Toward a reasonable theology for the trauma sufferer

It seems strange for me to have only come across the term “trauma theology” in the past few days through a counsellor friend.  

But given my personal and professional experience has lent me to the field, I feel led to explore the ideas that have been piqued.  

The following is deliberately incomplete . . .

What we’ve all struggled with in terms of the concept of Theodicy (one definition: “the defense of God’s goodness and divine providence in life in view of the existence of evil and outcomes of suffering”) is it endeavours to find explanation about things that cannot be explained.  

Why does God allow suffering?  How on earth could any human being, pastor or minister or counsellor, have any idea on how to answer that question?  It is so very variegated.  It is so very nuanced.  And endeavouring to answer that question only relegates any logical or valid real reason to nonsense.  

Seeking an answer misses the point, a ploy of the enemy.  More is the point of finding God within the suffering — this is still a tricky phenomenon for those who have suffered trauma.  

How can the Bible help?  Incredibly, Paul captured the essence of the attempt to explain the inexplicable in 1 Corinthians chapters 1 and 2.  Paul explains that God shames the strong and the wise, and instead blesses the weak and the weary — (there is a key here to be explored later).  God reveals human wisdom as folly in the realm of suffering and trauma.  Then we go back inside the Old Testament and find ourselves utterly at home in the inexplicable via Ecclesiastes, Job, the lament psalms, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and so many of the other prophets.  Even the books of history are full of stories of injustice and suffering, with no pat answers.  

Then in the New Testament again we find solace in the Passion narratives of Jesus suffering on the cross, and we can also land in 2 Corinthians — yes, the whole ‘tearful’ letter — and verses like James 1:2 leave us wondering!  “Consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters when you face trials of many kinds.”  What that says is there must be a way to healing, but the biblical vista is one of hope grounded in a future perspective of maturity and completeness — much of which is cast forth in the hope in eternity.  Christians are called to endure.  There is suffering here in this life that we can only endure with the help of fellow sojourners.  Trauma predisposes us to crave the love of someone, and ideally a community, who will walk alongside us.  

The human brain is responsible for absorbing stimuli that are anything from the mundane to the potentially traumatic.  The trouble with the brain is when it senses danger, it cannot think logically and can only experience the event — think trauma — for what it is.  The feeling part of the brain is all we have to cope with stimuli that is too quick for the thinking part of our brain to process.  Then when the thinking part of the brain does come on line, it must deal with one hell of a mess.  

For the sufferer (or would-be-sufferer, in the case of those who are about to be impacted by trauma), there is such a temptation — or need — to find an explanation for their suffering.  “There must be some reason for what happened or why it happened or what I’m to do about it, including how I’m to recover, that makes sense,” but there are no neat answers, and we know that the common experience of those who have been traumatised is that it literally sticks inside our bodies, becoming of a sense autonomic, with horrendous, ongoing after effects.  

For the counsellor or would-be-counsellor, as well there is such a temptation to actually bring from oneself a legitimate way of helping, otherwise we would feel we were ripping the client off.  “Surely I must be able to ‘do’ something!”  “Surely I’m to be helpful as a ‘highly trained specialist’ in my ‘field of expertise’.”  

When we bring nothing but our love
into the field of trauma-work,
and we are otherwise an empty vessel
to be filled with another’s pain,
then we are equipped.  

Trauma theology says that all the person needs in their trauma is a faithful witness to that trauma, someone with the discipline to show up and shut up, with the discernment and wisdom to know they are out of their league, but also with the willingness to speak caring truths in defense of the one they walk alongside.  

Central to Christian theology is the suffering servant, Jesus.  If anyone can identify with our trauma, Jesus can.  As can Job.  As can David chased by Saul.  As can many other biblical figures.  

In the Holy Spirit, we have One that “walks alongside” and it is this ministry of Presence that a fellow sojourner has the privilege of undertaking.  It is a slow and enduring work, one done without thought of destination, but fully encapsulated in the word, “journey.”

IMAGE: taken today (10 March 2026) at Piney Lakes, Perth, Western Australia.

Blessed are the Absorbents (a.k.a. Peacemakers)

Life, the wise life I mean, is upside down.  

