementary school, middle school, high school, Trine University, and now University of St. Francis. After school, it’s equally common to chart out the journey of life by occupation; perhaps I’ll say that I worked at Amtrak for two years, then I was a campus minister, and then I became a teacher at a Catholic high school.
Such a method of charting the course of life has its merits, certainly; it gives a good view of the person’s age, experiences, and interests. These are all important factors when considering one’s progression through life. However, there is another factor that can be vitally important in one’s life: faith.
Faith, as with anything else that makes a person who they are, is something that develops over time. This happens regardless of what particular faith the person may have, or what culture surrounds their faith. Just like the body, just like the mind, faith will grow and develop. Guardini believes that the development of one’s faith happens largely because of doubts, and such doubts progress along with age.
“Doubts as to faith almost always signify inner shifts of position, and the man whose religious life is at stake must recognize this fact—as must also those who have the responsibility of helping him” (32). Guardini made the following point to explain part of how these doubts arise. With this in mind, it’s good to consider how Guardini saw age as marking out the stages of one’s development in faith.
Guardini admits that his method of mapping out the steps of faith development is very general, and very likely doesn’t exactly fit anyone at all. However, it still provides a useful metric when considering faith development, for even if someone doesn’t meet all the faith steps at the ages he listed, people still have general ideas about how people are at certain ages, and this helps us understand how our faith has aged, as well.
Personally, I’m a little unsure where to put myself on Guardini’s stages of life. To answer this question, I’m going to map out my own faith life, starting in the child phase, and hopefully by the time I’m done writing, I’ll figure out an answer.
In my family, I was raised Catholic, going to Mass every Sunday and going to CCD, too. However, I’ve grown up with mostly agnostic friends, so I’ve had to question my faith, and being a kid that was really into science, I couldn’t accept ideas like the notion of a 7-day creation at face value. I never let go of my faith, but I never did much about it. I really don’t remember much from my childhood, regarding my faith or anything else, but I don’t recall any major situations involving my faith. Although now that I think about it more, I always understood my faith fairly intellectually; I couldn’t figure out why people cried at funerals, because we know they’re going to a better place. I did well in CCD, knowing most of what we were talking about. I prayed nightly, I think, but I can’t remember about what I prayed.
As an adolescent, more questions arose, especially when I read a magazine article about a guy who created his own religion. I thought that sounded cool, but to do that, I’d need to leave Catholicism. I didn’t have any problems with Catholicism, so I scrapped the idea pretty quickly. Still, as Guardini mentions, this stage of my life was when “…self-will and the rights of [my] own personality assert themselves…” (35). I was independent, I didn’t like being oppressed, although my teenage moods were fairly mild; I wanted to break free, but I wasn’t too rash about it. I went through some questions, although faith still wasn’t an important part of my life; I still didn’t have any problems with Catholicism, but I wasn’t too worried about having a relationship with God.
My faith story isn’t much like what Guardini describes from this point on; the idea of teenage rebellion was never too prevalent in my life, and I was already getting to what Guardini describes as the elder stage of faith, where “The view of things widens out” (39). I spent a lot of time just thinking; I went on long bike rides alone, without music or any sort of distractions, as a hobby but also as a chance to get out and just think about things. I’d spend long periods of time in my bedroom, just staring at the ceiling and contemplating things. So, I had a broad view of everything, including the impermanence of everything.
Occasionally this contemplation came to matters of my faith, but most of what I thought when it was God-related largely consisted of fighting the question of “Why am I here?”. This drove me nuts, then drove me into depression; I couldn’t figure out what my purpose was. Something in me always knew that there was a purpose, and I suppose I knew this purpose came from God, but I didn’t pray over the question so much as I tried to figure it out on my own. I knew there was a meaning, but as the years went on, the question I couldn’t find an answer to just drove me into depression. No one else knew about my depression; it only ever manifested when I was alone. It was very real, though, and I ended up shifting my focus from “Why am I here?” to my longing for a girlfriend.
My prayer life deepened when I was about 15, when I prayed every day for God to bring Audrey and I together; and He did. Then my prayer life deepened a little more, because my dad had made sure that his kids gave credit where credit is due, gave thanks when something was received that didn’t have to be given. I prayed out of gratitude for Audrey, and I occasionally asked for advice on how to handle the situations that inevitably arise in a relationship.
Perhaps the most dramatic event in my faith life happened after Audrey dumped me. I found out later that she did this because she thought I was dependent on her for happiness; in retrospect, I realize this was true. My depression from feeling like I was leading a life without a meaning hadn’t been resolved, and even though I loved Audrey, and tried to be a good boyfriend for her, she was my only source of lasting happiness. In more spiritual terms, I put Audrey where I should’ve put God; I idolized her.
I was texting her at night, using a stylus pen on my tablet. I didn’t have a phone, so we texted online, and I just preferred using the stylus end of a pen instead of using my fingers on the touch screen. We had hit some turmoil in our relationship, but that’s happened before, and I liked to think of the cyclical nature of relationships; things were going down, but texting her that night, I was expecting things to get better. I didn’t know what exactly I did, but I figured we’d talk about it, get it resolved, and I’d have a happy girlfriend tomorrow.
She began the conversation: “Do you know what I’m about to say?”
I replied, saying something along the lines of, “I did something you didn’t like, you’re about to bring it up, and we’ll talk it through?”
