In one model of religiosity, pioneered by Brian McLaren, there are four stages: Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity, and Harmony.* The first is simplicity, where the world is black and white and your religion is the one true path. The second is complexity, where the world may not be black and white, but your religious system has a series of tools, rules, rituals, hierarchies etc. to deal with a myriad of situations. This is a pharisaical model of religion. Stage three is perplexity. It is more of an individual experience but represents a deconstruction of the complexity of stage two. This is where we aren’t sure what we believe and if those rules and rituals were really serving us or if they were getting in the way. In the way of what? This is also the stage where we may question what even is divinity or even reality. The fourth stage is harmony and humility, where we find a way to hold the complexity and the perplexity and even the simplicity all together in a way that is healthy for both individuals and communities, recognizing that we don’t have all the answers. Sometimes we get so good at harmony, that we can slip back into simplicity until the gray of the world catches up with us again and we have something new to be perplexed about, so in that way these stages can be somewhat cyclical. Still, I think that once you have gone through all four, your journeys back through the cycle are qualitatively different, making it more of a spiral than a cycle. You never go back to true universal simplicity, but you may find new parts of your spiritual life that you want to examine and deconstruct. 

These stages represent an individual’s journey, but can also be used to talk about religions, religious communities, and religious organizations. I have had the experience of walking into a stage one church and the message is beautifully simple, but I know that at this time in my life, that no longer feeds my soul. I feel similarly looking into stage two religions. The ritual is beautiful and the theology is complex and I can see how you could spend a lifetime there in the complexity, but at this point in my life, it just isn’t fulfilling. In stage three you might find community in atheist YouTube, or deconstruction reddit boards. It’s been my experience that those only feed you for so long. You can’t build a life deconstructing, you must at some point pick up the pieces and construct a life. Where are the stage four spaces?

What this means for finding community

Here’s the rub though: stage four is only found through the other stages, and to be a space that can support you through your life course, it must also include the tools to support those at stages one through three? Or should it? Perhaps your initial thought might be that we shouldn’t regress to the earlier stages. That maybe being a stage four religion will help to only attract stage four congregants. My challenge to that is, what about children? 

We all need to move through these stages, and we have no choice but to start at the beginning. Indeed, it is not healthy to push children down the path. Very young children NEED black and white thinking. They need stories with good guys and bad guys to orient their morality and to feel safe in the world. They need simple attachment figures. God can be an important and healthy attachment figure, but not if we present a stage two God with rules and requirements nor a stage four God that is mysterious or even inscrutable. Yes, this means that as we teach children about spirituality we are not sharing the whole of our understanding and that can feel almost dishonest. I like to relate it to how we teach kids about science. We don’t jump to quantum mechanics. We teach simple Newtonian gravity first: what goes up must come down. Then we might expand that to understanding that gravity is not just what keeps things on earth, but also what keeps the earth bound to the sun and there are a number of complex equations to describe it all. Then we might introduce Einstein and relativity. At this point, students usually have some resistance, or should I say perplexity, because they realize that this understanding they have had is terribly incomplete and even misleading when it comes to grand scales. If they move past that, then we get to the cutting edge of quantum gravity and the search for the graviton and a grand unifying theory where we don’t have all the answers, which sounds a lot like harmony and humility. We don’t feel guilty or like we have lied about gravity when we teach that what goes up must come down, even if we know that there is an asterisk about escape velocity there. We know that would just be confusing at first and that there is time to get to all the complexity once we have a foundation to build upon. Spirituality is much the same. Yes, a simple God and simple morality isn’t the whole story, but it is a lot of the story, and we will get to the asterisks later.  

It can feel like we are just giving children beliefs that they will later just need to deconstruct, and especially for those of us who went through a difficult faith transition ourselves, we would rather save them the trouble by sharing the wisdom we have, maybe even let them skip ahead of that chaotic stage of perplexity straight to harmony. Unfortunately, that’s just not possible. The good news is that while you can’t change the “hard”, you can change the “alone”. Everyone must walk their own spiritual path and we can’t skip the hard parts, but we can walk with them through the hard parts.  

