Category Archives: Christianity

May 14, 2021 · 3:04 pm

You are NOT alone webinar, 5.19.21


May is Mental Health Awareness month and so it is a good time to talk about how the church can be a place of safety for the millions of Americans who are facing emotional and mental health challenges, whether a result of COVID or other chronic conditions. Did you know, when individuals are part of supportive faith communities, they tend to recover more quickly than those who are isolated and alone?

Join me as I talk with Rev. Dr. Nicole Martin and Toni Collier about improving how we care well for wounded people. I’ll be unveiling some brand new, easy-to-use tools to help Christians bring healing and hope to their communities

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September 12, 2017 · 6:20 am

The disconnect with some creeds: statements vs. conversation; orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy


If you read much news about Christianity then you may be aware of the “Nashville Statement.” It has surfaced in a number of locations with much commentary pro and con. There are those who disagree with the affirmations and denials, those who agree, and those who may agree–at least in part–but find something important missing. This final group commonly notices the cold expression of facts and beliefs that seems devoid of human connection. It appears to these individuals that love and relationship are missing, that it is a statement about people rather than to people.

At the same time, I am reading Heal us, Emmanuel: A Call for Racial Reconciliation, Representation, and Unity in the Church. This is an edited volume containing the voices of Presbyterian pastors from all walks of life about race problems in the church. Though a book about an entirely different subject as the Nashville Statement, there are two details that might help us identify the significant limitations of creedal statements:

  • Ideological statements vs. redemptive conversations. When talking about the problems of racial disunity in the United States it could be easy to mis-understand which conversation we should be having at a given time. While it is good to discuss what we think are the facts, causes, and solutions to systemic discrimination, sometimes those conversations are destructive. For example, if you begin to talk about an injustice you just experienced and the listener responds by saying, “well, that might have happened but it really isn’t a big problem” chances are you will not continue long in that conversation. Why not? You were not loved, not listened to, not shown compassion. What you needed was someone to validate you and to show concern for your experience. Statements of belief, important as they are, rarely meet people in their pain and confusion. Pastoral letters often do as they invite the other into a conversation. This point is made by Rev Lance Lewis in chapter 1 (especially on pages 3-6). In that section he suggests that ideological/political conversations alone “rob us of the opportunity to show genuine concern and love for the Black community.” Conversations, on the other hand, start with experience and move towards grounding in redemptive and theological foundations.
  • Creedal orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy. In chapter 5, “We’ve come this far by faith” Rev Stan Long makes this statement, “Dr. [Carl] Ellis once stated that for the White Christian community, creedal orthodoxy is supreme. It is the primary evaluative tool. However, for the Black Christian community, ethical orthopraxy is supreme. We determine  the authenticity of one’s confession through ethics, not creed.” Creedal statements often talk about facts in the abstract and rarely how it looks on the ground, in real life. Statements such as these, especially about what others should do/not do, might better start out with the author’s own failings to love the other well. While creeds are important–the church often recites ancient creeds each Sunday–what one does after the service tells us more about whether those creeds mean much.

As a Presbyterian, I am a creedal Christian. I do think there are lines to be drawn in life. There are boundaries to be observed and even protected. There are beliefs to be stated in black and white text. However, I don’t think creeds make good conversationalists as they cannot provide in-the-moment wisdom (who am I talking to, what do they need now?) nor do they reveal the kind of person you are and have been to the other person in the conversation. And if we creedal Christians are honest, we have not always done well engaging the ones we believe are operating outside the lines we cherish.

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April 20, 2017 · 5:52 pm

Historic child abuse prevention course


Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment and my seminary, Biblical Seminary, have teamed up to offer a 3 credit course for seminarians on the topic of child sexual abuse prevention and response. This course will run on our Hatfield campus on Monday nights during the month of June. To my knowledge, a course like this has not been offered before. I highly encourage you to send your pastors or church leaders for some continuing education.

Press release and details here: Curriculum Press Release or go to the BTS site to see it here.

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March 27, 2017 · 11:00 am

Trauma and the Church presentation this Friday night


This weekend, Foundations Christian Counseling is hosting a 2 day conference, Counsel From the Cross at Spruce Lake Retreat. I will be speaking Friday night (8 pm) on “The Cross, the Church, and Trauma: Making the Church a Safe Place for Victims of Trauma.” Use the 2nd link above to register for the day or the weekend.

