Rewired by Love | How Our Filters Are Formed

Hey everybody, good morning. How we doing?

It's good to see you. Welcome back.

I'm enjoying the snow outside. It's January.

It feels like it. We got some playoff football

going on. It's a good time to be alive.

It's a good time to be in New England, Good time to be here

together with you all. And I'm, I'm really excited

about the series that we're in currently.

If you are a nerd, I hope you are relishing it as deeply as I

am getting to play at the intersection of scripture and

theology and spiritual formation, attachment theory and

neuroscience. And, and really, this all feels

so important to me because I long for us to be a community

that is shaped by the love of Jesus and that shares that love

with our neighbors who people who don't just stop at

information, but go on to to formation, to transformation to

becoming people who love like Jesus.

And in the series, we're, we're delving into some of the

mechanics of what that actually looks like, how that occurs,

questions that I think are deeply important.

I hope that you'll walk away from this morning not only with

more understanding, but also a path to follow as we continue to

pursue our relationship with Jesus and our growth in his

likeness. Well, last week we talked about

the gap between what we know and how we live and we got super

nerdy. We delved into some brain

science. We talked about the difference

between knowing that and knowing how different brain systems that

support different ways of knowing and and explain that

sometimes we can have a great kind of explicit knowledge on

one level, a great theology, a great image of God at one level,

and yet that can fail to translate into our lives.

We looked at at Jesus great commandment and talked about how

the way of Jesus invites us not only into into right thinking,

but into right relating as we're transformed from the very center

of ourselves, mind, body and soul to love God and love our

neighbors. Well, this morning I want to

continue to build on this. I want to take things a step

further and ask so OK, if, if transformation doesn't just

happen by getting more information, then how are these

defaults, this implicit knowing this, knowing how that we talked

about last week, how is that actually formed?

How do we get these these filters, these expectations of

God and others in the first place, in our text today, we see

God's people struggling to trust God.

They have been in the passages that precede our text today in

Exodus 17, rescued dramatically from Egypt, but things have not

gotten easy for them. In fact, it's been a bit of a

like out of the frying pan into the fire situation.

Here in Exodus 17 we find that they are in the wilderness and

in verse one we read that as they camped at Refidim, there

was no water for the people to drink.

I don't know if you know this. Water is kind of important,

especially if you're in a desert.

It's pretty essential to human survival.

It is something that we need. This is not a made-up concern.

This was a real concern that the people had.

They had no water. They were thirsty.

And from this distressing situation we observe a reaction

in verse 3. We see that first they accuse

Moses and man, do they come at their leader?

They say, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and

our children and livestock die of thirst?

Moses, why are you trying to kill us?

It's not a very generous story about the motives at play.

And then a little bit later on in the passage in verse 7, the

question beneath the question emerges.

They ask, is the Lord among us or not?

And I'd suggest to you this morning that this is a beautiful

encapsulation of really one of the most important questions

that we could be asking, one of the most important questions

that we are asking. I think some sometimes we, we

spend so much time asking about like, well, does God exist or,

or how does God's sovereignty and human agency relate?

Or how does Revelation predict the end of the world?

And nothing against any of those questions, but under them,

sometimes there's a deeper question, a more profound

question, the question that is central to the spiritual life.

When I am in distress, will you be with me?

When I'm afraid, will you show up?

When I don't have what I need, can I trust you?

God is the Lord among us or not? And this is not just a

theological question, it is an interpersonal question, a

question at the level of implicit knowing.

And Israel's answer to this question is very clearly no, we

can't trust him. We can't trust Moses.

We can't trust God. Things are out of control.

Time to panic. A couple of years ago, I was

almost hit by a car, and it was 100% my fault.

I walked like right in front of the thing.

And I was stunned because in the moment I felt like I had done

exactly what I was supposed to do.

I, I'd done the same thing that I had done crossing a street

basically my entire life. As I stepped out into the

street, I looked to my left to make sure there were no cars

coming. But there was a problem.

I was in London. And in London, the cars come

from the wrong direction, from, you know, said from my

perspective as an American, right, the car, the things were

clear from the left, but there was a car approaching rapidly

from the right. And, and in my head, at an

explicit knowledge level, I was aware that in England people

drive on the other side of the road.

These were facts that I had in my brain.

But my nervous system, my implicit system, when I went to

check to see if things were safe, I looked left because over

thousands of experiences, that was always where cars came from.

That was the place to look to see if things were safe, to take

that first step. I was in a new environment and

and so the system that I had developed over a long period of

time for evaluating what was happening around me was broken.

