The Cross and The Traumatised God

If we take seriously the claim that God experienced the fullness of human experience, particularly in the crucifixion of Jesus, then we can speak about God having traumatic experiences. This changes not only how we see God, but how we can relate to God in our suffering. A God who experiences trauma is a God who can stand with the abused and the suffering, not as a distant observer, but as one who is in solidarity through shared suffering.

What Is Trauma?

Our starting point is to clarify what we mean when we use the word ‘trauma.’ People are often quick to use the word trauma to describe any kind of bad experience, or to speak about something that happened that was significantly bad for them. Sometimes people will speak about something traumatic happening to them, or they might say that something is traumatising. However, we need to be clear about what we are talking about. Trauma is not just something bad that happens to us. Trauma is a particular kind of experience.

Trauma is a reaction to experiencing or witnessing and event or events. This is the starting point. The trauma is not the event itself, it is our reaction to an event. We can either experience or witness this event. Which means that we do not need to be directly involved in the thing which creates a traumatic reaction in us, we can be witnesses, either directly or at a distance, to this event. Also, the thing which causes us to have a traumatic response can either be a single event, or it can be a series of events over an extended period of time. So trauma is a reaction or response to experiencing or witnessing an event or series of events.

The event(s) causes us to have a trauma response because it puts us into an immediate threat to our life or existence to such an extent that it is psychologically overwhelming. This means that the event(s) which creates a trauma response is something that means we genuinely feel a threat to our life or existence, and does so to such a degree that we are not able to adequately process that experience. It is overwhelming, whether in that moment or over an extended period of time. It is the overwhelming quality of the psychological experience which causes the trauma.

The trauma we experience in reaction to an event(s) creates an emotional response with long-term consequences to our ability to function and to cope with our life. The experience of trauma physically changes the way that our brain functions, by linking a profound memory with the part of the brain that perceives threat. When we experience that memory, or when something brings that memory to the surface, our brain cannot tell the difference between the memory and current reality and we experience a threat response in a similar manner to our reaction to the original event(s) which caused our trauma.

This is called a triggering event, when something brings back the memory of the event(s) which caused our trauma. This may be a conscious recollection, or it may be a subconscious reaction. Every time this happens, the part of the brain which controls our memory and threat centres gets bigger, creating a stronger link between the memory of the event(s) which caused our trauma and the perception of threat.

When we are in a threat response the part of the brain which processes our rational thoughts, and is normally able to distinguish between a memory and reality, is ignored. Our brain sends blood to our vital systems and our muscles preparing us to run away, to fight, or to freeze, as a way of surviving the perceived threat, which has the consequence of reducing our capacity to think rationally. Each time we experience the memory of our original trauma we are put into a threat response and overtime this shrinks the part of the brain that normally rationally processes our experiences. This makes it increasingly difficult to cope with the long-term consequences of our trauma.

These consequences include being hyper-aware to threats, high levels of stress and anxiety, poor mental health, nightmares, flashbacks, and unhealthy coping methods.

This is what we mean when we talk about trauma.

A Traumatised God?

Normally, we would not be able to talk about a divine being who experiences trauma. A classical understanding of God as all-powerful and all-knowing, as utterly perfect, includes a God who is beyond suffering and cannot be overwhelmed by any kind of psychological event. But we do not believe in a classical divine being. We believe that Jesus perfectly reveals to us who God is. Which means that God was human, experienced the fullness of humanity, including the psychological and emotional aspects of what it means to be human. We see that where Jesus cried for his dead friend Lazarus.

However, there is a difference between saying that God experienced human emotions in the incarnation and saying that God experienced trauma. What kind of evidence is there for me to make that claim?

Well, to be clear, it’s pretty much impossible to psychologise anyone at a distance, and I am not an expert or a specialist in this area. Also, as no one really knows or understands the psychological impact of the incarnation for the person of Jesus, any talk about the psychological experience of Jesus is speculation based on scripture and theological hunches. Further, the nature of trauma means it is a personal reaction to an event(s). As such, we can only possibly suggest an experience of trauma based on the actions and behaviours given in scripture and not any inference from a particular event.

With that disclaimer, I think it is possible to talk about Jesus experiencing trauma.

The Trauma of Jesus

The starting point comes from Isaiah and some of the great poetry telling us exactly what kind of Messiah we should expect to know.

Isaiah 53:3: He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Jesus was a man who experienced suffering, who was rejected, who experienced weakness. At various times his family turned again him, the people from his home town tried to kill him, and one of his twelve closest friends betrayed him. He had several experiences of intense rejection throughout his life. He also was frequently in danger of death. The Pharisees and Temple authorities kept on pursuing him throughout his ministry to try and catch him out so they could trip him up and either take his followers away or get enough evidence to have him executed.

Throughout his ministry Jesus was under threat on a regular basis and was rejected by the people closest to him. Perhaps we could read the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness not only as time to connect with his Father, but as time spent seeking a place of safety. If he felt under threat so often, perhaps he needed that time in the wilderness away from everyone else just a time to feel safe? A really common form of trauma comes as a result of an extended series of events over time that leave a person feeling constantly under threat. We can see that Jesus had that experience, and so perhaps also carried some of that trauma.

