I’ve been slowly reading through Michael Horton’s book Ordinary for the past month or so. Chapter seven is on contentment. I’m amazed by how much Horton is able to confront me with the importance of contentment in a biblical sense. He does this in other chapters where he takes a word that once had one meaning in American culture, but now has a different meaning. In this case, when contentment is seen as somehow accepting less than one can get, it’s a negative. But for Horton, as he defines contentment in Scripture it means something much more positive. He begins chapter 7 like this, “The cure for selfish ambition and restless devotion to The Next Big Thing is contentment. But like happiness, excellence and drive, contentment is not something that you can just generate from within. It has to have na object. there must be someone or something that is so satisfying that we can sing, ‘Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.'”

I see something similar when I read works from clinical psychology that focus on attachment theory. One of the “objects” that scientists and clinicians who affirm attachment theory often refer are an attachment figure, one of a small number of people we rely on in life for security, safety and emotional stability. Those attachment figures are usually family, spouses and God.

I find it highly unlikely that anyone will experience contentment in a good way if their attachments in this life are insecure. For Christians, we take great comfort in our ultimate attachment figure, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Horton makes a similar connection when he talks about how the concept of covenant is central to how Christians of the Reformed tradition understand a sinful human’s relationship with his or her perfect creator. Covenant is the way God offers his people a secure and stable relationship with their creator. Covenant is also the way God defines his relationship with those who reject him. So we’re either in a covenant of works with God, where we have to earn his favor or we’re in a covenant of grace with God where we receive his mercy and fellowship through Jesus. Evidence for believer of such a gracious covenant relationship is the presence of the Holy Spirit who most commonly uses the community of believers, scripture and the sacraments of baptism and communion to increase or sense of security and stability in our relationship with God.

I find that attachment theory is the most consistently God honoring therapy lens to use with clients and in my work as a psychotherapist.

If you would like to know more about how Attachment Theory integrates well with Christianity, I encourage you to listen to this 2018 plenary address Created for Connection by Dr. Sue Johnson to the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC). To my knowledge, Sue does not describe herself as a Christian; however, she is still able to describe undeniable overlap between attachment science and orthodox Christianity. I find this connection even stronger when I read Reformed theology.