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The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
The All of Life podcast, hosted by Nate Claiborne, provides weekly episodes that help further our mission to call, form, and send disciple-makers. At NewCity, we want to see Orlando flourish by filling it with people who say "Follow me as I follow Jesus in all of life."
The NewCity Orlando All of Life Podcast
Deep Dive on Attachment Theory with Benjamin Kandt
In this episode, the second of our Psalms and Secure Attachment series, Nate Claiborne talks with Benjamin Kandt about more of the specifics of attachment theory. The core of attachment theory is the dynamic processes that nurture emotional and spiritual bonds: attunement, containment, and the dance of rupture and repair in relationships.
Alongside this, we address the complexities of establishing a bond with a deity we cannot touch or see, sidestepping trite explanations and engage with the real struggles of those wrestling with anxiety and fear. The scars of trauma can distort our view of God, and so we explore the shadows that abuse casts on one's theological outlook. But, abuse and trauma do not get the last word, and an earned secure attachment with God and others is possible, something we will explain in upcoming episodes.
Welcome to another episode of the All About Podcast. I'm your host, Nate Claiborne, and I'm here once again with Pastor Benjamin Kant. How are we doing, Ben?
Speaker 2:Nate doing well. Looking forward to talking about the Psalms and secure attachment.
Speaker 1:That's right. This is episode two in this sort of mini-series that we're doing. So a couple episodes ago we introduced people to the connection between these two concepts of the Psalms of Refuge as being kind of a big kind of container for a bunch of different types of Psalms, and then this concept of secure attachment that we're drawing from psychological literature. So we sort of put those two things next to each other and said look at this. But we didn't go into a lot of detail on either one of them.
Speaker 1:And so that's what we're here to do today is to kind of give a little more technicolor to this idea of secure attachment, or even just attachment in general, like what is it? How does it develop, how does it fall apart? How does it get reestablished?
Speaker 1:And one of the lingering questions I'm sure listeners have if they really listen to the last one. That's not a shot at the listeners, I'm just saying if you listen to the last one, I think we left you with a little bit of a cliffhanger of how do you attach to a spirit, because most of the way we're using a concept that's between, for human relationships, and we're applying it to a human divine relationship, and so there's some continuities, discontinuities, that sort of thing. So we're going to pick a little bit of that up today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. So that's really the question we left off on is okay, if the Psalms this was my argument in a nutshell, the number one the human experience, particularly from the nervous system up, so like from a very basic level of our experience of what it feels like to have the security of a refuge. So that's really the point of contact that I made between the book of Psalms and the idea or the concept of secure attachment. So then the next question would be hey, we all know what it's like to be a child who's afraid and runs to their mom or dad, or to be the parent that their child runs to and you pick them up, or you get picked up and you get held in those arms and you experience a physical security in the arms of a caregiver and, for the record, that is a fundamental human need.
Speaker 2:In other words, if you don't get that, if you don't have that, it will profoundly distort your human growth and development. That's one of the things that we've learned from attachment theory. There's that interesting psychological experiment they did on monkeys where they put I think it was rhesus monkeys in a cage and they put them with a bottle of milk and then a wire monkey that was covered in fur and the rhesus monkey would spend all day on the fur, basically, and would leave the fur to go drink some milk and then run back to the fur and these infant rhesus monkeys. One of the things they realized from that was the importance of physical touch, the importance of proximity to this what seemed like a mother figure.
Speaker 2:This is kind of messed up that they did this to monkeys right, they're not allowed to do stuff like this anymore, it's even worth pointing out for the record.
Speaker 1:A lot of the things we have learned through experimentation in the early to mid-20th century cannot happen anymore for a variety of reasons, and yet somehow we're still benefiting from the insights. Yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:Like that one, we can still do it with rats, I think, because they're such lower order mammals or something I don't even know.
