Depending on the quality of care we received from our primary caregivers during childhood, we either develop what psychologist John Bowlby coined in the early 70s as a Secure or Insecure (Anxious or Avoidant) attachment style.
These attachment styles (Secure, Anxious, or Avoidant), formed during our earliest years of development, play a significant role in determining our relational motivations, impact how well we relate to others, and color our view of self, others, and God. Each style helps to explain one’s proclivity to fear rejection, avoid conflict, or dismiss negative unwanted emotions.
Notably, these emotionally driven relational dynamics also have significant ramifications for how we view and experience God. For more on how attachment styles impact our relationship with God, check out my other blog post here.
How To Develop A Secure Attachment With God.
- Understand The Past To Understand The Present: Revisiting past negative attachment experiences with a trusted friend or counselor can enlighten current negative behaviors and/or beliefs about God, yourself, and others. Someone who constantly feels the need to earn God’s favor is someone who probably constantly felt the need to earn the favor of their parents. Only once understood within a comprehensive context can the journey to healing holistically begin.
- Know Thyself: To the degree with which we understand our own depravity is the degree with which we can internalize and experience the richness of God’s grace. For there can hardly be another more positive attachment experience with God than authentically facing our capacity to wretchedly abandon all things good and true and yet feel the claim he still has on our soul.
- Source Your Ultimate Value From Your Identity, Not Your Accomplishments: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us! If the God of the universe sees value in us at our worst, this value must transcend behavioral failure or success. Tim Keller notes: “You are more sinful than you ever thought you were. And you are more loved than you ever dreamed you could be.” As a good father welcomes his son after years of addiction and relapse, so Christ welcomes us despite our many relapses into sin.
- Corrective Emotional Experiences: The sweetness of Jesus in the face of a dear friend, the mercy of Jesus in the unconditional positive regard from those who know our deepest proclivities for sin, or the grace of Jesus in the forgiveness given by a friend whom we’ve transgressed, these are corrective emotional experiences. As negative relational experiences distort our view of the divine, so corrective emotional experiences with fellow heirs can heal our view of the divine. We must be willing to step into vulnerability with others, to risk sharing of oneself if we are to repair what is fractured.
- Know The Person Of Jesus, Not Just The Idea Of Jesus: Eternal life is described as knowing Jesus and therefore knowing God (John 17:3). As knowledge of a dear friend mutes most transgressions, so knowledge of God can transcend unhelpful beliefs and behaviors conditioned from attachment wounds in childhood. Unfortunately, we can live our entire lives saturated in a religious context and yet be unchanged and unfamiliar with the person of Jesus.
- Remember: While in seminary, my professor of Old Testament Studies noted that the sum of the entire Bible could be described in one word: remember. God remembers His covenant with His people, he will never forget. So we, guilty of frequent forgetfulness, should remember God’s faithfulness in our life. Remember the answered prayers, remember the answers to prayers you did not even pray, remember his kindness, remember his provision, remember him hanging shamefully on a tree so we, miserably broken and hopeless, could be with him, and he with us. Remember.
Togetherness & Solitude
Many of the above ideas are only achieved within one of two mediums that require two characteristics. These two mediums are either connectedness or solitude, and the characteristics are safety and security.
To experience connectedness (friend, counselor, etc.), we need others to come alongside us to help us explore the innermost wounded parts of our story and childhood. Yet, these spaces must be safe and secure and offer curiosity, care, and concern.
Of equal importance, safety and security are essential internalized beliefs and feelings about Jesus that allow us to experience solitude with Him, to weep vulnerably before Him, or receive His mercy despite yet another relapse into sin. So, be vulnerable with a friend that you trust, find a community that you love, or seek out a counselor who is a Christian that can help you begin this journey.
It just might lead you to even greater intimacy with Jesus.