Attachment with God, wk 4 (Question & Response)

Subscribe: Apple | Spotify | YouTube

Hayley and Vince cue up some community comments and questions from our last three weeks discussing how Attachment Science can help us improve our relationships with God.

SPEAKER NOTES

Attachment With God, wk 4 (Question & Response)

Context

If you’ve been with us, you’ll know that this month we’re engaging a framework from psychology as a way to improve our images of God, and, in turn, our relationships with God.

• “Attachment Science” - how we try to get and keep connection - Attachment can be secure or three different styles of insecure (shut-down, anxious, or shame-filled) - And while the theory of attachment arose from researching caregiver-child relationships and partner relationships, we’re joining in the newest engagement of this theory — applying Attachment science to our images of God - Is our image of God like a good caregiver or companion, who leaves us feeling securely attached? - Or is our image of God like less than good caregiver or companion, who leaves feeling insecurely attached? - If so, maybe our image of God is not worthy of being called God!
• Our major source for this is the author and counselor Krispin Mayfield, and his book Attached to God. (Details in #references in Discord)
• And we’re also grateful to a team of therapists in our church who met together several times to help us plan this series!

Today

We’ve been gathering comments the last three weeks for a Question and Response message. So let’s move through them!

Q&R

What if we notice multiple of the three insecure attachment styles in us? Perhaps across different seasons of our lives?

• Totally normal!
• If this is the case for you, I’d probably focus your efforts initially on trying to improve shame-filled images of God (last week’s message), as shame-filled can be seen as suffering from a combination of both shut-down spirituality and anxious spirituality simultaneously. So that’s probably the most effective place to begin.
• If it’s across different seasons of life that you’ve noticed this, I wonder if those different seasons of different insecure God-attachment correlate with different church settings? Maybe a move from a home church of your youth to a college ministry setting? Or the move from a church in one town or city to a church in another town or city in a different part of the country?
• If that’s the case, I’d focus on what feels most recent or current — anxious, shut down or shame filled? That’s probably the best place to start your investigation for a better image of God.

Can you share more about feeling insecure God-attachment even if you feel secure caregiver-attachment?

• I think insecure God-attachment can be more directly related to the religious context you’re in, not the familial context you’re in - This is a range- Can be obvious overlap, and sometimes they are super separate - In my case, I felt very secure in my caregiver-attachment but the picture of God I was given in an evangelical setting did not bring about secure God-attachment - Any heightened anxiety and shame I felt driving my desire for connection came from church, not from my caregivers

And this impacts other relationships! (I’ll stay in my lane, but I have some wonderings…)

• If you grew up in highly religious setting, anecdotally, I think it makes sense that your insecure God-attachment strategies would transfer more to your other relationships in life than perhaps your caregiver attachment
• Like me, if you’re securely attached to parents, but were in a faith setting that used fear as a motivator (could lead to anxiety or shame or both), makes sense to me that anxiety and shame would arise in the context of other relationships
• When we’re given unhealthy images of God, we develop an unhealthy image of ourselves and that has an impact on how we see ourselves in connection with other people

(This is why I like the silliness of the Salsa scale for religious background…)

When we’re trying to move from insecure to secure God-attachment, how do we not throw the baby out with the bathwater?

• Came up in our discussion group a couple weeks ago-

• Life is rarely ever all one thing — it can be cathartic to talk through all of the problematic pieces and experiences that shape insecure God-attachment AND there are good pieces and experiences that we don’t have to downplay or disregard as formational in a positive way

• Nadia Bolz Weber line: you know you’re healing when acknowledging the good doesn’t feel like a betrayal to the bad

• We have agency in moving toward secure God-attachment, no one is litmus testing you on which hymns you still like even if you don’t align with all the lyrics. Or the testimony story or altar call that was a powerful moment for you

• You choose what to carry forward, how to hold onto what has been helpful, joyful, fun! What brought you the gift of community! - For me, even in the midst of insecure God-attachment, I still experienced earnestness and collective effervescence - I look for those now in healthier settings that contribute to secure God-attachment

• And in the process of looking back and naming what was unhelpful , it’s felt freeing to recognize the difference between an explanation and an excuse - Doesn’t excuse that damaging theology I was taught or absorbed - Or the shame that I felt - Explanation that doesn’t demonize those who were the teachers, directly and indirectly — that leads to bitterness that can actually keep the insecure attachment going

• Provides us with reason “this makes sense”

Will our different generations represented here (Boomers, Gen X’ers, Millennials, and Gen Z’ers) experience insecure God-attachment differently?

