Understanding
the relationship between faith and healing is essential when ministering
to the sufferers and victims of sin. All human beings are Han. All need healing from the effects of sin committed against
them. This wounding ranges from minor to profound, but those who are wounded
deeply are often the most difficult people for the church to minister to. They
are often fearful, angry, poor in relationships, self-hurting, self-medicating
(generally with disastrous results), and easily triggered.[1]
Distrusting of God and anyone who has anything to do with Him, they are quick
to run away, and their behavior can frustrate and wear out people who attempt
to care for them. At times it even seems they want to prove the depths of their
woundedness by demonstrating how intractable it is. Ministry to plain old
sinners seems easier.
A church that ministers to the sinned against must
recognize the fundamentals that are central to its success, especially for the
deeply wounded. There are other principles, but these are the most important
things a church desiring to minister to the sinned against must understand and
incorporate in its ministry:
- It must be safe. The complete requirements of a safe environment are beyond the scope of this paper, but they include having windows in doors, leaving doors open, including others in counseling or prayer, asking permission to touch or hug, using appropriate language, and being authentic and ready to confess or respond to offense.[2]
- It must understand the gospel for the Han and how they hear it.
- It must understand and teach the gospel for sinners. The sinned against also have things in their lives they need to confess so God can forgive them.
- It must not pressure the sinned against to forgive without understanding what forgiveness is and is not.
- It must seek to have patience born not of human strength, but of God. Han (especially the deeply hurt) are seldom healed quickly, often revert to self-destructive behavior, and often quit or relapse just as everything looks greatly hopeful. This should not come as a surprise.
- It must be alert to conscious and unconscious manipulation by the Han. For them it is a method of survival, though they often apply it inappropriately.
- It must understand that God is the author and finisher of healing, not the ones who pray and certainly not their mere kindness toward the Han.
Local churches, like believers, have different gifts, and
some are clearly more desirous (and perhaps better equipped) to minister to the Han.[3] At
other churches this is clearly not a strength, and the need is not even really
perceived. They understand the gospel as it applies to sinners but would find the
idea of the gospel being given for the Han a novel and perhaps even
theologically suspect concept. If such churches cannot be brought into actual
healing ministry—especially to the badly wounded—perhaps they can at least
learn to recognize the needs of the Han and refer them to others who are
better equipped to minister to them.
Healing and Refuge
When
parents, clergy, teachers, and others do not provide protection and healing for
victims of sin, those in trouble look elsewhere for refuge and help. Often they
band together for mutual support with others in similar circumstances. Many
people in these groups have been abused or abandoned, often as children, and
the harm done them has had a profound effect on their lives as adults. Some of
the abused disassociate into “parts” or personalities; some flee into the
numbing refuge of alcohol, drugs, or food. As part of the person’s search for
refuge from threat and pain, these choices can hardly be condemned, although
they are often foolish and harmful. Those who make them are also often unaware
of the gospel or misinterpret it badly.
Many subcultures are gifted at welcoming abused
individuals and making them feel relatively safe and at home. These range from
vital support groups to street gangs and can include everything from social
clubs and local bars to paramilitary armies and cults. Obviously, not all such
groups are harmful. As a rule they accept the wounded far better than the
church often does, and they offer victims comfort, acceptance, and a worldview
that rightfully condemns aspects of the culture they are fleeing.
While victims of racism, disability, political
oppression, poverty, and a host of other kinds of suffering face similar
issues, the prevalence and immediacy of the homosexual community in modern
culture serves well to illustrate the underlying challenges to the church in
healing all victims of sin. As a whole, in its organizations and in churches,
the homosexual community is skilled at providing refuge and understanding for
those who have been sexually abused. When others “do not want to hear about it”
or do not know what to do, this community says, “Come here. You’ll be safe. We
understand.”
They do understand. Many there have suffered in a
similar way, and this gives them both understanding and compassion. They
empathize and readily accept not only the sexually abused, but also
misunderstood and undervalued people such as males who are artistic and not
enthralled by sports, females who are tomboys or technically gifted, or anyone
whose body or affect does not conform to the cultural norm of maleness or
femaleness. When leaders in the church simply rail against this community
without understanding why it is seen and sought as refuge by Han,
they are blind to the victims and condemn them all as sinners.
Nevertheless, taking refuge in a homosexual
community can be harmful. Like other places of refuge, it can contain a
“stinger.” A stinger is something that is required for full acceptance in the
community—whether it is a homosexual community that requires the promotion of
same-gender sexual intimacy, a gang that requires “making your bones” (killing
someone) for full membership, a local bar whose patrons must embrace alcoholism
to be “one of the guys,” or a cult that requires rejection of one’s biological
family to gain entrance.
The tragedy is that although forgiveness and
healing are the great legacy of the church, it often seems inept and unable to deploy
them. The church should be speaking against the culture in the areas where it
hurts or abandons people; instead, it is often complicit in the victims’
injuries or isolation. The great loss in this is that the wounded look outside
the church and settle for refuge instead of freedom, for empathetic acceptance
of woundedness instead of healing, for (justified) anger instead of
forgiveness, and for a false identity instead of their true identity in Christ.
To be fair, what the victims of abuse settle for
is sometimes better than what they had. This is not to say that their refuge of
choice is ordained by God or without sin, but that it sees what the church
often does not: The sins of the fathers
are visited on to the third and fourth generation. Victims always pay for
the crimes of their victimizers; the victimizers pay only if caught.
