Psychologiczne aspekty dojrzałości religijnej

Abstract

Religious maturity, defined as the ultimate aim of the interior process of religious development of the human individual, may be described either in terms of the characteristics proper to the mature human personality (Allport), or in terms of a mature attitude towards God as Somebody Absolutely Different (Vergote). In so much as Allport stresses the meaning of mature religiosity in the aspect of the full functioning of the personality, Vergiote accentuates in nature religiosity the full openness and readiness of the individual to keep up the personal relation to God as Someone Absolutely Different. The personal relation has the character of a dialogue, the dialogue with God, the dialogue with other people, with whom the individual is connected by the ties of community before God. In defining religious maturity as a process there were taken under consideration certain stages of development of the personal relation man ‒ God. This process may be considered in the aspect of : 1° the readiness of the individual to contract a relation with the object of religion, 2° the development of new elements in the structure of the personality (experience of self as subject and object of the relation to God), and their organization in regard to the relation to God, 3° the directing of the behaviour of the individual toward actualization of the potentiality, revealing the relation „I - God”, 4° the readiness to perfect and deepen the relation to God, 5°confidence in maintaining the personal relation to God. Having accepted the psychological point of view of religious maturity, the author stresses the disposition of man to contract personal relations with God and the direction of the changes, performed in man's personality when he experiences having been accepted by God as a person and having been invited to a dialogue with Him. The conditions of the development of this dialogue are similar to those on which depends the normal functioning to the personality, giving it a chance of a full, personal contact with other people and God. While describing the highest stage of the process of religious maturity it is therefore necessary to indicate not only the sum of the attained „perfections" (moral, ascetic, personalistic), but also the degree of the interior freedom to perfect the personal relation to God as Someone Absolutely Different, achieved by the individual, and also of the freedom in accepting responsibility for all the consequences resulting from a dialogue thus conducted.