THE FALL changed things for us. You and I now live in a world that isn’t as safe as when God first designed it. There are dangers within us and dangers outside of us. Those of us who have been betrayed by another person, or even by our own hearts, know this firsthand.
This is why the Bible warns, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23). Yet it’s riot enough simply to understand that we need protection. We need to know what parts of our soul need protecting.
God has created within us different, specific parts of the soul that need safety as we continue the process of maturity. As we understand these different parts, we become more able to pay attention to the weaker, more immature aspects of the self that need more help. To understand this better, let’s take a deeper look at the soul.
Imagine the soul as a castle ruled by a king. To protect and secure the castle, the king has posted trained sentries in strategic areas. In order to perform their job functions, these sentries need to know the nature of the area they’re protecting.
For instance, one group of guards may look after the food and supplies of the castle Another might watch over the weapons and ammunition A third group could guard the royal family’s living quarters. Each protected area needs specific kinds of support to be safe.
Our souls are a remarkable creation of God, capable of great resiliency, yet at the same time extremely fragile. Let’s look now at those vulnerable, fragile parts.
Developmental Needs: Our Vulnerable Parts
The best way to understand what parts of us we are to take care of is to look at our developmental needs, the foundational building blocks that make up who we are. These needs prepare us for living and working in the world in an adult fashion, God has arranged these needs in definable stages of maturity that we are to grow through.
Spiritual growth is a stage-specific process. In other words, the Bible speaks of growth in identifiable steps that build one upon the other. As one is completed, we move to the next, just as a plant grows from seedling to shoot to maturity. John refers to this when he writes to believers in three different stages (1 John 2:12-14). He addresses:
Little children—new believers, whose “sins are forgiven”;
Young men—maturing believers, who “have overcome the evil one”; and
Fathers—mature believers, who “know Him,”
We learn from John that each different stage has different tasks assigned to it. The young Christian is to experience the intense gratitude and freedom of forgiveness. The maturing believer is to be encountering and combating evil. The mature Christian is to know God in a deeper way with a more eternal perspective.
Not only do we have different tasks for our differing stages, but also different ingredients to help us grow. The writer of Hebrews refers to it in this way:
You have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food is for the mature. (Hebrews 5:12-14)
Have you ever known middle-aged people who can’t seem to master the task of emotional intimacy? If so, then you can understand better that they haven’t yet grown through the “milk stage.” These individuals have a handicap in relating to others in a mature way.
The Scriptures paint a picture of our spiritual and emotional needs as a process of developmental stages. God didn’t fashion us out of a cookie-cutter mold; we are much more complex than that. Our needs are built on each other in a logical order. Just like the mansion, the foundation must come before the roof, or both will suffer. As we work through the tasks required in each stage. we progress to a new and deeper level of maturity that prepares us for the next. (For a more in-depth perspective on this developmental stages model, see When Your World Makes No Sense by Dr. Henry Cloud.)
Our First Need: Attachment
There it was again: Stuart’s blank look every time Betsy would reach out and ask him for emotional support. We were in our third session of marital counseling, and the relational difficulties were beginning to surface. The couple had come largely due to Betsy’s feeling of dissatisfaction with the level of intimacy in the marriage. When I’d asked her what she meant, her eyes filled with tears and she began talking about loneliness and emptiness in her life.
While she spoke, I noticed that Stuart seemed concerned, in a polite sort of way. He would pat her hand while she wept. He asked, “Anything I can do?” But there was no sense of empathy for the pain Betsy was feeling. It was like Stuart was tuned to a different channel than she was—or, perhaps, to no channel.
“What are you feeling right now, Stuart?” I asked.
“Well.” he replied. “I hope Betsy gets better soon.”
“Betsy’s talking about a deep, lonely place in her heart,” I continued. “Is that a feeling you’re familiar with?”
He thought for a second. “I — don’t think so. Being alone is sort of a relief for me, I get nervous around people. I thought everyone felt this way until I met Betsy.”
Stuart was not a hostile or uncaring husband. He was kind and responsible, and he genuinely wanted to be good to Betsy. But her needs were confusing for him. Stuart had a deficit in his ability to connect emotionally. This deficit was limiting his marriage.
What is an attachment?
Almost everyone has heard of the adventuresome boy who, one winter, was dared by his pals to lick the sheet of ice covering the house. An hour later, with the help of a pail of warn water, he was able to stop “kissing the house.” From his first tug after putting tongue to surface, he had learned something about attachment. Pieces of boy were attaching to the house, and vice versa.
An attachment between people, and between people and God, is like that. You know you’re attached when you experience loss after someone you love leaves you. Their “pieces” stay in your heart. The sad feelings are a sign of how deeply the person got inside you. Individuals who can’t feel that sadness have an incapacity to be close. That sadness is a mixed blessing.
