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December 31, 2022 - January 5, 2023
Attachment science tells us how we feel in relationships. Do we feel safe and secure? Do we feel tentative or anxious?
This confirms what many 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.
We all have ways that we reach for closeness that wear us out rather than bringing the peace and rest we’ve been promised. These are called “insecure” attachment styles, and they tend to fall into three distinct categories: an anxious attachment style a shutdown attachment style a shame-filled attachment style
Secure attachment is a quality of relationship. It’s knowing that when I need you, you’ll be available, responsive, and engaged. Secure attachment happens when children can naturally turn toward their parents, or someone else they love, without much worry about whether they’ll be able to get what they need. The relationship doesn’t have to be perfect, but healthy connection happens often enough that we can count on that person.
We find that in securely attached relationships, others rejoice with us when we rejoice and mourn when we mourn. Lastly, in secure attachment, we feel accepted as we are.
Research suggests that to develop a healthy, secure relationship with their children, parents need to get it right only 50 percent of the time.1 Parents don’t need to be perfect, only “good enough,” so there’s a lot of room for error. It’s estimated that 60 percent of the US population is securely attached.2
He doesn’t feel guilt—initially anyway. He feels hungry.
So he returns home, prepared to give a speech about his own unworthiness, hoping to appease his father enough to get some better living conditions.
It’s easy to become locked in a pattern of being as expressive as we can in our spiritual life, trying to keep God’s attention.
we find a similar portrayal of a God who is focused on the task of spreading the gospel or establishing a kingdom, without concern for feelings. In this paradigm, we’ve lost a vision for a God who both invites us into self-sacrificial living and knows us so well that the hairs on our heads are counted.
Researchers have called this style disorganized attachment or fearful attachment because there’s no clear way to seek emotional safety in the relationship. I’ve decided to call this way of relating shame-filled attachment because the foundation of this style is shame. It thrives on the belief that I am not good enough to deserve love and belonging.
Perfectionism is one of the sharpest tools in the toolbox of anxious attachment.
Her fervency for closeness robs her of the ability to explore, grow, learn, and make new relationships.
One clear example is the way we’ve equated sobriety with being close to God and active addiction as being far from God.
the harmful yet subtle message that comes through is that God is not present when you’re at rock bottom.
Behind your constant clinging is a deep need for a Divine Parent who is close and unwavering.
because the real way we keep closeness is not by performing but by expressing our needs and receiving a caring response. We all need someone who races toward us and embraces us before we even have the chance to explain ourselves.
he described our desire for a secure relationship, that we might “fall asleep in safe arms, to cry without fear, to let go, relax [our] tense muscles and rest long and deep”11 with God.
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann noted that rest is what was supposed to distinguish Israel from the other nations of the day.
Breathing Prayer Exercise
“I know I shouldn’t feel anxious.” Six little words that summarize a shutdown attachment style. This is a phrase I’ve heard from countless Christians who believe that their worry or sadness or fear or traumatic pain points to one conclusion: something is wrong with their relationship with God. If I truly believed in God’s promises, then I wouldn’t feel this way,
Emotions have long been taken as thermometers of our own spiritual maturity or character.
You expect that sharing your worry or sorrow or doubt will only cause more disappointment.
In shutdown spirituality, theological systems become the oven mitts with which to hold the red-hot threat of human experience, full of emotions and heartache, in an attempt to avoid being burned.
A shutdown spiritual style latches on to the tasks for God to the exclusion of communion with God.
He tells God about his joy, his gratitude, his sadness, his anxiety, his doubt, his guilt, his grief. He brings it all to the table, expecting that God can handle it—and will respond. This is what we truly need. We need a God who doesn’t want only our best but wants all of us.
Then there are children who never get the closeness they yearn for. There’s no abuse, just a soul-crushing absence of attention or care or comfort.
Paul Tillich wrote that when we “cannot contribute anything positive”12 to getting close to God, “then we try at least to contribute something negative—the pain of self-accusation and self-rejection.”
a shame-filled attachment style feels like God accepts us in spite of who we are, a notion that continually undermines feeling secure with God.
Theologian Brad Jersak points out the collateral damage of this internal war: “Hatred of sin and self-hatred and hatred of the sinner are a very thin line, aren’t they?”17
The apostle Paul talks about imitating Christ for good reason.20 In Jesus we see someone who is grounded in his belovedness and who sees belovedness in all others.
There are reasons to change and grow and heal and transform, but getting closer to God is not one of them. If we try to change ourselves because we fear disconnection, it won’t lead to healing. If we conclude that we are the problem, then we think the solution is to get rid of ourselves, often through self-destructive ways.
“Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of spiritual life,” wrote Henri Nouwen, “because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’”
Surely God’s love is brighter than our darkness, but constant self-denigration doesn’t help us increase our security with God. It works as a fertilizer for shame to grow.
When we speak about ourselves as deserving only punishment, it gives us license to treat others the same.
Mako Nagasawa believes that one of the main influences on high rates of incarceration in the US is the Christian church’s overemphasis on God’s role as a divine punisher.32 He’s argued that because we’ve believed God is more likely to punish sinners than heal them into wholeness, we have treated offenders in our society in similar ways.
Attachment research has shown that delight is one of the keys to a secure attachment.
“Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence,” wrote Nouwen.34 We all know God loves us, but God’s delight is a whole other matter.
Without emotional security there is no relaxation, but tension, distress and instability.”
Jesus’s good news was that God is a better parent than we’ve been told.
We know that security is built on a relationship that is not dependent on behavior. We know that helping your child identify their emotions and manage their inner turmoil is the way to create a safe haven. And we know that delighting in your child, communicating—more than anything else—that you love them, is the way to true connection.
One chapter later, Cain kills Abel, his own brother—a sin that would separate a person from God if there ever was one. But actually, it seems to draw God close. Yahweh shows up and talks with Cain.9 Later, Jacob cheats Esau out of his birthright and deceives his father. Yet he ends up meeting God in the desert.10 In the second book of the Bible, Moses kills a man and flees the city, only later to be met by God in a burning bush.11 The apostle Paul, during his life as Saul, kills Christians, and then is met by Jesus on the road to Damascus.12 God continually approaches us, even at our worst
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Never in any of these stories do we hear that the relationship is ever in jeopardy. Perceived feelings of closeness may shift—we will go through the mountains and valleys—but with these possible shifts in mind, we can still know that our relationship is intact.
Just like the rules on the fridge in our house, God gave the law so that the chosen nation would know how to relate to each other in healthy ways that upheld the imago Dei in each person.
Acceptance into God’s community was not dependent on following the law; the law was given because of being accepted into community. Sort of like, “We’re a family, so let’s talk about how we’re going to live together.”
Theologian Miroslav Volf wrote, “Israel is irrevocably elect and immutably loved by God; no failure on Israel’s part can change this.”27 They are the chosen people, and no amount of bad behavior can alter that part of the relationship.
“This covenant relation is characteristically conditional and unconditional at the same time.”29 God never gives up on his people, even as they fail time and time again to listen to his wisdom that will bring peace, justice, and healing to their community in a way that accurately represents the heart of God.
But your relational brain and attachment system don’t change with merely more data.
The book of Joshua tells the story where Israel comes up against the Jordan River and God parts the water for them to cross through. God then instructs them to build a monument of twelve stones as a reminder of his kindness to them. While other nations were constructing graven images to glorify their gods, the God of Israel asked them to construct a memorial not only for glory but to remind the people of God’s unending parental care and to signal to the other nations that Israel had a God who watched over them.38
You can rest deeply and wake to join with God’s mission to heal the world.
