Book Report - The Connected Life: The Art and Science of Relational Spirituality

by Todd W. Hall

Much of what psychologist Todd Hall writes in The Connected Life (IVP 2022) is important, but not novel. We are hard-wired to connect with others in healthy ways—especially with primary caregivers. These healthy early attachments pave the way for healthy functioning in healthy communities, and a deeper experience with our Primary Caregiver, God. In all kinds of ways, our society is reaping the negative effects of our relational disconnection with God and others: family breakdown, mental health problems, and spiritual alienation to name just a few.

What makes Hall’s book useful is the way he makes the latest psychological research on these ideas accessible to your average joe-reader, like me. His explanation of the many ways our attachment process can break down was clarifying—especially in how it relates to peoples’ different types of relationships with God. (“Attachment” refers to the process of early bonding with parental figures.) People with a “preoccupied attachment filter,” for example, relate to God differently than do those with a “dismissive attachment filter.” Basically, how we raise (or don’t raise) our kids has a direct bearing on the sort of relationship they develop (or don’t) with God. To our children, we are indeed the image of their heavenly Father. And at this image-bearing job we routinely fail, to their detriment.

The good news is that we (or our kids) are never too old to be “loved into loving.” New neural pathways can be cut. People can change—even in how they know God. How does this happen? Through the hard work of relational connection, hours of therapy, contemplative prayer, immersion in the story of Scripture, and—perhaps most importantly—a long-term, committed relationship to a healthy church community.

It is this last recommendation with which I deeply resonated, and which motivates me as a pastor. In his final chapter (“Born to Belong”), Dr. Hall is admirably honest that plenty of people experience trauma and alienation at church, practically compounding whatever disconnection they already felt. But, he says, it doesn’t have to be this way. And for every bad church experience, someone has a good one. This, in fact, would include me. The Methodist church I was a part of growing up, and the non-denominational one I attended in college, demonstrated to me the communal love of God in a truly transformative way. What I learned explicitly about God-as-Father in those healthy spiritual families became part of my implicit emotional reality, filling out whatever sort of imperfect attachment filter I acquired from my well-meaning but imperfect parents. In fact, it was the power of these experiences that compelled a group of us to start our own church in 2000 (Hi Rooftop!), where we could introduce disconnected St. Louisans to God and each other in a life-changing way.

Honestly, it hasn’t always worked. We’re an imperfect community and not everybody is interested in sticking around long enough to enjoy the fruits. Change is hard. But over the years, I’ve seen enough people at my church be “loved into loving” to know that Todd Hall is exactly right about what ails us, and what can fix us, too.

-MRH (8/1/2022)