An example of a particular moment of spiritual and emotional trauma is when Jesus is praying on the Mount of Olives before he is crucified. Luke tells the story.

Luke 22:39-46: He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. 40 When he reached the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.’ 41 Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, 42 ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.’ 43 Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. 44 In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground. 45 When he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief, 46 and he said to them, ‘Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial.’

There is a lot going on in these few verses. Jesus withdraws with his closest friends and followers, and then withdraws from them as well. He needs to be on his own for what comes next. Perhaps in these moments, when he is asking his Father to not make him go through what comes next, he doesn’t want his followers to see him. Is it too far to suggest that the fear and desire to find another way creates some cognitive dissonance and perhaps some fear about what his followers would say? As a church leader, I know the fear of the people you have responsible for seeing your weaknesses and thinking of you differently.

Jesus asks for things to be different, and an angel gives him strength. But it seems that if anything, the renewed strength from the angel just plunges Jesus into even greater anguish. God is giving him the strength to complete his mission, and that is not the answer he wanted from his prayers. So Jesus prayed more earnestly until he began to actually sweat drops of blood. A surgeon, Dr. David Acuna, wrote:

“There is a well-documented medical condition in which patients who are under a tremendous amount of emotional stress and physiological stress can, in fact, sweat blood because little blood vessels within the glands burst and then the blood is expressed,”

Such was the degree of emotional and psychological stress that Jesus was under that he burst blood vessels and sweat blood. Ultimately, Jesus is obedient. But he takes the consequences of that moment forward with him to the crucifixion. He wants life to be different. He doesn’t want to suffer. He wants God to change their mind and do something different.

Which brings us to perhaps the defining moment to see Jesus as experiencing trauma. The crucifixion. Matthew tells the story of what happened as Jesus died.

Matthew 27:45-46: From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 46 And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

The whole crucifixion process was horrific for Jesus. From being betrayed by a friend, to be ensuring a show trial, to being psychologically and physically abused and tortured, then actually being crucified. Crucifixion was a truly horrific form of death that was designed to be as shameful as possible – physically, psychologically, socially, religiously, and sexually.

Jesus obediently undergoes that destructive and torturous process because he believes that is what God is asking him to do, and because he believes it is how his messianic mission is worked out. But perhaps the trauma of the Garden of Gethsemane hasn’t gone away, because as he is dying, as he experiences the ultimate trauma of bearing the weight of the world’s sin and being separated from the Father and so from himself and incarnate God, perhaps we see his faith crack for a moment.

Jesus crys out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Which comes from psalm 22 and so some people suggest Jesus was quoting it because the psalm ends with things being resolved in faith. I don’t think that’s what’s happening. I don’t think that a person who had such a psychologically overwhelming experience that they sweat blood, who had been beaten and tortured, who had been humiliated and abused, would be doing biblical exegesis on a cross.

I think it is the expression of Jesus’s trauma in that moment. His ability to make sense of his experiences, his faith, his mission, his sense of identity and purpose, are cracked apart. I think in that moment Jesus makes the cry that people for thousands of years have cried out in their suffering. From the woman being abused by their partner to the black man being lynched, from the boy dying in a war, to parent of a dying child. “Why have you abandoned me God?”

Perhaps that is the moment of salvation. Perhaps it is as God becomes broken apart that grace flows out for humanity. Perhaps it is not only the crucified God who can save us, but it is also only the traumatised God who can heal us.

Trauma and Identity

It is easy for a person’s experience of trauma to become tightly linked in an unhealthy way to their understanding of identity. They struggle to know themselves, and to be known by others, outside of that trauma. In a similar way, we know Christ crucified. We know him as the suffering Messiah, and the crucified Messiah, as the murdered and lynched Messiah. But, and this is the important bit, we also know him as the resurrected and ascended Messiah.

The trauma of the cross is central to how we know Jesus and thus to how God makes God’s self known to us. But that is not the end of the story, because it is not the crucifixion alone which defines our knowledge and experience of Jesus but also the resurrection and ascension. There is life after death, hope after suffering, joy after despair. The traumas we experience are very real and very damaging, but they can be healed and they do not have to define who we are. Jesus tells us that we are more than our trauma.

Knowing God in Our Trauma

I think that if we start to understand and know God as the Jesus who understood and experienced suffering and trauma, then we are a step closer to understanding our relationship with God. I think when we know God as weak, as broken, as experiencing trauma, then we know the God who can heal our own brokenness. Jesus stands in solidarity with the broken, with the suffering, with the abused, and with the survivor of trauma.

No one needs to be alone in those moments because Jesus has experienced them and is experiencing them with you. I think it is also part of God’s judgement. When a person harms and abuses another person, they are harming and abusing Christ. The suffering, the abused, the victim of trauma, stands in judgement alongside Christ over those who have harmed them.

We don’t need a God who is far away, who is all-powerful, who is strong and untouchable. We need a crucified God, a resurrected God, a suffering God, a weak God. A God who experienced trauma.

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Joy Is An Act Of Resistance

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