Speaker 2:There's such lower order mammals or something I don't even know, and so to that, if physical proximity is such a big deal, the question remains how do we securely attach or how do we find refuge in a God who is spirit? And I said this last time I have zero tolerance for a sentimental answer to that question, and the reason why is because I've sat with enough people who have chronic anxiety. I've experienced anxiety and fear so acutely that a sentimental answer means nothing to you in those moments, and so I don't wanna do that to our listeners. I don't wanna give you some sentimentality about like just believe more and everything's better. That does more harm than good, and so I'm really wrestling this down and I don't know that I have an answer that is so good that it's like steadfast in the face of the harsh corners of reality that we experience. But I'm working towards that. So this is me kind of working that out with you, Nate, in our list.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're both presenting ideas that we've thought through, but we're also thinking out loud. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:Yep. So here's my from attachment literature. One of the things that was presented by John Bowlby was this idea of internal working models, and I think this has a lot of potential to answer the question I'm talking about. So an internal working model is basically you have enough experiences with a primary caregiver to where you actually internalize that caregiver and you almost think about it like they're imprinted on your psyche. They're imprinted on you somewhere internally and so you are. This is true for every human being. You first recognize the other before you have a sense of self. So there's something that happens in infants into toddlerhood where they begin to recognize themselves in a mirror. But a lot of times babies don't know that that's if you point to you holding them in the mirror, they can say that's daddy or that's mommy in the mirror but, they can't notice that.
Speaker 2:that's them in the mirror, because we all develop a sense of the other before we develop a sense of self. It's a really big deal, and so what internal working models are talking about is our ability to actually internalize the other into ourselves such that we carry around our caregivers with us even when we're not with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just a psychological point even. To add onto that is, we actually can't have a sense of self apart from the sense of other, which is why it has to develop in that direction.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's so good.
Speaker 1:I have to be aware of the outside world that is not me before I can have a clearer sense of what is me in relation to my caregivers, my surroundings, my context and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, which actually is like a fatal blow to expressive individualism, the idea that the world would be a better place if I would just turn inward, search my heart, find out who I am and then live that out, you know, on the display for everybody else to experience, or maybe endure in some cases. Right Um, that, that is the, that is one of the fundamental narratives of our cultural moment, and the problem is is that you don't have an individual you to express that's not bound up in relationship with other people. There is no self-existence for a human being. There is only you, existing in relation in relation to God, first and foremost creator creature, but then in existence, or in relation to your primary caregivers and to your friends and family, and you know those kinds of people. That's a really big deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the irony of all that is that the roots of this expressive individualism was developed by people who were not individualistic Like they, so it's like it's. The way forward is kind of a yes to the expressive piece and the no to the individualism, but not a both and conjunction of the two, because of some of the things you were just saying is it is the expression of the self, is a way to unite yourself to other people, not as a way to show how unique and special you are.
Speaker 2:Yes, wow, yeah, that is. That is quite a different way than we talk about it today. And when I say we talk about, I mean like every Disney movie, right, I mean like the version that's out there now does not work 80% of the top songs on the top 50 on Spotify right now probably have some version of expressive individualism expressed in it.
Speaker 2:So here's a quote from Diane Langberg, who is a Christian psychologist who has written and works in a lot in the realm of abuse spiritual, sexual, physical abuse and so this is a comment about abuse survivors and how they relate to God in light of their abuse, and so, again, this is relevant to this concept of internal working models. I think here's what she says, quote we see that many survivors exhibit this quality of thinking frozen in time, so I'm going to pause there for a moment. What Diane Langberg is saying how we learn about the abstract or the unseen think. Your view of God is from the concrete, in the scene Think your relationships with other people, and God's okay with this.
Speaker 2:In fact, he designed us this way. It's why the Bible is full of metaphors, because he knows to talk about God being. This, like substantial immutable being, is an abstraction To talk about, to say God is my rock. Immutable being is an abstraction.
Speaker 2:To talk about. To say God is my rock is a very concrete way to talk about God. To talk about God as my strong tower is a very concrete way to talk about God, because we've seen giant boulders and maybe we've been inside of strong towers before. So God actually designed us to experience the concrete and the seen and then to extrapolate from that to the abstract and the unseen.
Speaker 2:Now God is not merely an abstraction. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, as Augustine says. He is very real, very personal, very concrete in that sense. But our views, our thoughts, our concepts, the image of God that we have in our mind, our God image, as psychologists would put it, is an abstraction in its own right. I'm reading a book by George MacDonald right now and he says something to the effect of we all have views of God, and there's probably as many different views of God as there are human beings who have views of God. And yet there is some level of proximity to the reality of who God is actually like that all of those views of God fall along that spectrum.
Speaker 2:I just thought that's a powerful way to put it. Like Nate, you and I probably, if we took a test that had like 500 questions about God on it, would probably score pretty similarly in our views of God.
Speaker 1:That's my hunch.
