Attachment with God, wk 1 (Shut-down Attachment)

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We begin our look at how the framework of Attachment Science can help us improve our images of God, and, in turn, our relationships with God. First up, a focus on shut-down (or avoidant) insecure attachment with God.

SPEAKER NOTES

Attachment With God, wk 1 (Shut-down Attachment)

Story

Right before we started this church, I participated in a psychological assessment and various therapy exercises, because starting a church can be a really emotionally taxing project, and this was presented as a wise way I could get out in front of potential vulnerabilities I want to be aware of about myself.

One of the exercises I did was making a sort of visual map of my personal challenges — behaviors or mindsets or past wounds that have stayed with me — to try and see how everything’s related. We cut out pieces of paper and arrows, and laid everything out on the floor.

And, as I looked at the floor at a visual representation of my personal challenges, there were two very clear takeaways:

  1. I struggled to trust people — I had developed a fair amount of mistrust that people will follow through on their promises to me, that people will be reliable and stick around.

and…

  1. Strangely, I felt exactly the opposite with God — somehow, I felt an absolute rock solid trust in God’s reliability — the other participants in this exercise reported feeling angry with God for some of their circumstances, but that wasn’t the case for me.

The best way I was able to explain this was, honestly, luck.

  • I didn’t have negative experiences of religion growing up in the family and culture I happened to grow up in, I just had neutral experiences, so when I first became a praying person as a young adult, I had no religious baggage! - My wife — who by no means has had the most negative experiences of religion you’ve ever heard, but has had some — often says to me about my lack of baggage, “must be nice!”
  • And then, my first ever spiritual experiences, feeling God care for me in grief after I lost my mom to cancer, were so undeniably-good, without reservation, that that is just this huge protective factor around my sense of connection with God. - God feels incredibly good until proven not, for me. - For people with the bad luck of happening to grow up with more religious baggage, it’s more like God feels suspect until proven not.

So does positive connection with God just come down to luck?

I think we’re lying to ourselves if we don’t acknowledge in some ways the role of luck…

But, also, I can’t believe life is so flat and empty that spiritual joy and health only comes down to luck.

I’ll come back to that in a bit; let me set some context for us…

Context

For the next month or so we’re going to be engaging a framework from psychology as a way to improve our images of God, and, in turn, our relationships with God.

  • “Attachment Science”
  • A major source for this will be the author and professional counselor Krispin Mayfield, and his book Attached to God. It's a very readable book for a popular audience, and I would totally recommend it! (We'll put details in Discord)
  • And Hayley and I are also grateful to a team of professional counselors in our church who met together several times to help us plan this series!

Maybe you’ve heard a bit about Attachment Science?

  • Terminology like Secure vs. Insecure
  • It’s usually referred to as Attachment Theory, but it’s been so rigorously shown to be useful in the psychological community that it’s now often being referred to as Attachment Science.

Basics of Attachment Science

  • Basically, it is the study of how we try to get and keep connection. - Attachment can be secure or various styles of insecure
  • Most of the research has been done observing child + primary caregiver relationships. - The famous experiment is the still-face study. - Where a mother and baby at first engage normally — the mother is engaged and responsive. - And then for a brief period the mother goes still-faced, trying to remain neutral instead of emotionally responsive. - What is observed is: at first baby tries to re-engage their mother, but eventually, if there is no response, they pull back — first physically, then emotionally.
  • More recently there’s been a lot of research beyond child + primary caregiver relationships, - Observing adult partnership relationships - How do we try to get and keep connection in these relationships?
  • Secure attachment, the theory says, is... - I feel you are there for me, if I am distressed I believe you will come, - If we detach for a moment (a drop off at school, or you’re gone for a work trip, or there’s conflict), - I trust that you will come back. - It’s more than “you won’t leave me or kick me out” — it’s a feeling of being safe, being loved, being secure. - Quick comfort here for any parents here who struggle with perfectionism: - The estimate from research of what it takes to establish secure attachment for the average child (what's been called “good enough” parenting) is generally understood to be responding to bids for connection at least 50% of the time. - So if you're showing up to church right now and trying at all to live out the values that we represent here, I'd guess you're probably squarely in that camp of "good enough" parenting. Don’t let perfectionism condemn you too much!

Applying Attachment Science to Relationship with God

So I wonder if you can see why a new and exciting growing area of research right now is applying Attachment Science to spirituality? — to people’s relationships with God?

Attachment Science has helped me find words and a framework to describe that rock solid trust in God that I fell into by luck.

And that means that type of positive experience with God DOESN’T have to come down to only luck

With words and a framework,

  • Communities and individuals can make intentional choices to set people up for more secure God-attachment.
  • We can investigate our images of God, asking: is my image of God less-loving than a “good enough” parent that establishes secure attachment with their child?
  • If so, maybe I have an image of God that isn’t worthy to be called God!

My educated guess as a pastor is that:

  • the majority of the population does NOT experience secure attachment with God

  • And I want that to change.

