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Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world (James 1:27, ESV).
My wife traveled to Romania in 1991. A group from our church had listened to a newscast on ABC’s 20/20 entitled “Shame of a Nation” describing thousands of orphans in Romania. They were held in “child gulags” created by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Parents couldn’t afford to keep the babies at home and abandoned them on the doorsteps of the orphanages.
The orphanages had few workers, and the babies were left by themselves in cribs with little human interaction except for feeding and changing diapers. If you entered these orphanages, you would think there would be the screams and crying of unattended babies.
The exact opposite happened in the orphanages. The rooms holding the babies were strangely silent.
No crying or screams — just bumping, bumping, and bumping. The infants had stopped crying when no one responded to their cries and were now rocking themselves silently in their cribs.
The simultaneous sound of cribs bumping into one another filled the orphanage.
Psychologists have since concluded that many of these orphans developed attachment disorders, creating difficulties in forming meaningful relationships later in life.
A psychologist writing in an article in The Atlantic magazine said that when he first began studying these orphans, he didn’t realize that seeking comfort for distress from another human was a learned behavior with all babies. He said in the article . . .
Those children had no idea that an adult could make them feel better. Imagine how that must feel — to be miserable and not even know that another human being could help.
Has this happened with first-time followers of Jesus in the church today?
Newborn babies have developmental needs, and born-again believers do too. As with infants, do we understand that seeking comfort from other believers, walking in unity, and having a conversant relationship with Jesus are learned behaviors?
A healthy attachment between a mom and child is needed to develop love, the ability to communicate, and emotional health.
We must understand that the qualities of spiritual formation are best learned in a one-t0-one discipling relationship. Are we raising generations of believers who, because of a lack of disciplemaking, haven’t learned to speak the truth in love, value meaningful connections in fellowship, and lack spiritual maturity?
Our churches shouldn’t be filled with the silent bumping of inadequacy but life and joy in the Spirit.