Speaker 2:And some of that's. You know our own formation and training and the books we read, the people we think with, and all that. And yet what he's talking about is not your creedal, confessional view of God, but your actual experience, your beliefs about God, and that that's probably as diverse as there are number of people. But there's a continuum of proximity to who God actually is, the reality of who God actually is, that our beliefs about God fall on. And what Diane Langeberg is saying is that one of the primary ways you can fall on a continuum that makes you believe things about God that are far from who he is is if you've had really adverse experiences in relationship with human beings, particularly abusive experiences. So she goes on. She says one area that this profoundly impacts is the spiritual. God is viewed through the lens of abuse. I just want to pause and say there are listeners who are hearing us talk right now, who that sentence is true for you. God is viewed through the lens of abuse and I don't know, as I say that, what that sounds like to you or what you feel even as I say that, as I say that, what that sounds like to you or what you feel even as I say that but I think it brings God heartache on your behalf, not in the sense of he's mad at you, not in the sense of he's scolding or scowling over you, in the sense of he longs for you to know him as the tenderhearted father, the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He longs for you to know him as he truly is. But he understands I think he genuinely understands why you might view him through the lens of abuse. And so Diane Langberg goes on. She says who God is and what God thinks about.
Speaker 2:The survivor is understood based on who daddy was, or mommy, or a grandfather, or a youth pastor or whoever. They have learned about love, trust, hope, faith through the experience of sexual abuse. She's talking about that kind of abuse in particular. They've also learned about the unseen through the visible. The ins and outs of the ordinary life have taught them many lessons about who they think God is. That is why a therapist or pastor may have the experience of speaking the truths of scripture to a survivor, truths that are desperately needed and yet finding that they seem to have no impact.
Speaker 2:I'm going to pause again. Does anybody else have that experience where you read the Bible or you hear a great sermon about the love of God, the kindness of God, the mercy of God, the generosity of God, and they seem to have no impact on you, even though they're truths that you desperately need. Another way to say this is the truth doesn't feel true. If you've had that experience, you're probably in the realm of your attachment. You're probably in the realm of your internal working model of God and you've come by it honestly. You've probably got really legitimate stories and reasons why you might conceptualize or even feel God to be like that. So we'll go on.
Speaker 2:This is the end of the quote. These truths and principles, they don't sink in. Many times survivors can speak eloquently of the truths of scripture, but on an experiential level, their lives are lived out in the context of what the abuse taught them. Wow, intellectually, truth is rooted in the word of God. Experientially or personally applied, the truth is rooted in the lessons of abuse. So as I read that, nate, I'm curious how that strikes you. That comes from a work she has called the Spiritual Impact of Sexual Abuse. What does that stir up in?
Speaker 1:you. Yes, it makes me think just how significant experience is. I'm working on a paper right now that's really kind of arguing that all all theology starts in experience for better, like, and it's not even like a, for better or for worse. It's not even like a. This is bad, we should fix it. It's just more of a recognition that, like, this is reality, this is just reality. Is that my experience is the grid through which I make sense of theological claims and so there is a. In the case of abuse, like what you're reading in this quote, there's a barrier to actually understanding those theological claims truly. I mean, maybe there's not a barrier to understanding, there's a barrier to trusting that they're true, to actually feeling them for themselves. Yes, and instead it is, yeah, intellectually I understand how all that fits together, but I don't experience that in any way. Yes, or it's just an abstract exercise, almost in the sense of like. I can tell you a lot about ancient mythology, but that doesn't make me think any of it's real. Right, like I understand it, I could explain it.
Speaker 1:It's like I think it just made me think oh yeah, I think that is. One of the problems in theology in our contemporary situation is that a lot of people can explain it, but it doesn't actually impact their lives because of the experiential grid that it has to work through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so well said, and I think that's worth pointing out, what you're saying about theology. We would make a distinction between God's revelation to us in scripture, which is authoritative and has the role of being the standard by which we judge all of our theology. But theology is done by persons, right?
Speaker 2:And so those persons bring their personality, they bring who they are to the text when they're theologizing, when they're reflecting on the Bible in light of their personal experience and in light of the situations that they're in, whether those are cultural moments or personal situations, like there's theologies that come out of World War II that are really influenced by the experience of World War II, right.