So what does this mean for our communities? It means that as a stage four religion or group, we still have to find a way to access the previous stages so that we are serving all of our community members, not just children, but also adults all along the path. I’m not sure exactly what that looks like, but I think I have found a community with many who are also at that stage four and who have the humility to recognize that my truth and their truth might be different and there is space for all of our individual expressions of spirituality and we can learn from one another even in our differences. There are some stage one and two folks in this community, and while they don’t alsways “get” other perspectives, they have the freedom to move through their stages as needed. Harmony in music is not when everyone is singing the same note. It is when there are two or more notes played together that create something beautiful between them. 

*https://brianmclaren.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Four-Stages-1.pdf

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I have a 12 year old daughter who is a great kid. She always tries to do what is right and works hard. If anything, she is a perfectionist. The other day, we were at the park with her younger siblings and I was having a really rough time. I said “damn” to no one in particular. My daughter went into a lecture about not swearing. I know this is coming from our church youth group, and I’m worried about her growing up to be a “holier than thou” type. I told her as much, but I’m still concerned about it. Do you have any advice?

This is really normal for a 19 year old. It’s not normal for a 12 year old. Teenagers, especially older teenagers, start to develop their own moral compass that differs from their parents as they are exposed to more of the world. Some of them even go through a really annoying phase where they are correcting their elders. Think of the college sophmore who comes back home with newly hairly legs and armpits and explains to her parents why they really should say “Native American” instead of “Indian”. Or in a more conservative direction, the high school senior who decides they are “born again” and gets rebaptized and really wants to go on a missions trip for a gap year. Because of your child’s age and disinclination to otherwise rebel, I think this is different and much more concerning.

My concern is that your child is replacing her parents with her church as the moral authority. It’s so important that as your child is entering her adolescent years that she maintains strong connections with her parents to guide her. If her church participation is interfering with this relationship, that is genuinely dangerous. Perhaps this is a one off. Sometimes kids hear something and latch on tight and are unskilled about how they then communicate with others. Because you are concerned about a larger trend of her turning into a “holier than thou” person, I am guessing it’s more of a pattern.

My advice would be to make sure you are having plenty of family discussions around values and spiritual beliefs that do not simply refer to church. Remember, the church’s role is to support us as individuals and families, not the other way around. Do your kids know what your family values are? Here is a long list of values from Brene Brown to get you started. It’s a great family activity to have each person pick out some of their values and then maybe even say what their top 3-5 are. Then, come together as a family to talk about what your family values. This is something the parents might want to talk about ahead of time, so everyone is on the same page.

When we make decisions around morality, they should be grounded in our values. Integrity means that we act in line with our beliefs and values. That comes from somewhere deep inside us. It doesn’t come from the Bible or from sermons or from lists of rules. Those things can absolutely help you to think through your values and beliefs, give you examples of how others have applied their values and beliefs, even influence our values and beliefs, but they are not the direct source. By reorienting your family to looking inward to find that place of integrity, you will be setting them up to not depend on lists of rules from church, but to live authentically with a genuine regard for how they show up in the world. Because they are focused inward, they are also less likely to go around judging others. From a values perspective, it makes sense that others will make different choices because we aren’t judging people with an external standard but expecting ourselves and others to act from their internal values, values which might be a little different from person to person.

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Today I want to share with you what I believe is a valuable resource for parents looking to raise spiritual kids regardless of their religious tradition. I have spoken to a number of parents recently who know that their current religious situation is not good for their kids, but they feel they have no reasonable alternative. Raising your kids outside of the structure of Sunday School and youth groups is daunting. We want our children to be part of a community that supports their moral and spiritual development. We value our rituals and having a routine. We value having a curriculum. Uplift kids will not solve all of these problems, but I believe it can be a big part of the puzzle for families looking to raise spiritually healthy kids.

“Uplift Kids grew out of a desire to expand transformative practices for children.” It is a curriculum that is meant for families to use in their homes, though I do know of at least one church youth group that uses it as well. What makes Uplift Kids different is that it doesn’t seek to follow any particular religious tradition, but takes a more universalist approach, drawing from a variety of wisdom traditions as well as the science of child development, mental health, and wellbeing. There is a large library of lessons that center around various aspects of spiritual, emotional, moral and social wellbeing that any person could benefit from. Examples include : Your Inner Compass, Forgiveness, Conflict, Journaling, and Grief. There are also mini lessons on different world religions and on a variety of holidays.

