Healing Trauma with God: Your Journey through Suffering to Hope
A Book Review | Suffering and the Heart of God | Diane Langberg
Who is Diane Langberg?
Diane Langberg is globally recognized for her work with trauma victims. She has 50-plus years of clinical practice in her repertoire. She started her clinical journey serving the Christian community in 1972. She has been exposed to stories of sexual abuse not being taken seriously, the oppressed being more oppressed by Christians, and being taken advantage of. Those experiences ignited a passion inside Diane to expose the sins of those who say they are caring for the marginalized and lighten up the darkness through the person and work of Jesus Christ. She has a clinical practice in Jenkintown, PA, where she continues serving the Christian community.
“I believe that unless therapy is both incarnational and redemptive, in process and purpose, we who call ourselves counselors will fail to bring to our client’s true life as embodied in the person of Christ.” –Diane Langberg
The Call to Action
Langberg tells the story of when she was in the beginning stages of her clinical experience, which was the first time she heard a story of sexual abuse in a church. This being her first encounter with a shocking confession she turns to her clinical supervisor for supervision on the matter. Her supervisor stated that when women say something of the sort don’t believe them or play into this rhetoric because it will further their pathology. This terrible response was the seed that grew into her advocacy for sexual abuse victims and the marginalized.
Because of such routine ugliness, Langberg educates the reader on why trauma is a place of service to God’s children. Through her years of serving pastors and their congregations, she sees the lack of believing victims of trauma and the abundance of protection of the leaders who perpetrate the trauma. She knows that power and abuse often coincide and calls us to not only believe victims but do something about it and allow justice to be served. Langberg makes it clear that justice is a part of the healing process to tell victims you believe them but do nothing about it clashes with who Jesus is. She argues that He is the God of justice and restoration, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Central Idea
Langberg distinguishes between God and Christendom, noting that they are not the same. The behavior of those who lead the Christian “systems” reveals a significant lack of godliness. More than that, there is a lack of God himself in the systems. Langberg challenges churches to check their theological understanding of the relationship between God and the marginalized.
“Some of us also know of abuse in our families and our churches and have done and said nothing so as to protect the structure, the institution, rather than the victim.” | Diane Langberg
Your Trauma & God’s Heart
Langberg’s fight is against two things (maybe more, but two stick out to me). Sin and the toxicity of the church. She is fighting for those who have not been believed when they spoke up about their abuse because that is what Jesus did. She tells stories of having to sit in the sewage of sin with clients because they simply were not believed. Her parallel of sewage and sin is to invoke the reader to know how overcoming, garbage-like, and nasty sin is - yet that is the very place that Jesus calls us to go.
Langberg leaves the reader with compelling truths about the church, God, and us. She challenges leaders to do better and learn to sit with those who have suffered abuse. She challenges Christians to believe what victims say and stop protecting the perpetrators of such disgusting acts. She invites the victims of abuse to take hold of Jesus because he conquered the shame that has been experienced for all.
What will the reader learn?
The psychology of trauma
Biblical support for believing victims
The parallels between sin and trauma
How to minister effectively to those who have suffered trauma
Top 5 Quotes
“Go to the shamed and bend down and lift them up. Go to the shamed of this world and bring them a taste of his glory, the glory he has given you by his blood. And God forbid that we should glory except in the cross, that shaming instrument of torture that brings glory to ruined humans.”
“… I will know without a question that evil is not just “out there”; it is also “in here.” I will never see the world divided between “them” and “us.” There is no “them” because we are all “them.” God’s point of view will lead me to hate sin wherever I find it, including in myself.”
“Shame is a crushing burden and must be carried by frail human beings who were originally intended for glory.”
“Feelings express what the trauma did to the victim just like blood shows what a cut did to the skin. It is like seeing and acknowleding the physical wounds on the body after an accident. Feelings are the expression of the wounds of the heart, and they too need to be seen and heard.”
“Trauma turned their lives upside down— and still does— but it has not killed the soul.”
End Remarks
If you are looking to be educated, challenged, and inspired to work with the hurting within the Christian community, this book is a must! Even if you are not serving the Christian population, her clinical work is as effective for those who have suffered trauma. If you have suffered any form of trauma yourself, you will close this book feeling seen and motivated to walk toward your freedom and newness in Christ while bringing others along with you. I greatly support Diane Langberg’s work because she is well-informed about who Jesus is and how that relationship translates to psychological work with his people.
Here is a link for the hard copy of Suffering and the Heart of God. Once you have read it, come back here and let me know your reflections and big takeaways!