Claire Bankole has spent most of her life in ministry working with survivors of trauma. As a survivor herself, she shares truths from God’s word that have become keys to freedom.
As I reflect on my journey of healing from trauma having walked with the Lord through the course of my life, I have realised how aspects of the Christianity that I experienced and was taught kept me braced and fearful before God. Healing has been slow and stunted since I misunderstood the heart of God and his work of redemption.
Most of my life in ministry has been spent working with survivors of trauma, both young and old. In recent years I became profoundly aware that the Lord had entrusted these, his broken ones, to me. As I embraced the call to simply love them well, I embarked on a deeper journey into the heart of God for his broken ones and found that that included me.
This theology is full of joy but it gently challenges those traditions of teaching and practice that keep many from experiencing the heart of God.
It is on this journey that I have discovered four key insights from which a theology for trauma and its healing emerges. This theology is full of joy but it gently challenges those traditions of teaching and practice that keep many from experiencing the heart of God.
We are all entrusted with each other’s brokenness and that of those around us, but too often for survivors of trauma the Christianity we encounter is fraught with triggers that keep us from the fulness of freedom and healing the Lord has for us. The more we let a theology for trauma and its healing shape us and our thinking the better equipped we will be to love well and keep the way open to the heart of God. My hope is that through sharing this treasure and my story in conversations, training and a soon to be completed book, I can help us all love the Lord’s broken ones well.
The more we let a theology for trauma and its healing shape us and our thinking the better equipped we will be to love well and keep the way open to the heart of God
The first key insight was imprinted on me in my early teens as the Holy Spirit met with me one evening: in that moment I realised the Father had known and loved me before the creation of the world (see Ephesians 1:4-5). I remember being blown away by the realisation that God’s love for me was not borne out of pity since it started before my life ‘in flesh and blood’ began. Neither the circumstances of our birth, nor our family of origin is where our story begins. Our origin story begins with the words, ‘Before the world was made you were known and loved’.
The second key is that this God who has known and loved you since before he made the world is the Triune Creator God, and he is Love. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one heart, one mind, one purpose, and they are equal; they have different roles but they are One. God is Love, the life within the Triune God is Love, and the life that flows from the Trinity is Love. All this is our starting point when we consider how the Father, Son and Holy Spirit operate to bring about the rescue and redemption of the world and of you and I.
The third key flows out of the first two; God is on a mission. The Triune Creator God is Love, and his mission is the restoration of his entire creation, of his beloved humanity. ‘Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.’ When he comes again all will be made new and restored, but in the meantime he is already at work in love bringing about this New Creation. Where the first key held our origin story, this third key holds our destiny. The life we find ourselves living on this earth right now, however dark and horrific, is not all that there is to our story. We are beloved you and I, and our story will not be over until he has made everything right and new again.
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The fourth and last key, hidden in plain sight, is the one I have discovered most recently. It has to do with the powerlessness of God. It is in powerlessness that this all powerful, all-knowing God destroys the hold of sin and death over his creation. Stripped naked, nailed to a cross and emptied of all strength he wades into the depths of the horror and pain of our brokenness and sin. And today in the midst of my horror of the sexual abuse I suffered, I discover that he is here. Not the strong hero come to my rescue, moved with pity yet impervious to my pain. No. He is here, beside me, crying my tears, giving words to my anguish as he cries out for me and with me ‘My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?’. And all of sudden, I find I am no longer forsaken or alone, and redemption begins.
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