  • It is different to apply Attachment Science to relationship with God, for sure - Because most of the research on attachment has been done through observation of both sides of a relationship, and God is not observable or measurable the way people are; - But it can still be done! We can imagine 4 steps. - (1) Noticing evidence of Insecure Attachment strategies for connection in our personal relationships with God (which we’ll talk about examples of in a bit)… - (2) Identifying the False Images of God we’ve absorbed or been sold or force-fed that lead us to resort to those Insecure Attachment strategies for connection (because it's NEVER just “you're doing prayer wrong”). - (3) Replacing intentionally those False Images with, for example, Jesus’ image of God — - As the perfect caregiver and perfect companion — one who will always reliably show up for us. - Jesus’ preferred metaphor for God is “Abba Father” — an intimate image (we can call Jesus “securely attached”) - (4) Observing the results in our self-reported experience of spirituality — - “Judging a tree by its fruit” as Jesus said… Do we feel more securely attached? Do we feel more trust, more loving presence, more reliability in our relationship with God, less anxious that momentary distress or disorientation means we’ll never experience God again or that God is angry? - The early returns on people trying to practice this in ministry is: YES! Taking this approach can lead to noticeably improved connection with God! - So our church is joining in this new frontier of practicing ministry. Can we find ourselves feeling profoundly more connected with God by using an Attachment Science framework?

One disclaimer before describing the three Insecure God-Attachment styles—

  • As we talk about insecure God-attachment, some of us may notice coming up for us insecure caregiver-attachments or insecure-partner attachments in our lives.
  • In some cases, that can be really useful to our hope here of improving our relationships with God (because our most important human relationships can reveal a lot about our relationships with God),
  • BUT also you may find, as we do this, that your personal interest to learn more about the Attachment framework is focused more on your caregiver and partner attachments than on your God attachment.
  • We totally get that! If that’s the case, we want you to know that, while we’re going to keep our focus for our messages and discussion groups on “Attachment with God” (because that’s what a church is best suited to speak to), our church does help people all the time to find good, trustworthy counseling professionals and therapy settings to do that kind of personal growth work and ask those kind of questions.
  • We’d be SO glad to help you find the right setting or therapist for that for you! Just reach out to Hayley or me with an email or talk to us after service.

That said, we want all your questions that are about God-Attachment,

  • May 18 is going to be a Question and Response message, so...
  • Submit questions you’re okay with being public in Discord
  • Or submit questions anonymously via brownlinechurch.org/attachment
  • Also join in our first Discussion group May 4 after service!

Insecure Attachment with God

So… the three Insecure God-Attachment styles…

Style is the word used most, but "strategy" might be a more helpful word.

  • Again, think: how we try to get and keep connection…
  • If we feel, at a baseline, insecure about our attachment with God (unsure, like we’re getting a “still face”), then we will resort to and learn strategies to try to get and keep connection that are less than optimal.
  1. Shut-down (or avoidant)
    • When it seems like our feelings or needs can’t be handled or aren’t welcome with God, perhaps because of others’ feelings or needs, we learn the shut-down attachment strategy for connection with God.
    • We use distance to manage our relationship with God.
  2. Anxious
    • When it seems like we can never quite do enough to please God, we learn the anxious attachment strategy for connection with God.
    • We frenetically manage our relationship with God.
  3. Shame-filled (or disorganized)
    • This is the most distressing
    • When it seems like you need to try to prove how unlikeable and unworthy you are, because you’re never quite sure what to expect from God, it might be closeness but it might be coldness — it’s up and down and unpredictable and confusing — we learn the shame-filled (or disorganized) attachment strategy for connection with God.
    • We shame ourselves to manage our relationship with God.
  • Take this with a grain of salt, but I tried to connect each of the three insecure attachment styles to different types of church traditions people in our community may have grown up in. - (The connections aren’t perfect, but I still think they’re helpful.) - Shut down attachment with God is, I would argue, most closely correlated with the Progressive Protestant Mainline — like Methodists, PCUSA Presbyterians, ELCA Lutherans — and with more Progressive Catholic settings. - Anxious attachment with God is, I would argue, most closely correlated with Evangelicalism — like non-denominational mega churches or Southern Baptists — and with Black Protestant churches and with conservative Catholic settings (the paradigmatic Catholic guilt). - I’d also throw in here most experiences in the Covenant Church, which has a large Chicago contingent because of North Park University, - But some Covenant settings can more closely correlate with shut-down attachment - Disorganized attachment with God is, I would argue, most closely correlated with religious Fundamentalism — very insular, sometimes authoritarian churches that are almost entirely focused on what’s called “substitutionary atonement” — the popular view of “Jesus died for your sins” (which I personally don’t endorse) that leaves people with a split personality view of God: loving son but angry father. - In the last couple decades the line between evangelicalism and fundamentalism has blurred, so it wouldn’t be surprising if you notice both anxious and shame-filled God-attachment in you.

Today’s focus

Today, we’re looking specifically at shut down insecure attachment with God. (We’ll look at the others on future Sundays.)

