I Promise I’m Not Going Cage Stage on You

Have you ever heard of “cage stage” regarding theology? It is especially applied in Calvinist circles, but I think it can be true anywhere.

First, a definition from R.C. Sproul.

This gives birth to cage-stage Calvinists, those newly minted Reformed believers who are so aggressive and impatient that they should be locked in a cage for a little while so that they can cool down and mature a little in the faith. At times, someone who becomes convinced of the biblical doctrines of grace finds himself in conflict with friends and family because of his discovery of Reformed theology.

If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to interact with one of these people (usually men but not always), you know they can be incredibly condescending and rude. It’s unpleasant to deal with in many ways.

But cage stage can happen in all kinds of situations. I can think of people who have been in cage stage who weren’t Calvinists, but other forms of Christian.

And what’s the saying? There’s no one as puritanical as a former smoker?

How about someone who has achieved some fantastic health benefit from a certain diet or lifestyle change? I’m observing someone go through the cage stage in the health area and I don’t know if she realizes how truly rude and off-putting she is being. It’s like someone flipped a switch on her including the questionable theological statements coming out of her mouth. It’s actually made me quite sad to observe it.

So I say all this for a reason.

I promise I’m not going cage stage over the next week or two.

If fact, I normally go out of my way to trickle out information and posts when I want to wade into the waters of a particular topic that could be controversial. I don’t want to overwhelm people with a barrage of content.

But the problem with that approach is that it just takes so long to share the backlog of posts and links I have collected.

If I wrote a new post about Relaxed Homeschooling every day for ten days in a row, no one would think anything of it. I’ve been a homeschooler forever and that’s the approach we used. Some readers might think, “Okay, write about something else now” but it would not come across as cage stage. It would be me finding time to get a lot of stuff done and banging out a lot of long-overdue posts.

However, if I write about problems with Calvinism or eschatology-themed posts for ten days in a row, it might make people feel like I’m aggressively trying to push a topic.

See the difference?

Relaxed homeschooling is “neutral” as far as topics go on this website. It’s just me sharing what I’ve learned.

Theology just lands differently.

As do many cultural or current event related topics.

I think people process and feel theology and contemporary issues more personally.

All that said, I plan on pushing out a lot of content in posts and in the forum over the next week. Stuff that has piled up for months.

I’m not trying to aggressively push anything. I just want to clear my proverbial desktop.

So if I share a bunch of posts on a topic that doesn’t interest you, please just scroll on by. I know everything I write isn’t for everyone. That’s fine. Chances are something else will be coming up that will interest you.

The other risk is publishing too much so readers feel overwhelmed. I’m not trying to overwhelm people. This is simply content I want to publish on my website because I think it is helpful. And it can help the right people sooner if it is – oh, I don’t know – actually published and not sitting in draft mode.

Know what I mean?

So there you go.

No cage stage. I promise.

Just interesting content offered with the same prayer I’ve always had here on my website – that God will lead the right people to find the right post at the right time.

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