God. Whether one loves him, hates him, denies or defies him, it is hard to deny the worldwide fascination with God. This book explores why and suggests a personal response to the God Attachment in all of us. Why has the human race, the world over, been so fascinated with . . . some might say obsessed with . . . God? This built-in attachment to God crosses religious, political, ethnic, cultural, and generational barriers. Drs. Clinton and Straub reveal fascinating research about this worldwide phenomenon. From avoidant, anxious, and fearful to secure and personal, the range of responses to our internal attachment to God has a profound influence on the way we do relationships, intimacy, and life choices. With helpful self-assessments, intriguing questions, and surprising revelations, this book moves from worldwide statistics to personal challenge, offering the means to become securely attached to God in a way that can have positive effects on our attitudes, approach to life, and overall life satisfaction.
Why does God feel so far away? The reason--and the solution--is in your attachment style. We all experience moments when God's love and presence are tangible. But we also experience feeling utterly abandoned by God. Why? The answer is found when you take a deep look at the other important relationships in your life and understand your attachment style. Through his years working in trauma recovery programs, extensive research into attachment science, and personal experiences with spiritual striving and abuse, licensed therapist Krispin Mayfield has learned to answer the question: Why do I feel so far from God? When you understand your attachment style you gain a whole new paradigm for a secure and loving relationship with God. You'll gain insights about: How you relate to others--both your strengths and weaknesses The practical exercises you can use to grow a secure spiritual attachment to God How to move forward on the spirituality spectrum and experience the Divine connection we all were created for You'll learn to identify and remove mixed messages about closeness with God that you may have heard in church or from well-meaning Christians. With freedom from the past, you can then chart a new path toward intimate connection with the God of the universe.
Unlock the secret to loving and lasting relationships! This book is for anyone who desires closeness, especially in the most intimate relationships: marriage, parenting, close friends, and ultimately with God. The answer to why people feel and act the way they do lies in the profound effect of a child's bonding process with his or her parents. How successfully we form and maintain relationships throughout life is related to those early issues of "attachment." Author Dr. Tim Clinton is recognized as a world leader in mental health and relationship issues—and he knows intimately what it is like to feel unloved. The child of a mentally ill mother who locked him in a closet and a father who was frequently gone, Clinton struggled with attachments for many years before discovering the secret to loving and being loved. Citing four primary bonding styles, you will learn: Why we love, feel, and act the way we do How to conquer depression, anxiety, anger, and grief How to be a sensitive, secure parent to your children How God’s love is enough to penetrate the brokenness and remove negative emotions from your life If you have come out of a painful, damaging, or traumatic past, reading this book will teach you how to experience the love and closeness you long to feel.
"The primary aim of this book is to examine the ways in which aspects of religion and spirituality are linked to emotional attachment processes and close relationships. My approach is heavily influenced by John Bowlby's attachment theory and the enormous amount of research it has generated in developmental, social, and clinical psychology. A major aim of this book is to demonstrate the utility of approaching religion and spirituality from the perspective of a mainstream theory in developmental, social, and clinical psychology. This book will educate readers who are not yet familiar with attachment theory and the attachment-theoretical approach to religion and spirituality"--
Outreach Magazine’s 2021 Resource of the Year in the Church Category Christianity tends to focus on beliefs and choices as the keys for personal growth. But biblical evidence and modern brain science tell a different story. Combining faith with the latest developments in neuroscience and psychology, Renovated offers a groundbreaking and refreshing perspective of how our attachment to God impacts our minds and hearts. You’ll find that our spiritual growth is about more than just what we believe—it’s about who we love. Drawing from conversations he had with Dallas Willard shortly before Dallas’s death, Jim Wilder shows how we can train our brains to relate to God. Transformative and encouraging, this book offers practical insight for deepening your relationship with God through the wondrous brain and soul that He has given you. “Elegant, clear and bountiful in hope . . . if transformation for yourself and your community is what you seek, I can think of no better place to start.” —Curt Thompson, author of Anatomy of the Soul “Jim Wilder offers genuine hope. He uniquely combines the truth of Scripture with the truth in developing brain science to give us a path of renewal and restoration.” —Dudley Hall, president of Kerygma Ventures “A breakthrough on so many levels. Renovated is a must-read for everyone who is serious about discipling people and seeing life transformation.” —Bob Roberts, pastor and founder of GlocalNet
In this provocative and engaging book, Lee Kirkpatrick establishes a broad, comprehensive framework for approaching the psychology of religion from an evolutionary perspective. Kirkpatrick argues that religion is a collection of byproducts of numerous psychological mechanisms and systems that evolved for other functions.
Of all the problems we face in mortality, the most vexing is not the lack of money or even the lack of food and water: It is the lack of love--the inability to receive and give love as the Savior did. This book addresses the question of how we can increase our capacity to give and receive love so that we can have secure, healthy relationships with God and with others.;; For several decades psychologists have been studying how the attachment that forms between parent and child affects the quality of relationships we form as adults. They have identified four "attachment styles." Research has shown that the majority of adults suffer at least to some degree from one of the negative attachment styles, which makes it difficult for them to form enduring, joyful relationships. This book offers 20 suggestions for improving our attachment style so that we can strengthen our relationship with God and with others.;
A full-scale investigation of the controversial and often misunderstood science of attachment theory, inspired by the author’s own experience as a parent and daughter. “A profound and beautiful work . . . searingly honest, brazenly fresh, and startlingly rich.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon When professional researcher and writer Bethany Saltman gave birth to her daughter, Azalea, she loved her deeply but felt as if something was missing. Looking back at her lonely childhood, dangerous teenage years, and love-addicted early adulthood, Saltman thought maybe she was broken. Then she discovered the science of attachment, the field of psychology that explores the question of why—from an evolutionary point of view—love exists between parents and children. Saltman went on a ten-year journey visiting labs, archives, and training sessions, while learning the meaning of “delight” from Mary Ainsworth, one of psychology’s most important but unsung researchers, who died in 1999. Saltman went deep into the history and findings from Ainsworth’s famous laboratory procedure, the Strange Situation, which, like an X-ray, is still used today by scientists around the world to catch a glimpse of the internal workings of attachment. In this simple twenty-minute procedure, a baby and a caregiver enter an ordinary room with two chairs and some toys. During a series of comings and goings, a trained observer studies the minutiae of the pair’s back-and-forth with each other. Through the science of attachment, what Saltman discovered was a radical departure from everything she thought she knew—about love and about her own family, her story, and herself. She was far from broken—she saw that love is too powerful to ever break. Strange Situation is a scientific, lyrical, life-affirming exploration of love. Not only will readers be taken on an emotional ride through one mother’s reckoning with her own past and her family’s future, but they will also be given the tools with which to better understand their own life histories and their relationships today. Praise for Strange Situation “A fascinating deep dive into attachment theory . . . Carefully researched and with copious endnotes, this is an excellent resource for anyone interested in child development.”—Publishers Weekly “Honest and complex . . . A thoughtful engagement with a topic that affects all parents.”—Kirkus Reviews
In this transformational book, the authors have used ground-breaking research to develop four primary patterns of relating to one another that shed light on our actions--and how we can learn to love and be loved even better.
