I don’t know when I first heard the word “attachment”, but as I learned what it meant, I realized that it was the bridge between things I knew inside me and what I saw revealed so clearly in God’s word of the love, joy, and peace of the Spirit that conditions the fellowship of God’s people.
I can recall reading about people struggling to explain the Greek word “koinonia” which is translated into English as “fellowship”. I could sense that various writers had come across a treasure of close relationships in the early church that they longed to see reproduced in every generation.
I can remember hearing about how Paul’s heart was expressed in the book of Philippians in such a personal way and knew that I wanted to get to know Paul like that. I could see for myself that he wrote the little book of Philemon to address a very personal and sensitive issue between two brothers in the Lord, and I knew that he had something going on in his relationships that was almost foreign to me.
My point is that my discovery of the word “attachment” seemed to shed so much light on this quest to know and understand how important love-relationships were to God, and even how the triunity of God was so significant to what it meant for us to be made in the image and likeness of the Triune.
In a very helpful book on developing relationships in the church, The Other Half of Church, I found this description of attachment:
Attachment is the strongest force in the human brain. It is not an emotion, although we feel it strongly, and attachment runs much deeper in the brain below willful control. Attachment is the best word scientists could find for what glues people together and little creatures to their parents. It produces an enduring care for the well-being of another. Attachment is a life-giving forever bond with no mechanism in the brain to unglue us. If God has an enduring love for us that brings us good, the only force in the human brain that can understand such lasting kindness and care is the brain’s attachment system.[1]
My point in sharing this is simply that it explains how God designed our brains to match his design of our souls and spirits. He wants us attached to him in a love-relationship with him that consumes us in heart, soul, mind, and strength, and he wants us loving our neighbors as ourselves, loving our enemies as he loved us while we were enemies, and loving one another in the church in the very same way as Jesus loved us from the cross. Such a high and lofty aim has a level of reality to it that is absolutely stirring, while explaining why we are so traumatized by anything that is wrong in our relationships.
If you’re still with me, this Vlog post is just a few minutes
more of showing how personally God’s word speaks to our need for attachment,
and for healing when attachments go wrong. May the word of Christ dwell in us
richly even in this![2]
© 2022 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
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