An organization’s vision and how it is communicated and implemente.docx

An organization’s vision and how it is communicated and
implemented touch the “business heart” of the daily operations
of an organization and play a noteworthy role in successful
change. In order to fully understand the importance of linking a
company’s vision and change, let’s explore three areas that
contribute to the understanding of a company’s business vision:
core values, core purpose, and visionary goals.
Core Values
Core values are four or five values that are central to a business
organization. They reflect the deeply held ideals of the
organization and are independent of the current industry
environment and management fads.
Core values that business organizations might employ include:
· Excellent customer service
· Pioneering technology
· Creativity
· Integrity
· Social responsibility.
Core Purpose
· Core purpose is the reason that the business organization
exists. This purpose is expressed in a carefully formulated
mission statement. The core purpose is an idealistic reason for
being.
Visionary Goals
· Visionary goals are the lofty objective that the firm’s
management decides to pursue.
Core values, core purpose, and visionary goals all contribute a
necessary element of a company’s business vision.
A well-crafted vision provides a solid basis for an
organization’s culture and its purpose for change. If the vision
isn’t right, then it is extremely difficult to understand why a
company needs to change and to diagnose what must change
within the company. Potential for resistance to change

increases, and implementing change becomes more challenging
to manage effectively within an organization.
Understanding core values, core purpose, and visionary goals
leads to a company/business vision that defines the firm as it
moves forward. The organization is then able to integrate vision
with change successfully, which is paramount in an
exponentially changing business environment.
2. Capturing the Vision
Vision can be a key driver for organizational change. But what
makes a good vision statement? Consider the components
suggested in the following video:
https://youtu.be/0hdTz042xG
Capturing an effective vision statement for an organization
requires organizational leadership to examine the attributes of a
vision statement, develop the story communicated by the vision,
and consider the culture and structure of the organization.
Vision Attributes:
A vision statement must incorporate the following attributes:
· Statement of purpose
· Ideal future
· Desired future
· Future accomplishments.
These attributes are discussed in greater depth by Dr. John
Kotter: https://youtu.be/yA1a0khcuKo
Vision as stories:
Vision stories use rich imagery and descriptions to portray the
organization’s future aspirations in a way that is relatable and
fuels action and change. Steps needed to develop a vision story
narrative include (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin, 2016):
1. Becoming informed
2. Visiting the future
3. Creating the story (innovation, in many cases) (p. 175):
· Describe the actors, events, actions, and consequences
· What are the key messages and themes?
· What’s happening in the marketplace?

· How are staff providing services and interacting with
customers?
· What is the mood—what are people experiencing and feeling?
4. Deploying the vision.
Organizational Culture:
The context and culture of an organization impact its ability to
implement and sustain visionary change (Palmer, Dunford, &
Akin, 2016).
· Rigid organizations are hierarchical and lack openness to
change.
· Bold organizations are organic and accepting of change.
· Over-managed organizations resist change and defer to what
has worked in the past.
· Liberated organizations channel resources toward change and
accept and promote change.
Think about the process by which visions emerge. How are they
crafted and fine-tuned by change? Why do they fail? Failure can
result from the vision being too specific, vague, unrealistic
(keeping them achievable is paramount), complex, or irrelevant.
Finally, spend some time thinking about the link between vision
and change by asking these three questions:
· Does vision drive change or emerge during change?
· Does vision help or hinder change?
· Is vision an attribute of strong leaders or the organizations
they come from?
Understanding these important concepts and ideas will greatly
enrich your understanding of a company’s vision and its link to
change.
A company’s vision is closely linked to its ability to change
and, in some cases, its requirement to change. Change just
doesn’t happen serendipitously; it happens when a company’s
vision successfully adapts to change.

Trauma,
Terrorism, Catastrophes and
Pastoral Care
Prof. Cedric Johnson
PC 408
Spring 2017
Trauma & Recovery
How might you see Legion as a survivor of trauma (Mark 5:5-
9)? Symptoms? Process of recovery?
Using the 3 stages of recovery, how would you design a small
group ministry for trauma survivors? What do you need to be
attentive to?
Using the 3 stages, how might you design a congregational
healing ritual for trauma survivors?
Three major forms of adaptation that enable a child to survive
in an environment of abuse:
Dissociative defenses

Fragmented identity
Pathological regulation of emotional states
Forms of Adaptation
The victim’s self-representations remain exaggerated and split.
These contradictory identities cannot integrate.
Fragmentation becomes the central principle of personality
organization.
Fragmented Identity
Dissociative process may lead to a complete disconnection from
others and disintegration of the self.
Connection between childhood abuse and self-mutilation.
Here, self-injury is not intended to kill but to relieve emotional
pain.
Reading Legion through the lens of trauma: “My name is
Legion, for we are [fragmented].
Fragmented Identity
The abused child often constructs some system of meaning that
justifies the abuse – often concluding that her own innate
badness is the cause.
Emotional States

It is often camouflaged by the abused child’s persistent attempts
to be good.
In an effort to placate her abusers, the child survivor often
becomes a superb performer:
An academic achiever
Efficient housekeeper
Model of social conformity
Emotional States
Survivors of childhood sexual abuse may reenact the
relationship with the perpetrator by participating in forbidden or
risky sexual behavior.
The patient may assume that the only value she can possibly
have in the eyes of another is as a sexual object.
Sexualized Transference
Establishment of safety
Remembrance and Mourning
Reconnection
With self
With community
3 Stages of Recovery

The acutely traumatized person needs a safe refuge.
Begins by focusing on control of the body and moves outward
toward control of environment.
Assess the degree of continued threat and what precautions are
necessary.
Be attentive not only to the survivor’s psychological capacity to
protect herself but also to larger power dynamics.
Establishment of Safety
Though the single most common counseling error is avoidance
of the traumatic material, probably the second most common
error is premature engagement in work without sufficient
attention to the tasks of establishing safety and securing a
therapeutic alliance.
Establishment of Safety
The need to preserve safety must be balanced against the need
to face the past.
Intrusive symptoms should be monitored so that the uncovering
work remains within the realm of what is bearable.
Remembrance

Reconstructing the trauma story begins with a review of the
survivor’s life before the trauma to restore continuity with the
past.
“The ‘action of telling a story’ in the safety of a protected
relationship can produce healing.
“Reconstructing” the trauma entails reframing the meaning of
the event.
Remembrance
The counselor normalizes the survivor’s responses, facilitates
naming and the use of language, and shares the emotional
burden of the trauma.
The goal of remembrance is integration.
The premise is a belief in the restorative power of truth-telling.
Remembrance is not merely the exercise of thought. The remedy
for injustice also requires action, a determination of what must
be done.
Remembrance
Since so many of the losses are invisible or unrecognized, the
customary rituals of mourning provide little consolation.
While numerous social rituals facilitate the normal bereavement
process, few communal rituals recognize the mourning that
follows traumatic life events.
Mourning

Genuine contrition in a perpetrator is a rare miracle; it includes
confession, repentance and restitution.
Fortunately, the survivor’s healing depends on the discovery of
restorative love in her own life.
Mourning
Positive aspects of the self are recognized and a greater
appreciation for her own adaptive resources.
Survivors shed their “victim identity.”
Often requires repudiating those aspects of the self that were
imposed by the trauma.
Reconnecting / with Self
The survivor can sometimes begin to identify “traumatic
growth” – positive aspects of the self that were forged in the
traumatic experience, even while recognizing that any gain was
achieved at far too great a price.
Reconnecting / with Self

She seeks mutual friendships not based on performance, image,
or maintenance of a false self.
With lovers and family, she is now ready for greater intimacy.
Survivors may begin to speak about the “unspeakable” in public
in the belief that this will help others.
Reconnection / with Others
The relationship between survivor and mental health
professional is only one relationship among many.
When safety and self care are established survivor groups that
are “stage of recovery” specific are vital to the healing process.
Groups for safety
Groups for remembrance & mourning
Groups for reconnection
Reconnection / with Others
Counselors who work with traumatized people also require an
ongoing support system.
Traumatic countertransference includes the entire range of
emotional reactions to the survivor and/or to the event itself.
Otherwise, the counselor may act out, burn out or withdraw
emotionally from the therapeutic alliance.
Countertranference

Closing Meditative Minute
Trauma,
Terrorism, Catastrophes and
Pastoral Care
Prof. Cedric Johnson
PC 408
Spring 2017
Cultural Trauma
What is a “carrier group”? What role do they play in the trauma
process? Who serves as carrier groups in American society?
The carrier groups capacity to signify a cultural trauma is
contingent upon what 3 factors?
What are the 5 phases of recovery from cultural trauma? Name
one challenge inherent in each phase?
Does chattel slavery re-present a cultural trauma for America?
How or how not?

African American Slavery
Holocaust
Genocide and seizure of First Nation peoples
Rwanda genocide
September 11th Tragedy
What is cultural trauma?
Traumatic status is attributed to real or imagined phenomena,
not because of their actual harmfulness or their objective
abruptness, but because these phenomena are believed to have
abruptly, and harmfully, affected collective identity.
Cultural Trauma
What is at stake is the collective’s identity, its stability in terms
of meaning…Only if the patterned meanings of the collectivity
are abruptly dislodged is traumatic status attributed to the
event.
Cultural Trauma

Thrust into environments which are at odds with their previous
life-world, these traumatic experiences disrupt the structures
that inform the group’s self-understanding.
Shared values and norms, accepted ideas and beliefs, narrative
forms, symbolic meanings and frames of discourse can all be
undermined.
Cultural Trauma
Cultural trauma is not merely the result of a group experiencing
pain.
Traumatic status must be attributed to the event; the event must
be “signified” as traumatic.
Collective actors must signify the painful event as a
fundamental cultural threat.
Cultural Trauma Process
In any culture there are “authorized” persons who give voice
not so much to their own ideas and interests, but rather
articulate ideas to and for others.
These “carrier groups” are central in representing the interests
and claims of the affected to the wider public.
It is a socially constructed, historically conditioned role, that
refers more to what individuals do than who they are.
They have particular discursive talents for articulating their
claims – “meaning making” – in the public sphere.
Carrier groups