  1. Noticing evidence of this (what does it look like?)
    • We use distance to manage connection
    • We hide or ignore our feelings and needs — not as a way to disconnect, but as a way to connect!
    • We might say “Don’t worry about me, God! I’m good!”… Often what we really mean is, “You’re not supposed to worry about me, God. I’m supposed to be good on my own.”
    • We are Elsa from Frozen: “Conceal, don’t feel!”
    • We may appear from the outside passionately engaged in carrying on the work of Jesus, but inside we are more “going through the motions” than passionate.
    • This is why I think this correlates with more Progressive church settings that, in a great way, take really seriously matters of justice and ethics, but perhaps as an unintended consequence deliver a message that “there’s so many important issues out there that require God’s attention, so God doesn’t have time for you.”
  2. Identifying the false image of God you may have absorbed, been sold or force-fed
    • The way I would put this false image of God is:
      • The Ethical But Uninvolved, Impersonal God.
    • It’s a wonderful gift to have formed in us a picture of a God whose ethics we don’t become appalled by as we grow older
      • (the Exvangelicals among us here will remind us of that pointing to 80% support of Trump among Evangelicals)
    • BUT when messages of collective ethics become a retreat from talking about an actively involved, personal God, because we don't share the views on politics and science with the evangelicals who talk the most about a personal God, and we don't want to be associated with that…
    • The result is NOT “an ethical religion with none of the embarrassing problems”,
      • The result is ethical people who are burnt out!
      • Because we don’t have enough of a concept of or training in connecting with a personal God, who has resources beyond what we can provide for ourselves.
    • If we maintain any sense of God beyond “a Lawgiver of ethics”, that God is not close or emotionally responsive, that God is abstract at the level of morals and ethics, too lofty to be troubled with little me — and I should be okay with that!
    • We don't expect prayer to come with experiences of empathy, or feeling guided in real time, or of feeling filled up or intimate or brought alive — if we do pray, we're praying for other people.
    • We are shut-down in our attachment with God.
  3. Replacing

So let’s replace the “ethical but uninvolved, impersonal God" with a better image of a God who establishes secure attachment with us.

  • We often teach here at BLC the open and relational view of God and the world — to me, the most sensible and beautiful image of God being articulated today, and, in the academic world, usually considered the most compatible view of God with modern science — it’s different from the popular view of God and the world that modern people usually either accept or reject.

  • One way to think about the difference between the popular view and the open and relational view is a Venn Diagram. - Rather than a God entirely separate from the world, outside of time, who occasionally intervenes (but, maddeningly, not always)... - We have: God in the world and the world in God. - God is always present to all of creation, in every moment, in our internal experiences, luring the world toward the most good, most beautiful, most just possibilities. - So, if we are paying attention to our internal experiences, there are always personal, in-the-moment calls before us to join in God’s love for the world. - BUT we of course know full well that - we humans have the freedom to reject God’s calls — we make less-than-loving choices all the time. - and the world also includes randomness and chance that can frustrate God’s aims, - Nonetheless, God is, in every moment, present to us, calling to us personally

  • This view takes seriously our collective ethics, AND ALSO what happens for us internally, our subjective experiences, our emotional states, our longings for personal connection.

  • I think of Jesus saying…

    I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

    • This is a two-way image of an organic, symbiotic relationship. It’s not just us remaining in God, it’s God remaining in us!
    • Your personal experience as a branch matters! It doesn’t automatically detract from the collective experience of the vine! - It can, for sure. - But the goal here is not not mattering; it’s not shutting down; - It’s opening up — to a partnership — a secure attachment — branch and vine together bearing fruit.

Practice

One more Scripture from the Bible I think of, and I want to make it my practical suggestion this week for any of us who notice in ourselves a shut-down attachment style with God.

It’s one of my favorite prayers in the Bible — Psalm 8:

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

4 what are humans that you are mindful of them,

mere mortals that you care for them?

5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God

and crowned them with glory and honor.

6 You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under their feet,

The reason I love this psalm is that it does acknowledge the un-believability of the God of the Universe being invested in small, insignificant, individuals…

BUT ALSO it revels in the acceptance of that un-believable divine care and interest, even so.

That’s a beautiful encapsulation of moving from an insecure shut-down God-attachment to a secure God-attachment! It's like this Psalm was written just for that.

So, to make this practical, I want to encourage you, if you notice shut-down attachment strategies in your personal relationship with God, to read as a prayer Psalm 8 multiple times this week.

This is not the kind of linear reading we do in school, where we read again and again for understanding; this is what’s called Spiral reading, where we read again and again to let something we already understand sink in further.

It's not that we don't understand, right? It’s that attachment isn’t about understanding. It’s about feeling secure.

That'll be the fourth step we talked about: observing

  • Observe how you feel about God next Sunday at church, during our worship time here after a week of this.
  • Of Psalm 8, at least once a day.
  • Pull it up on your phone in a browser tab that stays open. (You know you have other tabs open too!) Or set a reminder on a smart device, or put a sticky note on your steering wheel or mirror.
  • Do something to bring yourself back to Psalm 8, letting yourself spiral further and further into its truth about the God who longs for you to feel securely attached.

Prayer

John, PsalmsVincent BrackettAttachment With GodComment