“There could be just some trauma there,” said the doctor assessing my condition. His statement left me reflecting on my highly singular use of the word ‘trauma’. The doctor, of course, was talking about a localised condition where an area of tissue has suffered trauma.
I got to thinking how medical trauma, like psychological trauma, can involve localised effects or more global effects, radiating out to the effect of an existentially felt trauma, where an entire human being feels encumbered by the effects of the trauma.
The eggshell skull rule, predicated as a legal recourse to violence, specifies that the person violating another will bear whatever consequence their violence causes, for they will be held legally responsible for the effects of their violence; whether the victim has a rocklike skull, or one made of eggshell. See how the same acts of violence will have vastly different impacts, and there is a law that sides with the actual impact suffered by the victim.
Some traumas are local in effect for some and more global in effect for others.
And global effects are devastating in terms of hopes for healing and for the vastness in the variety of the effects experienced, whereas local effects are more easily contained to the source of the wounding and healing is contingent only on the right process. This said, in terms of psychological trauma meted out, those who cause much of the globally felt trauma are more globally problematic in their narcissism.
Much of what trauma survivors of abuse have experienced is of the global, existential, whole of person kind. These were no one-offs, considering the grooming that often goes on beforehand, or the environmental circumstances—the toxicity—and the image protection of denial and or minimisation that goes on afterward. The traumatic event may be one-off, however.
All the damage done is sited in one moment or perhaps more than one, but these are always upheld on a mountain of lies within the region of time, the manipulation of hope, the transgression of innocence, and the gall of the demonic. Anyone who quarries power and believes they’re innocent of harm done to another in their midst on their watch has a case to answer.
~
Trauma bleeds its way viscerally, furrowing into every fissure, and it wreaks havoc at a soul level. The goodness of God, however, within divinity’s marvellously immaculate design, is that through faith and the light of life, such devastation can be transmuted into the change of transformation, and a new life path unfolds.
From the cross of our trauma we’re resurrected to a purpose that focuses our life on healing, especially as we’re used as wounded healers in the healing of others.But this is no localised trauma we’re dealing with. And only those who have been wounded globally will be able to help those who have significantly more than local trauma to deal with, but they will need to make significant and satisfactory inroads on their own healing journey first.
What man has meant for evil, God can turn for good, but not through some filthy theology that pretends justice is done when it isn’t. Men who do their abuse and cannot concede intentionality are the most dangerous ones of all. But it’s not only men. There are women who support such men, who even idolise them, and there is a deeper, even more global trauma as a result, and the risk is of existential harm in the abused.
Today’s church has a unique mission field. Its ‘lost’ are not always those who don’t know Jesus, but within their ranks are those who may believe but who have been significantly bitten, betrayed and bruised by those who claim to be believers in Jesus. These are those vulnerable ones I’m sure Jesus spoke about in Matthew 18:6-9. True believers are full of light and bring the Spirit’s healing wherever they go. Nobody can claim to be Jesus’ friend and wilfully exploit others.
We are coming to a day when those who have suffered global trauma of abuse will have their reparation ground. They will be taken seriously. They will be defended. The Spirit of Jesus is rising up to conquer the falsehoods of faith and doctrinal absurdities that have crouched deep within the church for so long.
And finally, could it be that the initial abuse is more a local abuse and the refusal of the perpetrator to confess and repent is the more global abuse? This is not to say that in and of itself an initial abuse doesn’t cause its own devastating trauma, for it so often does, but how much worse, how much more global, is the trauma when the crimes are denied?
If justice is to be a hope for healing for peace for trauma sufferers, justice must be the next revelation, the coming realisation, of a present and coming reformation.
Such a hope must be a catalyst for action and change. Without action there is no reformation. The reformation we may speak of wouldn’t shirk away from those who bear the scars of a more global impact of trauma, for that is where the heart of healing goes—in a triage that cares as much for those who are most lost as compared with those who are least lost. This is where Jesus went, and it’s where we need to go too.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
No comments:
Post a Comment