These socially-sanctioned “meaning-makers” deliberate in the
public arena, signifying and symbolizing events.
May be elites, academics, religious leaders, hip hop artists,
novelists, movie-makers or emerge from other segments of a
society.
What are some implications for the provision of pastoral care
and counseling?
Carrier groups
1) Nature of the pain – what actually happened.
2) Nature of the victim – to whom did it happen; what group of
persons was affected by this pain?
3) Relation of the trauma victim to the wider audience – to what
extent does the wider group see any relation to the affected
group.
4) Attribution of responsibility – who injured the victim? Who
caused the trauma.
The Trauma Signification Process
This representational process creates a new master narrative of
social suffering.
The Diary of Anne Frank played a vital role in the signification
of the Holocaust as a cultural trauma.
The Trauma Signification Process

The signification of cultural trauma to the collective depends
upon the carrier group’s capacity to (re)frame the particularities
of the event.
This is contingent upon (1) the symbolic resources that are
available, (2) the constraints and opportunities afforded by the
structures of power within a society, and (3) the interpretive
competence of the carrier group.
There may be incidents with strong traumatizing potential, but
either: (1) the symbolic resources to adequately interpret the
event are unavailable, (2) the carrier groups lack the
interpretive capability to signify the incident, or (3) the
structures of power explain away, rationalize, deconstruct,
reinterpret or repress the memory of the event.
The Trauma Process
Mediating structures tilt the signifying process in powerful
ways, expanding or narrowing representations, creating or
denying the factual and moral basis for civic repair.
Mass media allows traumas to be dramatized and competing
interpretations to gain persuasive power over others.
Governmental power can both facilitate, hinder and shape the
signification process.
Mediating Structures

Remembrance
Representation
By the Carrier Group
Reconstruction
Commemoration
Routinization
Stages of Recovery
Existence of the necessary psychological distance that
remembering a collective traumatic event requires.
The collective past is central to the maintenance of group
identity, part of a collective memory.
It is source material, a collective resource for a distinct
aesthetic, used as a weapon in the struggle for cultural
recognition.
Remembrance
As cultural traumas are re-presented, there will be a re-
imagining of the group’s identity as they re-member the
traumatic events.
How is the past to be represented, in whose interests, and for
what purposes?
Trauma is resolved only when the survivor develops new
structures of meaning.
Representation/Reconstruction

“Lessons” of trauma become objectified in monuments,
museums, and historical artifacts.
New collective identity will be rooted in sacred places and
structured in ritual routines.
Necessary accumulation of social resources in order to undergo
commemoration activities.
Supportive socio-political conditions.
Commemoration
By allowing members of wider publics to participate in the pain
of others, cultural traumas broaden the realm of social
understanding and provide avenues for new forms of social
incorporation.
Insofar as memorializations are not created, the traumatic
suffering has either not been persuasively narrated or has not
been generalized beyond the immediately affected population.
Commemoration
“If collective memory is rooted in a potentially traumatic
event…it may take a generation to move from group memory to
public memory. Sometimes it may take longer; sometimes it
may never happen at all.”
Public Memory

The trauma process can become subject to technical, sometimes
desiccating attention of specialists who detach affect from
meaning.- “triumph of the mundane”
Intended to remember and commemorate, efforts to
institutionalize the lessons of the trauma may eventually prove
unable to evoke strong emotions, the sentiments of betrayal, and
the affirmations of sacrality that were powerfully associated
with it.
Routinization
Without the means to influence public memory, blacks were left
to form and maintain their own collective memory.
12 Years a Slave: slavery has moved outside group memory to
challenge the borders, the rituals and sites, of public memory.
Has slavery become part of America’s collective memory?
Slavery & Public Memory
How might these dynamics inform the development of pastoral
care strategies and practice of pastoral counseling in
traumatized communities?
Implications

Theology Today
68(1) 8–25
! The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0040573610394922
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Article
Bearing the unbearable:
Trauma, gospel and
pastoral care1
Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger
Princeton Theological Seminary
Abstract
This paper examines trauma in light of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. Given the profound
and long-lasting suffering caused by trauma, how is it to be
borne? Moreover, how do
those in the helping professions bear the vicarious pain of

listening empathically to the
cries of the traumatized? Professor Hunsinger first examines
trauma and details its
psychological effects. Then she describes a process by which
one can break out of
the vicious cycle of trauma’s impact. Finally, she places trauma
in theological context,
by claiming that all that is truly unbearable in this world can be
borne only because Jesus
Christ has already borne the full weight of sin and death on our
behalf and for our sakes.
The anguish of human trauma is endured as we mediate the love
of God by providing a
relational home for one another, a place where God’s
compassion is attested, prayers of
lament are offered, and the worship of the people of God
sustains us in hope.
Keywords
Trauma, pastoral care, healing, PTSD, suffering, cross
Traumatic loss lies at the very heart of the Christian
imagination. The souls of
those who call themselves Christian are indelibly stamped with
the unbearable
sorrow of this man, Jesus. After raising the hopes of many,
Jesus died a shameful

death, indeed an unjust and horrible death. What is more, his
friends denied,
betrayed, and abandoned him in his hour of need. He was
tortured and executed
as a common criminal, even though he had done nothing to
warrant
1. This article served as the inaugural lecture for my
appointment to the position of Charlotte W.
Newcombe Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton
Theological Seminary on September 27,
2010. It is dedicated to my beloved teacher, Professor Ann
Belford Ulanov, of Union Theological
Seminary in New York. Studying with her was one of the great
blessings of my life.
Corresponding author:
Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, P.O. Box 821, 64 Mercer St,
Princeton, NJ, 08542-0803
Email: [email protected]
condemnation. Jesus Christ drank the cup of bitterness all the
way to its dregs, and
descended into the very depths of hell: how can such a terrible
story be borne?
Much more than an intellectual puzzle about so-called ‘‘theories
of atonement’’ is
at stake here. Believers who have survived trauma stake their
very lives on the

power of the gospel to heal.
Trauma: how can we give it the kind of disciplined attention
that it deserves?
Holding even a fraction of this suffering steadily in our
attention can be challeng-
ing. Is it possible to talk about trauma without causing pain to
those already
bearing trauma in their bodies and souls?2 Daily through the
media, we are bom-
barded with stories capable of breaking our hearts, yet little
attention is given to
the impact of such accounts on its hearers. How can we bear
these stories with an
open heart?3 Indeed, how do we bear them at all?
Pastoral theology, as I understand it, is first and foremost a
theology of God’s
care for the world in Jesus Christ, in which we are invited to
participate.4 This means
that all pastoral care depends upon prayer, leads to worship, and
trusts in the prom-
ises of God. Such an orientation leads us to confess that though
we ourselves, with
our enduring failures to love, cannot truly redeem traumatic
loss, we cling in hope to
the One who can and does. That One drank the cup of bitterness,
died a death of
anguish, and descends into every darkness that threatens to
overwhelm us.
Those who study theology are called to ponder holocausts of
every kind, from
biblical ‘‘texts of terror,’’5 to grueling historical or theological
tracts, to the horrors of
the evening news. How can we fortify ourselves, our students,

or our children for the
kind of world we live in? Whether painted on a vast canvas of
national or interna-
tional significance, or in a miniature of a single family or
community, traumatic loss is
ubiquitous. When it hits us personally, it changes our lives
irrevocably: through the
shock of an accident, a criminal assault or tragic death, or
through the multiple and
complex traumas that arise in relation to immigration, war,
imprisonment, torture,
domestic violence or sexual abuse, among others.
Unacknowledged and unhealed,
trauma often leads to further violence, either against oneself or
others, and thus to
more trauma. With knowledgeable intervention and wise
support, however, trauma
can be healed, and may even become ‘‘a catalyst for growth and
transformation,’’ the
turning point of a life, a sign and symbol of God’s goodness and
care.6
2. Serene Jones asks a similar question: ‘‘How can ministers
craft sermons that speak to the plight of
trauma survivors without retraumatizing them?’’ See Serene
Jones, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a
Ruptured World (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 85.
3. See Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, ‘‘Keeping An Open
Heart in Troubled Times: Self-empathy as
a Christian Spiritual Practice,’’ A Spiritual Life: Perspectives
from Poets, Prophets, and Preachers, ed.

Allan Hugh Cole, Jr (Louisville: Westminster John Knox,
2011), 123–134.
4. See Andrew Purves, Reconstructing Pastoral Theology: A
Christological Foundation (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 2004).
5. Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of
Biblical Narratives (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1984).
6. Patricia Mathes Cane, Trauma Healing and Transformation
(Watsonville, CA: Capacitar, 2000), 17.
Hunsinger 9
As caregivers in the Church who seek to help others, how can
we be sure that we
will first, do no harm? How can we be a source of spiritual
strength and practical
support for the communities we serve? Moreover, as witnesses
to the trauma of
others or as persons afflicted by trauma ourselves, where do we
turn for help? In
this inaugural lecture, I want to set forth an understanding of
the impact of trauma
and inquire into the role of the gospel and the Church in its
healing. I plan to
address three basic issues:
What is trauma and how does it affect us?
How do we break free from the vicious cycle of trauma’s

impact?
How does the gospel with the pastoral care of the Church bring
healing to the
traumatized?
What is trauma and how does it affect us?
The twentieth century offered countless opportunities for
studying trauma, but it
was not until the 1970s that social and political ferment enabled
its study to
advance decisively.7 By the mid-1970s, hundreds of ‘‘rap’’
groups had been orga-
nized by Vietnam Veterans against the War where men could
speak honestly about
the horror of war. At the same time, women gained collective
courage as they
shared, among other things, their stories of rape, sexual abuse,
or domestic vio-
lence. No longer willing to allow ‘‘denial, secrecy and shame’’
to render them mute,
both men and women were able to transform what had
previously been private
suffering into powerful public action for social and political
change.8 In the 1970s
and 1980s, crisis centers, rape hotlines, and safe shelters were
established with
painstaking effort in state after state.9
At the same time, the Veterans Administration commissioned
thorough studies
of the war’s impact on returning Vietnam vets.10 Subsequently,
a ‘‘five-volume
7. For a fascinating account of the history of the study of

psychological trauma, see Judith Herman’s
classic text, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books,
1997), Chapter One.
8. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 29
9.
http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/herstory/herstory.html,
accessed September 20. 2010: ‘‘A
study in Chicago reveals that from September 1965 to March
1966, 46.1% of the major crimes
perpetrated against women took place in the home. It also found
that police response to domestic
disturbance calls exceeded total response for murder, rape,
aggravated assault, and other service
crimes.’’ ‘‘From 1968 to 1973, the crime of rape increased 62%
nationwide.’’ With a statistic like
this, one wonders whether the crime actually increased so
dramatically or whether the increase can
be accounted for by the fact that more and more women were
willing to acknowledge and report it.
Both of these statistics cite Del Martin, Battered Wives (New
York: Pocket Books, 1976), 4.
10. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 27.
10 Theology Today 68(1)

