PAMELA MCGINTY | GUEST

“When it is the heart that has been wounded, it doesn’t heal.” These words broke my heart when I first heard them, from a woman who had experienced great trauma throughout her young life. Women across Africa often express similar beliefs.

The word, ‘trauma’ comes from the Greek, τραύμα, meaning ‘wound.’ Emotional trauma is a wound of the mind and heart that affects our brains, bodies, beliefs, and behaviours. Yet, the effects of trauma CAN change, hearts CAN heal, and our faith and trust in God can be renewed and grow.

Africans Know Trauma

Africa includes many of the most traumatized countries in the world. Physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual abuse, violent crime and political unrest are often the norm. Yet, emotional health is often ignored or poorly addressed, and holistic soul care within the church is rarely found. Many Africans know trauma all too well, yet often have little understanding of its effects on them or where to turn for help.

Where should our emotional support come from? Africans are spiritual. Most all believe that a Creator designed us as embodied souls, but many pray to a god whose favour they believe they can earn. Africans are relational, but across South Africa much traditional community and extended family support has been lost due to displacement and economic pressures. More than two-thirds of homes are fatherless and healthy, intact nuclear families are rare.

In some African cities there is a growing desire for professional counselling, yet this can be confusing or harmful when it contradicts traditional or Christian beliefs and ethics. All Western thought may be held suspect, even the common grace wisdom that God has revealed through sciences. Few Christian mental health professionals are equipped to understand their secular education through the foundation of their faith, or to discern where conflicts exist between them.

A Missional Opportunity

All this leaves many Christians feeling desperately alone when seeking relief from emotional pain. Yet, this provides an amazing opportunity for the Church. Diane Langberg believes “…trauma is perhaps the greatest mission field of the twenty-first century.”[1] All souls who do not know the Lord are our mission field, but by addressing the trauma that hearts have experienced and providing biblically sound counsel with an understanding of the physiology involved, we can point people to Christ and the healing of souls which only He can provide.

A church that preaches legalism or a prosperity gospel, both so prevalent in Africa, has no place to connect a truly biblical theology of suffering. Yet even a church preaching a gospel of grace, forgiveness, and restoration, if they fail to address the very real pain that hearts are experiencing, will miss great opportunities to point sufferers to Jesus Christ. He, who has felt the sorrow, grief, and pain of every tragedy ever experienced since our sin broke this world. He, who has carried the weight of all our sin and suffered the death we deserve. He, who has suffered trauma to a degree we cannot fathom.

Biblical Counselling Africa (BCA) points sufferers to these truths. BCA is an MTW-supported partnership with the Christian Counselling Educational Foundation (CCEF). BCA provides online, biblical counselling education, grounded in Reformed Theology, across Africa. African churches, ministries, and Bible colleges are partnering to include CCEF courses and material developed by BCA in their ministry training, and seeing hearts and lives changed. Christian psychiatrists and psychologists are growing in their discernment and understanding of biblical heart change. Pastors are embracing a greater understanding of mental health, spiritual growth, and sanctification. Congregants are being discipled and cared for by mentors and small group leaders in more compassionate ways, with a better understanding of how wounds of the heart so deeply affect us. Disciples are maturing to then disciple others. Churches are growing and maturing; adding to their impact within the community, seeing eyes opened to the truths of the gospel, and speaking to the hearts of many who have left churches due to abuse, legalism, and hypocrisy. The true gospel of covenant faith is being embraced by broken hearts.

While the ministries I serve are in Africa, hearts are very much the same everywhere. All sermons, small groups, women’s ministries, campus ministries, pastoral caregivers and counsellors interact with the wounded. You and I are both sufferers and sinners, yet saints because of Christ. In Him, we can one day experience true and total healing of the greatest wound, our broken sinfulness. While we can now be saints through His justification, we continue to suffer in a myriad of ways… often in silence. We need our churches to embrace a biblical theology of suffering and offer compassionate biblical soul care, after the model of Jesus. Only through Him and the hope He gives may we trust that our wounded hearts CAN heal this side of Heaven.

Some questions to consider:

1. Does your church project a biblical theology of suffering from the pulpit?
2. How do those who provide discipleship and care in your church address the common suffering of depression, anxiety, grief, and addictions?
3. How might addressing mental health and trauma through local community ministry help your church reach those around you for Christ?

[1]Diane Langberg. Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores.

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