“Brian McLaren says there’s a good reason your beliefs stopped working” by Jana Riess
Please walk us through the four stages of faith and doubt as you outline them in the book, starting with Stage 1.
I think we are all inducted into Stage 1, or Simplicity, in our childhood. This is the stage of simple dualisms: us/them, in/out, right/wrong, strange/familiar, safe/dangerous. Because we’re children and there’s a lot we don’t know, we need authority figures to tell us what’s safe. This is a natural and healthy stage for us as children.