Those who work their way through the second dark night of the soul reach the sixth stage, the stage where unconditional love becomes the rule of one’s life. Very few live consistently in this stage for long. Stage six people are compassionate toward others, even under extreme hardship. God’s loves flows through them toward others in every direction. Stage six people reach out to those who have hurt them, even people who in earlier stages would have repulsed them, people they used to despise. They have allowed God to change their hearts, to experience His mercy and compassion even toward “enemies.” Many people feel uplifted simply being in their presence. Stage six people have truly learned how to forgive. They see others through the eyes of God. God’s behavior becomes their model (Matt 18:23-35). They treat others as if they were serving God Himself in person (Matt 25:31-46).

Stage six people may not renounce materials things, but they certainly need them less than others do. They are free from the things that bring anxiety to others. If you don’t need material things to be content, you won’t fear losing them, and you won’t fret if you do lose them. They have an inner peace, a contentment that nothing seems able to shake. They have little ambition to be well known, rich, successful, noteworthy, goal-oriented or even spiritual. They don’t lose heart when others criticize them because their inner soul is grounded in the love and approval of God.

Since stage six is the goal of the journey, there are no humans left to mentor people in stage six. Instead, they are mentored directly by God. It also makes no sense to speak of “getting stuck” in stage six. The only issue would be maintaining one’s place there. Like stage five, stage six people may appear to be out of touch with real life, neglecting their own personal needs, wasting their lives doing things that don’t seem productive in worldly terms. Yet they are serene in the knowledge that they are following God’s leading and mentoring. If God approves, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

While stage six people are an enormous blessing to the world, they have an extremely hard time fitting in to religious institutions or even normal human society. One would think that unconditional love would cause them to be the most popular people on earth. But the reverse is the case. There is no more destabilizing behavior than unconditional love. Stage six people love everybody, including the people I can’t stand, even my enemies. The one thing I will not allow you to do is to love my enemy. In fact, enemies have been known to reconcile with each other in order to do away with someone who loves everybody. That’s what happened to Jesus. Pilate and Herod reconciled over the trial and condemnation of Jesus. People who love everybody often find themselves isolated from nearly everybody, because they seem to be a threat to a system that favors one person over another, one group over another.

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is for stage six people. No one else would even know where to begin with that sermon. Stage six people know what it means to be poor in spirit, meek, hungry and thirsty for righteousness. You can smack a stage six person on the cheek and no rising up of fury responds. They may simply offer you the other cheek. This is not normal human behavior, it is Christ-like, God-like behavior. As I have said, few in this life live consistently at this level. Jesus was talking about stage six when He said, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matt 10:39)

We might prefer that the stages of faith ended with stage three, the stage of success in human terms. We would like to believe that the closer we come to God, the more others will recognize that closeness and honor us for it, like they do the prophets of old. But the prophets of old were not honored in their lifetimes because they were so out of step with the accepted religious norm. Only at a distance can we clearly see the work of God in their lives. Their living presence would drive most of us crazy just as it did back in Bible times. The journey of faith does not lead to glory in human terms, but it does lead to glory in the eyes of God and that is what spiritual growth is all about in ultimate terms. It’s all about God, finding him, learning about Him, teaching others about him, learning to listen to Him, seeing the world through His eyes, loving others the way He loves them. It’s all about God.

Coming up. Two last blogs on the implications of the stages of faith.