study on the legacies of Vietnam. . .demonstrated beyond any
reasonable doubt
[the] direct relationship [of trauma] to combat exposure.’’11
With multiple vectors
for social change converging, the American Psychiatric
Association included a new
diagnosis in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for 1980
called Post-traumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD). In their first attempt to capture its
essence, psychiatrists
described traumatic events as lying ‘‘outside the range of usual
human experience,’’
a definition that proved untenable since traumatic incidents of
one kind or another
are quite common.12 As psychiatrist Judith Herman writes,
‘‘Traumatic events are
extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because
they overwhelm
the ordinary human adaptations to life.’’13 In fact, a simple,
thumbnail definition of
trauma might be: ‘‘an inescapably stressful event that
overwhelms people’s coping
mechanisms.’’14 When people face ‘‘intense fear, helplessness,
loss of control, and
the threat of annihilation,’’ and when these feelings persist for
more than a month,
PTSD becomes the chosen diagnosis.15 It is important to note,
however, that
witnesses to horrific events are also vulnerable to trauma.
Watching helplessly as
a loved one dies, seeing the Twin Towers fall to the earth, or
listening in fear as
one’s mother or sibling gets beaten—such events can also
trigger a traumatic

reaction.16
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 33. ‘‘Norris (1992), in a study of 1,000 adults in the
southern United States, found that 69% of
the sample had experienced a traumatic stressor in their lives,
and that this included 21% in the past
year alone.’’ Quoted in Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD, Alexander
C. McFarlane, Lars Weisaeth, eds,
Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on
Mind, Body, and Society (New York:
Guilford Press, 2006), 135.
14. van der Kolk, McFarlane, Weisaeth, eds. Traumatic Stress,
279.
15. N.C. Andreasen, ‘‘Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,’’
Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, eds H.I.
Kaplan and B.J. Sadock (4th ed; Baltimore: Williams and
Wilkins, 1985), 918–24, quoted in
Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 33. Following the criteria for
diagnoses can be dizzying since
PTSD has so many close cousins, such as acute stress disorder,
panic disorder, anxiety disorder,
agoraphobia, etc. However, a synopsis of the seven criteria of

PTSD are: (1) the traumatic stressor
involves death, injury or serious threat (or witnessing or
learning about such to another); (2) the
response involves intense fear, helplessness or horror; (3) the
person persistently re-experiences the
traumatic event; (4) the person persistently avoids stimuli
associated with the trauma and tries to
numb general responsiveness; (5) symptoms of hyperarousal
persist; (6) for a month or more;
(7) and the symptoms cause ‘‘clinically significant distress or
impairment in social, occupational,
or other important areas of functioning.’’ See also
http://www.psychiatryonline.com/
content.aspx?aID¼3357&searchStr¼post-
traumatic+stress+disorder.
16. See Kaethe Weingarten, Common Shock: Witnessing
Violence Everyday? (New York: New American
Library, 2003). See also Kaethe Weingarten, ‘‘Witnessing the
Effects of Political Violence in Families:
Mechanisms of Intergenerational Transmission and Clinical
Interventions,’’ Journal of Marital and
Family Therapy 30.1 (January, 2004): 45–59.
Hunsinger 11

The subjective experience of feeling overwhelmed uniquely
characterizes trauma
and differentiates it from those situations that are experienced,
perhaps, as excep-
tionally stressful but not as traumatic. Peter Levine elaborates:
Traumatized people . . . are unable to overcome the anxiety of
their experience. They
remain overwhelmed by the event, defeated and terrified.
Virtually imprisoned by their
fear, they are unable to re-engage in life. Others who experience
similar events may
have no enduring symptoms at all . . . No matter how
frightening an event may seem,
not everyone who experiences it will be traumatized.17
The imponderable factor here is that the nature of the triggering
event in and of
itself does not guarantee a traumatic reaction. One person may
experience the event
as traumatic while her neighbor, friend or daughter having the
exact same experi-
ence may find it stressful, but not traumatic. This fact remains
completely inexpli-
cable until we realize that none of us ever actually has the exact
same experience
because our minds organize our experiences in a completely
idiosyncratic way. Its
meaning will be different for each person because our way of
making narrative

sense of our lives is utterly unique. Thus, feeling overwhelmed
or immobilized is a
variable that cannot be predicted by either the nature,
magnitude or intensity of the
triggering event.18 ‘‘Consequently,’’ writes Carolyn Yoder, ‘‘a
traumatic reaction
needs to be treated as valid, regardless of how the event that
induced it appears to
anyone else.’’19
I want to underscore this point because I believe it is
fundamental to competent
pastoral care. Time and again, one hears people minimizing or
discounting the
anguish of others, essentially encouraging them to ‘‘get over
it.’’ Wanting those
they love to be whole, they try to encourage them by rationally
explaining why they
should not be upset by so small a thing. Yet there is little that
so completely
obstructs the healing process as having someone offer the free
advice to ‘‘get
over it’’ or ‘‘put it behind’’ them. While such defense
mechanisms—denial and
minimization—on the part of friends or caregivers are
understandable as human
reactions to pain in those they love, they only injure the
traumatized further, per-
haps to the point of shaming them into silence and truly
unbearable isolation.
Yet, why are they not able simply to ‘‘get over it’’? The various
symptoms of
post-traumatic stress have been aptly summarized by Judith
Herman, as hyperar-
ousal, intrusion, and constriction: ‘‘Hyperarousal reflects the

persistent expectation
of danger; intrusion reflects the indelible imprint of the
traumatic moment; con-
striction reflects the numbing response of surrender.’’20 While
each symptom orig-
inates in the triggering event itself, they all have an afterlife in
the person’s
unfolding post-trauma history.
17. Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (Berkeley,
CA: North Atlantic Books, 1997), 28.
18. Carolyn Yoder, The Little Book of Trauma Healing
(Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2005), 10.
19. Ibid., 11. Emphasis in the original.
Any kind of physical or emotional shock has the potential to set
certain phys-
iological responses in motion. Typical responses include one’s
heart beating faster,
difficulty in breathing, rising blood pressure, and the
constriction of one’s stomach.
One’s thoughts may begin to race and the skin may become
cold. These responses
all stem from the autonomic nervous system putting the body on
high alert in
response to a perception of threat. The release of hormones
mobilizes the body
for fight or flight. When neither fight nor flight seem possible,

the physiological
response of the body is to freeze.21
In the freeze response, ‘‘the victim of trauma enters an altered
reality. Time
slows down and there is no fear or pain. In this state, if harm or
death do occur,
the pain is not felt as intensely.’’22 There is a notable shift in
consciousness, in
which there is a subjective sense of detachment. Victims of
sexual assault, for
instance, sometimes speak of ‘‘leaving their body’’ and
watching themselves from
another point in the room: standing next to the bed or looking
down from the
ceiling.23 Metaphorically, it is as if the soul escapes the body
to protect the person
from the physical pain and the full emotional impact of his or
her radical
vulnerability.
Like the fight or flight response, freezing is also heralded by a
flood of hor-
mones. In 1844, David Livingstone described his subjective
experience of being
seized by a lion:
Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog
does a rat. It produced
a sort of dreaminess in which there was no sense of pain, nor
feeling of terror, though I
was quite conscious of all that was happening . . . This placidity
is probably produced

in all animals killed by the carnivore; and if so, is a merciful
provision of the Creator
for lessening the pain of death.24
The capacity of the mind to dissociate like this may reduce the
immediate pain
and horror of the event, but it does so at a high cost. Studies
now demonstrate that
‘‘people who enter a dissociative state at the time of the
traumatic event are among
those most likely to develop long-lasting PTSD.’’25
During a traumatic ordeal, the intense hyperarousal of the
emotions often
‘‘interfere[s] with proper information processing and the
storage of information
in narrative (explicit) memory.’’26 This means that memory of
the trauma is often
fragmented; it is not organized in a linear, narrative fashion as
normal memories
are. Instead, certain features associated with sensory data are
vividly remembered
such as a particular smell, sound, image or color. If a dog was
barking when the
21. Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers (New York:
W.W. Norton, 2000), 8.
22. Rothschild, The Body Remembers, 10.
24. http://www.man-eater.info/gpage5.html, accessed May 10,
2010.

26. van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress, 286.
Hunsinger 13
person was assaulted, for instance, the sound of a barking dog
might evoke sub-
sequent feelings of terror or rage, yet strangely unaccompanied
by an explicit
memory of the assault. Or, alternatively, the memory of the
assault may be explicit,
yet strangely dissociated from the accompanying emotions.
Bessel van der Kolk
comments:
Although the individual may be unable to produce a coherent
narrative of the inci-
dent, there may be no interference with implicit memory; the
person may ‘‘know’’ the
emotional valence of a stimulus and be aware of associated
perceptions, without being
able to articulate the reasons for feeling or behaving in a
particular way. [Pierre] Janet
[1859–1947] proposed that traumatic memories are split off
(dissociated) from con-
sciousness, and instead are stored as sensory perceptions,
obsessional ruminations or

behavioral reenactments.27
Such intrusive memories can be quite distressing, as aspects of
the traumatic event
are replayed in the mind over and over again, but without the
full picture, without the
experience of ‘‘normal memory’’ that enables a coherent sense
of self-understanding.
After such an event, the hyperarousal of the nervous system
keeps persons on a
kind of ‘‘permanent alert,’’ where they may startle easily and
sleep poorly.28 Subject
to nightmares and intrusive flashbacks, they may begin to
circumscribe their world
to avoid anything that might re-trigger the feelings of
helplessness, rage, fear, grief,
panic, and shame associated with the event. Flashbacks are
something like having
nightmares while awake. Something triggers the memory of the
trauma, perhaps
the smell of alcohol, the sound of a particular footfall, a certain
tone of voice or
characteristic gesture. Indeed, anything can trigger a flashback
because of the way
the brain organizes data in a vast web of interconnected
associations. Neurologists
remind us that neurons that ‘‘fire together, wire together.’’29
Two or more things
are forever associated, ‘‘wired together’’ in the brain’s neural
pathways. Suddenly,
one is shaking and sweating in response to an ordinary everyday
event.30 Yet,
knowing that one’s response is out of proportion to what
triggered it only increases
a sense of powerlessness, anxiety, and shame. Because such

experiences of intrusion
are so frightening and because survivors can make little rational
sense of them, they
often do whatever they can to avoid these states or to deaden
the pain by numbing
it out in some way.
27. van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress, 287.
29. See Daniel Siegel, The Developing Mind: How
Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We
Are (New York: Guilford, 1999), 26.
30. ‘‘Painful life experiences get encoded in our brains and
bodies and can be reactivated with great
intensity by the right kind of trigger decades later, even if we
believe that we have dealt with them or
have completely forgotten about them.’’ A.J. van den Blink,
‘‘Trauma and Spirituality,’’ in
Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry, 28
(Decatur, GA: Journal of Pastoral
Care Publications, 2008), 30–47. See
http://www.easternaapc.org/articlesofinterest.html, accessed
July 30, 2008.