Speaker 1:Juergen Moltmann is a prime example. Somebody who actually fought in, was prisoner of war, saw people get firebombed and then has to write this theological. He doesn't have to write this theological work, but in his work, the Crucified God, his starting point is that God has to suffer with us. To be God I wouldn't say to be a divine being, but if we're going to take God seriously, he has to be able to suffer with us.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah, in light of his experience. In light of his experience, he's holding God to the standard of his experience in a lot of ways, which is different than to even to point it out here.
Speaker 1:Just as we're, we don't want to get too far into the weeds of theological method. But it's different to say we all start with experience. It's another thing to say experience is the norm, yes, or is the authority of? What determines what is or is not true? And it's a very tricky line to like. I do want to take my experience into account, yeah, but I don't want it to be the thing by which I judge everything's truth or falsehood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's right, and the cheeky way to put that is there's a distinction between what you feel and what is real. We all hope that that's true. Right yeah, that what is real. Even when we talk capital R, our ultimate reality is the Trinity and the kingdom. Right, like? That's what is ultimately real, and yet what we feel is it falls short of that quite a bit.
Speaker 2:And one of the reasons why the Psalms and secure attachments so helpful to me is it helps give us some language and categories to understand and grapple with. Well, why is what we feel so far? Why is there such a gap between what is real and what we feel? Like? So plenty of people know the biblical view of who God is and plenty of people don't. So plenty of people know the biblical view of who God is, Um, and plenty of people don't. But plenty of people do. In their attachment schema, um, their internal working models are actually preventing them from from feeling, from experiencing the reality of who God is. Um. And so good news, um, dallas Willard and Jim Wilder have this book called renovated Um, and in there Jim Wilder really argues uh, what if we conceptualized, what if we thought about salvation as a new attachment, a new secure attachment Like what if we thought about all that Jesus came to do, all that God in Christ has done by his spirit to reconcile us to himself, reconcile us to himself.
Speaker 2:What if we thought about that in the context of that was all. There's a lot of work on God's part to bring us into a new, securely attached relationship with God. I love that. I actually love that idea. I think it's really powerful. This is what they say. Quote is salvation itself a new and active attachment with God that forms and transforms our identities? In the human brain, identity and character are formed by whom we love. Attachments are powerful and long lasting Ideas can be changed much more easily. Salvation through a new loving attachment to God which changes our identities, would be a very relational way to understand our salvation. We would be both saved and transformed through attachment, love from to and with God. That's what they're arguing and I think it's persuasive. It's compelling to me that a way to conceptualize salvation is that it's a new, secure attachment to.
Speaker 1:God.
Speaker 2:And that God did a lot of work in order to bring us back into that. And one of the things we understand about salvation is that there's a past, present and future tense to it. And so, in light of that, if God has saved us, because he's reconciled us to himself through Jesus, by his spirit, those of us who are listening, who are regenerated, we've been made new by the Holy Spirit, in union with Jesus. Let's talk about that process in the middle, the present tense, the ongoing nature of salvation, the way in which God is healing and restoring us to a securely attached relationship with him, because I think that's where we can get pretty practical with this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it makes me think of in therapy, when you're trying to help someone work through this. They have to go. I don't know if you call it a process or not. You're the therapist here.
Speaker 2:Trust the process mate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, trust the process. You use language of earned secure attachment, of this idea of if someone doesn't really know what a secure attachment feels like in their life, they can achieve that over the course of time with their therapist. To some extent they learn what it's like and then that gives them an experience that they can now use to evaluate other relationships and work through other relationships appropriately. It feels like this would map onto that as well. In this case, you're not earning it. In the truth, you have to bracket that out. When we're talking about salvation, there's a sense in which it is a thing that does develop. Develop. It doesn't just like oh, I'm saved, I'm now securely attached, I feel everything totally different. All my relationships are going to change. It's a in principle. The attachment has now been made, yep, but my experience of it, my understanding of it, my way of actually mapping it on onto other relationships, is going to take time to develop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's right, it's, it's cultivated, it's strengthened, it's healed, it's uh, it's built, it's developed, like all those words would be ways of getting at what you said when you said earned, like it's, it's, it's hard one almost, and that's true between a therapist and their client, right, like therapists work really hard to cultivate a really strong bond, a securely attached bond with their client. Because we believe that the relationship, what's called the working alliance, between the therapist and the client is the primary source of healing, at least on a horizontal set. In the horizontal sense, the primary source of healing is the Holy Spirit, but but on a horizontal sense, it's that it's that working alliance, that securely attached relationship between the counselor and their client, um, that enables healing to occur, and that that's, it is earned. It's not given. In that sense, right, even if somebody might walk into the room and say, oh, I totally trust you. It's like, do you though?