Our ability to attach is our ability to relate our spiritual and emotional needs to others. The key word here is “relate.” To relate our needs to others is to connect, or expose ourselves to them. Attachment means letting others inside the private, vulnerable parts of ourselves.
This isn’t necessarily a description of friendship. Friendship can be an attachment. Then again, it can be an acquaintance. Not all friendships are bonds, though all bonds are friendships. Attachments occur when we take the risk to allow someone else to matter enough to us to hurt us if they choose to.
Attachment, or bondedness, is our deepest need. This is because it is also the deepest part of the character of God. The Bible goes so far as to identify the very nature of God with love: “God is love” (I John 4:8). Love, which comprises the deepest part of who God is, determines what He does: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16).
We see this principle of attachment in other places besides the character of God. It’s also the guiding law of God’s universe. God is pro-relationship and anti-isolation. The world is constructed so that there’s a ripple effect from one thing to another. Everything affects everything else.
We see this in the physical universe. The term ecosystem has become increasingly familiar in recent years. It refers to the idea that the earth is a delicate balance of millions of factors, from microbes to humankind. Remove one of these relationships, and the system is injured. The result is an increasingly worn-out planet, less and less able to sustain life.
Relationships are portrayed as crucial in the Bible. As I’ve said, Jesus pictured His attachment to us as a vine and branches: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4). Connection is necessary for survival.
Our need for connection extends not only to God. It also means we need each other. During the Creation, the only “not good” God mentioned in an otherwise perfect universe was that Adam was alone. God wasn’t simply dealing with the benefits of marriage in this passage. He was addressing the deeper issue of our need for attachment and relationship, of which marriage is one important component.
Isolation has disastrous consequences. Solomon stated it this way:
Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? (Ecclesiastes 4:9-11; emphasis added)
People who suffer from depression often have a deep sense of isolation in their lives. Individuals with an isolation-induced depression will report that their heart feels cold and lifeless. This coldness is the lack of warmth referred to by Solomon, which only relationship can bring.
We see perhaps the most explicit example of the “ripple effect of relationship in the New Testament passages on the Church. Believers are inextricably and mysteriously entwined as part of the Body of Christ on earth, so much that “if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26).
Attachment as a Developmental Need
It’s easy to see why attachment would be our first, and primary, developmental task. Since the Fall, we come out of the womb empty, terrified, and isolated, part of the legacy of pain Adam and Eve bequeathed humanity. More than anything, we need to be drawn in to love, to be connected out of our aloneness.
For my wife, Barbi, and me, one of the more difficult things about the birth of our son Ricky was that for the first few minutes of his life he was being weighed, tested, and observed. Though it was only a brief interlude before the doctor handed him over to Barbi, it was gut-wrenching to see and hear Ricky’s terror and disconnection. Then, just as quickly, as he was held and soothed, he began to quiet down and fall asleep.
The beginning of life should be a sense of welcome, transferred from parent to child, a feeling of “you belong with us... we’re glad you’re here . . .you’re a part of this family.” The concept of the Church is built on a sense of family: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19). The Body of Christ is God’s second “family” for us, after the biological one.
The entire first year of life is ideally built around helping the infant to take in, or internalize, this sense of belonging and safety. Internalization takes thousands of experiences of the parents being there for the infant when he needs them. This is because we are creatures of memory.
God gives us memory to help us understand the world and avoid mistakes. The church of Ephesus was to “remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent” (Revelation 2:5)—in other words, to learn humility from their past. Israel’s struggles “happened as examples for us, that we should not crave evil things, as they also craved” (1 Corinthians 10:6).
It’s particularly sad to see people in the later years of life who, for some reason, weren’t able to learn the lessons God had placed in their path. Their lives become riddled not with thousands of bad decisions about love and work, but with the same bad decision thousands of times.
The infant builds an emotional picture of the world inside, based primarily on how he was treated in this first year. If his mother is responsive to his needs for holding, feeding, or changing when he cries, cuing in to his needs and not her own schedule, he learns over time that the world is a reasonably safe and predictable place.
Internalization means that the infant receives his mother inside him as his representation, or image, of the world.
The goal of good attachment is emotional object constancy. This term refers to a state of feeling connected even when one is alone, or “being rooted and grounded in love” (Ephesians 3:17). It’s the result of responding to many experiences of constant reassurance by a primary caregiver.
As love is taken in, it forms an emotional memory that soothes and comforts us in times of stress. The infant who panics when her mother leaves the room has not yet attained emotional object constancy. The baby who looks for her mother and protests for a few seconds when she leaves, then occupies herself otherwise, is closer to the goal.