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November 21, 2016 · 6:00 am

Lament During Thanksgiving?


First published November 2013 at www.biblical.edu, this continues to be my primary experience today and so I offer you it again, slightly revised.

Thanksgiving is that time of year when we get together with family to enjoy good food, maybe a football game, and to be thankful for God’s provision during the past year. Sometimes, though, we don’t feel all that thankful. Yes, we recognize that God indeed has given us many good things, things like food, water, salary, housing, and the like. We acknowledge that we have no rights to demand these things. We acknowledge that there are many who are far worse off. Given recent events, we can imagine how much more blessed we are than those who refugees from civil wars in the Middle East.

And yet, despite our knowledge of grace and mercy, there are times when all we notice are the broken things in our lives—our bodies, our families, our communities.

I confess this is my state this Thanksgiving. I won’t bore you with the details but I struggle to stay focused on the many good things God has given me.

But it might surprise you that though I am noticing a lot of brokenness, I am not embittered or angry with God. I am full of lament. I lament the length of time it is taking God to act in some matters. I lament how much active and passive hatred for the other is present, even in there is in our Christian communities! Have we not lost love for those we consider outsiders? I lament that Jesus has not returned and ended death and suffering.

I am thankful for lament

Here’s what I am thankful for. We serve a God who has encouraged us to lament to him. Laments are cries of our heart where we question God (sometimes even accuse as in Psalmfile-nov-19-7-46-37-am 89), cry out for relief, ask for understanding, and grieve over sins done by self and others. Think about this for a moment: what King in all the earth not only invites such communication but even writes words for his subjects? He is not afraid of our questions or our complaints. Giving him such can be an act of worship.

Enter Isaiah 64. Isaiah is a book of confrontation of sin, call for holiness, prediction of judgment, and vision of restoration. In addition, we find windows of Isaiah’s lament for what is going to unfold for Israel. Listen to portions of his lament and some of my commentary:

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you.

Ok Lord, act already. Do it! What are you waiting for?

But when we continued to sin against them [the vulnerable, the righteous], you were angry…all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…no one calls on your name…you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins.

We so deserve your wrath Lord, but we are wasting away here Lord, if you don’t help us!

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure O Lord…Oh, look upon us, we pray, for we are your people.

Lord, we know you are our creator. We deserve no special recognition. Yet, remember we are your image bearers. Oh Lord, shape us, don’t destroy us.

Thankful I can vacillate?

Notice how Isaiah 64 and other laments (e.g., Psalm 42-43; Habakkuk, the book of Lamentations) bounce between recalling God’s goodness, questioning his plans, grieving own sin, yet imploring God to vindicate. Are these writers wishy-washy?

I don’t think so. Too often we think the best theology is all neat and tidy:

Problem + Victorious God = No Problem

While this will be true one day, it isn’t yet. And so we lament in vacillating and non-linear ways. Even as we proclaim God’s sovereign power, we also acknowledge that we are in great turmoil. These laments give us examples of how to hold on to our faith even as we have no answer for the moment. We are not required to end on a happy note. Look back at Psalms 42-3. See how the Psalmist cries out in despair, recalls better times, enjoins himself to hope in God, but then again remembers that he is great pain. Notice that neither Lamentations nor Habakkuk end in victory for the “good guys.” Lamentations, like Isaiah 64, ends with a question mark—“if you haven’t forgotten us already?” Habakkuk acknowledges the victory of being able to praise God in a terrible famine, but that doesn’t remove suffering or the reason for the lament in the first place (ongoing sin by Israel and her destruction by a pagan nation).

So, I’m thankful this season that we worship a great God capable of holding our laments and recording our tears. I am thankful that I do not have to pretend all is well for fear God will strike me down. He knows my pain. He has suffered in every way and so is a High Priest who can relate to my feelings of abandonment. And he is working for our future Good. But for now, I can lament that it (victory) hasn’t arrived in its fullest form and take comfort in a more realistic equation:

Problem + Presence of God = I Lament and am Not Alone

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October 24, 2016 · 9:39 am

Is God eternally traumatized?


The first words of Alwyn Lau’s “Saved By Trauma” essay remind us that the work of Jesus Christ on the cross is the foundation and center point for all of Christianity.§ Without the cross, there is no Christian faith.