If they do not actively seek help, a whole range of defensive
patterns may
develop. Rather than facing the pain directly, survivors may
turn the intense trau-
matic energy against themselves. Many addictive behaviors
have their source in
unresolved trauma that is not consciously faced: substance
abuse, workaholism,
eating disorders, even rituals of self-mutilation can seem
preferable to experiencing
the buried pain of trauma.31 Shame, dread, and helplessness are
pervasive, alter-
nating with numbness, depression or a sense of emptiness. Their
sense of agency is
damaged; they often feel powerless and alone in a hostile world,
wondering
whether anyone cares if they live or die.32 Spiritual questions
may become parti-
cularly intense with a growing sense of disorientation or even
meaninglessness.
Living in an unsafe world, survivors of trauma put themselves
on constant alert,
watching for danger.
While many victims suffer in silence, others will turn the
intensity of their suf-
fering outward. Feelings of rage may predominate. Wanting
justice, fantasies of
revenge may become an obsession. Sometimes narratives are
created where the
plotline of good versus evil has them perpetually in the role of
the ‘‘good guy’’
with ‘‘the other’’ as the ‘‘bad guy.’’ The enemy is typically
seen as less than fully
human. The traumatized begin to tell a predictable tale that

seldom varies. Pastoral
theologian, David Augsburger, challenges victims of trauma
with a number of
pointed questions: ‘‘Can I identify what I get out of rehearsing
an offense over
and over? Why do I insist on replaying the history of injury?
How often have I told
and retold the story of the offense to others to gain their support
and validation of
my role or position as victim?’’33 When such desires for
revenge are not consciously
wrestled with, attacks on others may seem justified as a way of
restoring a sense of
dignity, respect, and honor or in the name of justice.34 In a
chilling comment, James
Gilligan, director of the Center for the Study of Violence at the
Harvard Medical
School, comments that ‘‘All violence is an effort to do justice
or to undo injus-
tice.’’35 Pain that is not transformed does not simply disappear.
As Ann Ulanov
writes,
Where we repress our grudge-holding, our wish to make
someone pay for what has
happened to us . . . that repressed shadow does not just go away.
It goes unconscious
and remains alive with instinctual impulses, emotions, but far
out of reach of
31. Yoder, The Little Book of Trauma Healing, 33
32. Feeling helpless and alone in a potentially hostile world was
Karen Horney’s definition of neurosis.

See Neurosis and Human Growth (New York: Norton, 1950).
Serene Jones speaks repeatedly in her
book on the damaged sense of agency of the traumatized and
their need for experiences of empow-
erment. See Trauma and Grace.
33. David Augsburger, Hate-Work: Working through the Pain
and Pleasures of Hate (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 2004), 227.
34. Howard Zehr, ‘‘Doing Justice, Healing Trauma: The Role of
Restorative Justice in Peacebuilding,’’
South Asian Journal of Peacebuilding 1.1 (Spring, 2008): 15.
35. James Gilligan, Violence: Reflections on a National
Epidemic (New York: Random House, 1996),
quoted in Zehr, ‘‘Doing Justice, Healing Trauma,’’ 5.
Hunsinger 15
modification by social or personal reality testing . . . We put
onto others what we do
not own in ourselves and identify them with this rejected bit of
ourselves. The personal
becomes social. But then this live bit of shadow menaces us
from the outside.36

Instead of the trauma being ‘‘acted in’’ against the self, it is
now ‘‘acted out’’
against others. The traumatized feel justified in venting their
rage, yet such repeated
venting only serves to inscribe the anger and sense of moral
outrage more deeply in
body and soul. It does nothing to bring healing or peace.
Freud describes ‘‘repetition compulsion’’ as a symbolic reliving
of the trauma, as
a way the traumatized express their suffering while yet failing
to become fully
conscious of it. Children who have been sexually abused, for
example, may
engage in ritual play that gives unconscious voice to the abuse.
Those honored
for bravery in war may suffer repetitive nightmares or else
wreak terrible violence
on their families as they struggle with mental pain.37 The
combination of survivor
guilt, depression, frozen grief, anguish, and rage act as a kind
of seething cauldron
beneath the surface, ready to burst forth in a symbolic re-
enactment of the original
horror, often with tragic results.
How do we break free from the vicious cycle of
trauma’s impact?
Is it possible to forge a path that seeks neither ‘‘oblivion’’ on
the one hand nor
‘‘revenge’’ on the other?38 Is it possible truly to heal? Ann
Ulanov describes the
predicament of those who have constricted their lives in the
aftermath of trauma:

We swap aliveness for restriction in order to feel safer, avoid
pain, survive some blow
that seems to us unbearable, that would destroy us. We fear we
are empty inside so we
cover it up with manufactured control, or made-up excitement,
or self-promotion. The
emptiness can never change if we refuse to experience it, and in
the company of an
other. We need an other to depend on when we turn to face our
deadness. Whatever
we are afraid of, it requires our attention; we must go down into
it, look around, not
knowing if and how we will come out.39
36. Ann Belford Ulanov, The Unshuttered Heart (Nashville:
Abingdon, 2007), 140–41.
37. Wilmer, Harry, ‘‘The Healing Nightmare: A Study of the
War Dreams of Vietnam Combat
Veterans,’’ Quadrant 19.1 (Spring, 1986), 47–61. See the story
told by ‘‘Gizelle’’ in which the
unhealed suffering of war leads to sexual assault with tragic
effects in Ellen Bass and Laura
Davis, The Courage to Heal (New York: Harper, 2008).
38. Bessel van der Kolk dedicates his remarkable anthology,

Traumatic Stress: The Effects of
Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body and Society, ‘‘to
Nelson Mandela and all those who,
after having been hurt, work on transforming the trauma of
others, rather than seeking oblivion
or revenge.’’
39. Ulanov, The Unshuttered Heart, 38.
Three key phrases need to be underlined here: first, whatever
we are afraid of
requires our attention. Second, we need to experience it in the
company of an other.
And third, we take these steps not knowing if and how we will
come out.
Those who seek to reclaim their lives after trauma need to face
what has actually
happened to them. It requires their attention. If their nervous
system is in a hyper-
aroused state, they need to find as much safety as possible. Only
true safety will
provide the emotional security needed to begin the healing
process commonly
known as mourning. Giving voice to all that they have
experienced—the terror
and helplessness, the sense of moral outrage and personal
violation, the sorrow,
hurt, anger, and grief—becomes the essential first step in

piecing together a coher-
ent narrative.
Yet none of this can happen apart from the lively presence of a
caring other.
Who is there that can bear the anguish of such a narrative,
without minimizing or
denying it, without giving advice or offering strategies to
overcome it? Who can
listen without offering empty platitudes or switching the focus
to a similar story of
their own? Who has the wisdom to refrain from asking intrusive
questions
prompted by their own anxiety, allowing the traumatized space
to tell their story
in their own way at their own pace? Who can offer a
compassionate, caring pres-
ence, free of pity or sympathy, free of judgment, praise or
blame?40
Healing begins as the traumatized begin to piece together a
coherent narrative,
creating a web of meaning around unspeakable events while
remaining fully con-
nected emotionally both to themselves and to their listener. It
takes courage even to
begin such a conversation. Their feelings can be confusing and
difficult to sort out.
Often there seem to be no words that adequately describe the
horror. Moreover, is
it safe to trust the listener? Feelings of shame, fear of judgment,
extreme vulnera-
bility are common. Maybe talking about it will make matters
worse.
Talking about it can, in actual fact, make matters worse. Any

kind of direct
processing of the traumatic experience needs to be balanced at
all times with a sense
of safety and containment. Anchoring oneself in the present,
feeling safe with one’s
listener, processing one small piece at a time, and mourning
each of the profound
losses involved, all these steps take time, patience, and
exquisite self-care. Trauma
specialists are trained to pay attention to signs of distress and
deliberately slow
down the process, remembering the maxim that ‘‘the slower you
go, the faster you
get there.’’41 The goal in talking about it is to stay fully
connected to the feelings
without becoming overwhelmed. Eye contact with the caregiver,
slowing down the
pace, taking a break from the past, returning to the present with
clear focus on
one’s bodily sensations, all help to put on the brakes.42
Understanding what is
40 Training in nonviolent or compassionate communication
teaches an exquisite awareness and con-
crete strategies for the kind of empathic attunement described
here. See Marshall Rosenberg,
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (Encinitas,
CA: Puddledancer, 2003).
41. Jon G. Allen, Coping with Trauma: Hope through
Understanding (Washington, DC: American
Psychiatric Publishing, 2005), 251–53.

