Have you ever snapped at someone you loved without meaning to? We’ve all been there. In most cases, we’re frustrated about other situations that come to the surface at the wrong time. We transfer that frustration onto the person in front of us, and they feel caught off guard because our response seemingly came out of nowhere. The environments we’re in shape our experience of the world. A stressful work environment can seep into a conflict at home. Likewise, a chaotic home environment may seep into other relationships. Has this ever happened in your relationship with God?
Sometimes we put our relationship with God in the “other” category because it’s not the same as other relationships in our lives. But as relational creatures, we respond in similar ways through all our relationships. We’re predictable that way. Even though you can’t sit across the living room with Jesus in the same way you would with your family, the relational environment you grew up in still influences your connection with Him. Your family of origin plays a significant role in shaping who you are and how you view the world. According to neuroscience, this is a crucial aspect of a child’s development, affecting our ability to navigate relationships and emotions.
So if you’ve ever felt disconnected from God or felt like something was missing, the solution might be much more concrete than you realize. You may be transferring your family dysfunction onto God. How? Just look at the research regarding parental figures in child development:
The Role of Mom in a Child’s Development
Research has shown that a mother’s role is particularly important in the early stages of development. The bonding and attachment that a child forms with their mother sets the foundation for how they learn to be in relationships and manage emotions. In fact, mirroring emotions is a crucial part of a mother’s job, as it helps children learn how to handle strong emotions. When a mother makes a sympathetic face to comfort her crying child, the child begins to grasp the emotion they’re feeling and feel safer expressing it.
According to a study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, “Mother-infant bonding is a critical process that plays a central role in infant development.” The study found that “a secure mother-infant attachment has been linked with improved cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes in infancy, childhood, and adolescence.” If this bond is fractured, there will be implications for other relationships throughout that person’s life.
The Role of Dad in a Child’s Development
Fathers also play a critical role in a child’s development. As toddlers begin to develop their own sense of identity, fathers help provide the necessary tools and support for this development. They offer safety, security, and critical thinking skills that are important for launching into adulthood.
A study published in the Journal of Family Psychology found that “the quality of the father-child relationship is related to many aspects of children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development.” The study found that “children with involved fathers are more likely to have higher levels of educational and economic achievement, and lower levels of delinquency and substance abuse.” A broken or dysfunctional relationship with dad limits the scope of healthy relationships into adulthood.
The Role of Family and Friends in a Child’s Development
The findings of these studies can apply to other close relationships as well. Sibling relationships are just as formational for a child as parental influences. Your brothers and sisters can just as easily impact how you view the world and your relationships with others. Additionally, relationships with aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, extended family, spiritual leaders, and even close friends can have a significant influence on your world, for good or bad. A solid, trusting, loyal friendship could help you feel more secure, confident, and supported. However, the opposite could leave lasting wounds.
All relationships leave wounds because all people are imperfect. Our mistakes, flaws, and imperfections leave a mark on the people around us. Our sin has consequences. This is not meant to be a devastating or defeating reminder, but instead, it should give you the freedom to acknowledge where you’ve been hurt without feeling like you’re condemning the person who hurt you. Not every wound comes from an evil person. Most of the time, well-meaning people who love us can still cause pain.
Finding Your Place in this World
Research shows that relational experiences impact a person’s view of the world and themselves. For instance, a safe and nurturing family can help foster a healthy outlook on relationships, while a toxic or abusive family environment can impact a person’s ability to form healthy relationships. Your family of origin shapes how you answer questions like:
- Is the world a safe place?
- Are people trustworthy?
- What does a healthy relationship look like?
- How should I connect with people?
- What does love feel like?
Developing a Relationship with God
As we develop our understanding of family relationships, we also develop our understanding of:
- What it means for God to be our Father
- What it means to be part of God’s family
- What God’s love is like
- What it means to be forgiven by God
- How to please God
- How God feels about us
The problem is we may not gain a correct understanding. Negative experiences in our family of origin can impact how we view these concepts. If we experienced conditional love in our family, it will be hard to experience unconditional love even if we cognitively comprehend the concept. If a parent was always disappointed in us, it might be hard to believe we can please God. Our experiences with our mother, father, brothers, sisters, and close loved ones all shape our view of God.