It didn't work for the situation that I found myself in.

And this kind of default is exactly what we're talking about

when we describe this implicit system, this this way of knowing

how that we talked about last week.

It's the the brain system that houses our reflexes, our

reactions, our assumptions, the area of our knowing that so

often in the church we we miss, we don't pay attention to, as we

talked about last week in attachment theory, these

patterns of implicit memory have a name.

They're described as an internal working model.

And these internal working models or these kind of filters

through which we see the world are formed just like my filter

was formed when I stepped out into the street looking left By

lots and lots of experience, by training of attention, by by

seeing how things show up in our life.

In attachment theory, we, we see that basically these, these

patterns of assumptions have to do with our relationships.

And will stress be alleviated? We're our distress be attuned

to, will somebody be there to help us?

When I'm in distress, can I reach out and get my needs met?

Some of you know the history, especially if you're a

psychology nerd like me. John Bolby and then Mary

Ainsworth developed this pioneering field in psychology

called attachment theory. And it was really explanation

for how it was that that individuals, initially kids and

later it moved out to encompass adults as well, would

essentially move under distress, how their relationships were

formed and then how these internal working models would

developed based on the reactions that they saw.

Mary Ainsworth, over the course of of many, many different

experiments, observing and and watching how people would

respond, came to describe a couple of patterns or or typical

ways that people would relate based on how the world occurred

to them. One of these was described as an

anxious attachment strategy. In this strategy, kids would

essentially amplify their bids for connection.

When they were in distress. They might cry or COO.

They might make faces or or try to touch the face of a

caregiver. Essentially, when they were

upset, when they weren't getting what they needed, whether they

were hungry or or needed to fart, whether they were looking

for attention or connection, they would reach out and they

would try to amplify these signals to get their caregiver

to pay attention to them, to come close, to connect.

They would pursue and press and protest.

Of course, this isn't just a kid strategy.

Many of us as adults have slightly more refined but

similar ways of reaching out. We think that when we're in

distress, when something is wrong, I need others to help me

feel better. And so we reach out in

relationships for others. We try to bring them in close.

Maybe we complain about the project that our boss just

dropped on us at the last minute to our Co workers, we're making

a bid for connection. We're saying, hey, be with me in

this experience. But there's not just an ancient

attachment system. There's also an avoidant

attachment system. And this system typically formed

and aims with observations among kids whose caregivers were

unavailable or uninterested, right?

If there was a a chronic system, a persistent experience, that

even when they escalated, even when they made these bids for

connection, if the person who was there to support them, to

care for them, didn't show up, if they didn't connect, if they

didn't respond, over time, these kids would start to turn away.

They would go silent. They would quiet down.

They would learn to manage things on their own.

Of course, in adults we see this pattern as well, right?

Many of us have have have come to learn by way of a lot of

little micro experiments in the world, or perhaps some traumatic

experiences that we've had, that when we reach for others, when

we try to get help in our distress, that other people are

not trustworthy, that their help comes with strings attached,

that we can't count on them reliably to have our back.

Maybe you attempted to reach out and, and your experience was

minimized. Maybe you attempted to reach out

and, and, and Pete, you were actually met with shame.

This is something you should have been able to sort out on

your own. And so over time, these

patterns, not from one instance or two, but just like looking

left, our patterns of behavior began to form in us, an internal

working model, assumptions about how the world works and whether

we can trust people when we're in distress.

If we do reach out, what will happen?

We begin to develop assumptions about these things in attachment

theory. Now, why do I name all of this

and go to the trouble of explaining something that

probably some of you already learned from talking to your

therapist or going to a site class in undergrad?

Well, the reason that I name this for the spiritual life, why

I think this is important for us as Christians, or at least

helpful, is that many of these implicit beliefs, these internal

working models, these are things that don't just live

independently of our life with God.

In fact, the the formal term is that they correspond to our

spiritual life. Very often we take these same

mental models of how the world works, these filters of what we

assume is going to happen next, and we project those same

filters right onto God, right. If we grew up in in a system

that was anxious, where we learned anxious strategies, we

might assume that man God is, is always just just right around

the corner. He might be disappointed with me

like I, I need to do a lot of things to intensify these bids

for connections. I need to make sure that I never

miss devotions in the morning. I need to make sure that I show

up every week and I serve and I, I do all of these things

because, because I, I need God to stay connected with me.