As victims, the Han are fundamentally innocent, but are wounded by (rather than
complicit in) evil. It is not only wrong but also harmful to equate their sins
with the sins of those who harmed them. The sins of the latter are crimes of
violence; the former, at worst, attempts to find shelter, love, and safety. Often
this “misses the mark,” but it is not like the sin of the abusers. It is
counterproductive and even destructive to force victims into the same category
as their victimizers.[4]
For the church to be able to minister to the Han, whatever the origin of their
wounding, it must acknowledge their wounds and treat them, rather than complain
that their cries of anguish disturb prayer time or try to force them to see
themselves simply as sinners. The church must see behind their wounding to
people who are made by God, living in fear, seeking refuge, and often unable to
fulfill God’s desire for their lives. Refuge, though not God’s best for us, is
often better than what was, and the church needs to see that. Jesus would see
it, and He would understand. But He would not leave victims of sin unhealed,
still hiding in refuge.
Here is an analogy that might be helpful in
understanding the Han in relation to refuge and healing. During World
War II, many people not involved in battle were hurt simply because the
violence was so widespread. They often wandered the streets injured, dirty, hungry,
confused, and alone. Others, including the Jews, were the intentional victims
of Nazi violence. All these people were true
Han.
If they were fortunate in the midst of this
horror, they stumbled into a partially destroyed building, where they discovered
other Han hiding in a room in the basement, living as best they could
with the food and supplies they found there. Sometimes Jews were hidden by
non-Jewish families, who took them in, often at great personal risk.
Recognizing the victims’ hurt and loss, they accepted them, loved them, fed
them, and shared what little they had with them.
This was genuine and wonderful refuge, in which
the battle wounded and weary helped one another survive. They all knew that the
Nazis were the enemy and that they were innocent victims. They knew that what
the Nazis did was evil, and they hid from them. This refuge was much better
than wandering the streets alone in danger and in fear—but it was still only
refuge.
When the Allies liberated Europe and their troops
entered the bombed-out towns, they found many people in hiding. Most of them
willingly came out, rejoicing at their newfound freedom and ready to begin the
hard task of rebuilding and even re-visioning their lives. But some, fearful of
being tricked, would not come out. They believed that what they had together in
refuge was better than what they would have alone outside. They could not
believe that something better would follow if they left their refuge and came
out into the light.
Many who have been wounded in life are like that.
They are Han who have found refuge in various communities (some healthy,
some neutral, and some fraught with danger and further sin), and they do not
want to come out. But no matter how much better their refuge is than what they
suffered before they found it, Jesus would not have them remain there. The
great hope of the gospel of Jesus is for the
Han to have all that God desires for them. He wants to heal their
wounds, not just cover them over, and He wants them to find wholeness, not just
have their brokenness accepted or falsely labeled “good.” Ultimately, He wants
the Han to leave their refuge behind and step into the light.
Jesus desires to redeem their lives and begin the
process of rebuilding them into the persons God intended and desired them to
be—free from wounding and free from refuge. The “stinger” in the gay community,
as in gangs, cults, and other groups, is that those who receive comfort there
can be trapped in refuge and taught that their new identity is the end, the
fulfillment of their journey to healing. This is the deception that keeps them
still partially bound, and the church must vigorously resist this deception as
it seeks true healing for the sinned against.
The Han need a Liberator-Healer. To ably
minister the gospel to them, the church must do more than use Scripture to show
them they are sinners in need of a Savior or counsel them (directly or
disguised as prayer) to stop sinning. As important as it is for the church to
help all people understand their sinfulness, it must also minister healing to
the sinned against. That requires the humility to recognize that everyone is
wounded and needs healing, even though some wounding is not as profound. Those
who care for the Han are also Han,
in need of God’s grace and healing. They are not the “holy ones” helping the
unwashed.
Jesus did not rebuke and accuse the poor and
suffering; He fed and healed them, and they ran to Him in response. He rebuked
and accused those who considered themselves holier than the poor and suffering;
those who abused, oppressed, and took advantage of others; those who looked
“religious” but lived selfish lives; those who expertly quoted the Law but did
not live by its spirit. The way Jesus responded is how the church, as His body,
is also to respond. This can liberate the
Han by bringing them out of isolation or refuge into healing and fullness
of life. How do we go about this?
[1]Trigger
is a word psychologists commonly use to denote a stimulus that produces a
response, often of an intensity or direction other than would be expected
normatively. For example, someone previously mauled by a dog might react in
terror in the presence of any dog. Victims of abuse often have a variety of
triggers that stem from the specifics of their abuse. For example, the use of
the word Father for God, even in a hymn, can produce profound distress
during worship for someone who has been abused by a father.
[2]See appendix A, “Resurrection
Guidelines on Touch, Respect, and Leadership,” as an example.
[3]Catherine
Clark Kroeger and Nancy Nason-Clark, No Place for Abuse: Biblical and
Practical Resources to Counteract Domestic Violence (Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press, 2001), 72–74.
[4]Those
who believe in total depravity are often blind to the uncorrupted good that is
in the victims of sin and to God’s highest intention for each human being while
here on earth. C. S. Lewis wrote, “I disbelieve that doctrine, partly on the
logical ground that if we were totally depraved we should not know ourselves to
be depraved, and partly because experience shows us much goodness in human
nature.” (C. S. Lewis, The Problem
of Pain [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996], 61.) More strongly
stated, the notion of total depravity is blasphemy because it asserts that
God’s creation is evil instead of good, as He pronounced it to be. Instead, His
creation is seduced and infected by evil. The Han, as victims,
are fundamentally innocent—wounded by, rather than complicit in, evil.
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