The Way We Engage Our Stories: Part 3: Trauma Can Distort our Perception of The Bible
As I have been writing this series, I started off with a list of posts that I wanted to write, but as I dig into each topic, I keep wanting to take more time to unfold and go deeper, so this series is turning out to be a lot longer, and this week’s post is just a little tiny stepping stone to get started into the topics I introduced last week about what Scripture has to say to us regarding our suffering and how our trauma is not a good hermeneutic for reading the Bible.
I want to plainly state what I see happening in the aftermath of so much of our collective trauma awareness as a culture to explain why I feel so strongly that a warning is needed about how we engage with our stories.
The Good
There is a growing awareness of the issues of abusive pastors and leaders within the church, and knowing the warning signs of abusive leadership.
The church is also being cleaned up because of the exposure of many false shepherds.
Survivors can understand and name what happened to them and seek healing.
We can care for one another in wiser and more trauma informed ways within the church.
We understand the importance of churches being safe, both in preventing abuse and taking it seriously, and in receiving survivors and caring well for them.
The Bad
There are wolves in this survivor movement, that want to prey on the vulnerability of the traumatized.
There is an overuse of words like abuse, trauma, toxic, narcissist, and other terms, and when everything is abuse and trauma, then nothing is.
We are too preoccupied with safety as the end goal of our faith and life.
Survivors can tend to find their identity wrapped in a trauma diagnosis, which can lead to other damaging beliefs about themselves and God.
When survivors are too focused on trauma and the need for safety, they miss out on learning to be resilient and obtain skills and tools to press through difficult or scary things (why seeing a personalized care and qualified counseling and not relying on social media therapy culture is very important!)
Survivors are tempted to view everything through the lens or worldview as trauma survivor, and this becomes especially dangerous when we approach the text of Scripture.
I realize that I just opened up a big can of worms, and I also plan to take the time to unfold each of the above “bad” points, as I continue these Friday posts, but to start, I want focus on the last point on the list. Trauma is not a good hermeneutic and we need to be very careful that we don’t let our traumatic stories distract us from the greater narrative that is being told in Scripture.
A hermeneutic is simply a method of interpretation. Our trauma does not make a good hermeneutic because the effects of trauma and the unbiblical teachings within “trauma culture” (I don’t know what else to call this for now) pose the risk of making us biased as we approach the text, potentially causing us to miss what the text is saying. The Bible tells us what it is about, and there are a several guiding principles we must use as we read the text if we are to understand it properly, including understanding the original intent of the author, letting scripture interpret scripture, and seeing the overarching story of the grand redemptive narrative of the text. The Bible is telling us one unified story and the Bible is about God.
I would like to invite you to look at Scripture from the perspective God has given us within His Word. Full disclosure, I am coming at this from a confessionally reformed perspective, and so I will be quoting from the Westminster Standards when applicable as we work our way through these ideas in the coming posts. I will quote and leave the scripture proofs in the footnotes and encourage you to pause and spend time studying each one. Additionally, If you are new to the idea of confessions and catechisms, a simple explanation is that the confessions summarize the core doctrine of Scripture can be found here.
Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 1.1:
I. Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable;a yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation;b therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his Church;c and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing;d which maketh the holy Scripture to be most necessary;e those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased1.f
I wanted to quote this entire section because it tells us why Scripture is necessary. Essentially, this is saying that what we observe around us that gives us information about certain aspects of God, but is not sufficient for us to have the specific information we need for the knowledge of salvation, so God spoke in the past through many ways (think OT prophets and NT apostles), to reveal Himself and declare His will, that time of God speaking through prophets and apostles is finished and we have all the ways God spoke through them written as The Bible.
WCF 1.2 lists the sixty-six books of the Bible and tell us that they all “are given by inspiration of God, to the rule of faith and life2.”
And finally, The Westminster Larger Catechism Question 5 asks, “What do the Scriptures principally teach? And answers, “The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man3.”
To summarize everything up to this point:
The Scriptures are necessary, given by inspiration of God for faith and life, and teach principally what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.
This is the starting point for us as I take us down this path of what Scripture has to say to us and our trauma stories. The Bible is not meant to be a text that we can take and make it our own to make statements for our particular issues of interest, but a place for us to lay down what we have experienced, and let the truth of Scripture illuminate our hearts and stories by the power of the Holy Spirit. God, the Maker of all, who knows us completely, and knows far better than any finite trauma informed person the effects of trauma on His creation, and nothing can separate us from His love.
a.Psa 19:1-3; Rom 1:19-20; 1:32 with Rom. 2:1; 2:14-15. • b. 1 Cor 1:21; 2:13-14. • c. Heb 1:1. • d. Prov 22:19-21; Isa 8:19-20; Mat 4:4, 7, 10; Luke 1:3-4; Rom 15:4. • e. 2 Tim 3:15; 2 Pet 1:19. • f. Heb 1:1-2.
a. Luke 16:29, 31; Eph 2:20; 2 Tim 3:16;Rev 22:18-19.
2 Tim 1:13