This post is the 9th in a series titled “Transformation Workbook“.
All of us are born into this life with a great need and longing for love, protection and the compulsion to totally trust someone else. Total trust and dependence on another is the same thing as worship. Go designed us to be born with instinctive behaviors that enable us to meet our need for love. In the first years of life we instinctively bond and attach ourselves to our caregivers trusting them to love us and provide for us. At birth we also inherit a sinful nature from Adam that causes us to be egocentric, meaning we see ourselves as the center of all things. In addition, we are born without knowledge, as a “tablu rasa”, a blank slate, a term coined by John Locke in the late 17th century to describe our need to develop a life perspective. Let us first examine the way we bond with others.
God made man as a worshipper. He made us to have deep longings, to have a sense that we are helpless to control our lives and the drive to find and attach ourselves to someone we think will love us and take care of us. The emptiness He created in us causes us to yearn for love. The immensity of life and our failure to control life conveys our need for help. The instinct to bond ourselves by attaching our hearts with total trust to some provider of love and protection is the instinct to worship i.e. the “Worship Instinct”. Let us clarify the way this works by the following principles.
1. God designed the human soul to totally trust and attach to others.
2. Babies instinctively form a trust bond with those who care for them
3. A trust bond is an attachment that opens the trusting soul to total influence.
4. This instinct to trust & attach is the instinct to worship someone or thing.
5. Children sense they are helpless and look for someone to fully trust.
6. Children attach to parents, peers, mates, children and hopefully God.
7. We grant the objects of our attachments the power to influence us.
8. We naturally love and emulate those people to whom we bond.
9. The consistent goodness & giving of parents with bonded children has a
major influence on what ideas children adopt to form their belief systems.
10. The failure to be consistent, to be present, to be loving, to have an open soul, to train/teach, to provide, to communicate, to be affectionate and to set an example of integrity has a major influence of a bonded child’s belief system.
Through bonding we attach our hearts, become dependent and open ourselves to be influenced by the person to who we bond. The experience of bonding is very similar to the feeling of falling in love. Falling in love bonds us into a dependence on the reciprocation of the one we now love. If the positive regard which we have come to need is not returned, we feel abandoned and betrayed. As a child we bond with parents and become totally dependent upon their attention, provision and praise. A child’s desire for parental approval is evidenced by their constant antics to gain parental attention and praise. I have watched so many made up dances and athletic moves that I couldn’t possibly keep track of them. A parent can make or break a child’s view of themselves through the way they deal with the bonding of their children.
Why is this important for us to understand? The reason is that the bonds that you have formed in your life and especially the one’s that have been broken and brought you pain, have had tremendous influence on what you believe. All of us are a product to some degree on the experience and outcomes of the bonded relationships we have had in our lives. If your had healthy parents who treated you with love, modeled a healthy marriage, disciplined you consistently and trained you up in the admonition of the Lord, then you are likely to be a healthy person in your adult life. However, if your parents divorced, treated you harshly, disciplined you inconsistently and frightened you with the bible, you are having a difficult time believing and applying the promises of God. It is important that you gain control of your life through the transformation process provided by God so that you don’t pass your negative influence down to the next generation of your family.
Trust bonds that we form with imperfect people are always a set up for disappointment. Imperfect, flawed, hurt people give what is inside of them, both good and bad. When a bond is broken by abandonment through divorce or death, it causes the one who is left to have a broken heart. Broken trust breaks the human heart. Many adults live today with hearts that were broken as children and they have learned to cover over their pain and function. Not function well, but with emotions repressed, they have learned to go through the motions of doing the right thing. “Going through the motions” probably describes the majority of Christians in the world today. We numb our pain and push ahead into life and tell ourselves that we have dealt with the pain of the past. Not true! We have dealt with the pain of the past with a defense mechanism but not the mind of Christ. God wants much more for us, not from us.
In conclusion, the bonds we make in life exert great influence over our development for the good or bad. Trust bonds are a set up, for good or bad. Whenever we put our total trust in anyone except God, we set ourselves up to be disappointed. Ideally, we would only ever put total trust in anyone but God. Born spiritually dead and separated from God, we have little choice but to bond with people. The bonds we made with healthy, faithful people will have been a blessing to us. The bonds we have made with hurtful, angry people who break our trust have hurt us more than anything else in life and have been a cursing to us. As we go through God’s transformation process, He will truly heal our hearts and redirect our trust bonding to His own person. He is truly worthy of our total trust, dependence and worship and He will never break our trust by abandoning us.
Most, if not all of us have been hurt by our most intimate relationships. Even those with great Christian parents have experienced some degree of pain in their primary relationships. In addition to setting ourselves up to be hurt, we have another instinctive behavior that distorts our understanding of what actually happened in our life. One of the results of the inherited sin nature is that man is born egocentric. Egocentricity is defined as viewing everything in life from a self centered point of view. Egocentricity renders us incapable of even realizing that there is another view than our own. In the following paragraphs, we will discuss the concept and how it has distorted our memories and what we believe.
Ask yourself some of these questions to help remember relationships that have been good influences and those that have hurt you deeply.
1. How would you describe your relationship with your parents?
2. Did your parents divorce? At what age were you?
3. Do you remember blaming yourself?
4. Who do you think now was really the cause of the divorce?
5. Do you have a relationship with your parents now?
6. How do you feel when you are around either of your parents?
7. Do your divorced parents have a relationship now?
8. Did either of your parents remarry? Did you live in this environment?
9. If you grew up with a stepparent, how did that go for you?
10. What relationships in your life broke your heart? List them.
11. When you remember that time, does it still hurt?
12. Who was to blame for that relationship failure?
13. Have you forgiven the person – forgiven yourself?
Reflect on the times when you have been deeply hurt because of a relationship that failed or ended. Ask yourself what changes you made in your thinking and behavior after each relationship.
Did you become less trusting of the opposite sex?
Did you blame yourself and tell yourself you weren’t worth loving?
Are you in a marriage or steady relationship now?
Do you feel afraid within this relationship?
Make notes on these questions and save them for later.
View all posts in the Transformation Workbook
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