Stage Theory and Human Development in Christian Life

Goals of Development in Christian Theory

The goals of human development in Christian theory can be divided into the ultimate and the intermediate. The ultimate goal is to achieve life everlasting in the company of God and Christ in Heaven (Sermabeikian, 1994). The intermediate goal is to do God's will in one's daily life on earth. The behaviors that represent God's will have been defined in the Old Testament of the Bible mainly in the form of specific commandments and proverbs, often illustrated with examples from people's lives. Most prominent among these are the Ten Commandments, which warn against such acts as killing, stealing, telling lies, committing adultery, coveting others' possessions, worshipping idols, misusing God's name, failing to respect one's parents, and improperly conducting religious rites (Exodus 20:4–26). God's will is reinterpreted by Christ in the New Testament in the form of more general principles of conduct, the chief of which are to love God and all mankind:

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with thy entire mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is … thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (Mark 12:30–31)

The principle of treating others with love is illustrated with examples in the accounts of Christ's life and with suggestions in subsequent books, most of which consist of letters sent by the apostle Paul to various groups of Christian adherents. According to Christian theory, human development can be judged satisfactory when the individual's behavior increasingly matches the behavior described in God's commandments. Or stated differently, because the term sin identifies all behaviors contrary to God's will, human development is progressing satisfactorily when a person increasingly avoids sin.

However, Christian theologians disagree on the question of the connection between (a) the intermediate goals of abiding by God's commandments and (b) the ultimate goal of the soul's ascending to Heaven after the death of the body (Nee, 1968). The question is: Will a person earn an afterlife of everlasting joy in Heaven by having faithfully followed God's commandments while on earth, or earn an afterlife of misery in Hell by having lived an earthly life of sin? Or is the soul's destiny after death dependent simply on God's inclination or grace, regardless of one's conduct during the years on earth? Can people who have lived sinful lives attain a Heavenly afterlife by, at the time of death, confessing their sins and accepting Christ as their savior? While some Christians would answer yes and others no to such queries, all Christians endorse the belief that humans are obligated to follow the Lord's commandments, and child-rearing and educational practices are directed toward such an end.

The Length of Development and the Christian Perspective

Defining the length of life and of development from a Christian perspective requires that the material being — the body — be considered separately from the non-material — the soul or spirit (Sermabeikian, 1994). For the body, the beginning of both life and development occurs with conception, with the joining of the sperm and egg, and the end comes with physical death as the heart stops beating. For the soul, life is far longer, although the length of development may be the same as for the body. The decision about when the life of the soul starts depends upon which theory of the soul's origin is adopted. Those who subscribe to either the pre-existence or traducian theory hold that the soul originates at the time of conception, when the sperm and ovum merge. Those who subscribe to the creationist theory believe the soul originates at whatever time between conception and birth God places it in the fetus. It is not clear in Christian doctrine whether the soul achieves any prenatal development, so the beginning of development of the soul appears indeterminate. However, it is clear that from birth until physical death the soul develops — that is, it changes with experience and knowledge.

One of the key tenets of Christian belief is that the life of the soul does not end with physical death but continues on through everlasting time. Hence, the life of the soul extends from the prenatal period into eternity. It is unclear, however, whether any development of the soul occurs after physical death (Nee, 1968). In the view of Jonathan Edwards, a seventeenth-century American Protestant theologian, "An unbodied spirit may be as capable of love and hatred, joy and sorrow, hope or fear, or other affections, as one that is united to a body" (Simonson, 1970), but the question of whether such an ostensibly sensate soul experiences any development while in its unbodied state following physical death is left unsettled.