42. Babette Rothschild writes, ‘‘I never help clients call forth
traumatic memories unless I and my
clients are confident that the flow of their anxiety, emotion,
memories, and body sensations can
Hunsinger 17
happening and why profoundly assists the healing process as
well. This is why a
clear conceptual understanding of trauma is important:
understanding becomes a
part of the holding environment that contains anxiety and
increases a sense of
empowerment.
Those who have courageously faced trauma give powerful
witness to the risks
involved. Will they choose life by facing the pain or will they
shrink back once
again into numbing defenses?
When I get into a crisis now, instead of saying, ‘‘Oh my God,
I’m never going to heal,’’
I see that it’s like layers, and the more I work with it, the more
they keep coming
around. And even though it’s like ‘‘But I was feeling good two
days ago and now I’m
shaking and crying and I can’t sleep,’’ I’m beginning to see that
I’m not coming back

to the same place. I’m coming back at a different level . . .
When I reach the next level
where the tears are, where the fear is, where the tiredness is, I
have to trust . . .43
For me the decision not to identify with the past was a decision,
not just a change I
went through in the healing process. I had to make a quantum
leap that I was no
longer going to have the abuse be the cause and my life be the
effect . . . Right now you
have to choose what standpoint you are going to live life from.
And it’s a constant
choice.44
Trauma survivors need to choose life over death, not once but
many times,
reaching out with the fragile hope that the trauma can be healed
or transformed,
that the pain will abate, or that some kind of normalcy will
return. Some try to take
their lives. Tragically, many succeed, despairing that nothing
can stop the eternal
recurrence of the trauma. Each person needs the love, support,
respect, and under-
standing of caring others.45 Those who grow through and
beyond trauma do so in
part by forging a spiritual framework for what is called post-
traumatic growth. Not
knowing if or how they will come out, they nevertheless are
freed to take steps

toward greater and greater freedom. It is to one such framework
that I now turn.
( fnote continued)
be contained at will. I never teach a client to hit the accelerator,
in other words, before I know that
he can find the brake.’’ See
http://www.saskworld.com/bodymindspirit/edition21/17_article
_r-
othschild.htm, accessed July 10, 2010.
43. Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, The Courage to Heal (New
York: Harper and Row, 1988), 457.
44. Ibid., 438.
45. Sometimes teens and children are overlooked. Where early
attachment is threatened or ruptured,
children are much more vulnerable to trauma throughout their
lives. See the valuable work done by
the National Child Traumatic Stress Network for helpful
resources: http://www.nctsnet.org/nccts. I
am indebted to Jennie Olbrych for this reference.
How does the gospel with the pastoral care of the church
bring healing to those suffering from traumatic loss?

When we enter ‘‘the strange new world of the Bible,’’ we are
confronted with
paradox and mystery at every turn. Here we behold a crucified
Savior, a God
who bears our grief and carries our sorrow, who heals by taking
away the sin of
the world, both the evil we suffer and the evil we do. It makes
no rational sense.
Looked at from outside the circle of faith, it is a complete
conundrum. ‘‘Getting
in’’ on this religion wrenches your mind inside out: is the cross
of Christ sheer
foolishness or is it the very power of God (1 Cor 1:18)?
At its core, the cross becomes gospel for the traumatized only if
they are able to
see there a divine love willing to bear what is unbearable for
mortal, fallen human
beings. God bears for us the full weight of both sin and death. If
God in Jesus
Christ descends into the worst hell imaginable in order to
deliver us from the hells
we inflict upon one another, then such a God is worthy of our
trust. When we stand
by helplessly witnessing the suffering and dying of those we
love, we have a God to
whom we can entrust them in life and in death. For Jesus Christ
is not simply a
human companion who comforts us by suffering trauma
alongside us. As the
creeds of the Church attest, he is known to us as the risen Lord,
the very
Wisdom and Power of God, through whom God will fulfill his
purpose of redemp-
tion. Jesus Christ, the gospel attests, bears what cannot be borne

by fragile, fallen
human beings. He alone bears the sin of the world and he alone
bears it away.
As the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Christ
is known as
that One who suffers for our sakes as well. On our behalf and
for our sakes, he
takes human depravity into his own divine heart in order to
transform it, so that it
no longer has the power to separate us from God. The powers of
sin and death that
have such a hold on us—and that are at the root of all trauma—
are finally nullified.
Not only the fear of death, by which human beings are made
‘‘subject to lifelong
bondage’’ (Heb 2:15), but also the fear of eternal estrangement
from the very
Source of Life, is proclaimed to be overcome in Christ. Through
Christ, we have
access to all that we long for: the loving gaze of one who
cherishes us, miraculous
outpourings of grace, a steady anchor in times of distress,
mercy on our weakness,
forgiveness of our sins, and most basic of all, the lifeline of
basic trust.
If salvation means forgiveness of sin and the promise of eternal
life, then all our
pastoral arts of healing have this promise as its telos. Healing,
whether physical,
emotional or spiritual, is always set within this larger context of
the unimaginable
reaches of God’s salvation.46 If our hope is nothing less than
the salvation of the
world in Jesus Christ, it is also a hope held out for the

perpetrators of trauma as
well as for its victims. All those human beings from whom we
normally seek to
46. See Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, Theology and Pastoral
Counseling: A New Interdisciplinary
Approach (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 122. See also,
Robert W. Jenson, ‘‘Story and Promise
in Pastoral Care,’’ Pastoral Psychology 26.7 (1977): 113–23.
‘‘In historical fact and by manifest
anthropological necessity, nothing but final hope ever sustains
genuine suffering or enables creative
historic action.’’
Hunsinger 19
separate ourselves by every conceivable means, those
perpetrators of unspeakable
horror—they, too, perhaps more than anyone, need to hear the
gospel word of
God’s judgment and mercy. If One died for all, then he died for
those who have
brought the terrors of hell, not only upon others, but also upon
themselves through
their own actions.47
Indeed, whenever we affirm that Christ died for sinners, we
affirm our solidarity
with all who do harm, solidarity in sin as well as in our
deliverance from sin.

In confessing ourselves as sinners, utterly unable to save
ourselves, we recognize
that under similar circumstances of deprivation, terror or
colossal historic evils, we,
too, would be capable of monstrous crimes toward our fellow
human beings. The
cross of Jesus Christ is God’s response not only to the terror of
human trauma, but
also the anguish of human guilt, bringing succor and healing to
the one, and
judgment, forgiveness and the ‘‘godly grief ’’ of repentance to
the other (2 Cor
7:10). When we affirm the resurrection and ascension of Jesus
Christ, we affirm
his power to bring every kind of evil to an end. ‘‘Though
innocent, Christ suffers as
if guilty and ends the logic of evil by taking our suffering onto
his body, and not
being destroyed by it nor by the death it inflicts. The abyss of
love is revealed as
stronger than the abyss of death, the power of love as stronger
than the power of
hate.’’48 This is an interpretive framework that no psychiatrist
or therapist has to
offer, no twelve-step program or self-help group can claim, but
which can be
preached and taught week after week in the context of ordinary
pastoral care:
that in overcoming the world, Jesus Christ saves us from both
the guilt and anguish
of human sin, as well as the terror and trauma of suffering and
death.
These are words of hope to which the traumatized may cling.
‘‘Now hope that is
seen is not hope’’ (Rom 8:24). Though our faith holds us fast to

this hope, we know
that many descend into their graves with nothing but hatred
toward those who
have harmed them or those they love. Forgiveness, though
freely given by God,
does not seem to be a human possibility for us in turn. Try as
we might, it does not
seem subject to our human will but comes, when it does, as a
miracle of God.49
While not subject to our human will, forgiveness rarely happens
apart from an
active decision to forgive. One definition of forgiveness, given
by pastoral theolo-
gian, David Augsburger,
is an act of laying aside one’s rational arguments for repayment,
my principled argu-
ments for my being truly in the right and you being wholly in
the wrong, and at last
47. ‘‘More recently has come an awareness of ‘perpetrator-
induced trauma’ and its role in perpetuating
the cycle of victimization and offending; severe offending can
itself cause trauma in offenders.’’
Zehr, ‘‘Doing Justice, Healing Trauma,’’ 10. See also, Robert
MacNair, Perpetration-Induced
Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002). For
a compelling story, see Wendell Berry, ‘‘Pray without
Ceasing,’’ in Fidelity (New York: Pantheon,

1992), 3–60.
48. Ulanov, The Unshuttered Heart, 150–51.
49. Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, ‘‘Forgiving Abusive
Parents,’’ Forgiveness and Truth, eds Alistair
McFadyen and Marcel Sarot (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2001),
71–98.
offering a full and complete pardon to the other, whether or not
there are any believ-
able signs of authentic remorse or repentance in the perpetrator.
In granting the other
person release, one receives one’s own.50
We have seen this miracle of forgiveness in the testimonies of
those who
appeared before the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. One
that has stayed with me is the testimony of Ms Babalwa
Mhlauli. Bishop Tutu
writes, ‘‘When she had finished telling her story, she said she
wanted to know who
had killed her father. She spoke quietly and, for someone so
young, with much
maturity and dignity. You could have heard a pin drop in that
hushed City Hall
when she said, ‘We do want to forgive but we don’t know whom

to forgive’.’’51
We see it in Marietta Jaeger-Lane who has worked tirelessly for
both victims and
perpetrators in the years that followed the kidnapping and
murder of her seven-
year-old daughter, Susie. Founder of Murdered Victim’s
Families for
Reconciliation, Ms Jaeger Lane continues to honor her daughter
by offering testi-
mony to end capital punishment for capital crimes.52 Such
stories challenge us to
consider those for whom we harbor ill will, those we are unable
or unwilling to
forgive. Sometimes, we can only lay them at the foot of the
cross for God to judge,
confessing our inability to fathom either the extent of the evil
or its redemption. We
can only point away from ourselves to the transcendent hope of
the gospel we are
called to proclaim.
If maintaining hope is the foundation of all healing, as
psychotherapist Jon G.
Allen attests, then the gospel has something fundamental to
offer those afflicted by
trauma.53 While ministry cannot replace the work of psychiatry
or psychotherapy,
it can nevertheless function as an indispensable part of the
healing process.54 When
human trust has eluded them, the traumatized desperately need
an anchor, a point
of reference, something or someone reliable in which to place
their trust. Scripture
attests again and again that by the power of the Spirit, God
comes to those who cry

out for help: ‘‘I called on Your name, O Lord, from the lowest
pit. You have heard
50. Augsburger, Hate-Work, 232.
51. Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York:
Doubleday, 1999), 149.
52. ‘‘Testimony of Marietta Jaeger Lane On Behalf of Murder
Victims’ Families for Human Rights &
Journey of Hope, An Act Abolishing the Death Penalty and
Replacing it with Life Imprisonment
without Possibility of Release,’’ Senate Judiciary Committee
Hearing, February 7, 2007.
http://www.mtabolitionco.org/news/Lane%20Testimony.pdf,
accessed September 9, 2010. See
also, The Lost Child (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983).
53. Allen, Coping with Trauma.
54. In the United States context, those diagnosed with PTSD
will often turn for help to therapists
especially trained in trauma. In other contexts around the world,
imaginative rituals and collective
healing processes have been developed. See, for example, the
work of Martha Cabrera, ‘‘Living and
Surviving in a Multiply Wounded Country,’’ describing her
work in Nicaragua: http://www.goo-

gle.com/#sclient¼psy&hl¼en&site¼&source¼hp&q¼Martha+C
abrera%2C+%E2%
80%9CLiving+and+Surviving+in+a+Multiply+Wounded+Countr
y%E2%80%9D&aq¼
f&aqi¼&aql¼&oq¼&gs_rfai¼&pbx¼1&fp¼8d9c50a61d5b9175
, accessed September 27, 2010.
Hunsinger 21
my voice: ‘Do not hide Your ear from my sighing, from my cry
for help.’ You drew
near on the day I called on You, and said, ‘Do not fear!’’’ (Lam
3:55–57, NKJV).
We thus faciltate healing when we help the afflicted cry out
their sorrow, rage, and
tears to God. Prayers of lament—crying out to God for
deliverance—seem to be faith’s
only alternative to despair.55 Instead of protecting themselves
against the pain, the
afflicted are encouraged to go down into it, clinging to God’s
promises as they do so.
Listen to one such lament, in which the afflicted one directs her
anguish toward God:
There comes a time when both body and soul
enter into such a vast darkness
that one loses light and consciousness
and knows nothing more of God’s intimacy.

