Page 109 - Biblical Counseling II

“Spiritual Responses
We all long for peace and joy. We don’t like difficulty, tension, or sadness. We love the Resurrection, but we
don’t like to linger too long on Good Friday. The trouble is, suffering is a real part of the broken world we live
in. The 23rd Psalm, with its green pastures and quiet waters, follows the 22nd, which begins, “My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” And
yet, how do we fully understand the real meaning and joy of Resurrection Sunday without fully
understanding the weight, the suffering, and the grief of Good Friday? Scripture, particularly the Old
Testament, is full of stories of trauma. We don’t tend to dwell on those. We prefer the verses that make us
feel calm and happy. However, we can learn key lessons about facing our trauma and the anxiety that it
causes from these stories.

Facing Trauma requires honesty about our pain.
I wish that just reciting a passage of Scripture was all you needed to do to heal from the trauma behind it, but
God’s Word is not intended to be our Zoloft (Zoloft is a medication that helps with depression and anxiety). It
must be understood in its full, overarching narrative. The stories in the Old Testament often detail painful
circumstances, unimaginable injustice, and uncertain futures. They also picture a relentless God who
pursues and intervenes for good, even when the circumstances seem hopeless or dire. Our own stories are
much the same.

Part of healing from our trauma is to stop hiding from our reality and attempting to paint a happy face on
it. Instead, we must confess it, allow it to come into the light, and lament it. Biblically, this was done
well. Lamentations illustrates how we can grieve deeply about our sin through the story of the subsequent
captivity of the nation of Israel. Job expresses despair as he wrestles with devastating loss despite his
upstanding lifestyle. One of the reasons that so many details are given through the Old Testament is so we
can rest assured that God cares about the truth of our details. We can bring our pain into the light, because
only then can it be dealt with properly.

Facing Trauma requires Grief over the loss.
Consider the rape of Tamar by her brother, Amnon. “She put ashes on her head and tore the ornate robe
she was wearing. She put her hands on her head and went away, weeping aloud as she went… And Tamar
lived in her brother Absalom’s house, a desolate woman.” (2 Sam. 13:19, 20b) Absalom was so angry at the
injustice done to his sister he later had Amnon killed. David believed all his sons had been killed, and he
“tore his clothes and lay on the ground.” Later, when the other sons arrived, they were “wailing loudly. The
king, too, and all his servants wept bitterly.” And “King David mourned many days for his son.”

Place this story in modern times. What would Tamar likely have done? Perhaps been too ashamed to act
like anything was wrong. Tried to go on with life and stuff down how she felt. Worried that people might
accuse her of coming on to Amnon. And would we ever see grown men grieving so deeply that they lay on
the floor or tore their clothes or wailed loudly together?

I love the Psalms because we see that David doesn’t just sing songs that make him feel happy. He expresses
his anger, his frustration, his confusion, his sadness, his weakness, and then he engages with who God is in
the midst of that grief. He doesn’t stay wallowing in his mess, but neither does he ignore it.

107