If I don't feel his presence in the same way, I need to double

down on my efforts. I've got to go harder and, and

make up to perform to please in order that God would stay close,

that he would stay connected. Others of us have grown up with

kind of more avoidance systems, right?

We've learned these strategies by the ways that we've related

with caregivers and others, and we bring those same assumptions

into our relationship with God as well.

We say, I can't really count on God if, if, if this is going to

happen the way I need it to happen, it's on me.

You know God helps those who help themselves, right?

We might believe that the prayer is nice, but in the real world,

the community isn't trustworthy, that God can't really help that

ultimately I've got to take things on and handle things in

myself. So often as a pastor in

community, I watch people begin to, to go through something, the

death of a family member, difficulty paying the rent,

right? A breakup or a loss and quickly

they began to step back from community.

They haven't learned how to handle those things in

relationship with other people because they have an avoidant

attachment strategy that tells them that when I'm in distress,

I'm non palatable, I'm not acceptable.

I need to to dip back and only show up in community when

everything is OK. Friends, these are not just

ideas. I can tell you that I'm a pretty

good case study in these things. Personally, I've watched this

play out in my own life with God.

As some of you know that in my 20s I went through a really

painful situation. I was rocked by the death of a

very serious romantic relationship that I'd had over

several years. In this relationship, I was

absolutely convinced that we were going to be together

forever, that we were partners and that nothing could change

that. And then she cheated and left me

and I left absolutely blindsided.

I was devastated. My whole world was turned upside

down and I honestly, I just didn't know how to make sense of

things anymore. And it didn't just mess with me

relationally, it messed with me spiritually as well.

I didn't blame God for what happened.

I, I saw things that I contributed and things that she

contributed. But I, I did stop trusting him,

like relationally, I, I began to live in and from a story that if

God could allow such a painful thing to happen to me, me

somebody who is reading my Bible and going to church and serving

in church and doing all the right things.

If God could allow such such pain and devastation to come

into my life, how can I trust him to take care of me?

I started to live from a story of suspicion and doubt where I

kind of trusted God with some things.

But but I always had to make sure that I had a plan.

I had a strategy. I was hyper vigilant looking

around me, making sure that I handled things in case I might

get blindsided again. I had a great explicit theology

in my head, but my implicit theology, my relational system,

my attachment system was wack because I hadn't healed from

this trauma that I had experienced.

And I think here in Exodus chapter 17, this is part of

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

what's going on. Like God's people do not respond

to their need, to their distress, which is real in a

healthy way. They move from distress to

complaint to accusation. The, the place that they're at

ends up getting renamed Merida and and Masaba.

Like basically it's, it's, it's it's complaint, it's arguing,

it's distressed. This is a place that becomes

representative of tension in the relationship.

And I'm not trying to justify that or, or say that there was

no agency involved. These people had a choice, but

they also had some filters. They had an internal working

model of the world. And in their internal working

model, people were not safe, right?

These are folks who had grown up under Egyptian slavery.

They had been in a joyful conversation with one of their

neighbors when the taskmaster came screaming with his whip.

They had gone to bed hungry and thirsty, without their basic

needs being taken care of. Their nervous systems were

rocked, and their bodies bore the Marks and the scars of the

pain that they had endured. The body kept the score.

And so they get out into this space, into this wilderness

space where once again their needs are not being met.

And their first reaction, their first instinct is distrust,

disbelief, to blame God, to blame their leadership.

They don't believe that they are held.

And this is even though God has done literally everything to

demonstrate his trustworthiness, like God has rescued them from

Egypt. He, he, he provided turn by turn

navigation with this whole pillar of fire and cloud thing.

Like he parted the Red Sea, like he's been dropping baked goods

from the heavens. Like God has been showing up for

these guys. They have a lot of reasons to

believe and to trust him, but it hasn't yet healed their implicit

working model of the world. They're still moving and showing

up in a way that that doubts, that suspects, that's hyper

vigilant, that's on guard because they still haven't

healed from these wounds. Friends, I think this is so

important for us because what I'm trying to say is that in the

church, too often we don't address this deeper level of

change. See, God wants you to have a

right understanding of things. He wants you to have the right

awareness of things. But he also, like we talked

about last week, wants you to be healed and changed in the depths

of who you are. And there's good news.

There's really good news about this.

And that is that we are not only harmed in relationships, but

we're also healed in relationships.

This is one of the things that's really encouraging.

Sometimes pop culture gets wrong about attachment theory where it

starts to be talked about as though it's like your attachment

style is like a personality type.

