It has been said that if you have a distorted worldview or a mistaken goal, the more dedicated you are to it, the worse it will be for you. If you are bonded to a god who is punitive and hateful, who finds you disgusting and hard to put up with, then you are not bonded to God, but to a belief. And the more bonded you are, the worse it will be for you. And while this “bond” will certainly drive your life, is it the bond or your belief that matters the most? Most likely, the two issues are actually inseparable.
If you then discover that God loves you more than you can possibly imagine, and He wants to become your dearest companion and source of life, love, and good … are you transformed by the new revelation (belief) or by your new relationship to the true God? Again, the two are inseparable. A great many people are bonded to money. It runs their life. They would lose their identity if they lost their wealth. If they discover that they were mistaken and are in danger of wasting their life in pursuit of riches, and instead turn to God and begin the journey of relinquishing their bond with mammon and building their bond with God, what is the cause of their transformation? Was it the revelation? Or is it the bond that they have barely begun to form with God? Again, inseparable.
We cannot put these things into boxes and prioritize them. They are deeply intertwined. This is even true in human relationships. A person who grows up in a highly dysfunctional family system will internalize a host of distorted ways of viewing life, identity, and relationships. These ways of understanding their own life are deeply embedded in both hemispheres of their brain, and they will live out of those distorted beliefs. But when they get into a recovery group and discover that life does not have to be that way and there are other family patterns that actually bring life and good through the love they share, then that person begins a journey of transformation. But which is it? Were they changed by their new experiences in their support group or from the new ideas they gained from that or from the new bonds they formed with other recovery people? Once again, inseparable.
What this comes down to is that Wilder has an incredibly truncated definition of belief. He thinks of belief as an idea stored in the left hemisphere of the brain that we use as an explanation for the way things are. But the kinds of beliefs that drive our life are actually iconic in nature and occupy space in both hemispheres of the brain. The words “father” and “family” for example elicit all kinds of images and feelings for people, from gratitude and comfort to terror and hate. These are not dictionary definitions stored in a box in the “slow-track” left side of the brain. They are living icons, and they may need healing before we can move on in some area of our life. In fact healing these iconic beliefs has transformed thousands of lives. God speaking his experiential truth into these icons is one of the most accessible means of transformation available to us.
Nothing is gained by reducing the work of God down to a single approach (i.e. attachment) and redefining the other resources out of existence.