Page 12 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 21

When a person becomes a Chris�an, they are mited by the believer’s capacity to do so.
brought into union with Christ. As a result, the
Father of Christ becomes their Father, and they
are given the gi� of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Through the Holy Spirit, God comes to dwell in
believers (Jn 14:23; 15:4; Jn 17:21, 23, 26). Ho-
wever, our experience of God is imperfect, be-
cause even the capaci�es of believers to dwell
in God by faith and love are so compromised by
remaining sin. Nevertheless, there is something
thoroughly remarkable in the communion we
can enjoy (1Jn 1:3). To begin with, divine com-
munion is vastly superior to simply living and
moving and having our being in God—which is
true of all humans (Acts 17:28). The triune God
is especially present within believers and
knows them lovingly, as his children, which he
communicates through the Spirit’s pouring out
the love of God in their hearts (Ro 5:5) and
enabling them to receive God’s presence and
knowledge and give that love back to God, in a
way massively poorer, but vaguely resembling
the reciprocal love, affirma�on, and joy of the
Trinity. Through faith and love—what John calls
“abiding” (15:4)—believers and the Trinity par-
�cipate in a communion of consciousnesses—a
harmonizing of their subjec�vi�es (a kind of
“intersubjec�vity”)—which Eleonore Stump
(2010) considers an aspect of love: sharing joint
a�en�on; personal presence; and thoughts,
emo�ons, and story; a communion hampered
only by the internal conflict that remains in the
believer.
One would think this could lead to significant
psychospiritual benefits for believers: In this
way, they can taste the richest interpersonal ex-
perience possible with an immaterial and infini-
te, tri-personal being: a mature, secure a�ach-
ment bond, friendship (Jn 15:13-15), in�macy
with God, and a sense of being wanted, cheris-
hed, and loved by a holy God of love, pervasive-
ly condi�oned by a spirit of dependence, wor-
ship, and obedience. Yet such blessings are not
communicated automa�cally. Apart from the
compara�vely rare miraculous disposal, to rea-
lize them in their lives, believers must “abide in
Christ” (Jn 15:4), which involves inten�onal,
conscious appropria�on, and it is therefore li-
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Such intersubjec�ve experiences with God oc-
cur through the believer’s faith and love, in
prayer, Bible medita�on, and worship, as belie-
vers sharing a�en�on with the omnipresent,
indwelling God in love. By this means they
make possible a significant kind of healing
through the reorganiza�on of their brain/souls
around God and his glory, crea�ng repara�ve
rela�onal experiences with God by the Spirit
that promote internal integra�on and reduce
their double-mindedness and the conflicts of a
divided heart.
Hindrances to Soul Healing
Our greatest impediment to such healing is the
internal resistance to God that all humans have
called sin, the resolu�on of which God has
accomplished in Christ. Further hindering the
ability to abide in Christ for many is the fact
that humans form cogni�ve-affec�ve/neural
structures through the course of their early so-
cializa�on—called an “internal working model”
(Bowlby, 1988)—that come to cons�tute their
deep view of themselves and others and condi-
�on the quality of their rela�onships with God
and others (Coe & Hall, 2010; Guntrip, 1957;
Moriarity & Hoffman, 2007; Spero, 1992).
Through earlier intersubjec�ve experiences
with chronically poor caregivers, one’s internal
working model can be rather severely distor-
ted, and unless there is healing, its effects will
con�nue throughout life to condi�on nega�ve-
ly one’s percep�ons of others and interac�ons
with them, including one’s deep percep�ons of
God (called one’s God-image; Moriarity & Hoff-
man, 2007), and therefore the quality of one’s
interac�ons with him.
While a fundamental recentering of one’s life
occurs at conversion, most of the damaging
effects of previous development are not imme-
diately remediated. The cogni�ve-affec�ve/
neural dynamic structures that were formed
earlier in life remain, and it takes a certain
amount of matura�on just to recognize these
effects, let alone learn how to undermine them
and develop new, healthier structures. Signifi-