I know with certainty that there is hope for the darkest of stories because the Light of the World has come. His name is Jesus, and He brings life to dead places, forgives sins, and heals the broken and wounded.

Given the vast number of suffering & traumatized people, the trauma of this world is one of the supreme opportunities before the church today. Worshiping God means that, in Jesus’ name, we listen & attend to those who are suffering. We MUST enter the trauma of shattered humanity.

The most powerful lie of all is the lie that contains a likeness to the truth in some way. It is how we lull others and ourselves into believing what we prefer to hear instead of believing what is true.

When we speak of God’s redemptive work, we are speaking about a sacrifice that covered unspeakable atrocities, such as incest or genocide. We are also speaking of a sacrifice for things we, at our peril, minimize.

When you sit with someone who is suffering, grieving, or sorrowing, you are sitting face-to-face with a grief that your Lord has carried. There is no tragedy that you will encounter in another’s life or in your own that He has not borne.

Trauma worldwide is a call to God’s people to become like our Savior—love stooping to the uttermost depth to deal with the poison of evil in this world and in our hearts.

When your life is blown up, your faith may be shaken—or even blown apart. Yet this, too, can become a place where God, over time, forges a new and deeper faith.

Oppression is literally a crushing of the image of God in humans. To say or do nothing when power is abused is to contribute to the defacing of God’s image in others. In other words, it is to join with the enemy of God, who sought to destroy that same image.

Trauma is a wound to the mind, the heart, the soul, and often to the body as well. We will help others and honor God when we learn to be like Him—hearing their story and sitting with their tears.

Verbal power is a tremendous power. People who have a command of words, or are articulate, can dominate a conversation, a room, a relationship, a group, or a nation. Words can be used to influence, shape, and encourage or to humiliate, deceive, maneuver, and control.

Whenever abuse is exposed, it creates a crisis, and a crisis is a revealing time. It will reveal the heart of the one who is accused; it will reveal your heart to you; and it will reveal the heart of the structure or organization that is threatened by the truth.

We in the church are hungry to be progressive, to get higher, to have more, to increase our numbers, and to achieve yet another level. Yet, our Savior goes back to gather up the lost things, those that have been left behind. He came to “seek and to save that which was lost.”

Power is a gift of God and is derived from His power. Any use of power that is not Christ-like is corrupt. When one with power uses another for his own ends, the powerful has used the vulnerable for food.

We are called to ALWAYS protect, honor, respect, and care for the small, the vulnerable, and the powerless. To protect is not simply to prevent physical harm—it is acting in a way that bestows dignity, never shame.

Systems that cover up abuse through deception, coercion, or abuse of power mimic the perpetrator and revictimize the victim. Tragically, many lives have been sacrificed on the altar of secrecy for the sake of the church or a perceived noble cause.

Not a single word in the Beatitudes relates to human notions of what a kingdom is like. Human ideas of kingdom building focus on nations, race, tribe, military strength, and wealth. Jesus teaches that greatness in His kingdom is found in the character that reflects His likeness.

“We must oppose every form of alienation, liberate people from every kind of oppression, and denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist.” —The Lausanne Covenant

Scripture makes it clear that the place where God dwells must be both holy and a refuge for the poor and oppressed—both individually and as the body of Christ.

The silence about wrongdoing in our religious institutions can be rationalized and affirmed as a desire to protect the name of God. Such harmful rhetoric from leadership fosters interior silence in the victims and in the followers.

Trauma brings emotional darkness and aloneness because it feels like no one cares and no one could possibly understand. When we are heard by someone who seeks to understand and feel with us, we are no longer isolated and alone in our suffering.

“The single most significant factor in determining whether a religion will be implicated in violence is its identification with a political project and its entanglement with those trying to realize and protect that project.” —Miroslav Volf

You cannot talk people out of suffering, trauma, or great grief. You must go to them, sit with them, listen, and understand; then, little by little, you can begin to walk with them toward a new and different place.

The pursuit of truth reminds us that no matter how much we know or how many people we help, we are always a student, a disciple undergoing training. We are not the Teacher. We are only servants of the Teacher. There is no arrogance at the foot of the cross.

To tolerate sin, pretense, disease, crookedness, or deviation from the truth is to do something other than the work of God, no matter the words used to describe it.

Faith in God is a struggle in ordinary life. Faith in God when we have seen tragedy and trauma is a massive struggle. But it is a good fight because it is a fight against those things that tried to destroy us and make us like themselves.

It is not hard for humans to learn to think that mind-boggling evil and gross injustice is acceptable. It is a little-by-little seduction until we find ourselves thinking of another human being as a nasty, threatening creature not worthy to exist in our world.

When you enter a life in crisis, you will not help if you swoop in, tell people what to do, and take over. You need to leave your comfort and convenience and enter in, little by little, so you can listen, understand, and be touched by their infirmities. It is about them, not you.

So often, rather than suffer involvement with messy injustices and corrupt systems, we choose the quiet/easy way and sin against Justice Himself rather than allow the suffering of others and the injustices they live with daily to alter our schedules, comfort level, & tidy lives.

Many adults judge their childhood experience of abuse as if they had the knowledge and resources of the adult they are now. They see themselves as weak, stupid, bad, or something that caused the abuse. It is a belief with long tentacles, and it takes much time for freedom to come.

Exploitation of the vulnerable person tells us about the exploiter, not the victim of that exploitation, and is always an abuse of power.