Heart Attachments by Bruce J. Hammond
Book Review: Heart Attachments: How What You Love Shapes Your Thinking, Behaviors and Destiny, by Bruce Hammond (2020). eBook and paperback.
Author Hammond wrote Heart Attachments from his and Jean, his wife’s, exploration of their dissatisfaction with their Christian lives. For one thing, “…we didn’t feel valuable unless we fulfilled specific standards,” he writes. “…There was an unsettled feeling,” therefore. Then, he continues, “…we were not accepted by God or people unless we lived up to certain criteria.” “We had so many questions for God,” he acknowledges. Finally, they wanted to know: “How would we positively change our thinking, heal our emotions, rightly align our beliefs, and change our behaviors?” This exploration led into an in-depth, personal, ongoing relationship with the living God.
Heart Attachments Well-written
This book shows good logic, well-crafted writing, and sound use of Scripture. It contains carefully chosen Scripture texts and stories to advance his argument. Using those insights that God gave Hammond and his wife, the author reports, has resulted in “countless people set free, delivered, and restored.” Through Heart Attachments, they share, “What we learned, how Jesus Christ transformed us, and how we’ve seen Him change the lives of others.”
Hammond identifies three “faculties” we possess as persons, spiritual, mental and emotional. These “come to knowledge differently, function uniquely, and have varying strengths and weaknesses,” he says. The goal is to engage each faculty so that they are “fully functioning in their proper boundaries.” This leads to “beautiful clarity, flow, and balance within us.” “Dysfunction exists,” he explains, “when a faculty is overused or underused.” He then takes the reader on a journey to explore each faculty in turn, showing from Scripture how dysfunction develops and how we may achieve a proper balance, neither under or overusing each faculty. The goal is to “Know [God] in a living and personal way,” in which we enjoy “an intimate, transforming relationship” with Him.
Focus on Emotion
One interesting note on Hammond’s view of human personality is his focus on the emotional faculty as primary. This contrasts with many contemporary schools of thought which emphasize primacy of the mental. “Generally speaking,” he says, “things start in the emotions and then move into our thinking.” Regarding how we know (what we know), Hammond says, “The mind knows through reason, the spirit through revelation, and the emotions through relationship.” I would add that the mind also knows through information. But his emphasis on the emotional life of persons needing relationship is a welcome relief from recent overemphasis on cognitive functions. He also deals at length with the crippling emotion of shame.
Heart Attachments: Case Studies
Hammond wisely includes case studies of people, alternating a chapter of instruction with a chapter devoted to the story of someone who illustrates the principles he previously explained. His stories may fail to grasp the reader, however, because they are related in the third person, and without dialogue. The subjects may well be real people and not someone devised as a literary device. This very question, however, reflects my doubt. The reader must experience the truth of our writing. We cannot simply tell readers our information.
Well-rewarded
Hammond’s Last Chapter: “Practical Considerations,” I loved. It was indeed practical and helpful to show how we can develop that personal, intimate, transforming relationship with God. That’s what we all say we desire. I would have appreciated those practical suggestions throughout, but the reader feels well rewarded for reading the book to the end.
Intellectually stimulating, Heart Attachments is useful for personal and group study. It enables the reader to explore a deeper experience of the Living God through Jesus Christ. The book focuses more on deepening our understanding of what that living relationship with God involves. What the reader now needs is to apply that understanding. We need to learn practical ways to apply the instruction of Heart Attachments to our personal lives. I believe small group sharing would facilitate this.
Heart Attachments is available through Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/sk=heart+attachments+bruce+hammond&i=stripbooks&crid=SNXYX4W9M6G2&sprefix=Heart+Attachments%2Caps%2C458&ref=nb_sb_ss_organic-diversity_1_17