No, your internal working models are are strategies that you've

learned to cope with the world based on a bunch of experiences

that you have had. And honestly, those strategies

probably make sense based on the experiences that you had.

You got them from somewhere. You are showing up in the world

in trust or in distrust, in faith or in fear based on the

experiences that you've had and what and what you've learned

from others. But the good news is that just

as those patterns, those strategies were formed by

experience, so too can they be changed by new experience.

Like you can be repatterned, you can be rewired, not necessarily

by the stuff that you know, but by the relational experiences

that you have. And this is God's heart for us.

This is what we see here in this story.

If we were to go on and read beyond Exodus chapter 17 or even

Exodus 17 · chapter mention

here in this text today, we see that that what does God do in

response to all of their complaint, all of their protest?

He takes it very generously as a bid for connection.

He takes care of their need. He shows up with water.

He says, hey, I get that you don't trust me.

I get that you have reasons for not trusting.

I'm not like them. Let let me take care of you.

Let me provide for your needs. You know, I started to wonder as

I reflected on this text this week, if if maybe the reason

that it takes so long to get to from Egypt to the promised land

is there was like a bunch of stuff that needed to get re

patterned right? These people needed some time

following God faithfully, day after day after day after day,

experiencing His provision, experiencing His care, the manna

from heaven, the cloud that led them, the protection from

enemies, His provision over and over again.

Friends, we do have agency, we have the ability to make

choices, but our defaults, the way things show up to us, those

get formed in relationship by our experiences and friends, The

good news is, is what the Bible tells us an attachment theory

confirms is that we can be reattached to God.

Like, I don't know what happened for you in childhood.

Some of us in here have great parents that we're really close

to. Some of us parents are a

disaster and they're not in our life and all of our parents have

issues because they're people just like us, right?

None of us have like perfect magical situations where we

never experienced anything off. That's just not how the world

works. That's not how flawed and fallen

humans work, but for for all of us, whatever kind of internal

working models we developed, however we assume or or or

imagine things will be about the world, God invites us into

intimacy and independence with Him to be healed.

In attachment theory, they talk about this attachment figure,

this primary caregiver, often times a parent, but sometimes

not. Sometimes there's somebody else

you're really close to as being both a safe haven and a secure

base. And these are kind of technical

terms, but they're pretty simple to understand.

The safe haven basically means that this is a person that when

I am in distress, I can come to this person and they take care

of me. They provide safety, they

provide comfort, they provide help.

They might not be able to fix the problem, but they're at

least with me in it, right? Ava fell down yesterday and

scraped her knee. I couldn't fix the scraped knee

necessarily. But mostly Ali, honestly, mostly

Ali. But but me and Ali, like we

showed up and like, we just gave comfort, gave affirmation, gave

support, like, hey, we're here, you're OK.

Let me look at it. Let me give it a kiss.

Right? The safe haven.

But, but we're not only supposed to be connected, attached to God

in intimacy, we're also made for independence.

We're often intended to develop, to grow to to flex our

relational muscles, to do things in the world.

I love how Jesus named this with his disciples.

He, as he called his disciples, we read in in the book of Mark

that they talked about both the invitation to be with him, but

then also to be sent out to be with Jesus, but also to do what

he did. And in the healthy relationship,

this is what we see developing. Ava is a great example of this.

I'm using my daughter for a lot of examples here, but I just see

this dynamic in her all the time.

We go to the park. We live just a couple blocks

away from this big park on a hill.

There's a lot of grass. There's like fences around, so

cars aren't too big of a worry. And she'll just like take off

with her friends, you know, She'll be a hundred, 200 yards

away. I can kind of see her, but she's

over there. She's collecting acorns, she's

picking up sticks, she's chasing the rabbits and the squirrels.

She's exploring. She's flexing her muscles of

independence, but then, you know, a big kid with a bike will

go whizzing by and she'll get all panicked.

And what does she do? As soon as she gets triggered,

as soon as she is afraid, she returns.

She comes back to that safe haven.

She comes running to me or to Allie and, and she says mommy,

mommy, daddy, daddy. I got scared.

And we'll take her and, and just comfort her, just reassure her.

She'll cling to the leg for a minute, and then she works up

her courage and she's back out exploring, playing, adventuring,

chasing the world and friends. I think this is so important

because it gives us a model not only of what's important for

childhood development, but what we see in Scripture about God's

relationship with us as well. See, God is that caregiver,

regardless of how your parents showed up with you, regardless

of how that romantic partner that made such a mark on you

was. God is that caregiver in our

lives who reliably, consistently is available.

