In recent years, trauma has become a dominant lens for how we interpret and communicate our experiences to one another. We find it in books and podcasts, therapy and counseling offices, and everyday conversations with family and friends. Given its widespread influence, it makes sense to pause and consider: Is viewing trauma as the defining characteristic of our lives helpful?
There have been echoes of concern as the wider culture wrestles with this question. Articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, and Vox have offered critique, noting that current views of trauma have reshaped how we view the human experience and that “trauma” has even become a meaningless term because it’s used so often.
The book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk has been a significant voice in popularizing the term “trauma.” Positively, Van der Kolk’s work helps people understand the physiological effects of trauma. As a counselor, I’ve found value in the increasing awareness of how trauma can affect a person. But I’ve wondered if trauma-directed narratives can skew our understanding of ourselves and others.
How the Trauma Narrative Helps and Hurts
On one hand, the growing awareness of trauma makes good sense. When you’ve experienced something painful—or traumatic—of course it affects you cognitively, emotionally, spiritually, and physiologically. These experiences can and do shape our lives in various obvious and inadvertent ways.
Our society hasn’t historically understood or responded with consideration for all the ways trauma can affect a person. A course correction is helpful. To whatever degree others may have dismissed or misunderstood painful events in a person’s life, it’s good for us to have a better understanding of how he or she is affected by trauma.
On the other hand, we increasingly relate to one another through the lens of trauma and use that lens to develop self-understanding. Why do I do the things I do and think the way I think? Why do I respond in this particular way in these kinds of situations? Books like Van der Kolk’s are sought for guidance on how to understand trauma’s effects and for solutions to navigating life after trauma. But these issues are worldview-laden. How we answer questions about people and our response to suffering are rooted in assumptions about God, the nature of humanity, and the world. So as Christians, it’s wise to ask: How does the trauma lens fit with a biblical worldview? How does the gospel relate to trauma?
The Bible affirms the beautifully complex way we’ve been created, acknowledging the role of the spiritual, social, and physiological spheres, while simultaneously teaching we have some autonomy to choose how we respond to the world around us. If the current views of trauma compel us to focus primarily on one dimension of our humanity (our experiences and physiological responses), we risk a reductionist view of ourselves and others. We take one truth about ourselves, make it the primary influence of our lives, and end up with a skewed picture of the human experience.
What the Bible Says About Trauma
We take one truth about ourselves, make it the primary influence of our lives, and end up with a skewed picture of the human experience.
It’s important to realize the Bible does speak to trauma. It doesn’t use that word, but biblical authors are honest about the full range of painful and shocking experiences people can walk through. The Bible uses the lens of suffering for trauma—suffering due to the sins of others, suffering due to living in a fallen world, and suffering due to our sinful choices. Traumatic experiences can fit all three categories.
The consistent message of the Bible is that all of life exists in relationship to God. Suffering is no exception. We see both in the Bible and in our lives that God often relates to us through trials and suffering (trauma) in specific and meaningful ways.
Current secular literature on trauma will obviously neglect this point. It can still be helpful, as current theories and narratives on trauma will validate our pain and offer explanations for our responses. But if we stop there, we’ll miss the bigger and more hopeful picture of how God relates to us in our suffering. As Christians, the most important things we consider in our painful traumatic experiences are who God is, how he meets us in our pain, and how he uses our suffering to form us.
Four Biblical Responses to Trauma
What then does a Christian response to trauma look like? I suggest four actions that can help us process our pain biblically.
1. Continually turn toward the Lord in suffering
The Psalms offers dozens of examples of how to honestly explore our pain with the Lord, ask for his help, and remind ourselves of God’s goodness, worthiness, and faithfulness amid our pain. Throughout the Bible, we’re continually implored to engage relationally with God in suffering, and the Psalms gives us many illustrations of lament. That the longest book in the Bible is devoted to examples of prayer in all circumstances should encourage us to engage honestly and fully with God in our pain.
2. Consider how the situation can make you more like Jesus
If the goal of our lives is to glorify God, what does that look like in a traumatic situation? To be clear, glorifying God includes living in grace and truth toward others. Abuse requires us to be honest about the reality of our situation with ourselves, with proper authorities, and with people who can help. It requires us to seek counsel and to take wise steps to prevent such mistreatment from occurring again.
But where the world would compel us to believe hope is found in healthier relational experiences or finding emotionally satisfying resources within ourselves, we should recognize that solutions pointing primarily to other people or ourselves are limited and often skewed. We may need help in determining what growing in Christlikeness looks like in our particular context, but this remains God’s goal for us in trials (Rom. 8:28–29).
3. Consider spiritual realities alongside physical ones
In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, he describes a great deal of suffering—floggings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, sleeplessness, hunger, and more (2 Cor. 11:23–27). This makes what he says earlier in the same letter much more astounding. Paul encourages us with hope that transcends suffering, explaining, “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (4:17–18, NIV).
Scripture assures us that Christ, our high priest, sympathizes with us and cares for us in times of need (Heb. 4:14–16). But it also continually points us to unseen spiritual truths that give us hope amid suffering (Eph. 1:3–14).
4. Reduce suffering where possible
Our ultimate goal cannot be relief from suffering. And yet if there are steps we can take to mitigate our own or someone else’s suffering while pursuing the glory of God, we should always, always do so. Jesus had compassion on the lowly, the suffering, the sinful, and the hurting. He eased burdens while pointing people to himself and to the hope we have in his life, death, and resurrection.
The point isn’t that trauma is OK because God has purposes in it. And yet trauma doesn’t get the final word.
There must be balance as we seek to understand ourselves and our experiences through the lens of trauma. The point isn’t that trauma is OK because God has purposes in it. And yet trauma doesn’t get the final word on who we are and what we do. God doesn’t save us from trials, mistreatments, or suffering—but he is at work in them, and he redeems through them. In Christ, we aren’t merely victims of our experiences. We were designed to glorify God and live in relationship with him, and that should fundamentally shape how we think about trauma.
By Beth Claes / Is the Trauma Narrative Helpful? (thegospelcoalition.org)
Beth Claes is the director of counseling at New Heights Church in Vancouver, Washington. She has a doctorate in psychology and practiced from a traditional psychological perspective for 10 years before shifting to a gospel-centered counseling approach. She is married with three children. More of her writing is available on her blog, Wrestled Faith.
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