Speaker 2:Maybe you shouldn't Maybe you really I should show you that I'm trustworthy, and so, in a similar sense, I genuinely believe God is glad to work really hard to earn your trust. Like I really believe that, I really believe that there's a way in which God is in some ways bending over backwards in order to show himself both trustworthy and true, and that starts with the gospel, right. It starts with him sending his son and his spirit, but he's doing it in real life, in real time in our lives today, and so one of the ways I want to talk about that is using these attachment categories of attunement, containment, rupture and repair.
Speaker 2:So these are three things in the attachment literature. Attunement is when you are able to see into someone and to essentially bring yourself to see them so well that you're seeing their internal state. Now, we do this often, right, if you are around somebody who just seems like they're kind of in a low mood state, right, you might just check in with them. You might say hey, nate, are you doing okay today? Now, you didn't say anything, there was nothing explicit in that sense, but I'm attuned to what would be your internal state, given some non-verbals, some ways in which I'm experiencing you in conversations, those kind of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a form of attunement. Now, the Psalms are profoundly attuned to the human experience. John Calvin says that it's an anatomy of all parts of the human soul. You're not going to find anything in human experience that's not represented in the book of Psalms. That's a really big deal.
Speaker 2:Um, I believe it's Augustine, I think it's in his um, uh teachings on the Psalms. Uh, he, he describes the Psalms like a mirror and he says what happens in the mirror is the Psalms show ourselves to us. As we look at the Psalms, so we see our own lives represented there in very real and clear ways. But then they reflect our lives back to us in the presence of God. And so, in that sense, the Psalms themselves. God's given us this book of Psalms because the words there, the experiences that are there, they attune with our experience. And so praying through the Psalms on a regular basis, having a regular diet of kind of devouring, and feasting on the book of Psalms, actually, I think, brings us into this experiential nature of us being felt by God in his attunement to our experience. Before I move on to containment, I'm curious what that sounds like to you, Nate, or what even that evokes in your mind.
Speaker 1:Well, it makes me think of we talked about. I think we touched on this last episode. We talked about the sense of feeling felt, which is maybe a next level of that. But just attunement is just. It's being able to sense and feel your way through your environment, including other people. That's right. And so you walk into a room and you're able to sense like, yeah, something's going on in here.
Speaker 1:You're attuned to what's happening, but you can narrow your attunement, the focus of it, to an individual person and be like I can just tell you're anxious.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Everything about your body language is telling me that, or I can tell you're really excited. What? What you know? The way you're smiling is different. What happened Like? So just it's. It's being very attentive to environmental cues, but specifically as it relates to people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good. Well, when we use language like that in our culture, we talk about somebody having an energy, like, oh they just well, you just brought a certain energy into the room, right? Or you might talk about. I remember I was asked this guy if I could pray for him, who isn't a follower of Jesus, and he said, yeah, that'd be great. So I prayed for him and then he sent me a text afterwards. He's like hey, thanks so much for those positive vibes, and I was like that's what you understand. That just happened right there.
Speaker 2:And it gave him positive vibes. Right, me doing my spiritual thing in his presence gave him positive vibes, yeah, and so we talk about this idea of vibing, which has, I think, comes from like the idea of vibration.
Speaker 1:I had no idea this is where we were going, totally Neither did we.
Speaker 2:Vibrations and attunement has musical ideas to it.
Speaker 2:And the next step after attunement is resonance. And so first, Nate, I attune to you or you attune to me, and so I see into what your internal state is like, and then resonance is when I begin to feel some of your internal state. Now we all know that we've experienced anxiety being contagious. We've all experienced what it's like to be in a room where there's just a sense of sobriety or somberness in the room. Maybe somebody's got some heavy news or something like that. We've also experienced being at a concert and there's just this like really high energy and what's happening? Our nervous systems are resonating with each other. Our right brain to right brain resonance is happening.
Speaker 2:This is a profound thing that human beings are capable of doing, and I'm saying because of internal working models. We're capable of doing that with people or persons that are not physically present, which I think is a really big deal. So one of the things I like to do is, just so that you know, not like proof texting from the Psalms like is to take just the five Psalms of the day. So today's the 25th, multiply that by five. We're talking about Psalms 121 through 125. I think by the third episode people are going to understand your math.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:I know I got to figure out how to do that better. I've always been bad at math and so I'm even worse at explaining it. It so. So, psalm 123, um, I spent some, I spent the year 2020, memorizing the Psalms of Ascent, which are 120 through 134. Um, and when I was, uh, when I was memorizing the Psalm or 135, I think when I was memorizing them, uh, everybody knows what the year 2020 was like.
