“But having right faith allows us to both mentally explain and endure our most broken human experiences and heal our broken souls.”
We have read of too many Racers coming home and feeling the shock and trauma of what they have experienced on the Race. The best answers for this will come straight from Scripture. Biblical Counseling has answers that secular psychology and even “Christian” counselors cannot provide. We hope this article, and even this counselor, will help some.
Post-Traumatic Stress Is Not a Disorder
The psychiatric label of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) describes not a disease, but an impairing event(s) and a person’s normal reaction to it. Likewise, the secular label of PTSD provides clear insight into the popular but false humanistic belief about human nature.
PTSD Is an Explanation Of Human Nature
The premise which views post-traumatic stress as a disorder rests on the false belief that people are normally capable of enduring severe trauma or stress without lasting, deep, and impairing mental and behavioral struggles. Yet, as holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl once wrote,
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
In fact, the label of PTSD itself is redundant and undermines the suggestion that ongoing distress is an abnormality; by definition, trauma is an event(s) or experience that produces ongoing distress.
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines trauma as “a very difficult or unpleasant experience that causes someone to have mental or emotional problems usually for a long time.”
It should be expected, then, that when people experience horrific events or survive painful wrong-doing against them, they will experience ongoing mental struggles—even potentially throughout the rest of their lives. When a person’s trauma is the result of another’s depraved or evil actions, the ongoing stress and impairment are often greater, the pain deeper, and the negative physical effects more pronounced.
A Biblical Perspective
The construct of PTSD highlights the sharp contrast between humanistic and biblical anthropologies. Humanists see people as normally strong and able to survive, whereas the Bible teaches human fragility and depravity.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) asserts in its construct of PTSD that post-traumatic stress is a medical abnormality/syndrome, but Scripture does not present this human tendency as a disorder or an abnormality.
Instead, the Bible reveals post-traumatic stress to be a normal and expected human response or reaction to a tragedy. In Ecclesiastes 7:7, for example, King Solomon states, “Surely oppression drives the wise (those who possess knowledge or are intellectual) into madness (turning to false beliefs).”
When people experience trauma that rests outside of their ability to handle the enormity of the stress mentally, it should be expected (“surely”) that they will struggle mentally to resolve these horrific realities and will be prone to turn to false beliefs to explain and mentally shoulder their experience.
Rather than being able to rely on faith or changing beliefs to enable endurance, the human tendency is to turn to falsehood and suppress or deny reality. The disposition of turning to false beliefs to deal with or reject reality represents the biblical definition of madness and is represented in the DSM-5 in part as “distorted cognition” and false guilt:
Persistent, distorted cognitions about the cause or consequences of the traumatic event(s) that lead the individual to blame himself/herself or others. Persistent negative emotional state (e.g., guilt or shame).
In Deuteronomy 28:33-34ff, as another Biblical illustration of PTS, the Word of God states,
“A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually so that you are driven mad by the sights that your eyes see.”
This text not only helps to define the biblical concept of madness, it specifically explains what drives people to it: “by the sights that your eyes see.” Unlike the secular construct of mental illness today, madness in Scripture was not a concept that described abnormality; rather, madness meant that someone had turned to deceit or was overcome by it.
When people are oppressed and crushed, they naturally turn to deceit. In Deuteronomy 28:28, God warned his people that if they rejected His truth they would be given over to deceit (madness):
“The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind, and you shall grope at noonday, as the blind grope in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. And you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to help you.”
Without proper faith, the realities that our eyes see (trauma) and the experiences of being oppressed and crushed will enviably lead us into spiritual blindness and deeper false beliefs. (continue reading for the remedy and help from a Biblical counselor)
Something to think about with regard to all we have shown is false about the teaching at AIM. There is help and hope in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus if you find yourself suffering, the Lord will be merciful to those who turn to Him in repentance and faith.
Missions and Mysticism 