Sermon Central
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We Are Biologically Wired To Trust
Contributed by Martin Spoelstra on Apr 20, 2023 (message contributor)
Henry Cloud in his book, Trust, talks about how we are hard-wired to trust. If you have ever been around a newborn, you may have noticed that newborns do not do much due diligence when they're hungry. They scream with all their might and basically say, "Bring it to me now!" The human infant is wired to trust. When the breast is offered, a natural rhythm develops between a baby and a nursing mother. The human infant is wired to trust. Trusting is the most natural and instinctual thing infants do. They trust for food than for holding and then for comfort. They experience hundreds of incidents of being in distress and then consistently being delivered from the pain of hunger and loneliness by a caring person, the trust they automatically placed in their mom or a caretaker pays off and even multiplies. Trust followed by satisfaction builds more trust.
Neuroscience teaches us that these become actual living physical structures inside the infant's brain. Slowly a neurologically constructed mother is internalized and will be able to eventually help soothe an infant from the inside even when the external mother is not present. Eventually, in a couple of years, this infant-turned-toddler will be able to venture into the next room and not be afraid because he will have "mommy on the inside." One day, as an adult, this same person, now grown up, will be able to "self-regulate" his anger at a boss and keep his cool - all because a lifetime of trusting relationships produced an internalized self-soothing system.
Developmental psychologists call this process "developing emotional object constancy." At some point, the infant achieves the milestone of secure attachment which leads to constancy where they feel loved even when not being attended to directly.
Proverbs 13:12 says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life" NIV. The longing for love and comfort that is fulfilled by a loving mother or primary caretaker now is a life-giving tree living inside, and it yields the perpetual fruit of feelings of security.
But no matter how loving a mother may be, if an infant does not know how to trust-to depend on another human being and receive what its mother has offered-none of her milk, love, or care will matter.
Dr. Henry Cloud, Trust: Knowing When to Give It, When to Withhold It, How to Earn It, and How to Fix It When It Gets Broken. Worthy press: 2023. Page 20-21.
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