Speaker 1:I was in.
Speaker 2:I was in Psalm 123, uh, in April, which was kind of the I mean, this was the dog days of 2020. Like this, is when it was getting really bad. We were all still in lockdown here in Orlando, this kind of stuff and I read Psalm 123 and the psalmist says this have mercy upon us, o Yahweh. Have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough. And I experienced attunement in that moment.
Speaker 2:I thought, wow, this Psalm is articulating my experience. I've had more than enough. And then it gave me words. Oh Lord, would you have mercy on us? I've had more than enough. I've had more than enough Zoom calls. I've had more than enough, you know, mask mandates. I've had more than enough lockdowns, more than enough of the ways in which 2020 was just challenging for all of us, right, and so that's an example of how the Psalms connect so acutely to our internal experience and then give us words to bring them into the presence of God, into relationship with Him, so that I can experience His attunement. Now, containment, so that's attunement.
Speaker 2:Containment is what it sounds like, which is when an attachment figure can create space. We use that language therapeutically a lot. They create space with their very presence. A way I like to talk about this is it's a form of hospitality. You've been around people who have a hospitable presence. You can come and be around them and you feel like you don't have to put on a mask. You feel like you don't have to be somebody. You're not why? Because they have a hospitable presence. They know what containment looks like. But containment goes further and it looks like this Imagine a teenager who just got in trouble for being out past their curfew and their mom or their dad holds them accountable.
Speaker 2:They play the role of mom and dad and they say hey, listen, you're not allowed to come back past curfew. And the teenager gets so upset because there's hormones and emotions, all these things, and they say well, I hate you. And they stomp up the steps and they slam the door of the bedroom door, right? What mom and dad have to do in that moment, if they're attachment figures for that child which they are is they have to contain that emotion. Now, that might have been profoundly painful.
Speaker 2:They might have been incredibly angry that their child said that in that moment. What mom and dad cannot do in that moment is go, I hate you too. Why? Because they are supposed to be more emotionally and psychologically mature than their teenager and their stronger, more mature brain is supposed to be able to regulate itself so that they can create a container to regulate their teenager's brain. Now, some of us never got this, and now we're 40 and we don't have strong, emotionally, psychologically mature brains, and so we can't barely handle those moments and we do things we regret and we have to deal with those things. Things escalate and spiral.
Speaker 2:Why ate you too. Or you know you're the most ungrateful little Brad, or you know these things happen and we know that they happen, and they cause us deep pains of guilt and shame afterwards when we remember and recall them. But what containment does is you have somebody who's a stronger, more mature brain that can create an environment for you to come and pour out the contents of your soul, and they can create a space, a container for that. Psalms talk often about pouring out your hearts before God Psalm 62, verse 8. And so this is one of the ways we can experience a secure attachment with God as we pour out the container of our souls into the containment of God's presence. And the Psalms have more laments than they have praises, which means that the Psalms again train us in secure attachment. They train us to articulate these experiences to God. Let me just give you one, and then, nate, I'd love to hear your thoughts about this.
Speaker 2:Psalm 74, verse 11. This is one of my favorite Psalms of lament. This is the Psalmist talking to God. If you didn't think you could talk to God like this, read the Psalms and you'll you'll learn that you can. Verse 11. Why do you hold back your hand? Your right hand, take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them. Okay so, this is the context. The Psalmist Okay so this is the context.
Speaker 2:The psalmist feels like they're experiencing injustice and they want God to do something about it. And they say in good Hebrew poetic idiom thing Get your hands out of your pockets, god, do something. That's what the psalmist is saying. Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them. If you didn't know, you could tell God to take his hands out of his pockets. You can think about that Somebody just standing there with their hands in their pockets when they should be doing something right. You're angry. Get your hands out of your pockets, do something about this Act. That's what the psalmist just said to God. Why? Because the psalmist is angry that God's allowing them to experience what they're experiencing and they have no problem telling him about it. Why? Because they're securely attached. They know that God is a container for their worst emotions.