Asking The Right Questions
Have you ever taken time to really sit with these concepts? There’s a difference between cognitively understanding that this can be true and really understanding your inner world enough to untangle the web. You can do some of this work with trained professionals if that would be helpful, but it doesn’t need to start there. You could start by asking yourself questions from a place of curiosity and not condemnation. Ask:
- What familial relationship left me with the deepest wounds, insecurities, or trauma?
- How have I transferred this hurt onto God?
- How do I imagine God looking at me? Is he joyful, disappointed, aloof, or angry?
- Is this picture of God accurate? Does He actually look at me this way?
- When I mess up, how do I envision God feeling about me?
- When I do something good, what do I imagine as God’s response?
- What am I most afraid of happening in my relationship with God?
- What makes me hide from God?
- Are there any lies I believe about relationships that affect my relationship with God? (i.e. – “I can’t trust anyone.”)
- What does God’s love feel like to me?
- Is God a safe person to talk to?
- What lies does the enemy tempt me to believe about God over and over?
How to Recalibrate Your Relationship with God
Find a time today or this week to sit with these questions and journal your responses. Even if you’ve asked some of these questions before, your answers may change or shift as you go through different life stages. I encourage you to go into this exercise as an observer. It’s not your job to make any judgments or conclusions yet. Instead, just observe what is happening in your brain and body as you ask these questions. Are there topics you feel resistant to exploring? Are there emotional responses that surprise you? Even if you think you’ve only had positive relational experiences with God, your negative experiences with other people could still come up in this exercise. Don’t push those away as irrelevant. It’s more likely that those same fears, insecurities, and core beliefs are affecting your relationship with God too.
Once you’ve spent time asking questions and observing the answers, identify where you should dig deeper. Is there one question that feels like it holds a lot of weight? Sit with it. Ask Jesus to sit with it with you. Ask Him to reveal what lies you’ve believed about Him or what human experiences are influencing your divine experiences. For many people who grew up in religious contexts, this concept may be new. We’re so used to holding every fact we internalize about God as absolute truth. We sometimes don’t question an assumption we’ve made about God.
My Story of Disentangling My Misunderstanding of God
For example, there was a time in my life when I felt like I was failing at everything. When I pictured God’s response to this, I felt like He was displeased, disappointed, and held disdain for me. I just assumed this was another side of God’s wrath that I read about in the Old Testament. I didn’t even consider that this was wrong. Instead, I distanced myself from God because I felt too burdened by my own insufficiency. The reality is that rather than looking at me with disdain, He was looking at me with delight. Instead of impatience, He regarded me with so much grace. But my human experiences at the time were coloring my view of God.
I was believing lies about Him as if they were absolute truth. When he revealed this to me, I audibly gasped. My entire experience of God in that season was based on false perceptions and fake facades. This wasn’t who He was at all. This is why these kinds of exercises can be so beneficial. Something that you have based your relationship upon could end up being false. If you unknowingly build your relationship with God on a false foundation, you can miss out on experiencing so much of His love, grace, and fulfillment.
Putting the Pieces Together
Even as faithful believers, we are at risk of forming misunderstandings about God based on our own lived experiences. The complexity of this is that everyone’s experience is different. When your church says a simple phrase like, “love one another” or “love those who persecute you,” those words may mean very different things to different people. For one person, love feels codependent. For another, love feels distant and disinterested. Healing is needed to bring their perception of love back into balance and align their experience with the truth.
How has this impacted your faith? Maybe your mother’s attentiveness as a child has led you to feel like God is always listening to your prayers, or perhaps your father’s discomfort with your emotions has made you hesitant to bring your honest feelings to God. Take some time to journal about the ways your relationships have impacted your view of God with grace and curiosity. Remember that God is with you in this process, and as you identify lies you’ve believed, you can begin to embrace the truth of who He really is. This opens the door to experiencing his love and mercy in whole new ways! May the Holy Spirit guide you in this process, and may you find peace and healing as you discover the beauty of Christ.