I don’t remember a single other word from that conversation, but at some point, she told me she was breaking up with me. I was hit with such emotional pain, more than I’ve ever experienced, and I just needed some sort of distraction away from this incredible mental pain. I suppose I thought physical pain would be the distraction, so I clicked out the pen from my stylus, and went to swing it down into my arm.
Something threw the pen out of my hand. I remember swinging it towards my arm, then seeing it fly across the room. I just broke down and cried; what else could I do?
At that time, or maybe the next day, I’m not sure, I realized that I somehow didn’t remember the past; the hurt was too much. (To this day, February 2016 is largely a gap in my memory.) I was in a strange state of mind; I realized that I couldn’t remember the past, I had no clue about the future, and all that was in the present was daze and confusion and more pain that I knew how to deal with. I remember thinking of it initially as kind of a cool plot line for those old science fiction books I love; a man who suddenly lost memories of the past and ideas of the future, figuring out how to start a new life. So that’s what I did; I looked at my situation, I realized I was hopeless, and I thought, “Well, I don’t know what to do. I’ve heard a lot about that God thing, let’s give that a try.”
Giving that “God thing” a try helped immensely. While I don’t remember any details, I know that I started walking down a different path, walking with God. I suppose this was where I hit Guardini’s adult phase of faith, seeing idealisms as pretty well useless, and applying my faith to the tasks set before me. In any case, this was the first time in my life I actually thought of myself as religious; I had finally established it as part of my life, not just something I happen to go to on Sundays.
To skip a few more details, I came to Trine University, signed up for a degree in Design Engineering Technology, to hopefully become a product designer in Switzerland. Regarding my faith, I remember a moment when I was packing to leave; I had most of my stuff ready to go, and I saw my Bible I got for graduation sitting by my bed. I almost left it, but I remembered that God did save my life that night that Audrey dumped me, so as a bit of reciprocity I brought it. I didn’t plan on using it, but I thought I should bring it because of the God who saved me from killing myself in a heat of the moment. I suppose my faith was fading; I still hadn’t answered the persistent question of “Why am I here?”. The crisis was more than a year behind me, and I was about to go to college, be independent, create my own life, much like the adolescent stage that Guardini charted out; I had “Awareness of the infinite, boundless longings, vague hopes, measureless dreams…”. Although my hopes were very specific, I still met Guardini’s profile of the adolescent, not because of rebellion but because of the call to independence. I didn’t have much issue with authority, but I still wanted to be my own person.
Coming to college, I didn’t do anything with the Christian Campus House, and I only kept going to Mass because I thought I should; again, out of reciprocity for God saving my life.
However, the question of “Why am I here?” hadn’t been solved, and the loneliness from Audrey leaving me never went away. In fact, I was lonely enough that I would be laying on my bed in my dorm, unable to move; I could literally say I was cripplingly lonely.
I remember lying there, staring at the very nice dorm I had, realizing that I was a successful student at a good university, enough financial aid to do so debt-free, being given such incredible opportunities, and I literally couldn’t move because I wanted a girlfriend too badly. I knew I had a problem, and I knew that the last time I tried to girlfriend thing didn’t go too well. So I prayed, saying “I clearly can’t do this on my own. God, I’m putting you in charge.” I joined the Christian Campus House and the Newman Catholic Fellowship to meet girls, because if I was going to get a girlfriend, I knew it had to be under God’s supervision, and these seemed like good places to carry that out.
I still wasn’t doing the best, until I found a CD in the back of church, “How to Find Your Soulmate Without Losing Your Soul.” It was a big step for me to pick up a CD like that, but I grabbed it, listened to it, and it was a pretty good talk. Along the way, the speaker (Jason Evert) made mention of something called Theology of the Body. I looked it up, got hooked on watching Jason Evert talks, because the dating advice was so good, and along the way discovered my love for theology.
I don’t know how to pinpoint this on Guardini’s list of steps in faith, but it was huge in my own life. I fully welcomed God into the deepest desire of my heart, and He did an incredible transformation of me, inside out. There’s a separate story for how I came to USF, but this was where that decision began. This is also how I know so confidently that I’m not called to the priesthood; every big step in my spiritual life, including some that I didn’t write here, were centered around love for a girl. This is clearly how God is reaching me, and now it’s how I’m reaching Him.
Overall, I’d say that I’m not at the child stage of faith, because I’m too aware of reality and daily work; I’m not at the adolescent stage, because I’m not interested in rebellion, and more focused on being the person God wants me to be (although that still fits remarkably well with my quest for independence); I’m not at the adult stage, although the idea of “steadfastness in the face of reality” (37) is a very big factor in my faith life. Honestly, I see myself at the elder stage, where I’m more interested in what I’m leaving behind than much else. Part of this is because of how transitory my life is right now; I left all my friends at high school to go to Trine University, I left all my friends from Trine to come here, and over the past two summers, I had a separate set of friends when I worked at Camp Chief Little Turtle, and last year I left all of them to work somewhere else. I’m very aware that I’m only here at USF for two years, and then I’m leaving everyone here for somewhere else. Leaving something behind has become the only logical thing to focus on; working at summer camp, where I saw the kids for only one week at a time, really showed me the stupidity of selfishness. There’s so much reward in leaving something good behind, and selfishness is never fulfilled!
I don’t know where I expect my faith life to go from here; while I mostly feel at the elder stage of faith, I also feel somewhat as an adult, having to power through trials with a very realist idea of faith, as well.
