To begin, it should be noted that the experience of "faith" in each stage is radically colored (and at times distorted) by the psychodynamics of a given stage.
For example, people tend to look down on people who are in the stage they have just passed through.
The newly devoted believer in Stage 2 tends to judge a person in the chaos of Stage 1. (You can imagine someone shaking their head disapprovingly at "those sinners," or rationalizing their fear and hatred of gay people).
Similarly, a person who has just deconstructed their faith and dwells in the doubt and skepticism of Stage 3 tends to view the devoted believer of Stage 2 as naive and benighted.
Yet even as we can judge those in the stage behind us, we retain vestiges of the previous stages through which we have just come. Under stress, we can be tempted to lie, coerce, or manipulate to get our way, thus returning to Stage 1.
Someone who lives in the logic and skepticism of Stage 3 may also be oddly and irrationally superstitious about certain matters. Even in Stage 3 or 4, under pressure you mightlike all of uswish for some oracle or authority to cut through life's ambiguities with ultimate answers - the norm of Stage 2.
Not only is there a tendency to look down on those just behind us, but we are mostly threatened by those in the stages above us. For example, people in Stage 2 are told to "love sinners." If they move past their initial judgmentalism, people in Stage 2 can become quite loving of those in Stage 1. Yet they will generally remain threatened by those in the stages above them.
As Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes, "The prophet"employs notes one octave too high for our ears."
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