14. As I experience being loved and accepted “as I am” in my spiritual community, it helps me experience God’s unconditional love for me.
(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.)
What is the difference between knowing that God loves you and actually experiencing God’s love for you in some way?
Do you have a memory of an experience when you not only knew that God was with you, but that He loved you deeply?
Can you bring to mind a time when someone loved you deeply, without conditions? (Maybe a grandparent, special friend, or teacher loved you this way). How was this experience similar to what you experience when God loves you?
The strongest need of every person is to be loved. We know and believe that God loves us, we even believe that He loves us unconditionally. But knowing that God loves us and experiencing that love are not the same. It is not enough to know about God’s love for us, for unless we can experience that love, our need for love will not be met. When I experience unconditional love from another person, it provides an example and taste, of God’s love for me.
Spiritual communities practice loving each other in the way that God loves us. Even though spiritual communities may never love each other with the depth and fullness that God loves, it nevertheless provides an example of how God loves. As we build a memory bank of experiences in which our community loves us without conditions, we are provided a treasure trove out of which we can imagine and experience God’s love for us.
Our memory of the past is what the brain uses to imagine the future. This idea has been proposed by researchers in the area of neurobiology. One of these scientists, Daniel J. Siegal, writes the following: “Created by repeated past experience, mental models reinforce themselves by biasing ongoing perception to conform to expectations set by prior learning and in this way can lead to a tendency to repeatedly encode similar representations with little variation. This is a top-down* process in which prior learning shapes ongoing perception and behavior.” (Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind, p. 240, W. W. Norton & Company, Kindle Edition.)
If we apply this quote to our discussion, we can say that a person who has little memory of being loved deeply and unconditionally by others will struggle to perceive and behave as one deeply loved by God. It becomes not a matter of desire or will power—it requires an experience that creates a new memory. Information about God will not change the part of the brain that controls behavior or experience.
Only when new experiences and relationships reshape the memory of the brain, will a person be able to live differently. To quote Siegel again, “The brain does not change in a vacuum. Interpersonal neurobiology reminds us that the brain is profoundly social. With this view, we can turn to our triangle* of mind, brain, and relationships and keep in the front of our minds the reality that even neuroplastic changes are facilitated by supportive relationships.”(p. 68.)
If this is true, then only though “supportive relationships” can our brains and minds be transformed to experience the unconditional love of God and be able to participate in a healthy relationship with God. Spiritual communities provide these “supportive relationships.”
Spiritual communities help us experience being loved by others which then helps us imagine what it is like to experience the deep unconditional love of God.