An extreme example of a lack of object constancy is the condition known as autism. A combination of genetic and environmental factors, autism is an almost-complete cutting off of the child’s ability to connect emotionally. This is in no way an intellectual deficit. Autistic children are quite often extremely bright. Autism is an emotional deficit — a relational prison preventing the child from connecting to his world.
Attachment deficits occur in different forms. There’s a common denominator, however: a lack of connectedness in the person’s significant relationships. The detached person was not “met where he was” in some way.
At times, this lack is blatant, such as the emotionally cold or hostile family. It’s clear that here the need for constancy was not met. Other times, it is more subtle, as in the superficially warm family that appears to be intimate. In this case, there’s generally a withdrawal of the warmth when painful subjects are brought up. The developing child learns that she can be attached when she doesn’t have needs or problems. But her hurts and fears go deep inside into an isolated place in the heart, where they may stay for a lifetime.
Just as connectedness is our most basic need, isolation is our most injurious state. The most severe punishment in prisons throughout history has always been solitary confinement. In fact, the whole message of the gospel is the restoration of connectedness between God and humanity. Why is isolation so serious?
The reason is found in the law of entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics. This law of physics states that things that are isolated move toward deterioration. After a hundred years, a junk heap will turn into a rustier junk heap. Vegetables left too long in the refrigerator will tend toward something resembling penicillin. And people in their thirties begin noticing that staving in good physical shape takes more effort than it once did. During Sunday afternoon football, they don’t get off the ground quite as quickly after a hard tackle.
Entropy operates in the spiritual world, too. Whatever is cut off tends toward deterioration. That’s why the ultimate punishment, hell, is not defined by loss of consciousness or annihilation, but by its utter and complete separation from the love of God. Jesus’ sacrifice for us involved His own separation from the Father when He became sin on our behalf. He suffered in that “He was cut off out of the land of the living” (Isaiah 53:8). In other words, there is no life without relationship.
It’s quite common for believers to have active, purposeful lives in which they seem to have their “priorities right.” These same Christians are often bewildered by painful psychological symptoms that don’t appear to make sense until the quality of their personal attachments is investigated.
Sheila is an example of this dilemma. “But I’m doing everything right.” she told me. “I’m a committed believer, Jesus really is Lord of my life. I work hard. I help people as much as I can. I try to stay away from unhelpful activities and influences. So why do I wake up in the morning not wanting to live?”
Sheila’s schedule was full of helpful activities. Her commitment to God was authentic. But her life was devoid of relating to anyone on other than a “helper-helpee” basis, with her as the helper. She was unable to ask for comfort for herself. Though busy. Sheila’s life was meaningless and empty.
When Jesus called us to be like little children, He was referring to the openness that children have in asking for their needs to be met. Humbly acknowledging our need, rather than pretending to be self-sufficient, should characterize our lives. Sheila was lost in sincere but misguided self-sufficiency.
A lack of emotional object constancy always shows up in some form during adulthood. “I don’t believe you.” one patient said to me in the hospital program. “You’re saying my eating disorder has to do with isolation. But I like being alone. I can spend my time more profitably that way.”
“I don’t doubt that,” I replied. “I just noticed that what you actually do when you’re under stress or in emotional pain is withdraw to your room and eat large quantities of cookies.” The woman actually could not experience her lack of attachment— she had lost access to her need for connection. The only sign of it was the fact that when she hurt, she turned to food instead of relationship.
This brings us to another point about attachment. Since God created us for bonding, it’s part of our very essence, just as it is in His essence. We cannot not bond. We are created to bond in either a growth-producing or a death-producing manner. If we cannot bond to loving relationships, we will bond to something else that is not so loving. This is the root of the addictive process. It’s also the root of Satans strategy to sabotage our maturity process.
Satan’s plan is to help us get God-given, legitimate needs met in a way that will destroy us. He is a counterfeiter who hates being a creature and having needs himself. That’s why the original sin was the pride of self-sufficiency: “I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14). He hated being in need of God.
The counterfeits for getting our needs met are explained by John: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” (1 John 2:16: emphasis added). Sexual affairs, materialism, or professional success meet our needs for maturity in temporary but unsatisfying ways. They ultimately cause self-destruction.
As fallen beings, we are very susceptible to buying into this lie of what is satisfying. A part of our nature agrees with the deception that we can get needs met in ways other than those God has prescribed.
When people do realize that they’ve been emotionally cut off most of their lives, they often ask me what they’ve bonded to instead. At that point we usually discuss Luke 12:34: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Whatever is taking up emotional energy, money, and time is generally the bonding substitute. It tends to have an addictive nature to it. There’s never really enough.