At such a time, when the light in the lantern burns out
the beauty of the lantern can no longer be seen,
with longing and distress we are reminded of our nothingness.
At such a time I pray to God:
‘‘O God, this burden is too heavy for me!’’
And God replies:
‘‘I will take this burden first and clasp it close to Myself
and that way you may more easily bear it.’’. . .
If God leaves me unanointed, I could never recover.
Even if all the hills flowed with healing oils,
and all the waters contained healing powers,
and all the flowers and all the trees dripped with healing
ointments,
still, I could never recover.
‘‘God, I will tear the heart of my soul in two
and you must lie therein.
You must lay yourself in the wounds of my soul.’’56
These words of Mechthild of Magdeburg, mystic of the
thirteenth century, echo

down through the centuries, offering a startling image of
healing through the pal-
pable presence of Christ’s own body. In her fervent prayer,
Mechthild offers the
wounds of her soul for healing through the intimate presence of
Christ’s broken
body. Here we meet profound mystery. An image of union with
Christ rises up
from the depths and is given voice in her prayer. Only the full,
living presence of a
wounded Savior can heal her soul.
Psychologist Robert Stolorow speaks of the fundamental
necessity of finding
what he calls a ‘‘relational home’’ for traumatic experience. He
writes, ‘‘Trauma is
55. Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, ‘‘Prayers of Lament,’’ Pray
without Ceasing: Revitalizing Pastoral
Care (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 138–155.
56. Marchienne Vroon Rienstra, Swallow’s Nest: A Feminine
Reading of the Psalms (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1992), Appendix. From The Flowing Light of the
Godhead, by Mechthild of Magdeburg,
Cistercian nun (1210–c. 1285).
constituted in an intersubjective context in which severe
emotional pain cannot find

a relational home in which it can be held. In such a context,
painful affect states
become unendurable. . .’’57 Severe emotional pain cannot be
endured if it does not
have a relational home, someone to hold what cannot be
borne.58 Ministers of the
gospel of Jesus Christ who are rooted and grounded in the love
of God provide just
such a relational home for all those who groan for the
redemption of the world.
They offer a steady, sturdy, compassionate, and loving witness
to all who have
suffered trauma. In so far as they thus participate in Christ’s
own compassion, they
become witnesses to and mediators of Christ’s miraculous
grace.
Conclusion
In recent decades, pastoral theology has turned more and more
to the public,
social, and political dimensions of both affliction and pastoral
care. Ministers of
the church attend not just to individual members of their
congregations, but also
participate in larger communities of outreach and care.
Especially in the light of
recent large-scale disasters, pastoral leaders need to respond
with sensitivity to the
needs of those who do not share the gospel narrative as the
overarching context of
the meaning in their lives. I believe that it is crucial for us also
to address questions
such as these, even though they lie outside the scope of the
present article.59

As leaders in their own church communities, pastoral leaders
need to recognize
the power inherent in their position to frame and interpret any
traumatic event that
has occurred. In so doing, they can either inflame the situation
by escalating anx-
iety (through name-calling, rushing to judgment and blame,
using us/them dichot-
omies, labeling dissenting views, or withholding or
misrepresenting the facts) or
decrease anxiety and facilitate healing by opening channels of
communication
among all parties involved.60 As they offer a secure holding
environment to
57. Robert D. Stolorow, Trauma and Human Existence (New
York: The Analytic Press 2007), 10.
58. See also the example in Hunsinger, ‘‘Keeping an Open
Heart in Troubled Times: Self-empathy as a
Christian Spiritual Practice.’’ The experience described there
illustrates the importance of having
one’s pain ‘‘witnessed,’’ as described by Weingarten in
Common Shock.
59. Jeannette Sutton writes about the wariness that disaster
coordinators have toward those providers
of spiritual care who volunteer their assistance. ‘‘There has
been unease about hidden agendas, the
appropriateness of religiously oriented interventions, and
concern for victims who might feel that

contact with some minister-types is intrusive and assaultive.’’
‘‘Convergence of the Faithful:
Spiritual Care Response to Disaster and Mass Casualty
Events,’’ Journal of Pastoral Theology
16.1 (Fall, 2006): 19. Through ministries of ‘‘presence’’ and
‘‘hospitality,’’ spiritual care providers
in the public sphere offer comfort and reassurance while helping
victims to draw upon their ‘‘own
religious and/or spiritual resources in order to construct
meaning out of chaos.’’ They respect
personal boundaries, know how to work in an interfaith manner,
and are responsive to training
from the disaster assistance professionals such as the American
Red Cross.
60. Volkan Volmik, Blind Trust: Large Groups and their
Leaders in Times of Crisis and Terror
(Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone, 2004), cited in STAR training,
‘‘Part III: The Trauma Healing
Journey, Breaking the Cycles of Violence,’’ Eastern Mennonite
University, 2002. See Howard Zehr,
The Little Book of Restorative Justice (Intercourse, PA: Good
Books, 2002), 67–69.
Hunsinger 23

strengthen frayed bonds of trust, and as they call upon God to
minister to the
community in its pain, they offer space to the hurting to tell
their story. In some
cases, nearly everyone in the community has been hurt by
trauma, but in strangely
diverse ways.61 In this kind of situation, it is essential to
refrain from moralizing or
blaming, but position themselves in such a way that all persons
can be heard.62 The
community needs to gather in order to share their common grief
which serves to
counteract the fear, shame, isolation, and horror of what has
occurred.63
The pastoral care of the community finds its final locus in
ritual, psalm, and
song, in worship and the mystery of the Lord’s Supper. Personal
trauma and loss
are woven into the losses of the larger community as the liturgy
unfolds. That
which is most deeply personal becomes part of the communal
lament of the
people of God through the ages. Walter Brueggeman reminds us
that
[The] public dimension of grief is deep underneath personal
loss, and for the most
part, not easily articulated among us. But grief will not be
worked well or adequately
until attention goes underneath the personal to the public and
communal. My expec-

tation is that pastors, liturgically and pastorally most need to
provide opportunity and
script for lament and complaint and grief for a long time. No
second maneuver after
grief shall be permitted to crowd in upon this raw, elemental
requirement.64
By permitting an unrelieved descent into the raw emotions of
grief within the
secure boundaries of ritual space, hope and trust may be
paradoxically restored.65
As the Church gathers for worship, we are told of a God who is
‘‘the Father of
mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our
affliction, so that we
may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the
comfort with which
we ourselves are comforted by God’’ (2 Cor 1:3b–4). In worship
we find space both
to mourn and to hope, as we wait with painful longing for the
redemption of the
61. It is worth noting that ministers themselves are vulnerable
to any trauma afflicting their community.
Pastors and church leaders occupy a unique dual role, as those
called to give pastoral care, yet at the
same time as human beings who are themselves personally
affected. Those in caregiving roles need
to be exquisitely attuned to their own needs for care, especially
when their immediate community is

in crisis. Ministers’ families are vitally affected and need
support as well. Presbyterian Disaster
Assistance (PDA) consists of PCUSA pastors, elders, and
mental health professionals who are
trained in trauma and crisis-response, who offer companionship
and support to church leaders in
congregations affected by ‘‘human-caused disasters.’’ I am
indebted to Katherine Wiebe, a
Princeton Theological Seminary alumna who serves on the PDA,
for this point.
62. Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice, 67–69.
63. Ibid., 19–41.
64. Walter Brueggeman,
http://www.sermonmall.com/WTC/wtc22.html, as cited by John
Swinton,
Raging with Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problem of
Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2007), 121.
65. See Cedric C. Johnson, ‘‘Unspeakable Things Spoken:
Globalization, Imperial Trauma and the
Development of AfricanAmerican Identities’’ (Princeton
Theological Seminary; PhD dissertation,
May, 2010) for a description and analysis of a whole community

engaged in a transformative
healing process as they confront horrific historic and ongoing
trauma.
world. We find comfort in the midst of affliction when we are
reminded that the
One who descends into every human hell we create, and
unwittingly or maliciously
perpetuate, is the very One who sits at the right hand of the
Father in glory.
The community that responds to trauma in these ways will, by
the grace and
power of God, find itself stronger, wiser, more compassionate,
and more resilient.
Its collective story will be one of overcoming adversity together
rather than a story
of shame, re-victimization, fear, and silencing. By reclaiming
the essential practices
of our faith—compassionate witnessing, communal lament, and
public wor-
ship—we ‘‘enable people to continue to love God in the face of
evil and suffering
and in so doing to prevent tragic suffering from becoming
evil.’’66 As John Swinton
writes, ‘‘Loving God does not take away the pain that [trauma]
inflicts, but it does
transform it.’’67 May God work out our salvation by bearing
what cannot be
borne, by transforming our mourning into longing, our longing
into lament, our

lament into hope and, through the redemption of this beloved
world, our hope into
joy.68
Author biography
Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger began teaching at Princeton
Theological Seminary
in 1994 after many years as a practicing pastoral counselor. She
is currently the
Charlotte W. Newcombe Professor of Pastoral Theology.
Ordained as a Minister
of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church USA, Dr
Hunsinger is inter-
ested in placing the healing resources of psychological insight,
restorative practices,
and compassionate communication in the context of Reformed
theology. Author
of Theology and Pastoral Counseling: A New Interdisciplinary
Approach and Pray
without Ceasing: Revitalizing Pastoral Care, Dr Hunsinger is
currently co-author-
ing a book on transforming conflict in the Church.
66. Swinton, Raging with Compassion, 85.
67. Swinton, Raging with Compassion, 75.
68. I am indebted to colleagues George Hunsinger, Katherine
Sonderegger, Katherine Wiebe, and
Barbara Chaapel for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this
article.
Hunsinger 25