• Any generation will have struggles with all three insecure styles, so they won’t have differences in that sense.
• But it’s totally true those insecurities will develop for different reasons, because of social and cultural changes generation to generation.
• Our discussion of Altar Calls the week we talked about anxious spirituality is a great example.
• My wife’s family has a beautiful story passed down of her great grandpa (of the Silent Generation, who came of age at the beginning of the 1900s) having a powerful and authentic spiritual experience in an alar call that changed his life, turning him from a hard man, bordering on abusive, to a kind man, gentle and loving. Contrast that with Keziah’s Millennial generation (3 generations later), in which altar calls feel inextricable from rule following, from pressure to perform, from “close the deal” sales pitches (as we discussed at length two weeks ago). - In general, the closer you are to the Silent Generation, probably the less altar calls will evoke insecure attachment for you, because the sales-ey, pressure-ey, performative culture that eventually developed around it by the 1990s wasn’t fully formed yet.
• Or, another example: Boomers came of age when, arguably, the most culturally common insecure God-attachment struggle was with the shut-down spirituality of Mainline Protestantism. Some estimates say 50% of Americans were Mainline Protestants in the 1950s; but has plummeted since and today it is down to only 14%! - So, obviously, the makeup of insecure attachment for X’ers, Millennials, and Z’ers is going to be different when they’re growing up in a world with so much less cultural exposure to shut-down spirituality, and so much more cultural exposure to the anxious spirituality of evangelicalism (which peeked in percentage of the population in the 1980s and 1990s at like 30-some %).

Maybe a note here about the drive of “spiritual but not religious” (millennial and gen z?) also makes secure attachment difficult — tasked with the challenge of sifting through all of the unhelpful images of God and creating security and spirituality all on your own. We benefit from community and tradition (On Being convo with Nadia and Krista Tippett)

• Yeah this is a curious one — is there an insecure god-attachment that might specifically correlate with the growing population of SBNR folks? Or with the broader categories of non-traditional faith identification that SNBR is just one group within? - there’s spiritual “nones” (mark “none” on their religious identification), - but there’s also those who identify as Christian culturally even though they are not practicing… YET they still report spiritual behaviors or beliefs, like unexplainable experiences of awe or belief in an afterlife.
• I haven’t read anyone yet make a really compelling suggestion on this but I’ve been thinking about this this whole series and what my best guess would be. I might take a stab at this as a part of one last message in this series on June 1st.

How might insecure God-attachment distinctly develop and play out for women?

• Experiencing safety in your body is the embodiment piece of secure attachment
• So when you have a insecure God-attachment style, your experience of being in a body becomes an additional area to be hyper vigilant about
• Control of the body across the board (can be an aspect of all 3 insecure strategies we’ve talked about) impacts everyone, and insecure God-attachment plays out uniquely for women when we think about embodiment
• Almost a prescribed insecurity and shame for women that we see culturally — Hilary McBride refers to this as “normative discontent” — and it’s intensified within evangelical and other religious cultures. Esp purity culture
• Mixed messaging — God loves you and also God hates it when your shorts are too short - Stakes are really high — believing your body is bad becomes an encouraged avenue for experiencing closeness with God - In most cases, intentional, not ill-intended
• Shame is not an effective motivator. (Thanks Brené Brown) - Constantly being at war with your body, disconnected from your body, and ashamed of your body can keep women striving toward the wrong thing and motivated by insecurity.
• Trying to prove your goodness to a disciplinarian God rather than being able to accept that unconditional positive regard, the consistent love of God who cares about bodies. - Not to police and control them, but to celebrate physicality and identity.

How might our insecure God-attachments correlate with our different ethnicities and cultures of origin?