What’s really confusing for most of us is that the list of attachment substitutes can include good things:
• Work
• Sports
• Hobbies
• Food
• Parenting
• Sexuality
• Shopping
• Religious activities
• Knowledge/information
• Rescuing or “one way” relationships
Many committed Christians are unknowing “sanctified addicts” of otherwise good things that help keep them away from a black hole of loneliness in their hearts and the crucial necessity of close relationships.
Not-so-good substitutes include drugs and alcohol, which of course are physically dangerous. The long list of bonding substitutes indicates the range of what an unbonded person might take in to fill up an attachment deficit.
The existence of emotional attachments in our lives is not an option: it is not a luxury. It is a spiritual and emotional necessity. God designed us for it! In fact, research now indicates that chronic, untreated isolation can result in physical problems and even contribute to shortened lifespan.
It’s a sad fact that Christians who have never been able to be vulnerable with their needs for connection sometimes are then drawn to fellowships where true bonds are trivialized —or, even worse, dismissed as “trusting man too much.” The fact is that having relationships with God and other persons is not an either-or proposition: it is a both-and necessity. The heart has a deep need for God, who placed eternity there. The same heart yearns for satisfying and safe human attachments in which we can be truly known and truly loved, that we may all be one.
How to Repair Attachment Deficits
1 understand the problem,” Jerry told me in session, “I know I can’t get close to people. I know that’s why I’m depressed. I know how I got this way. So what? Where do I go to buy this missing part?”
God’s plan for repairing those unattached parts of ourselves is the story of redemption. The undeveloped, unloved heart is still in the past where the emotional object constancy process was prematurely ended for some reason. Just like the lost sheep in a hundred. God wants that isolated part to be brought out of darkness into the light of His love.
Wherever the process was interrupted, it must be continued. The emotional memories made up of deep, loving experiences with safe people are to be continued until the person’s heart is “caught up” with the rest of him.
Repairing bonding deficits involves two factors. First. it requires finding safe, warm relationships in which emotional needs will be accepted and loved, not criticized and judged. Sometimes this may involve changing friendships or locations in order to find the right relationships in which comfort, not denial, is the norm.
Second, repair requires taking risks with our needs. This means taking a step of humility. It means bringing our loneliness and abandoned feelings to other believers in the same way Jesus revealed in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:3-4).
These are genuine risks. No matter how safe others appear. God allows each of us a choice to be unloving. Yet when those unattached parts of the self become connected to others, our ability to tolerate loss of love from others increases. The more we internalize, the less we need the world to approve of us constantly. This is a hallmark of maturity. Loved people can feel loved even when their circumstances are emotionally dry. This is the position of being rooted and grounded in love.
Christians who have experienced attachment deficits understand the fragility of this part of the soul. Though relationship is what the soul needs most, it was relationship that injured it. An unbonded person can be devastated by further emotional abandonment. Jesus’ metaphor of the men who built their houses on rock and on sand is a picture of this dilemma: bonded people have a good foundation: they can withstand more difficult times. The unbonded person doesn’t have the emotional resources to tolerate the same suffering. It’s easy to see why this part of our character needs to be carefully protected and nourished, as a nurse tends a sick infant.
Jenny provides a picture of our need for attachment and some of the consequences that occur when that need goes unfulfilled. In the next chapter we’ll look at the flip side of the attachment need: our need for separateness. Meanwhile, recall Jenny’s situation:
The Woods were her safety, but memories kept her going. She would cry herself to sleep each night and then wake up the next day and get on about the business of surviving. She found the best places in the stream to get fresh water: she learned where the best berries and food plants were. Once in a while she would sneak back to her old vegetable garden just after dark and take a few potatoes or turnips. She knew how to build afire and where to find warm places in cold weather.
Jenny was making a place for herself in the forest. Food and shelter weren’t problems anymore. She began to feel that she was out of danger—at least for now.
But something was different inside the little girl’s heart. Her heart had been broken, and it did not mend while she was busy learning how to live in the forest. The part of Jenny that had trusted, had longed for caring, had reached out for a warm embrace or a kind word, became still and quiet. It was replaced by a dull painful emptiness. She had felt it shriveling up inside, until now there was nothing. Jenny hadn’t wanted that part of her to break. But it just did, anyway.
Your attachment need is like a muscle. Left alone, that part of your soul will atrophy and wither. Only with exercise will it grow and be properly reconstructed back toward the image of God that was defiled at the Fall.
Jenny experienced this atrophy in her aloneness. She felt brokenhearted, just as you and I do when we fall into hiding patterns within. We need to move toward relationship, toward attachment, to grow in Christlikeness. We need the emotional resources that God has provided: Relationship with Christ, and relationship with other image-bearers.
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