Each lesson begins with reading for the parents on the topic, and questions to ask yourself as you prepare the lesson. I love the invitation to process the concepts and emotions that come along with them, ensuring that you are bringing your best self to each lesson you teach. Next, there is a section on what the science says and another on what various wisdom traditions from around the world say, giving you a variety of perspectives to chose from. The actual lesson has an opening activity, sections for different age groups that you can mix and match to fit your family, and a closing activity.

One thing I love about Uplift Kids is that it is flexible enough to meet the needs of a variety of different belief systems. I’ve seen it used by atheists, Mormons, Quakers, and humanists. You can pick and chose what lessons your family needs and leave the rest. The lessons take 20-40 minutes depending on how many of the optional activities you do, which works great for families who are trying to replace an unhealthy church situation but haven’t found another youth program that works for them (check out this guide to evaluating a church youth program) They also offer daily devotionals where they break down a lesson over the course of a week into little 5 minute bites. I love using these as part of a family bedtime ritual.

Because Uplift Kids is non-dogmatic, they are a great middle ground for mixed-faith families. These are topics that are found across religions and they are taught in a way that respects a variety of perspectives. This also means they are great for parents who are going through their own times of doubt and uncertainty (see here for more about navigating a faith crisis as a parent), because they don’t require that you have all the answers or even to take a stand on a topic. It simply presents the information and invites you to have a discussion. Also, there are credentialed professionals such as therapists, psychologists, and social workers on the team so all lessons are evaluated to follow best practices. That means you can be reasonably assured that they are written in such a way that they will support what we know about the healthy development of children and families.

No one curriculum can replace all of the benefits that a structured spiritual community, but this can be one part of the puzzle that is raising spiritually healthy kids. It can provide some of the structure of Sunday school lessons or daily family scripture study without having to commit to a religious dogma. It can help bridge the gap in a mixed faith family. Even if you have a strong religious tradition and community, this is a great addition for families to bring some of these conversations home in a way that is evidence based and balanced. If you need more specific support, please consider booking spiritual coaching session.

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Raising kids is hard, and it really helps to have a community to help. In fact, that’s a leading reason that people join churches. But, not all youth programs are created equally. How do you know if this will be a beneficial environment for your kids? Will it meet your needs? Here’s some things to consider:

Safety: 

1. Do the adults have background checks? These don’t catch everything, but it’s a bare minimum that all programs should have. 
2. What is their safety policy? Two deep leadership is the general standard in all programs.
3. What is their reporting policy? Concerns should be directly referred to the local authorities, not to internal systems. 
4. For larger programs, do they have files on the kids with emergency contacts, allergies, and a check in/check out procedure? 
5. Do the leaders take a training course on recognizing abuse? Here’s one I was really impressed with.

Community:

1. Are there kids the same ages as yours? 
2. Are the classes small enough for personal attention or large enough for peer interaction?
3. Does your child “vibe” with the other kids? With the teachers? Don’t’ discount it if your child is getting the creeps from a leader or another child. 
4. Kids change as they get older. Will this community be accepting if they come out as LGBTQ in the future? Are they accessible to those with disabilities? etc.

Values:

1. Do they center values over in-group/out-group thinking? Some programs spend a lot of time in boundary maintenance. In my opinion, a good children’s program spends more time actually teaching values rather than a specific dogma. Some red flags for me are teaching a “victim mindset” where the “world” is out to get the “believer”. It also is a red flag if we label who is and is not a true believer. That is different from teaching values, which are goals to strive towards, not measuring sticks to beat yourself with.
2. Do they treat everyone as deserving of love and belonging?  Beware of worthiness talk. Teaching excessive self-monitoring with the goal of being “worthy” can lead to serious mental health disorders in some children. A healthy program treats all people as worthy of love and belonging, even as they encourage them to be their best selves.
3. Do they engage in dangerous or unhealthy discipline? Exclusion and other shaming practices should never be used as a punishment. For example, a teen is suspected of being sexually “impure” and so is not allowed to go on any special trips for 6 months or must stand aside during rituals, that kind of treatment is highly damaging not only to the children that are excluded, but also to those that witness such treatment. Of course, physical forms of punishment are also unacceptable.

So what if you can’t find a program that checks all your boxes? Well, that’s where a lot of young families are right now. For more personalized help, I encourage you to book a coaching session and we can talk about your specific needs and what resources are out there for you and your family.

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