In this relationship, God reveals his unconditional love and acceptance for us.

We first learn about the nature of this relationship with God and our purpose in this world through the connection we have with our first caregiver, usually our mother. We call this relationship attachment. Our human, horizontal attachment is meant to prepare us for our vertical attachment to God. The way we experience unconditional love and acceptance in our human attachment relationship tends to be the way we view God.

Healthy attachment in infancy is critical, because when attachment in our horizontal relationship goes awry, our understanding of who God is can be negatively impacted.

When attachment between the mother and infant develops securely because the infant’s needs are met adequately during the first year, infants learn that:

• They are important

• Their needs are important and

• They can trust their mother/attachment figure to see and meet their needs.

When this attachment relationship is insecure or goes awry and the infant’s needs are not met adequately, infants learn that:

• They are unimportant

• Their needs are unimportant

• They cannot count on their mother/attachment figure to meet their needs

• Therefore they can only count on themselves.

When attachment does not occur correctly, children feel that they have to control everything and everyone around them in order to feel safe.

Our first attachment with our earthy parents lays a kind of “template” in the the infant brain, a pattern through which we view all future relationships….including our relationship with God. If our needs were not met adequately in early childhood, we oftentimes do not believe that we can trust God to meet our needs. Conversely, if our needs were met adequately, we are more likely to see God as trustworthy and believe his promises to us.

None of us had perfect parents, nor are we perfect parents. As this first attachment is inevitably flawed, these flaws become part of how we see God and other people. In this fallen world, all of us are broken and wounded to some extent.

We also learn the difference between right and wrong through our attachment relationship, when we strive to please our attachment figure. When infants have not learned to trust their attachment figures, they do not care about pleasing them. In this case, the child may not develop a healthy conscience.

Sadly, the world is filled with traumatized and orphaned–unattached–children. Trauma and lack of attachment leads children to see all situations as threatening. They are constantly vigilant In response. They attack or defend, through fighting or fleeing, or respond passively by freezing. The only love they typically find while so defended can cause even more trauma.

Individuals who have never developed a healthy attachment relationship may:

• Victimize others in order to feel powerful;

• Treat others with contempt and disrespect;

• Lie and deceive;

• Lack impulse control;

• Identify with evil;

• Lack realistic cause and effect thinking (which keeps them from learning from experience):

• Be unable to tolerate external limits and control, and;

• Take things that do not belong to them.

Such children often grow into adolescents and adults who cannot trust; who lack faith, compassion and other spiritual values; who do not have a sense of right and wrong, and who cannot form healthy relationships. “Looking for love in all the wrong places,” they exhibit inappropriate sexual conduct and attitudes which that them vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, and sexual exploitation.

Created to Belong is designed to train pastors, lay leaders and caregivers of abandoned and traumatized children in meeting the unique and complex needs of these children.

As orphaned and traumatized children do not get the appropriate help, violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS will only increase in our global community.

If the development of conscience is weakened, the violence in the world will only increase.

We must reach out to these children NOW, while they can still be helped.