• Some people mentioned to us experiences in ethnic minority church spaces: - Chinese or Korean churches for example (which can be evangelical Protestant or Mainline Protestant, like Presbyterian or Lutheran), - or Black Protestant churches (like AME or Black Baptist or Black Pentecostal). - These all carry with them cultural distinctives that influence the images of God painted in those spaces.
• Likewise, mono-racially white church spaces carry with them White-Anglo cultural distinctives that influence the images of God painted there. - this is not talked about as often because white-anglo culture is the dominant culture in America, - BUT every image of God anywhere is culturally formed.
• So, in your home culture, especially your home church culture… - What was the relationship of leaders in a community (or parents in a family) to the rest of the community (or family)? Were leaders or parents honored and revered or was a more “among the people” leadership expected? That will affect the image of God painted for us. - Was there more talk of individual responsibility or collective interdependence? That will affect the image of God painted for us. - Were you encouraged more toward courageous resistance of injustice or radical acceptance of injustice? That will affect the image of God painted for us.
• No cultural distinctive is better or worse in these ways.
• Secure God-attachment is not necessarily easier or harder to establish in any specific cultural context. Insecure God-attachment can happen in any culture; the risk factors and protective factors will just be different.

Okay one more question, and maybe we can do slightly more rapid-fire responses to this one: If I feel like I only know how to insecurely look for signs of God’s presence, what do I do? How do I pray?

• Grounding yourself in the consistency of God — the world is mysterious and random and frustrating AND God’s love is consistent
• When it comes to prayer and consistency, I think of the Mary Oliver line of “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention”
• Looking through a lens of curiosity and awe and wonder - Loosening that grip of anxiety - Looking around you in curiosity and wonder may be a helpful stepping stone if anxiety and shame is happening within - On your own and in community - have you seen that the sun came up again this morning!
• Last week’s prayer, starting with the face of someone who delights in you, letting that be a starting point for your image of God, is a great way to help us experience God’s presence more securely. (We’ll end with that again today.)
• Mindfulness- bringing awareness to the present moment can feel really grounding and stabilizing (breath prayer, centering prayer)
• When I feel disoriented and untethered I can bring myself back to the present over and over and over again.
• Steady love of God is readily available
• For those of us who are more cerebral, I recommend a phrase you can repeat to yourself in prayer, like a mantra, every time you want to feel God's presence but don’t: “this is a reality of life, not a withholding from God.” - You are in the company of the greatest minds in history if you are struggling with the fact that feeling God is not automatic, even when we authentically pursue it (Philosophers call this “the problem of divine hiddenness”) - Repeating this phrase in prayer is a way to practice the Open and Relational view of God and life we often teach here. - I won’t go into more depth right now; I’ll just say: - If, for several months, every time you want to feel God’s presence but don’t, - you gently remind yourself, “this is a reality of life, not a withholding from God”, - I think your security with God will improve - Even in the times you still don’t feel God’s presence strongly, you will feel less threatened by that. That’s the resilience of secure attachment — it doesn’t mean uninterrupted presence; it means you feel trust (security) that, if and when you detach, attachment will return.

Scripture

As we close, we want to bring one more grounding scripture from Jesus’ teachings here. Consider this image of God from Jesus’ famous “Prodigal Son” parable (Luke 15):

17 “When [the Lost Son] came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

21 “The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.

Father jumps in to interrupt the son’s spiral of shame. His rehearsed line - sinned against heaven and you, not worthy, make me like your hired servant..” doesn’t let him finish! Breaks thru to say no, I am delighted you are here! You are worthy and beloved.

This image of God — filled with compassion, running out to us, throwing arms around us and kissing us, celebrating us — is one that will establish secure attachment with us.

Prayer

Get comfortable in your seat and we’ll start…

1. Think of someone who likes you, who is delighted to see you (could be a mother, father, friend, partner, mentor, child, niece or nephew, even a pet)
2. Close your eyes and imagine their face… what does their face look like when they see you? Does mouth turn into a smile? What other things does their face do? (Scrunch of the nose? Does their shape of their eyes change? Does a dimple appear?)
3. Notice how your body feels in reaction to their delight — Shoulders? Gut?
4. Without putting pressure on yourself, gently consider that this is a better picture of God than any shame-filled image you’ve inherited.
5. Ask yourself: if God delights in you this way, how might this change your style of relating to God?