noun: trauma;
- a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.
- a personal trauma like the death of a child
- emotional shock following a stressful event or a physical injury, which may be associated with physical shock and sometimes leads to long-term neurosis.
It should be obvious to any person, Christian or non, that the world is full of conflict and trauma. Society is getting increasingly darker in regard to people’s sense of hopelessness in their future. Most recent polls or interviews in the world point to just how fast people’s sense of morals, values, and positivity are at all-time lows. How can this happen at the end of the fastest growing century economically, technologically, and informationally in the history of mankind? With all of man’s “progress”, it appears this has all come at a cost of spirituality, morality, and personal peace.
Depressions, suicides, addictions of all kinds, and a general lack of vision and hope for the future are at all-time highs. While my generation in America could at early ages quote the ten commandments and other Biblical passages along with the pledge of allegiance to their country…just a couple generations later we have masses of children who have no clue about any of that. Instead, we have exchanged the truth for lies, and have replaced faith in God with faith in self and secular governance that promises to “take care of us” in exchange for our enslavement to a system of high taxation and living for the “common good” of others. In general, the masses have conformed to all the world offers along with its demand for allegiance, and the concept of individual liberty and personal faith is completely out of vogue.
It seems prophetic what Paul wrote to the Romans in Romans 1:18-32 as it applies to our times:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
These verses represent the roots of all our human trauma. The results of our ways as a culture have resulted in trauma levels we may have never experienced before. When your life is full of Paul’s description above, you will have no peace, joy, or true love in your life. These traumas then lead to pursuing anything that will overcome our pain…drugs, alcohol, obsessive eating, escape into pornography and perverse sensuality, and the pride of life that comes from having riches and more toys than the next guy. This then escalates into a false sense of self-importance, vain comparisons of yourself with others, and a totally inward focus on a life where the world revolves around you and your tremendous needs. Nothing isolates people or rips societies apart faster than these lifestyles depicted in Romans 1.
As I talk with individuals about deeper things like who they are, what they believe, what their likes/dislikes are, and why…I almost always hear the rationale and self-based interpretations of how they grew up, who their parents were, and how they were educated (or not) as a child. Most people are living trapped, reactionary lives based on all those past experiences, many of which they had no real choice in going through…and very few people find the wherewithal to let go of the shackles of their past lives in order to live their very best present lives or have hope for the future. The past is impossible to overcome for most and we resign ourselves to mantras such as “that’s just the way it is”, or “what are ya gonna do?”. Thankfully, God’s word gives us a very clear path on how to overcome our past traumas and many failures in life. There is much we can and should do to put our pasts behind us.
Yet, I sadly see the secular humanist’s approach to overcoming trauma all around me. Psychologists and psychiatrists everywhere are speaking and writing about their “self-help” solutions to overcoming our mental and physical ills. Humanism is focused on our somehow “healing ourselves” or we look for other humans to take the place of God in our lives to make us feel better. Here are a few vacuous “self-help” mantras I’m sure many of us have heard at one time or another (I will hide the names of the sources in order to protect the guilty):
- “What we don’t need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human.”
- “The big issue for traumatized people is that they don’t own themselves anymore. Any loud sound, anybody insulting them, hurting them, saying bad things, can hijack them away from themselves. And so what we have learned is that what makes you resilient to trauma is to own yourself fully.”
- “If you have survived your world shattering over and over again and you are still here, a bit damaged, a bit broken but still here – you should be proud of yourself. Because that is no small thing.”
- “There is no timestamp on trauma. There isn’t a formula that you can insert yourself into to get from horror to healed. Be patient. Take up space. Let your journey be the balm.”
- “There is no one way to recover and heal from any trauma. Each survivor chooses their own path or stumbles across it.”
- “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of trauma, I will fear no concussion.”
The only complete and lasting way I know of that has worked for me and others to overcome past traumas is a total surrender and renewing of the mind in Christ by His Holy Spirit. The spirit that God created within us is the main attribute of ourselves that needs renewing in order to overcome our past traumas. The fractured childhoods from divorce, abuse, addictions, and worldly pleasures have resulted in unexpected pregnancies, inability to find “true love” in others, or just a general lack of vision or direction in our adult lives…all results of sin and separation from God our creator. The only forever solution I have seen for myself and in others is total spiritual renewal by faith in Jesus Christ.
When Jesus said “you must be born again”, His message became the great hope of every believer that we can truly start over and live successful, clean lives full of His love, joy, and peace. No matter what our circumstances or what we have done before to create and maintain our traumatic lives, God promises to change and renew us from the inside out WHEN we choose to turn over our lives to live for Him and according to His ways. Those who hear and TRULY believe WILL be saved and God’s promises will be fulfilled in their lives.
To that end, there is good trauma and bad trauma. It is traumatic to be confronted with the spiritual truth of God’s plan for our lives. It is “distressing” and “disturbing” to go through the changes that spiritual renewal or rebirth causes us at least momentarily. But I call this “good” trauma…which leads to better, cleaner lives. It is disturbing to confront our sins and failures in life, but when we confess and repent of our sins, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9)”. This is the first step of overcoming our lifetime of traumas…allowing HIM to cleanse and change us from within. For some, this is an immediate, overnight change in life. For others, it is a gradual, step-by-step change in our daily actions and perspectives. God works in each person differently and independently. That was part of His design from the beginning.
Those of us who have been blessed by being born again spiritually have eventually discovered that the changes we always feared in the flesh are the very things that awaken the spirit within us. We are no longer bound by our past or even present experiences and conflicts. We are no longer defined by our past sinful natures, but we become new creatures because we have claimed the promises of the Gospel of Jesus. We have by faith accepted His death and resurrection that provided the way for eternal life and forgiveness of our human sinful natures. Once this spirit is alive within us, we are able to overcome all the obstacles in our lives; past, present, and future. Trauma and its demons can be overcome.
When we accept God’s solution to our traumas, we also begin to understand we are no longer bound or defined by them. We suddenly find our definition and meaning in life by KNOWING we are now children of God Almighty. We now have an eternal family to be connected to even beyond this short, temporary life on earth.
When we realize and accept the fact that we are living by the will of God and have become “children of God” (John 1:10-13), there is no trauma or hardship that we cannot overcome or understand. Even in the midst of pain, suffering, or loss…we can KNOW our redeemer lives and that God our Father is right there with us to help us understand and overcome any temporary adversity in this life. We even overcome death by understanding that “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:8,17-20)
Some of us feel like our lives have been one long, traumatic failure. We feel a sense of worthlessness, or worse yet, no sense of anything real in our lives at all. No love, no joy, no peace. If that is you today, I pray that you will be “reconciled to God”. If we give our lives and all our failings to a merciful God full of grace and understanding, because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross of His blood, we are saved and healed from our past traumas and are reborn in His spirit. That spirit is full of forgiveness, understanding, love, light, and grace unlimited.