Issue 09 Preaching about MoneyBlog | Engaging the trauma pandemic
Engaging the trauma pandemic
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 16.12.16
Standing in some of the world’s most notorious troublespots it’s easy to discern the face of trauma. At a holiday club in war-torn Gaza some years ago, it was etched in the expressions of teenagers barely able to laugh anymore.
In the photos casually scrolled through on his iPad by my colleague in Iraq, I could see the tell-tale glazed eyes of numerous victims bereaved by extremist assassins. And in the bodies of the famished in both Uganda and Ethiopia I’ve seen the debilitating scars of malnutrition and years of inadequate eating.
TRAUMA OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS
‘In the world today’ writes Harriet Hill, director of the Trauma Healing Institute at American Bible Society, ‘many people have experienced war, ethnic conflict, floods, car accidents, domestic abuse, or crime’. She goes on ‘many of them have been wounded inside by these things. The church should be helping its members who are suffering (Acts 20:28) as well as being like light and salt in the world.’
According to the human rights agency International Justice Mission, it is widely assumed that one in four women in the West have experienced abuse by their fathers, partners, relatives or employers. This rises to one in two when it comes to the developing world. And in my private pastoral sessions with men in emerging countries, many face me with tearful eyes as they recount their experience of neglect, humiliation and brutality in younger years.