He wants to be with us in our distress.

We see this all over Scripture. Jesus describes Himself as as as

a hen that gathers her chicks under her wings.

The Psalms declare that God is our refuge, a very present help

in time of trouble. The Lord is near to the broken

hearted we read in Psalm 34 and Jesus invites all of us to come

to him. He says I will give you rest.

This is what we would call a safe haven.

Jesus is saying cast your anxieties on me.

Bring your cares and concerns to me.

When you go out and and you get your knee skin.

When you get beat up, when you get broken up with, when your

bank account doesn't work for the bills.

When you run into a situation of anxiety, when the world is on

fire, when you open up the news and the people are getting shot

and snatched off the street, when things are not OK, God is a

safe haven. And he says, come back to me

like bring what's real for you to me.

I want to meet you in it. I want to be with you in it.

And we don't just stay there forever.

Then he says, great, now go like be with me.

And then take that. And now I send you, I send you

back out as my hands and feet and friends, depending on where

our filters are at, depending on where our kind of internal

working models are at the very often one side of this is like

easy for us and the other side is terrifying, right?

Because some of us have learned to be really close, to cling on

for dear life because that's the only way we know we're safe.

Others of us are like great with being by ourselves, right?

Because people can't be trusted. So we're all about that

independence. And God says no.

I want you to develop along both axes.

I want you to move deeper into intimacy, deeper into

independence. I want you to learn how to, to

bring the pains of your life to me and allow me to restore and

to to rebuild, to encourage and to comfort you.

But I also want you then to have the courage to go out in your

life, to go out in your neighborhood, in your workplace,

in your relationships and your families, and to be my hands and

feet. It's a both and intimacy and

independence. So for some of us, the challenge

this morning might be we're good at like attaching to God, but we

just want to stay in the prayer room all the time.

Great, that's good. We need that intimacy that is

there so that you can go and do, right, Enjoy God, be with him,

be present with him, allow him to change you and shape you, and

then go and do like Jesus did for others of us.

We are really good at like doing for God.

We're out here and we want to do like this missional project and

we want to do a book study and we want to do this and we want

to do that. And our faith is all about the

intellectual. It's all about the behavioral.

It's all about how we show up and what we do.

And Jesus just says like, hey, would you share some of that

with me? You know how like how many times

I get that most people in this room do not have children at the

same age as my child. And everything in my life is

about my child right now. But again, Ava, like I cannot

tell you how many times, like every time she is doing

something fun in her life. Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy,

come, look, come, look, come, look, come, look, come, look.

This is, it's exhausting, like every, every two minutes.

Like she wants to bring me into it.

Like she wants me to experience the thing that she is

experiencing, not just for comfort, but as she flexes her

independence. She also wants me to to see what

she's doing. The sticks that she found, the

acorns that she found, the squirrel that she discovered,

the way she climbed the tree. Come look, come, look, come look

friends. Some of us need more of that in

our relationship with God too. Like we're out doing, we're

outgoing, We're we're, we're, we're performing, we're

pleasing, we're, we're doing all of these things, but we've left

kind of our relationship with God back there.

And God says, Hey, like, can I be with you in it?

Can we stay connected even as you go out and flex your

independence, intimacy and independence?

Friends, for all of us, this is an invitation.

See Israel in this story. Under distress, they protest,

right? They complain, they get panicked

and that they push into kind of avoidance.

They run from God like they attack and then they avoid.

But there is another way to do this.

It's a way pointed to us throughout Scripture, but

especially by the Psalm. Some of you know what I'm about

to say, right? The Bible paints a picture in

which we are invited to be in our reality, to feel our

emotions, to be grieved by the things in the world, and then

take that and run to God to bring it to his feet.

It's called lament, right? All over the Psalms we see this

practice, this invitation, as we are invited to, to take our

experience and bring it into our relationship with Goddess.

As David says in Psalm 142, I pour out my complaint before

him. I tell him my trouble.

I don't know about your parents. They may not have wanted to hear

what was going on for you, what was real for you.

They may not have been able to hold space for it.

They may not have shown up in the way that you need it.

But God wants to re pattern your attachment style as you develop

how to be with Him in distress, how to be in community with

distress friends. We are hurt in relationship, but

we are also healed in relationship.

So much of transformation goes beyond the information in the

explicit system and it goes on to this implicit relational

patterns, assumptions, defaults, filters.

God wants to change all of it by His love and for His love, so

that we can be people who are shaped by Him and who share His

love with the world.