The Christian faith is centered around the historical trauma of the suffering, death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus. Christian theological reflection starts from and eventually relates back to the work of Christ. Indeed, for some theologians, the resurrection points back to and affirms the cross. The apostle Paul’s declaration that the Christian pronunciation is essentially “Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23) ontologically entrenches trauma, destabilization, and anxiety at the heart of kerygymatic [sic] proclamation. (p.273)

Sit with that last sentence a bit. Christianity is at its core or essence a faith wrapped up in trauma. Yes, there is an all-important resurrection, but a resurrection cannot happen without a traumatic story (false-blame, injustice, torture, abandonment, and death). If Christianity is ANYTHING, then it is a faith that takes seriously the impact of brokenness.

So then, Lau makes an important next point about what a Christian theology should provide:

Theology proffers a distinct vocabulary to talk about personal and interpersonal wounding and trauma; the Christian community approximates a traumatic community. (ibid)

Victims of trauma ought to find great comfort and help from Christian leaders and communities because they observe a community that really gets their experience, both by word and deed.

Are we that community?

Or, are we a bit more like Job’s friends? Consider Lau again,

 Job’s friends, in presenting all kinds of explanations for why Job suffered the tragedies he did, were attempting to obscure the trauma of the truth of evil in the world. Job’s disagreement–and God’s eventual vindication and endorsement of his views over against that of his friends–demonstrated resilience in the face of such tempting illusions of closure. Job refused to look away from the void in his pain. He refused to accept cheap solutions to the problem and “causes” of his suffering. (p. 274)

To become a safe community for victims of trauma, we must continue to highlight that God and trauma are put together (albeit willingly) for eternity in the abandonment and death of Jesus on the cross. In this God takes trauma (injustice, torture, and death) into his own being–no longer does it exist in creation.  Again in the words of Lau, we need a “theology of Holy Saturday” if we are going to show that “hope can be spoken of only within the context of injustice, negativity, and despair; the joy and the Lordship of Christ takes place in and through sickness, death, and sin.” (ibid)

“If God’s being cannot be comprehended without factoring in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ…” (p. 275) then consider this statement:

“If indeed God suffers in the cross of Jesus in reconciling the world to himself, then there must always be a cross in the experience of God as he deals with a world which exists over against him.” (quote of Paul Fiddes in Lau, p. 275)

God is defined by trauma. But he, unlike creation, is not weakened by this trauma. Rather, Lau encourages us to see that “the God self-revealed  and depicted in the Judeo-Christian tradition is a begin who, out of love for the created order, chose the trauma of death as a central facet of God’s self-definition.” (276) In an immeasurable act of love that had been present in God from eternity past, God chooses self-sacrifice to break the power of sin and death. And since this love is not temporal, then neither is God’s character ever without the knowledge and drive to reconcile a people to himself–even through trauma.

So what? What if we really understood God’s experience of trauma?

  1. The church would follow her head in the care of the most vulnerable even at the cost of her own comfort and safety. “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he has brought justice through to victory.” (Matt 12:20, quote of Isaiah 42:3)
  2. The church would regularly make room for lament (individual and corporate) as acts of faithful worship. Like Thomas, we need to see the wounds that remain in the risen Christ.
  3. Hope would be illustrated in her ability to equally cry out about the “not yet” part of God’s present kingdom even while she looks for the “already” present redemption and healing. There is as much hope in Psalm 88 and Lamentation 3 as there is in Revelation 21.

 

§Lau, A. (2016). Saved by trauma: A psychoanalytical reading of the atonement. Dialog, 55, 273-281.

 

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October 8, 2016 · 2:17 pm

Using the news to explore our difficulties with apologies


Given the news in the last 24 hours about one politician’s indecent language (and his subsequent “apology”), it seems like a good time to review the human tendency to defend ourselves and shift blame. We’ve been doing this since Adam and Eve blamed others for their fall. But rather than shrug our shoulders or think we are better then politicians, let’s use this opportunity to remember what constitutes a good apology. Consider reading some of these previous posts and discussing with your friends. Ask yourselves where you need to grow:

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April 1, 2016 · 7:00 am

Making the Church a Safe Place for victims of abuse


This Saturday I will be attending and presenting Cairn University’s Faith in Practice conference hosted by their counseling center and department (free but you need to register). I will be speaking about how we can make the church a safer place for adult victims of abuse and trauma. If you want to peak at the slides, click here: 2016 Cairn U Presentation.