Speaker 2:Now, is this theologically true? Absolutely not. It's not true. God is actively involved in every situation. God, what people intend for evil, god intends for good. He works things out for the good of those who are called according to his purpose. Right so? Romans 8, 28,. This famous passage. So this is not theologically true. What the psalmist is articulating, god doesn't care really. He wants the real you to come to the real God to pour out the contents of your soul, to bring the reality of where you are, matters more to God than if you're being theologically accurate Now. Theological accuracy matters to God. I believe that.
Speaker 2:But, in these moments, he wants to create a container for you to pour out your groanings, your anger, your rage, your vengeance into his presence, and so that he can contain that there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's even. I mean, even in this, in this space. It's the experience of the psalmist is God's just standing there with his hands in his pockets? That's right, and so it's like, in some sense, it is true, because you're relaying. This is how I'm experiencing you right now. You're pouring that out. You're not necessarily making cause it. I mean, if we, if you read the next verse, he immediately like does the truth shift to in a very metaphorical way? Cause I don't know if listeners are comfortable with God breaking the heads of sea monsters and dividing carcasses to create the world. But that's what the next section says, but it's. It is this? Like he's almost taking it back, like this is how I feel you are right now. On the other hand, I know this is not who you are and then lays out these are things I know, but this is what I'm experiencing from you right now. Do something about it.
Speaker 2:So good, you're right, cause that's I read verse 11,. Verse 12 says yet God, my King, is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. So to your point, they're juxtaposing what they feel and what is real. In their way they bring this to God.
Speaker 2:That's a really big deal, because some of us stall out or get, you know, start spinning our tires in our resentment towards God, and some of the reason why that is because we don't think we have permission to articulate that to God. Another reason for that is that we don't actually do the next move that the psalmist does, which is they praise God for who they believe God is in reality, even when they don't feel that to be true. And so that third category which I gave, which was attunement, containment, and then the third one is rupture and repair. So this is a broader category than repentance and forgiveness. This is a, this is a category of any kind of strain or break in a relationship. So that happens on accident, right? You? We call these missing each other, right?
Speaker 2:Martin Buber had this category of a miss meet, which is when you is, when the I and the thou don't really connect with each other very well, and we get mismeets all the time. You're saying one thing and you're I'm saying one thing and you're hearing another. That creates a rupture in a relationship. And so whatever, however significant the rupture is, the repair has to be commensurate with that. And so what's interesting to me is there's probably only six, maybe seven repentant Psalms in the book of Psalms.
Speaker 1:That means something. I feel like. If you ask most people, they could probably name Psalm 51, David's created me a clean heart, oh God. And maybe one other one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, psalm 130, psalm 6. You can argue Psalm 32, but Psalm 32 is really a reorientation. It's a Psalm of thanksgiving and praise but it's on the back end of confession and repentance. But the reason why I say that is that Psalm 51 was my gateway into the book of Psalms because I felt myself to be so acutely a sinner and Psalm 51 gave me language to articulate my experience to God when I had ruptured the relationship. Psalm 51 gave me language to come back to God and articulate my rupture and then experience repair. Because the psalmist I love it David did some really messed up things before Psalm 51, but he doesn't bank on him being good enough to deserve repair.
Speaker 2:He banks on, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions right, like you. Repair this because your perfection in relation to me deals with all of my imperfections in relation to you. Your infinite abundance towards me deals with all of my deficits towards you. That's the only way the Bible teaches us to really relate to God as God is. And so rupture and repair. A few weeks ago, damien preached on Blessed are those who mourn, and he made up the word. There's repentance and lamentance.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, People can go look at the transcript. It's still in there. Lamentance.
Speaker 2:Lamentance. So rupture and repair. If God has ruptured relationship with us, which I'm telling you, the Psalms give us categories to say God can. We can feel God rupturing relationship with us. He doesn't meet our expectations. He falls short of what we, of the standards we hold him to, and God's not shy about that. He inspires by the spirit a whole bunch of Psalms, even Jeremiah, the lamentations. There's all these ways in which the Bible prepares us that we're gonna experience ruptures in our relationship with God. Now it's got to blame. No, god is perfect, he's faithful, he's good in all of his ways, all that's true. But he's so kind he recognizes that we will experience rupture from him. That'll be our experience of it. And so he gives us lament in order to deal with our experience of God rupturing relationship with us. And then he teaches us how to repent to deal with our ruptures in relationship with him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's probably even, as you're saying, that it's probably worth noting. Rupture is I'm trying to think how to say this without accusing anyone or anything, or even using anecdotes that are personal but because I experienced rupture, it actually doesn't necessarily mean there is rupture.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so it's even in continuity with things we've just been talking about of um. I had a friend telling me the other day about an experience he had where, um, yeah, he has these ongoing experiences with another person. I have to be vague to make sure I don't get too many details, but he said sometimes he only finds out about the rupture when the person comes to repair, and so it's like I didn't even know we had a problem. And then they show up and like hey, I'm sorry, I've just been mean to you and you're like were you?