Chapter Eight
Moral Injury
Of the many questions arising from a warrior’s participation in
armed conflict one of the
most common arises from seeing humanity at its absolute worst.
“What happened to the good?
Where did it go?” The question takes many different forms but
the essence is universal. How
can human beings inflict the type of carnage and destruction
upon one another that warfare
demands?
There is no doubt that war in the twenty-first century is unlike
war in any previous
century. To be sure there are similarities in the basic nature of
warfare but the forms, venues,
and means have evolved beyond the levels of our moral and
philosophical reasoning and
understanding.
Warfare in American history has always been evolutionary,
especially from the
standpoint of technology. Perhaps no war has shown the tragic
reality of technology exceeding
both military tactics and strategy more clearly than World War
I. The advent of the machine
gun made Napoleonic Squares and cavalry charges obsolete and
resulted in what can only be
described as the mass slaughter of millions of young men on the
European fields of battle.
However, the armies continued to collide on specific geographic

spaces known as the
battlefield. In fact, those battle spaces often lent their names to
the battles themselves up to
and through the Vietnam War. Names such as Bunker Hill,
Cowpens, and Yorktown; Gettysburg,
Manassas, and Vicksburg; Belleau Wood, the Somme, and the
Meuse-Argon; Normandy, Sicily,
Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima; Inchon and Chosen Reservoir; Khe
San, Ira Drang Valley, and Hue
City help to define engagements in which opposing armies met
en masse upon the fields of
battle.
These battles involved significant movements of troops and
engagements lasting from
days to several weeks in duration, followed by relatively long
periods in which little or no
kinetic action occurred. Ante–twenty-first-century warfare
could be described as having armies
that were clearly identified as combatants, where war was
waged largely on open battlefields
with relatively well-defined front lines, and engagements were
typically brief with lengthy
periods of relative calm wedged in between them during which
troops could replenish, rest,
and regroup. This pattern is no longer descriptive of twenty-
first-century warfare. The latter
few years of the twentieth century saw the advent of terrorist
bombings in 1993 by an attack
on the World Trade Towers in New York City followed in 1998
with attacks on the US Embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania. The second attack upon the World
Trade Center in 2001 moved the
whole world into twenty-first-century warfare in which the
phrase “Shock and Awe” became

part of the common vocabulary.
Speed, increased lethality, network-centric platforms, the loss
of noncombatant
exclusions, urban settings, and remotely piloted vehicles have
become the standard for a new
way of waging war. There are no longer clearly discernible
front lines, no rear echelons, and
what is now twelve years of war in which kinetic engagement
has been near constant has
become the new face of war.
Broken bodies and broken lives manifest the damage in
increased incidents of post-
traumatic stress, and suicides occurring among active soldiers
and veterans in near battalion
numbers each month, not to mention the spouses and other
family members of service men
and women, are all too common. Sexual assaults on both women
and men by green on green,
and moral failures of senior officers, have increased at a
disturbing rate.
Beyond the physical and psychological wounds experienced by
our warriors there has
arisen a new class of injuries called “spiritual, soul, or moral.”
While there are many different
definitions of moral injuries the following is taken from the US
Department of Veterans Affairs
and aptly describes the essence of a moral injury.

Like psychological trauma, moral injury is a construct that
describes extreme and
unprecedented life experience including the harmful aftermath
of exposure to such
events. Events are considered morally injurious if they
“transgress deeply held moral
beliefs and expectations” (1). Thus, the key precondition for
moral injury is an act of
transgression, which shatters moral and ethical expectations that
are rooted in religious
or spiritual beliefs, or culture-based, organizational, and group-
based rules about
fairness, the value of life, and so forth. 64
Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini in their book on
moral injury speak of those
who have suffered such injury as feeling “they no longer live in
a reliable, meaningful world and
can no longer be regarded as decent human beings.” 65
Jonathan Shay says that moral injury is the persistence of
adaptive behaviors to survive
in a combat situation that cause a warrior to have complications
in the process of readapting to
a civilian environment. Moral injury to the warrior is not simply
the result of experiencing the
awful things that warriors are exposed to in combat. Moral
injury according to Dr. Shay is the
result of three parts, each of which must be present in order for
a moral injury to occur. First,
there must be a betrayal of what is morally correct. Second,
someone who is in a legitimate

position of authority must commit the betrayal of what is
morally correct. Third, the betrayal
must occur in a high-stakes situation. 66
Moral injury is often not readily apparent either to the injured
or to others. Not unlike
post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury the symptoms of
moral injury do not just
suddenly and dramatically appear. It is more like they just
emerge, coming out of the murky
mist of one’s inner core. Shay’s three-part definition is an
important contribution but a broader
statement seems preferable: moral injuries are wounds from
having done something, or failed
to stop something, that violates a person’s moral code. By this
definition moral injuries are not
the same as PTS with nightmares and flashbacks along with
other symptoms. Moral injuries
torture the soul of an individual. Moral injuries plague the
conscience and are manifest by a
sense of deep shame, guilt, and rage. Retired Col. Elspeth
Ritchie, a former psychiatry
consultant to the Army Surgeon General, asserts that “The
concept of moral injury is an
existentialist one. You may not have actually done something
wrong by the law of war, but by
your own humanity you feel that it’s wrong.” 67
Col. Ritchie’s observations can be illustrated by a recently
published interview with a

veteran of the war in Iraq who served as an Army nurse. In the
wake of a bombing he took
charge of those who had little chance of survival. Among them
was a little girl of perhaps six
years old whose chest was blown apart. He recounts that he
could not let her suffer and so he
injected dose after dose of painkillers into her IV. She died then
and he is sure that he killed
her. Even though subsequent medical evaluation and toxicology
reports showed that she died
of her injuries, not his injection of pain medication, he still
blames himself for her death. Now
he seeks therapy with other “souls in anguish,” including an
Army staff sergeant who was
unable to aid a comrade whose legs were severed in an
explosion in Afghanistan, a Marine Iraq
vet whose junior comrade was killed after he had persuaded him
to switch posts, and a Navy
man who beat an Iraqi civilian in anger. 68
The notion of moral injury does not necessarily include the loss
or taking of human life.
Consider the following anecdote taken from WBUR 90.9,
Boston’s NPR station, entitled “Moral
Injury: When Soldiers Betray Their Sense of Right and Wrong.”
“Tom” is an Army Veteran who deployed twice to Iraq. He
lives in the suburbs of Boston
and asked that we not use his real name.
Tom tells a story of moral injury where nobody dies. Still, it
gets at another way of

defining moral injury, one in which you stand in for the person
of legitimate authority,
betraying your own sense of right and wrong.
“With the dogs I always laugh, because people could not
possibly understand. I love
dogs. I grew up with dogs. But in Iraq you have to shoot the
dogs. One of our staff sergeants got
bit early on, and he had to have these rabies shots—like, the
old-school ones with the six-inch
needles. After that it was like a mandatory rule: You will shoot
every dog.
So we were clearing this whole village, nobody getting shot or
dying, but it was chaos.
Things were burning, yada, yada. We came to this last house
and this dog was going crazy.
Can I just shoot it?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
So I went over to the dog and shot next to it, just to scare it.
The dog started to shake so
uncontrollably, I thought it was going to die of a heart attack.
Maybe I was too soft at the time . . . but I just had this feeling,
like, what are we doing?

This dog was barking because a bunch of soldiers just went
through its house and
grabbed its owner and now they’re breaking things.
What am I doing here? It was not a good feeling.” 69
Johnathan Shay provides the additional important insight that
moral injury is best healed by
veterans themselves with professionals providing a safe space in
which the veterans can engage
in telling their narratives to one another. It is the process of the
veterans telling their stories
that is the essence of their healing. Members of the healing
professions can serve as
trustworthy guides through the process and be empathetic
listeners. provided they listen with
heart and head; make the process about the veteran; and are
humble enough to understand
that the veterans who have experienced the moral injuries have
much to teach the
professionals. In other words, it is the veterans themselves who
are the agents of their own
healing. 70
In addition to the safe space, there must also be a sacred space
to affect healing of
moral injuries. Shame, guilt, alienation, and despair, that often
attends to the first three, are
profoundly spiritual or soul-related injuries and not simply
psychological. What is a sacred
space? Sacred means to be set aside for a holy or single purpose
usually having to do with a

religious use. Veterans often feel that what they have
participated in as combatants is so
morally reprehensible that there is no possibility for
reconciliation and therefore they feel
alienated from the divinity due to their moral failures. In order
for there to be forgiveness or
reconciliation there must be both a sacred space in which to
confront the divinity and some
means by which communication with the divinity is possible.
We will discuss this vital matter of
a safe and sacred space further in the final chapter.
Retired Navy Captain William Nash, a psychiatrist who headed
the Marine Corps combat
stress programs, says, “Forgiveness, more than anything, is key
to helping troops who feel they
have transgressed.” 71 Moral wounds or injuries require
something more than emotional or
physical healing. Moral wounds are not medical issues, though
they may manifest medical
needs if left unattended. They are profoundly religious issues.
Military chaplains see troops
struggling with moral injury at the basic level of troops in the
trenches. Soldiers wrestle with
the notion of forgiveness even if they don’t possess the
religious language to describe their
struggle. Soldiers will frequently ask if they need to confess an
action-or an inaction. All too
frequently they come to their own conclusion that they have
gone past the point of possible
redemption and cannot accept the notion that God could or
would forgive them. They adopt
language that reflects their sense of alienation like: “I’m a
monster.” “It should have been me

and not those good guys who died.” “I’m not a hero. The guys
who were killed are the real
heroes.” “If there is a God, he couldn’t forgive what I’ve done.”
These are profoundly religious
questions though they certainly are not limited to any single
faith tradition.
The challenge facing faith communities and chaplains in
uniform in particular is in
finding a way to address the issue of moral wounds in a
constructive fashion. There are many
roadblocks in the way. It goes against the grain of a warrior’s
self-image to think that one
cannot carry the weight of one’s duty in combat. Ergo PTS is
seen as a weakness, a failure on
the part of the warrior. Likewise, moral injury implies an
ethical failure by the warrior who
serves in a force whose motto stresses honor, duty, and country.
Equally problematic is the
daunting challenge of determining how to help someone who
believes that he or she cannot
say what’s bothering them for fear of losing one’s security
clearance or being declared unfit for
duty.
Military chaplains must not only respond to and care for those
warriors who have
experienced moral injuries; they are also people who have
suffered moral injuries themselves.

