Another example of stage one can be seen in the associations Elias makes with the comfort he finds sitting in his mother's lap and hearing stories about Jesus. The main factor leading to the transition into the next stage of faith is the development of concrete operational thinking. As the child mentally develops he or she wants to know more about how things are and also the need for clarification between what is real and what is not [Fowler]. Therefore Elias' transition from stage one to stage two is more or less as a result of mental development. .
In the second stage of faith development, stories are often used to teach children morals and the beliefs of the community's faith. The second stage of faith development is therefore called the Mythic-Literal faith because of the child's mythic or literal understanding of these stories. Fowler describes this stage as that of the school child because it generally occurs in children ages seven to eleven. In this stage, the emergence of concrete operational thought helps to organize the previous stage's imaginative view of the world with a more literal interpretation. This narrative form of faith gives the child more coherence and meaning to his or her faith experiences. A limitation of this stage is that the child does not understand the symbolic meaning of the stories and moral teachings. The child's mind has not developed the mental capacity to understand that the stories are not meant to be taken literally and that they are really symbolic to a more general principle [Fowler]. Examples of this stage include the daily teachings of biblical stories to Elias and his siblings by their parents and the village priest. Another example occurs when Elias's mother repeats the Beatitudes and Elias is unable to understand its underlying meaning. Elias puzzled says, "What did He mean? How can you be blessed or happy "if you are poor or in mourning "if someone insults you or persecutes you? How can you be hungry and thirsty for righteousness?- (Chacour 36).