The true spiritual life is the wise life, and it’s a life that defies the world’s values for a supreme and eternal value set woven into the living, breathing, space-time phenomenon we exist within.  

The world will have us believe that pushing our way around, asserting our authority, taking control of what we can, etc, is the right and best way to live.  

But the precise opposite is true — never do we, however, receive feedback from this world that that is the case.  We can only trust this to be the truth by faith, to absorb other peoples’ pressure, stress, and aggression is the only way to peace and eventual victory.

The more we absorb, the better it is for us.  

The more others spew their garbage toward us and we don’t react, the more their putrid behaviour stands as its own testimony.  

Far better is it in the true spiritual life to be the abused than be the abuser — notwithstanding the judgement facing us in the next life is the judgement that prowls in this life threatening the person who thinks they’ve gotten away with it.  

When a person impugns me, the more I need to gird the temptation to react.  

I need to absorb the threat and respond with kindness, as it’s a reflection of my heart on test.  If I cannot absorb the indignity thrust my way, I’m no better than the aggressor.  If I meet aggression with aggression, I prove my carnality and distance from the Benevolent One.  At which time, I can repent.  

If we believe in the gospel message, we can possibly live the gospel message.  Believing is living, because if we don’t live the way we believe we enter unbelief.  

It makes no sense in the moment to absorb the aggressor’s attack, but as we absorb the attack by choice, we are not observed as a weakling, but as someone strange — “did you see that, how that person did not react?”  This is the witness of Christ in a person’s life, and it is what the world celebrates — once it sees the outcome of the behaviour.  

The only way to beat aggression is to transcend it.  

Life Comes After (Spiritual) Death

Spiritually, life comes after death; a spiritual truth that must be practiced to be realised; a universal truth that works when we work it — plied by faith.  

Life after death — death to selfishness, death of dreams, death of our pride, all kinds of spiritual death — when we allow these ‘deaths’, life beckons; that’s what we Christians practice.  

It’s what makes the maxim “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” real through the cross (death) and resurrection (life) of Jesus.  

This is what it is: the resurrection gives us both life eternal and life temporal.  

Here is how it works in this life:  

Many times in this life we struggle and stumble.  We don’t always get it right and many times we become bewildered by where life takes us.  Some days we just want to give up!  And some days we do!  

All this is normal in any life,
no matter how “good” we’ve got it.  

Life comes into us after we experience spiritual death —
when we come to the end of ourselves.  

When we agree, once again — and it is a repetitive process — that our personal strength can take us only so far — and we need God’s strength — right there, we feel the infilling of God’s Spirit that makes us stronger for the present moment, giving us hope for the tasks ahead.  Life comes after death.  

The key to arriving at the juncture of death (coming to the end of ourselves) is to literally give up.  Acknowledging that our way’s not working is the key point in time when hope rises.  

We may not feel hopeful,
but our prospects are stoked with hope.  

The first step of AA’s Twelve Steps is to admit life is unmanageable without the help of God.  When drunks arrive at Step 1 they’re at their rock bottom, it’s so obvious life is hopeless without help; indeed, they cannot do it without the help of a ‘higher power’.  

Until we’ve been there, low enough to give up trying to do things in our own strength, we don’t truly realise how foundational a spiritual step like this is.  

When you’re at ground zero — bewildered by the depth of the disastrous pit of where our choices have taken us — there is a twofold experience: spiritual death paradoxically amid the spiritual life that beckons if only we steadily trust God each moment.  With each moment out of that kind of hell, the light gets brighter on the horizon.  

The only way is up from a rock bottom.  

I imagine David feeling closest to God when at his rock bottom, when he fell to his knees in utter desolation praying he would not lose God’s Holy Spirit.  It was IN this place that David experienced an absurd, ever replicable reality — God cannot despise a broken and contrite spirit.  God comes close to us when we’re down and out!  

There, in essence, is the key to the moment’s perfection of humility — as we face the truth of the plight we’re in.  This is why life beckons even as we step out of the jaws of spiritual death — out of a reality where the life we’ve led has died.  

There’s no better hope in reality than experiencing life rising out of ashes.  

The more we practice this life, the more life we practice.