The double challenge of experiencing personal moral injury
combined with the demand to be a
caregiver for others who have experienced moral injuries places
a significant burden upon
military chaplains and their families. In part due to the
atmosphere of antireligious sentiment
common in today’s cultural milieu military chaplains have
frequently adopted a medical model
of responding to the moral injuries of others. That is to say,
military chaplains have moved to
seeing themselves as therapists, counselors, or healers who
diagnose and treat “clients” in
much the same manner as psychologists or clinical social
workers. This tendency is one filled
with potential problems for the military chaplain. In order to
stay true to a vocational calling to
tend to the spiritual well-being of themselves and others,
chaplains must be well trained,
grounded in their own faith traditions with well-honed skills in
understanding the spiritual
nature not only of the injuries experienced by themselves and
others, but of the need to be
well trained and deeply committed to their own spiritual core.
We do not suggest that there ought not be a relationship
between the religious and the
medical or other helping communities. Indeed, each community
brings richness and essential
aspects to the treating of both the physical, spiritual, and moral
injuries incurred by warriors.
Military chaplains must be able to possess and demonstrate a
mature and well-developed
personal spirituality that is deeply informed and shaped by the
religious and theological tenets

of their faith traditions.
Warren Kinghorn, who is both a professor of psychiatry and
pastoral and moral theology
at Duke University Divinity School, has analyzed and criticized
the medical model that has come
to predominate in the treatment of moral injury. Though
insightful and clinically useful,
psychological theories of moral injury are limited by their
empirical suppositions. This makes
them unable to treat the problem as anything other than a
technical one. Thus, their
empiricism makes for an inability to evaluate the moral
suppositions and rules under attack in
cases of moral injury. They are unable to distinguish between
meaningful and non-meaningful
moral suffering. “Communities and meaning-structures
[religious communities and faith
convictions] can be instrumental, but only instrumental” to the
process of healing in moral
injury. For Kinghorn, who sees moral injury in terms of moral
and penitential theology, Christian
communities need to make room for combat veterans to
experience confession and absolution.
They need a community that can walk with them on an honest
path toward reconciliation,
recognizing that we are all implicated in the violence of our
world. 72
Brock and Lettini tell the story of Herm, a chaplain during the

Vietnam War. Herm
witnessed the terrible impact of the war’s atrocities upon the
soldiers he served. “I was
amazed,” he said, “at their personal shame—not guilt—but
profound, searing shame. Many felt
that they had committed a personal affront against God.” This
sense of shame emerged
especially when he had them read the Psalms, Psalm 51 in
particular. At a time when moral
injury was not yet named, Herm was drawn by these experiences
to the conclusion that
something far more profound than PTS was going on in the lives
of these soldiers. 73 The power
of this penitential psalm and the salutary effects of Herm’s
regular practice of serving
communion with its promise of forgiveness and mercy and
Jesus’ solidarity in human suffering
are surely lessons for today’s growing awareness of moral
injury.
Theological Reflections
The problem of evil is as familiar as it is seemingly insoluble.
If God is gracious, just, and
omnipotent, why is there evil? In theological terms it seems
totally plausible to say that moral
injury is an encounter with evil so radical that it evokes the
problem of evil as a deeply
existential reality rather than simply a theological conundrum.
We are all familiar with the
reality of evil within in us and around us. Given the webbed
interconnectedness of all things, we
cannot escape being touched by the manifestations of evil that

permeate our world. The Law of
God, says Helmut Thielicke, keeps reminding us of this truth of
our worldly existence.
It compels us to realize that, so long as we are here below, we
are implicated in
innumerable, suprapersonal webs of guilt . . . that we are actors
in a thousand plays
which we individually have not staged, which we might wish
never be enacted, but in
which we have to appear and play our parts. 74
For Thielicke, then, ethics is not a matter of competing
philosophical theories. It is a theological
matter of how we cope morally and with hope in this in-between
time, the time between the
eschatological fulfillment of Christ’s redemptive work and the
lingering reality of terrible evil.
75 In other words it is life in the tension of the interplay
between the accusation of God’s Law,
innately present in the brokenness of life, and the hope and
promise of the gospel.
It is humanity’s lot in general to live in this tension, to be
caught in webs of
suprapersonal guilt and placed on stage in tragic dramas not of
our choosing. Recognizing this
should place the faith community in a position of solidarity with
those suffering moral injury.
However, for the victims of moral injury their drama is a
counsel of despair; there is only the

accusing Law and no hint of gospel hope.
Providing help for those locked in the grip of despair is a
pastoral task involving the
chaplain along with the pastoral ministry of the community of
fellow sufferers and of the caring
congregation for those who have returned from battle struggling
to reenter civilian life. It is
important to provide a safe and welcome place in the church.
Providing safe and sacred space
for returning warriors to find healing for their wounds is an
obligation of the churches and their
congregations. No matter what their position on war may be, the
unconditional demand of
Christian love, which is the cornerstone of the Christian ethic,
reaches out to all.
In terms of the just war tradition, which has been observed
inside and outside the
churches, the principle that a war to be just must be declared by
a legitimate authority, means
for a democratic society that the citizenry take ownership for
that declaration and responsibility
for its casualties, whether physical or spiritual, including all
who share in the losses of war. The
Christian church along with other faiths have a vocational
obligation to lead the way in their
own witness of caring.

In her recent book in which she relates stories of the morally
injured with whom she has
been embedded, Nancy Sherman is insistent throughout on the
duty of society to take
responsibility for the well-being of their returning service men
and women. The nation and its
noncombatant citizens have been in some measure responsible
for the war by their political
involvement, their taxes, and in various ways supporting the
war. Thus she states emphatically,
We have a sacred moral obligation to those who serve, whether
or not we agree with
the causes of those wars and whether or not those who serve
agree with them. Those
moral obligations are institutional, both governmental and
nongovernmental: veterans
are morally owed the best possible resources across the widest
swath of medical
psychiatric, social, legal, and technical services. But the
obligations are also
interpersonal, one-on-one. We have duties to each other for care
and concern:
normative expectations and aspirations that we can count on
each other, we can trust
and hope in each other, and we can be lifted by each other’s
support. 76
Clearly, no mere ethical reflection on right and wrong will avail
in and of itself. The awful
encounter with evil, as Thielicke observed, is always for the
Christian a deep theological

question. A common theological response to the problem of evil
is to posit that God in creating
needed to allow for freedom if the creation is to have its own
integrity. Out of love of creation
the all-powerful God freely limits God’s self. Characteristic of
God’s love for the creation is that
willingness to be open to its rejection and, instead of coercing
obedience, to suffer with the
creation in order to redeem it.
This argument from love and freedom popular though it may be
does not stop the
nagging questions of why evil should emerge in the wake of
freedom or even how much
freedom for evil an omnipotent God can allow to go on. “How
long, O Lord, How long?” This is
the lament of the psalmist:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will
you hide your face from
me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, And have sorrow in
my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (P s 13:1–2)
The mystery persists. For this reason many theologians would
have us look not to the mystery
of evil’s origin. (“Universal sin” for example has largely
replaced “original sin”; the former

describes a fact while origin remains a mystery.) Instead of
looking to origins, some call us to
consider what God in love for the troubled world is doing to
redeem it from itself. Taking that
advice we can begin to see some theological resources that can
provide sustenance and a
compass for those seeking to walk with the morally injured on
the path to healing.
The Beatitudes with which Matthew begins Jesus’ Sermon on
the Mount give expression
to characteristics of agape love’s character and disposition. As
“blessings” they are capacities
born of that grace of God in Christ that engenders love. 77 In
the second of the Beatitudes
(Matt 5:4) we read, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall
be comforted.” Mourning, the
deep sense of loss and grief in the face of death, gives
expression to love’s profound
relationality. This may be a response to the loss of someone
near and dear but it may also be an
empathetic response to the tragic loss of life in the world
around us through acts of violence,
the fury of natural disaster, or the terrors of war. The onset of
mourning when confronted with
such loss of life or, more broadly, with all manner of human
suffering, tells us of our inherent
connectedness with all in the community of life. Our grief and
our empathic capacity to feel the
pain of others is a testimony to that connectedness. It is a
readiness to be in solidarity with the
suffering. It is love reaching out to affirm those relationships
with the hurting in a desire to
comfort and heal.

Even as it is Jesus who announces and bestows these blessings
of love’s disposition, it is
Jesus who embodies them in his life and work of self-giving
love for all people. Jesus’ solidarity
with the suffering of our sad world comes to its most complete
revelation in the event of the
crucifixion. We understand that in the mystery of the cross
Jesus took upon himself the sinful
brokenness of our world and even death itself. However, we
must insist that, contrary to some
traditional views, it was not simply the human Jesus who
endured the burden of human sin and
our death; it was an event in the very life of the Triune God.
For Luther the unity of human and
divine in the Christ and the unity of the Son with the Father and
the Spirit made it clear that
Christ’s passion was indeed God’s passion. Luther is quoted
thus in the Formula of Concord ,
one of Lutheranism’s confessional documents, “if it cannot be
said that God died for us, but
only a man, we are lost.” 78 While the Formula makes clear that
it is not in the nature of
divinity to die, it is clear from Luther that the suffering and
death of humanity as embodied in
the suffering and death of the Christ is taken into the divine life
of the Trinity united as the
persons are in the mutual indwelling of one another in the bonds
of love.
This theopassionism is central to Jürgen Moltmann’s theology
of the Trinity. These are

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