Speaker 2:Did you?
Speaker 1:Or you're like I was passive, aggressive and it's like I guess so, and so it's just. I think that just to illustrate, it's like yes, we will experience rupture in our relationship with God because of unmet expectations. It's not to say that the rupture has actually happened, and that's actually common among peer to peer relationships of I expected you to do something, you didn't do it. I experienced rupture. You weren't aware of my expectation because I didn't name it, so you don't experience anything in that situation. But there's a rift now and it's really on me to repair the rupture.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, and I think that illustration, kind of on the horizontal plane, is really helpful because it goes back to where we started talking about this, which is rupture can occur through a variety of ways and it might be unknown to you, and you know like I can experience God distant in my life at times, and one of the first things I do is I pray Psalm 139, search me, o God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
Speaker 2:And then I listen Like will the Holy Spirit reveal to me convict, the world of sin, righteousness and judgment? Will the Holy Spirit come and show me ways in which I've ruptured my relationship with God and need to repair that? And then, if something comes to the surface, maybe I've been cultivating resentment towards another person, maybe I've been, you know, having thoughts internally that are ways in which are living outside of the realm of where God would have me. Maybe I've been, you know, harboring bitterness towards him. Maybe I've been dealing with envy, or these are all internal things, right, and God's willingness to reveal those and say, hey, you've ruptured the relationship, you've drawn away from me in these things, and then I repair it by repenting, or I repair it. I deal with it by articulating my experience of God's rupturing with me.
Speaker 1:Like the Psalm that you drew on, that's exactly right, so I can remember.
Speaker 2:This is where we'll close, because I want to illustrate for my own life ways in which I've felt the secure attachment of God being strengthened. So, in other words, hear me say like this is something, as you said a moment ago, cultivated, developed, strengthened over time, and I'm trying to give you practical ways to do that. Feel the attunement of God as you pray through the Psalms. Experience the containment of God as you pour out your heart before him. Know what it's like to rupture and repair with God, whether he's ruptured or you've ruptured or you've experienced him as rupturing, I should say. In 2018, my wife and I went through a season of infertility and we didn't know if we could get pregnant, and I can remember distinctly us being so worn down through that process of unknown and just the. If anybody's gone through infertility, you know that the monthly cycle is one of hope and despair hope and despair, and it's painful and arduous and it wears on you and endurance is really low. And so we Alana, my wife and I took up Psalm 77, one of my favorite lament Psalms, because it asks six questions about whether or not God is who he says he is. I mean, listener, do you ever feel like God is not who he says he is? So did the psalmist, so did Asaph in Psalm 77. So did I, in under my carport with my wife, and so we just articulate God has your compassion run out Like, are you not the God who says be fruitful and multiply? Aren't you the God who opens the womb? What are you doing right now?
Speaker 2:I remember saying I know of people who have been given children that they did not want them. They got pregnant without desiring it and they groaned because of that. I know of abortions that happened because people got pregnant and they didn't want that baby. Here are two people who want to have a child and want to raise them in the fear and instruction of the Lord, and you won't give us a child. What kind of God does that? Why would you hold this out as something?
Speaker 2:So you can hear the tone Like I'm. I'm challenging, I'm bringing anger, I'm contending with the Holy one because he invites us to do that, because he can attune to us, he can contain that, he can repair the ruptures that occur. And it was a profound experience. I'm telling you about it now because my memory didn't delete it like it does most of our human experiences. In fact, it was a moment where I felt I had the experience of feeling, felt by God, because he could hold space for me to pour out the contents of my heart, to contain it, to connect with me there, to create a secure attachment, to bind, to strengthen that bond between God and I, and so that's my encouragement to the listener wherever you are, those are ways in which you can move towards God and we'll pick up some more things next time we talk.
Speaker 1:Sounds good, we'll look forward to next time.
