Articles exploring trauma-informed theology and the theology of trauma
To be who God wants me to be means I have had to learn to keep putting myself to death so that I can find new life. Which feels absolutely rubbish! Because the process of being made new means confronting all the things we wish we could forget or try and justify. Part of the…
Over time, the initial pain of grief gives way to the dull ache of absence. People think this is because grief shrinks over time. I think it is more that we grow used to it, and the sharpness of its edges is changed into something else. I think that grief over times ends up being…
I’m not ok today. My particular brand of neurospicyness means that I occasionally go through periods of depression. Sometimes these last for a day, sometimes for a few weeks. Sometimes it’s just a general feeling of melancholy and anxiety; other times it feels like a big pit of icy darkness waiting to swallow everything good…
We make a mistake when we think of discipleship as something which develops in a straight line from A to B. Instead, when working with survivors of, or people experiencing, trauma, we need to recognise the fragmental nature of human reality and so also avoid faith-tropes such as holism, wholeness, and flourishing. We need to…
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…
Learning to “find yourself” is, by and large, a waste of time. The authentic self is not the problem — it is the wrong question. The right question is this: who are you in relation to God? That is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was wrestling with when he wrote a poem from a Gestapo prison…
Content note. This is a personal reflection on living with depression and anxiety, and it includes a description of the thoughts that come with that — including feeling that others would be better off without me. It also refers to the Columbine school shooting. If now isn’t the right time to read this, that’s completely…