photo by Laura Allen
What are the implications of attachment science for ministry?
I wish that every pastor understood three things:
Our day-to-day relationship with God is based on what we know implicitly — in our heart, not our head.
Whether correct or not, our heart-knowledge about God exists for a reason. If underneath it all, we believe God doesn’t like me, that belief has been cultivated in some way, possibly from the church itself.
Being curious and creating space to understand and explore these implicit beliefs about God, without judgement, is the best way to heal our relationship with God and move forward in discipleship.
How we feel about God can actually be very different than what we think about God. This makes our unhealthy attachment patterns with God even more difficult to recognize, because we know all the right answers: God loves me. God’s anger was satisfied in the cross. God cares for me. But sometimes that’s different from how we feel. We’ve been told that because of Jesus’ work, we’re at peace with God, yet we feel the constant hint of disapproval. We might say that we know God loves us unconditionally, but we worry that the moment we slip up God will pull away.
It’s hard to put words to these feelings, often because we feel like we’re not supposed to have them. A few years ago, a study was conducted [1] where Christians were asked to consider a way of describing God, attributes like kind, patient, responsive, and asked them to identify whether the adjectives were ones they felt they “should believe that God is like” or adjectives that they “personally feel that God is like.” At the end of the study, the researchers found that although people did experience God as a positive figure in their life, participants believed that their experience of God should be much more positive than it actually was. That is, their actual experience was not as positive as they believe it should be. This confirms what most of us already know: in most church communities, we’re afraid to talk about our insecurities with God because we feel we should not have them.
“In the Christian faith, for example, clients commonly report believing in a God that is close and forgiving. However, it is not uncommon for these same clients to report experiencing God as distant and unforgiving. They may believe in the concept of grace, yet still feel like they have to earn God’s approval.” - Glendon Moriarity, The Head and the Heart: Perspectives from Religion and Psychology (2013)
The vulnerable space of acknowledging these discrepancies is a sacred one. It’s a wonderful privilege to walk into these waters with people, as they tell me things like, “I’ve always been told that ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so,’ but deep down, I feel like God doesn’t really want me, and isn't going to stick around. I’ve never really put that into words, it’s just been this background feeling my whole life.” This is the way we begin to step into security with God. When we can slow down and notice how we feel with God, it illuminates our insecurities in a way that leads us into healing. As we bring our painful experiences of faith to the forefront, we can allow God and others to help tend to these wounds – as long as we can do so in a community that has proven itself safe.
Contact Krispin for consultation on using attachment science to create healing spiritual communities.
Notes:
[1] Bonnie Poon Zahl & Nicholas J. S. Gibson (2012) God Representations, Attachment to God, and Satisfaction With Life: A Comparison of Doctrinal and Experiential Representations of God in Christian Young Adults, The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22:3, 216-230, DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2012.670027
[2] Hall, et. al. (2009)