By Denny Wayman
As a pastoral counselor, when a person came to me with the belief that there is no such thing as love, it never dawned on me to agree. Love is central to my existence, however imperfectly experienced.
No, my thoughts would turn to questions: What happened in this person’s life for them to give up on the very existence of love? Was it an early dating rejection? Was it a painful divorce? Or was it something even earlier, like the absence of a mother’s or father’s love? Was this person so impaired that there were no receptacles for experiencing love, let alone making the fulfilling attachment that such love brings?
Psychologists have identified a developmental problem that inhibits a person’s ability to attach to others. Usually originating within their experiences with their own parents or caregivers, these irreplaceable humans who were essential for providing love and nurturing care consistently and persistently denied or withdrew love from them such that they lost the hope of ever being loved. Using the descriptor reactive attachment disorder, therapists attempt to change this early programming through consistent therapeutic relationships to restore hope and trust and to establish a new healthy foundation for a loving life.
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“Most of us realize that to ignore or dismiss love says far more about the person doing so than about the reality of the existence of love.”
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But it is not easy. Once belief becomes practice and a person withdraws from all who would love them, then the resulting isolation repeatedly reconfirms their belief and life becomes defined by its absences.
Cultural “theologian” Tina Turner created a “hymn” reinforcing this belief when she sang:
Oh-oh-oh, what’s love got to do, got to do with it?
What’s love, but a second-hand emotion?
What’s love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken? Who?
I’ve been taking on a new direction
But I have to say
I’ve been thinking about my own protection
It scares me to feel this way…
What’s love, but a sweet old-fashioned notion?
Like most secular theologians, Turner redefines existence based on her own experiences and describes previous beliefs as being nothing more than a “sweet old-fashioned notion.”
But is that all love is? Is it only a notion — however sweet and out-of-date? Is it no longer applicable to life in the modern moment?
Most of us would disagree and not even give it a thought that love is out-of-date, let alone out of reach or, even worse, out of existence. Most of us realize that to ignore or dismiss love says far more about the person doing so than about the reality of the existence of love.
Atheism
In the same way that my mind goes to an evaluative mode when a person claims there is no such thing as love, I question how a person makes a similar conclusion about God. Leaving aside the logical and philosophical inconsistencies in this disbelief, I wonder: What happened to this person to deny God’s existence? Did an early experience of disappointment in prayer disorient them? Was there a failure in the example of a parent or pastor? Were they in some manner hurt or abused by the church or people in it? Or was there some early experience of abandonment by human caregivers that was then projected onto their image of God?
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“If God is love, then love is not just a partial characteristic but a comprehensive description of divine essence.”
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Although this analogy is helpful, it may be more helpful to realize that it is not just an analogy. It might also be that an early attachment disorder can become a later disrupter to this person’s relationship with God. Perhaps their receptors, which allow most of us to experience God in profound and life-altering ways, have been damaged psychologically and spiritually. Then the skepticism, which Turner describes, becomes a reality not only of a human relationship but of a divine one as well. She would rather not have a heart, or perhaps even a God, than experience heart-breaking disappointment. Since God is love, her apparent attachment disorder consequently fuels her probable atheism into momentary and eternal isolation from both.
Essence and Existence
If God is love, then love is not just a partial characteristic but a comprehensive description of divine essence. It would follow then that to be unable to love God would also cause a person to call into question God’s very existence. The beloved Apostle John explained this to us 2,000 years before psychologists gave it a diagnosis when he said:
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. … And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. (1 John 4:7–8,16)
To use the language of attachment theory, the last sentence could be translated: God is love, and the one who has healthy, loving attachments is also attached to God. The converse is also implied: Since God is love, if a person cannot form healthy, loving attachments to others then this will negatively impact their relationship with God as well and call into question for them both the existence of love and of God.
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“Confession is simply saying the truth and allowing that truth to set us free from whatever binds, enslaves or hinders us.”
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Healing Atheism as an Attachment Disorder
If it is true that atheism is less a theological belief than it is a consequence of unhealthy love relationships, then it would also follow that the way we heal atheism would be informed by how we heal attachment disorders. Though all healing is unique, the standard intervention for healing an attachment disorder begins with a full understanding of what caused the person’s inability to form loving relationships.
It is not surprising that this full understanding is what is meant by the biblical concept of confession. Confession is simply saying the truth and allowing that truth to set us free from whatever binds, enslaves or hinders us. Thus, if we recognize and confess that we do not really love others, or even ourselves, then that acknowledgement can inform our relationship with God. For reasons that we would then want to explore, if someone is not open to God’s love and presence then they are not expressing an actual belief that there is no God, but rather confessing their own closed mind and heart to being attached to God.
Conversely, the result of such confessional honesty would be to open their mind and heart both to others and to God in a growing attachment and union with God and others. It is thus that a loving church community gathered to love and commune with God would provide the healing of body, mind and soul and extend to relationships. Once healing has begun, the reinforcing growth can only be described as holiness, a holiness without which no one can see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14).
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Denny Wayman, D.Min., served 40 years as the lead pastor of the Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara and 10 years on the superintendent team (eight years as lead superintendent) of the Free Methodist Church in Southern California. He is the author of “Healthy Biblical Communities” and the discipleship trilogy “Discipleship Ecosystem,” “Toxic Discipleship” and “Rootbound.” He is married to Cheryl, a licensed marriage and family therapist.
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