The presentation that I will do will only be one hour so that limits what I can do. What I wish I could do is also talk much more about the systemic factors that make churches less safe places for vulnerable people. While we can all grow in better understanding the nature of trauma and how to walk alongside victims, our institutions can be systematically harmful, even when the individuals within the system have no intention to hurt others. Thus we need to keep examining the ways our systems operate that can be toxic to some. While this presentation doesn’t cover these questions, it can be good to ask,

  1. How do we handle recent or older allegations of mis-handling difficult cases?
  2. How do we handle allegations of child abuse (the victims, the family, the alleged perpetrator and family, and congregation)?
  3. Are we a safe place for people who are broken and not all tidied up?
  4. Does our system allow for ongoing lament? (Corporate and individual)?

 

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March 23, 2016 · 5:46 pm

Defining an influential church


Take a minute right now and consider what churches you know would make your list of “influential” churches? What criteria would you use? Number of members? Growth? A well-known and revered senior pastor? Active in the community? A killer social media presence?

G. Campbell Morgan talks about influential churches in his commentary on the book of Acts. In discussion of the Spirit-led apostolic sermon in Acts 2, Morgan notes that influence then meant that the people were amazed at what they saw, interested enough to inquire (even if they were “perplexed” and even dismissive) and were attracted to join. How did these churches show lasting favor? Beyond the initial flame of the first days of growth, church members giving generously to each other indicates “influence.” When members are willing (not coerced) to give out of their own hearts then that church can be called influential.

The influential Church is the company of loyal souls who ‘continue steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and in the breaking of bread and the prayers,’ who eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, who manifest in their individual lives and corporate capacity the strength, the beauty, the glory, the compassion of the Christ. Wherever there is such a Church you will find the Church that has favour with the people.

Faking influence?

In 1924 when this book was published, here’s the kind of church that Morgan felt was called “influential” for wrong reasons,

We call a Church influential now because of the kind of people that attend it, because of the money which it raises for philanthropic objects.

I suspect we could add to this short list other forms of “influence” as how many people visit the church website, the number of times quoted in Christianity Today, or the number of satellite locations.

Is your church influential?

I suppose a few key questions might help us assess our own churches:

1. Are we better known, as a corporate body, for being compassionate or correct? Would your church be attractive to new refugees coming into your community?

2. How connected are the people who regularly attend? Would new attenders want to join in smaller cell groups?

3. Are outsiders perplexed and amazed by what the church is doing and teaching? For example (and these are examples admittedly come from my domain of counseling), does your church ever say anything about mental health issues? Does your church talk about the scourge of addiction–in a compassionate way? Does it talk about domestic violence in ways that do not suggest that staying together is more important than safety?

These questions should not be asked so much of the individuals within the church (though that isn’t a bad thing to do) but of the corporate identity.

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January 4, 2016 · 3:00 pm

An open wound community? How can the church tackle racism?


Last February, BTS held a public dialogue on Temple’s campus entitled: From Protest to Process: Law Enforcement, Race, and Trauma, How Can the Church Become a Healing Community (the title tells you academics were involved in the process–but the topic was anything but just academic). During the Q and A time, there were several questions about what the church can do to help.

Any answer has to acknowledge that getting our heads and hearts wrapped around the problem and our wills engaged to be part of the solution is a monumental task–because it calls us to a place of discomfort. Take a minute and consider Dr. Shannon Mason’s initial  two minute response: Can the church become an open wound community? Or will She prefer to close the wound and pretend that what is underneath is healed? While Dr. Mason’s illustration can be difficult to stomach, it is nevertheless apt!

BTS Trauma Seminar from Temple from Biblical Seminary on Vimeo.

Soon after the dialogue, I wrote the following just published piece for the BTS faculty blog. I list two small steps that suburban, predominantly white, congregations can take towards making a difference in our even more racially charged world. Surely we can do more that what I suggest, but if we don’t start with ownership of the problems, how will we ever engage?

Finally, you might think that race in America is a hopeless case. It sure seems so. But one-by-one, if we can have an impact on one person’s life, and that person has a positive impact on one other…then everything is possible. It may not be in our life-time and that is okay. We are not called to win the battle but to run the race set out before us.

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