Attachment and Spiritual Maturity 7
skills (Daniels, 1983). Seminaries are now finding that training mature spiritual leaders
needs to include personal development at cognitive, affective, and behavioral levels.
Entering seminary students today seem to be experiencing more problems than in
earlier times. They are often severely deficient in basic relational skills and experiences
(Botton, King, & Venugopal, 1997). It can no longer be assumed that these students have
had the early childhood, adolescent, and family experiences that are associated with
building supportive relationships, keeping commitments, and resolving conflicts. In fact,
many students come from home environments where models of trust, love, self-esteem, power, and identity were either absent or uncertain (London & Wiseman, 1993). There
should not then be surprise when students have difficulty experiencing trust in God or
expressing compassion toward others, marks of spiritual maturity.
Further, students can profess belief in correct doctrine or theology but secretly
hide sins involving misdirected sexuality, addiction, lying, etc. Rather than integrating
their faith with life, they keep their private life in a very different internal space separate from their beliefs about God and the love and grace that He has for them (Wilkins, 1997a).
In the emptiness of seminary students private lives, they often turn to
performance in school and in ministry hoping to experience belonging, value, and worth.
On the one hand, their successful performance leads to an experience of value and worth
associated with competence. This competence provides a cover-up of an unmet need for
belonging and validation. External experiences ofworth alone seldom bring satisfaction
and contentment. Instead these experiences may breed perfectionism and a continuing
sense that their work is seldom good enough. Eventually, these seminary students may
turn to the pleasures of sin for their much needed relief. On the other hand, if their
performance is not successful, they may feel guilty, blame themselves, and feel depressed.
This guilt cycle recreates the need for the momentary pleasure of sin again and again
(Hart, 1993).
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker